Frost Death Knight DPS Spec, Builds, and Talents — The War Within (11.1.0)

You have the option to play two distinct builds as the Frost Death Knight. They have different gameplay and feel and excel in different areas. We have Shattering Blade focused builds that rely heavily on your Pillar of Frost windows to consume and generate lots of Killing Machine procs, as well as consuming Razorice stacks for big Frost Strikes. We also have Breath of Sindragosa builds, sticking to bosses for 30-60 seconds to maximise your damage. This build also runs Obliteration and plays in a similar manner to the other build, as long as your Breath is not running.

For The War Within, we recommend running the Shattering Blade as your go-to raiding build once you obtain the new tier set. It has the highest potential Single Target and do not suffer as much from forced downtime as Breath does. Until you receive your 4-set, or on fights where you want more cleave, run Breath of Sindragosa.

When it comes to Hero Talents, the choice depends on the build you are running. Breath of Sindragosa wants to run Deathbringer, primarily due to being quite constrained on talent builds, finding it difficult to pick up both Frostwyrm's Fury and Absolute Zero that enable Rider builds. Shattering Blade builds are much more flexible and can easily pick up everything that enables Rider of the Apocalypse. This is great since the build both deals the most damage, and has the added benefit of great mobility through Death Charge.

The Rider of the Apocalypse Hero Talents provides more focus on minion damage with your Riders being summoned both passively as well as actively via Frostwyrm's Fury. It primarily synergises with Shattering Blade builds since Breath builds have difficulties picking up the appropriate talents to make the build work. Furthermore, we gain the benefit of Death Charge, which significantly increases our mobility.

Deathbringer focuses on your 45-seconds burst windows with Reaper's Mark both dealing significant damage on its own, but also buffing your other abilities. It has a large amount of variance due to potentially proccing on itself multiple times in a row. Good synergy with Breath of Sindragosa which helps stack up Reaper's Mark up more quickly!

For more information on Hero Talents, please visit the dedicated page below:

In this section, we will rank the PvP talents that are best for leveling and doing open-world content.

• PvP talents enabled in the outdoor world.
• 10% increase in World Quest rewards at maximum level.
• 10% more experience gained while leveling.
• Earn Conquest Points, which can reward gear every week.

With the benefits of enabling War Mode for leveling and PvE content, it is recommended to enable the feature to maximize your leveling and rewards at maximum level. However, you will make yourself available for open-world PvP, and the possibility of being "ganked" while leveling or doing World Quests exists.

In this section, we will rank the PvP talents best for leveling and doing solo / small group PvE content. Below is a ranking of both General PvP Talents and Frost Death Knight-specific PvE talents.

1. Bloodforged Armor reduces Physical damage taken by 20% for 3 seconds after using Death Strike. Solid defensive value in a PvE environment!
2. Deathchill causes your Remorseless Winter and Chains of Ice to root the target in place for 4 seconds. Your Remorseless Winter causes all targets within 5 yards to be afflicted with Deathchill. If a target is afflicted with Chains of Ice, then casting Chains of Ice again will afflict them with Deathchill. A good option for controlling the enemies you fight against!
3. Delirium causes your Howling Blast and Frost Strike to apply Delirium to the target. Delirium reduces the cooldown recovery rate of movement abilities by 25% stacking up to 2 times for 15 seconds.
4. Dark Simulacrum places a dark ward on the target for 12 seconds; when the target spends Mana on a spell, you gain a duplicate of that spell. This ability has a 20-second cooldown and costs 20 Runic Power. It can be used to steal a very strong spell that can turn the tides of a fight.
5. Strangulate silences the target for 4 seconds. Okay, against casters in PvE, but generally not worth the point.
6. Bitter Chill reduces the target's haste by 8% when affected by Chains of Ice. Frost Strike extends its duration. Good for PvP CC but generally worthless in PvE.
7. Rot and Wither applies a 100% absorb shield for the damage dealt by Death and Decay. Not worth it in any PvE content.
8. Shroud of Winter reduces the cast range of enemies within 8 yards around you by 30%. Not useful in PvE.
9. Dead of Winter causes your Remorseless Winter to stun an enemy for 4 seconds when it deals damage 5 times to that enemy. It also increases Remorseless Winter's cooldown by 25 seconds and reduces the radius by 5 yards. This is a bad PvP talent since it reduces our DPS. Remorseless Winter is a big part of our DPS, and increasing its cooldown is a bad thing.
10. Spellwarden reduces the cooldown of Anti-Magic Shell by 10 seconds, and allows you to cast it on allies. Somewhat useful defensive talent to pick up!

Bloodforged Armor is a solid defensive upgrade and Deathchill helps to control your enemies. All other talents are not very impactful or simply worse for our damage throughput!