Frost Death Knight PvP Talents and Builds — The War Within (11.0.7)
Choosing the right PvP and PvE talents is a prerequisite to proper performance in PvP. This guide goes through the various talent choices available to you as a Frost Death Knight and gives you the best combinations you can take.
This page is part of our Frost Death Knight PvP Guide.
Best Talents for Frost Death Knight
Dual-wield Talents for Frost Death Knight
Dual-wield Frost is very similar to Unholy in that it is focused on dealing sustained damage. This tends to be much easier to play as you aren't forced to setup big goes to win games.
When playing dual-wield make sure that you lock in The Long Winter. Since we focus on doing more sustained damage having a longer Pillar of Frost helps us to achieve that goal. You can drop Shattering Blade if you want to pick up Icebreaker but it is generally not worth it due to the finishing power provided by Shattering Blade.
2H Build for Frost Death Knight
This build is optimal for one-shot compositions as all of your damage is concentrated into Pillar of Frost. Breath of Sindragosa might seem like a weird pick but we use it pop Reaper's Mark. This allows for an explosive go every 2 minutes.
Be sure to use the 'Export Talents' button to import our build in-game!
PvP Talents for Frost Death Knights
PvP Talents are very situational with their usage. They tend to fill certain niche roles in your own comp or counters to other comps. Therefore, instead of a cookie-cutter PvP talent setup, you will change them in the gates before a match starts, depending on the enemy classes.
General PvP Talents
Strangulate is a very impactful crowd control effect. It costs no resources, has no cast time, and lasts 4 seconds on a short 1-minute cooldown. Because of this, you can use it every time you use Pillar of Frost on the healer and make the damage much more difficult for them to deal with. The healer's trinket will have a longer cooldown than your Strangulate, meaning one of your setups will not have an answer. This can also be used against certain classes to prevent them from using certain abilities, such as a Priest's Greater Fade. This talent is very powerful in any composition as a result.
Situational PvP Talents
Delirium is a unique and powerful anti-movement effect that works against abilities that will move a player's character; namely, Mage's Blink, Monk's Roll and Transcendence, and Demon Hunter's Fel Rush. Because of this, this talent is generally taken against any of those classes to shut down their mobility.
Bitter Chill is a powerful disruption tool. Every spec and every class in the game gets some benefit from Haste in the forms of faster casts, resource generation, and global cooldown reduction. This means reducing it by a whopping 8% can severely throw off the enemy's momentum and the power of their burst windows. The ability to reset this effect and chains by using Frost Strike just makes it even more consistent. This talent is key if you are having trouble surviving a burst-heavy team.
Bloodforged Armor is a new addition to the Death Knight's toolkit. This ability provides a 20% physical damage reduction for 3 seconds after each death strike. This should be used in any class with heavy physical damage, such as feral and Warrior.
Dark Simulacrum is one of the more interesting spells in the game currently. It is extremely powerful against spammable CC effects, such as Polymorph, or Cyclone, as well as powerful healing cooldowns such as Life Cocoon. It is a neat addition to Death Knight's toolkit while having a high skill cap and awareness requirement.
Spellwarden is a remarkably powerful tool. This allows you to cast AMS on your teammates. This can be used to prevent crowd control from landing on your healer or to allow your teammate to stay aggressive in caster match-ups.
Shroud of Winter is a very niche PvP talent. It does not have a set composition. It is good against it because every class has abilities with important range thresholds on them. This talent is based heavily on what your team is playing and what it struggles against. If a certain crowd control setup has been too difficult to stop or swaps during burst windows are causing your team many losses, this talent prevents both of those things by limiting the range at which they can happen. Experiment on your own with this very interesting PvP talent!
Dead of Winter is a strong PvP talent. This ability allows for Remorseless Winter to serve as an AoE stun every 45 seconds. This talent is chosen when your team has a lack of AoE stuns or cannot reliably get an AoE stun every Pillar of Frost, such as when playing with a caster.
Changelog
- 15 Dec. 2024: Reviewed for Patch 11.0.7.
- 21 Oct. 2024: Updated for Patch 11.0.5.
- 09 Sep. 2024: Reviewed for The War Within Season 1.
- 21 Aug. 2024: Updated for War Within Launch.
- 23 Jul. 2024: Reviewed for War Within Prepatch.
- 07 May 2024: Reviewed for 10.2.7.
- 22 Apr. 2024: Reviewed for Season 4.
- 19 Mar. 2024: Reviewed for Patch 10.2.6.
- 15 Jan. 2024: Reviewed for Patch 10.2.5.
- 06 Nov. 2023: Updated for Patch 10.2.0.
- 01 Sep. 2023: Reviewed for Patch 10.1.7.
- 10 Jul. 2023: Reviewed for Patch 10.1.5.
- 05 May 2023: Updated for Patch 10.1.
- 21 Mar. 2023: Reviewed for Patch 10.0.7.
- 30 Jan. 2023: Reviewed for Patch 10.0.5.
- 11 Dec. 2022: Updated for Dragonflight Season 1.
- 22 Nov. 2022: Updated for Dragonflight pre-patch.
- 31 Jul. 2022: Reviewed for Shadowlands Season 4.
- 31 May 2022: Reviewed for Patch 9.2.5.
- 02 Mar. 2022: Reviewed for Patch 9.2.0.
- 11 Dec. 2021: Updated for Patch 9.1.5.
- 02 Jul. 2021: Updated for Patch 9.1.
- 20 Mar. 2021: Reviewed for Patch 9.0.5.
- 20 Feb. 2021: Updates for the developing meta.
- 05 Dec. 2020: Updated for Shadowlands Season 1.
- 12 Nov. 2020: Updates made by new writer.
- 14 Oct. 2020: Updated for Shadowlands pre-patch.
Other PvP Guides
Keator is a Rank 1 Death Knight and has been playing Death Knight since Wrath. After having raided in US Top 50 guilds for multiple expansions, he decided to dive into PvP where he found his passion. He also streams occasionally on Twitch.
- The First Pet With a Player Teleportation Ability Arrives, It’s From the Store, and May Be Coming to the West
- Death Knight On a Paler Horse Hero Talent Not Working in Siren Isle
- Very Handy Official Siren Isle Rare Mob Map
- Season of Discovery Phase 7 Initial PTR Development Notes
- WoW Classic 20th Anniversary Edition Phase 2 Arrives January 9
- 20th Anniversary Razer Collaboration: Two Mounts and a Pet Added to Purchases
- New Alleria “Seasons” Comic Released
- Blizzard Plans to Reduce Add-On Reliance in Future Raids