Frost Death Knight DPS Spell List and Glossary — The War Within (11.1.0)
On this page, we present you with all spells and procs that you need to understand as a Frost Death Knight in World of Warcraft — The War Within (11.1.0).
Introduction
If you are new to Frost, this is a great place to start to get an understanding of how the spec works. On this page we will discuss what abilities you have, what they are used for within the specialization, how they interact with each other and also with important cooldowns. If you already have experience with Frost and are comfortable with it in the current expansion, it is recommended you skip this section and move on to the rest of the guide.
Main Resources of Frost Death Knights
Runic Power and Runes are your two primary resources. We have 6 Runes in
total
that passively generate over time, taking 10 seconds to recharge (decreased by
haste).
Runes are the most common resource we use for our abilities, which include
Obliterate and
Remorseless Winter. Spending Runes
generates 10 Runic Power per Rune used. We use Runic Power as our spender on
abilities such as
Frost Strike and
Glacial Advance
Unlocking Abilities
Spells and passive abilities are unlocked as you level up and spend talent points. This page will simply list every single ability you can obtain, not recommending any specific talent setups or rotations to use. If you want to understand which abilities are best to pick up when leveling, please follow the below link.
Frost Death Knight Baseline Abilities
These are the abilities that you obtain without selecting anything in the talent trees.
Ability | Abbreviation | Description/Effect |
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DC | Costs 30 Runic Power to cast, dealing Shadow damage to the target. Can be cast on an Undead ally (including yourself) to heal it. Works to heal Afflicted affix! |
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DnD | Costs 1 Rune and places a damaging area at the
target location, which persists for 10 seconds. If you have selected
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DA | ![]() |
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- | Costs 1 Rune and deals moderate damage. Is replaced
once we choose a specialisation (![]() |
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RE | A passive that gives you a 2% chance per Runic Power spent to instantly regenerate a Rune. Always picks a fully depleted Rune if possible, or the least depleted one if possible. |
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- | A passive that grants you a free ![]() ![]() |
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- | A passive that grants 20% mounted movement speed. |
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- | Pulls your target towards you. Also has a shorter GCD compared to normal spells at 0.5 seconds. This means that you can quickly use another ability after gripping something. |
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- | Costs 30 Runic Power and battle resses a targeted dead ally, bringing them back to life (even in combat). |
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- | Turns you undead for 10 seconds. This makes you immune to charm, fear, and sleep, and grants you 10% leech. You can also activate this ability to break any of these CCs, making it a useful tool if you are accidentally hit a mechanic that applies such a CC. |
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- | Taunts the targeted enemy, forcing them to attack you. |
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- | Allows you to apply a powerful Runeforge to your weapon, acting as a (usually) better enchant. You do this in the Acherus Hold at the Runeforges. |
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- | Summons a gate that will teleport you to Acherus. Here you
can Runeforge your weapon and practice your rotation on target dummies. Using
the ![]() |
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- | Costs 1 Rune and grants everyone in your group the ability to walk on water. Breaks on any damage taken. |
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- | Our Mastery, increasing all Frost damage we do. Doesn't work on damage sources from items. |
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RW | Costs 1 Rune, dealing AoE Frost damage around you for
8 seconds. It also slows all enemies affected by 20%. Our primary non-cooldown
ability for AoE damage that is also worthwhile to press in Single Target.
It can be significantly buffed with talents such as ![]() ![]() ![]() |
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MotFW | Increases the damage of ![]() ![]() ![]() |
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- | Turns your ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() |
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- | Provides a 45% chance for ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() |
Frost Death Knight Class Tree Active Abilities
Ability | Abbreviation | Description/Effect |
---|---|---|
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DS | Costs 45 Runic Power and constitutes our primary mean of healing ourselves. The amount of healing increases with the damage we've taken in the last 5 seconds, making it excellent to use after you have taken a big hit. It heals for 25% of the damage taken with a minimum of 7% max hp healed every time. |
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- | Summons a ghoul to fight with us for 1 minute. The ghoul can charge as well as stun, in addition to dealing damage. |
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- | Interrupts your target. It has a 15 yards range, a benefit over other melee interrupts that often require melee range. |
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Sleet | Blinds all targets in a cone in front of you for 5 seconds. When the enemies are broken out of sleep via damage or if the duration finishes, they are slowed by 50% for 6 seconds. Great ability to stop a group of enemies from casting, as well as controlling them efficiently. Your tank will love this ability whenever they need to kite. |
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SacPact | Costs 30 Runic Power and sacrifices your primary ghoul, dealing AoE damage (linearly to 8 targets, square root afterward) and healing you for 25% of your maximum hp. Primarily used as an energy heal as the damage component is not worth the hassle of resummoning the ghoul. |
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- | Costs 1 Rune and controls the targeted Undead enemy for 2 minutes. This requires that the enemy is sufficiently low-level (it does not work on bosses and certain mobs in dungeons). Furthermore, it prevents you from having your primary ghoul active. You can use the abilities of the dominated undead at reduced effectiveness. Overall, this should only be used as a CC tool since the damage loss of not having our primary ghoul active is too great. |
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IBF | Provides a 30% damage reduction for 8 seconds, additionally making you immune to stuns. It can be used when stunned as well to break out of the CC. Primary defensive cooldown for us with the added benefit of the stun break! |
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AMZ | Places a zone on the ground that reduces magic damage taken by 20% for 10 seconds for everyone standing in it. The maximum amount that can be absorbed is equal to 1.5 times your Maximum Health, increased by your Versatility. |
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Asphyx | Stuns your target for 5 seconds. Simple single-target stun with a range of 20-yard range. |
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- | Heals you for 50% of your maximum health, as well as putting a healing absorption heal for 30% of your maximum health. A panic-button heal with a downside. The effective healing is only 20%, but you still find a lot of instances where this provides the required breathing room for your healers or you need to bring you back to health. |
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WW | Provides 70% movement speed for 4 seconds. Any ability used during the channel will break the effect. Useful as a movement speed increase in instances when you need to move between A and B without doing anything else. |
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Limb/AL | Grows an extra arm for you for 12 seconds, dealing
AoE damage around you, as well as pulling a random enemy toward you every
second.
The enemy must be outside melee range to be liable to grip. Great utility tool
that will help your party group up any pack of mobs. It also provides three procs
of ![]() |
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SR | Costs 1 Rune, deals low damage, and applies a debuff to your enemy. After 5
seconds, if the target is below 35% health, this debuff explodes, dealing heavy
ShadowFrost damage. If the target dies while under the effect of Soul Reaper,
you
gain ![]() |
Frost Death Knight Spec Tree Active Abilities
Ability | Abbreviation | Description/Effect |
---|---|---|
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FS | Costs 25 Runic Power, dealing Frost damage to your target. This is our primary Runic Power spender in Single Target, forming part of our Core rotation. |
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Oblit | Costs 2 Runes, dealing Physical damage (or Frost damage if talented). Our
primary
Rune spender! It can be significantly buffed through a variety of procs and
talents such as ![]() ![]() ![]() |
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HB | Costs 1 Rune, dealing frost damage to your target
and nearby enemies. The damage scales as square-root, meaning the damage per
target decreases as you add additional targets. The total damage always
increases.
This spell also applies our DoT ![]() ![]() ![]() |
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GA | Costs 30 Runic and deals Frost damage to enemies
in a line, in the direction you are facing. Also applies ![]() ![]() ![]() |
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Pillar/ PoF | Increases your strength by 25% for 12 seconds. Additionally,
every Rune you spend when the buff is active increases your strength by an
additional 2%. Iconic Frost DK cooldown that we leverage to boost our other
cooldowns. It has multiple talents that directly interact with it, such as
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FsC | Costs 2 Rune and deals Frost damage in a cone in front of you. It's a guaranteed
crit and deals 4 times normal damage when it crits. Consuming ![]() ![]() |
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HoW | Instantly grants you 2 Runes and 25 Runic Power. Good
addition of resources to the rotation and especially good with
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ERW | Either grants the ![]() |
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CS | Costs 1 Rune and throws a snowball at your enemy. This ball will bounce to the closest enemy within 6 yards for a total of 9 bounces. If there are no enemies to bounce to, the snowball can bounce of the player as well, making it useful in Single Target as well. |
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FwF | Calls down a dragon to breath frost damage to all enemies in a line in front of you, traveling 40 yards. Huge burst AoE cooldown that can be leveraged well on extra-large packs in Mythic+ or add spawns in Raid. |
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Breath/ BoS | Deals Frost damage in a cone in front of you dealing full damage to your primary target and 1/ sqrt(n) times as much on all secondary targets (n is the number of total targets). The ability will drain 16 Runic Power per second, stopping once you reach below 16. Alters your rotation significantly and presents an optimization problem to maximize its duration. Great cooldown both for Cleave, Single Target, and AoE, which great Frost Death Knights can leverage to excel! |
Frost Death Knight Class Tree Passive Abilities
Ability | Abbreviation | Description/Effect |
---|---|---|
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RA | Gives your auto attacks a chance to grant you 3 Runic Power. This provides around 30 Runic Power per minute, adding a good amount of resources to our rotation. |
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- | Increases the healing of ![]() ![]() |
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- | Makes your ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() |
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- | Lowers the cooldown of ![]() |
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- | Grants you an extra 25% movement speed during the first
3 seconds of activating ![]() |
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- | Provides a 5% Haste buff whenever you stand in your
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- | Gives your ghoul a chance to apply a debuff to its target, reducing its movement speed by 30% and making it deal 15% less damage to you. |
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- | Grants you 10 Runic power and reduces the cooldown
of ![]() |
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PC | Increases the number of targets hit by your
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- | Provides a shield on yourself based on 40% of your auto attack damage. Provides a good deal of tankiness, both from passive healing but also as prevention to one-shot mechanics. |
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VoTW/ Veteran | Increases your stamina by 20%, making you significantly tankier overall. |
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- | Grants your diseases a chance to apply a debuff to your enemy, increasing the damage you do against them by 6% for 5 seconds. |
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- | Increases the range of ![]() |
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IT | Provides a 6% increase in attack speed for 6 seconds
every time we spend Runic Power, stacking up to 3 times. Provides a nice increase
in our ![]() |
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- | Increases the effectiveness of our Runeforges by 20%.
This includes every aspect of the Runeforge, making
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- | ![]() |
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GW | Increases the effectiveness of all absorbs on you by 15%.
Big survivability increases both from empowering our abilities, such as
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- | Increases the amount absorbed by ![]() |
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- | Adds a 90% slow to your ![]() ![]() |
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- | Passively increases your Avoidance by 3%. This is increased to 9% for 6 seconds when you suffer a loss of control effect. |
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- | Passively increases your Leech by 3%. |
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- | Converts your ![]() |
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- | Your ![]() |
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- | Applies a stacking debuff with your auto attacks,
reducing the enemy's attack speed by 5% per stack up to 20% at 4 stacks. Helps
your tanks survive in a scenario (or yourself when doing open-world content).
Stacks with similar effects such as ![]() |
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- | Reduces your chance to be critically struck by 3% and increases your armor by 6%. Small defensive boost. |
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BD | Heals you for a moderate amount if you drop below 30%
health. It can only occur once every 2 minutes. Also reduces damage taken by 10%
and Runic Power cost of ![]() |
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- | Makes spending Runes give a chance to increase our strength by 3/6% for 8 seconds. |
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- | When you pull an enemy (with ![]() ![]() ![]() |
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WotN | Reduces the damage you take below 30% by 20/35%. Big boost to our survivability since the damage we take below 30% is by far the most useful to mitigate. Effectively increases max HP by 16% against one-shots. |
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- | Reduces magic damage taken by 10% and harmful debuff duration by 35%. A really nice defensive boost against magic damage. |
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- | Increase the cooldown of ![]() |
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DE | Provides an extra charge to ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() |
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- | ![]() |
Frost Death Knight Spec Tree Passive Abilities
Ability | Abbreviation | Description/Effect |
---|---|---|
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KM | Gives your critical auto-attacks a chance to make
your next ![]() ![]() |
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EF | Applies a debuff to any enemy damaged by your
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- | Gives a 2% stacking strength buff every time you deal damage to an enemy with an ability that costs Runic Power. Lasts for 6 seconds and stacks up to 3 times. Provides an ability to track in your core rotation where you need to prioritise Runic Power abilities every so often to maintain it at full uptime. |
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- | Increases the damage of your ![]() |
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- | Increases your maximum Runic Power by 10/20, bringing the
total to 110/120. This stacks with our ![]() |
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- | Increases the damage increase of ![]() |
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- | Increases the damage of our ![]() |
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BC | Increases the damage of ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() |
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- | Increases the damage of ![]() ![]() |
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RotFC | Increases the chance for ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() |
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CH | Gives a stacking buff every 2 seconds that makes your
next ![]() ![]() ![]() |
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- | Provides a 15% strength buff after your
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- | Reduces the cooldown of ![]() ![]() ![]() |
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Whelp | Summons a mini dragon when we use ![]() ![]() |
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ME | Gives a 25% chance to generate a Rune when
you consume a proc of ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() |
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IA | Provides a stacking buff on yourself every 8 seconds.
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GS | Increases the duration of ![]() ![]() |
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CC | Each time ![]() ![]() ![]() |
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- | Makes your ![]() ![]() |
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EC | A 20% chance to increase the total amount
of bounces by 1 every time ![]() |
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- | Provides a stacking 1% critical strike buff whenever
you consume a proc of ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() |
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- | Increases auto-attack damage by 10%. Also increases the number of times
that ![]() ![]() |
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AZ | Reduces the cooldown of ![]() |
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- | Provides some extra AoE damage whenever we consume a proc
of ![]() ![]() ![]() |
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- | Makes your ![]() ![]() ![]() |
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Oblit | Makes your ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() |
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IDT | Your auto attack crits have a chance to deal Frost damage in a cone in front of you. Good passive damage throughput that requires you to always think about your position to deal effective AoE damage. |
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SB | Makes your ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() |
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- | Runic Power abilities sometimes deal 45% of their damage over 4 sec. Just a
passive DPS boost to any ability that consumes Runic Power. This includes
the free ![]() ![]() |
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TLW | During ![]() |
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SF | When ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() |
Rider of the Apocalypse Hero Talents
Ability | Abbreviation | Description/Effect |
---|---|---|
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Spending Runes have a chance to summon a Horsemen for 10 seconds.
Randomly gets one out of four Horsemen:
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While outdoors, you are able to mount your Acherus Deathcharger in combat. Huge increase to the speed at which you can quest in outdoor content. Unfortunately does not worked in instanced content such as Raids, Dungeons, Battlegrounds and Arenas. | |
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Replaces your ![]() |
|
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When ![]() ![]() ![]() |
|
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The damage of your diseases and ![]() |
|
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Your damage is increased by 5% and you gain the benefits of your ![]() |
|
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|
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Every 50 Runic Power you spend extends the duration of the Horsemen currently aiding you by 1 second, up to a maximum of 5 seconds. Solid way of improving overall uptime of the Horsemen! | |
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While you have 2 or more Horsemen aiding you, Runic Power spending abilities
deal 20% increased damage. Good synergy with ![]() |
|
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When active, your Horsemen will occasionally cast ![]() |
|
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When you take damage, 5% is redirected to each active Horseman. Solid passive damage reduction that increases significantly during your cooldowns. | |
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Deathbringer Hero Talents
Ability | Abbreviation | Description/Effect |
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2 Rune, 45 seconds cooldown ability that deals Shadowfrost damage and applies
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Casting ![]() |
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When ![]() |
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Your ![]() ![]() ![]() |
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Consuming ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() |
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Shadowfrost damage applies 2 stacks to ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() |
|
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When you suffer damage of more than 25% of your max health, you instantly
cast ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() |
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Each Rune spent reduces the magic damage you take y 2% and each Rune generated reduces the physical damage you take by 2% for 5 seconds, up to 5 times. Provides a solid amount of defensive value as you tend to maintain high stacks for most of fights. | |
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Reduces the cooldown of ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() |
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When an enemy deals direct damage to your ![]() |
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After ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() |
Changelog
- 24 Feb. 2025: Reviewed and updated for Patch 11.1.
- 15 Dec. 2024: Reviewed and update for Patch 11.0.7.
- 21 Oct. 2024: Reviewed for Patch 11.0.5.
- 09 Sep. 2024: Reviewed for The War Within Season 1.
- 21 Aug. 2024: Updated for The War Within.
- 23 Jul. 2024: Updated for The War Within Pre-Patch.
- 07 May 2024: Reviewed for 10.2.7.
- 22 Apr. 2024: Updated for Season 4.
- 22 Mar. 2024: Reviewed for Patch 10.2.6.
- 15 Jan. 2024: Reviewed for Patch 10.2.5.
- 06 Nov. 2023: Updated for Patch 10.2.
- 04 Sep. 2023: Reviewed for Patch 10.1.7
- 10 Jul. 2023: Reviewed for Patch 10.1.5.
- 01 May 2023: Reviewed for Patch 10.1.
- 20 Mar. 2023: Updated for 10.0.7.
- 24 Jan. 2023: Reviewed for Patch 10.0.5.
- 11 Dec. 2022: Reviewed for Dragonflight Season 1.
- 28 Nov. 2022: Updated for Dragonflight launch.
- 25 Oct. 2022: Updated for Dragonflight pre-patch.
More Death Knight Guides
Guides from Other Classes
This guide has been written by Bicepspump, a semi-hardcore player raiding with Pescorus on Kazzak. He is heavily involved in the DK DPS theorycrafting community, testing hyoptheses and investigating the correct priority to use. He produces guide content on YouTube and frequently streams on Twitch.
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