Jan 11

Welcome to Part 6 of the “So, You Wanna Play a Death Knight” series. Today we will talk about the frost talent tree.
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The Frost Tree

The frost tree is mistakenly referred to as both the “tank tree” and the “dual wield” tree. While there are talents in the frost tree that significantly boost dual-wielding ability and mitigation, none of the death knight’s trees are meant for any one role.

That being said, the frost tree is a very strong tanking tree, especially at lower-levels of avoidance (where a death knight tank wouldn’t have enough avoidance to keep Bone Shield up very long).

Death Runes

Each death knight talent tree has a talent that causes certain runes to become death runes after using certain abilities. For frost, this talent is Blood of the North. This talent changes blood runes into death runes when using Pestilence and Blood Strike.

Strike

Each death knight talent tree has a talent that gives you a new strike. For frost, this ability is Frost Strike.

Frost Strike is unique in that it costs runic power, rather than runes, to cast. The attack cannot be dodged, parried, or blocked, so is a reliable source of damage. Thus, frost death knights do not cast Death Coil as their runic power dump.

Frost also gets a second double-rune ability, called Howling Blast. More on this in the “Frost DPS” section, below.

Aura

Each death knight talent tree has a passive aura that affects your party or raid. For frost, this aura is Frost Aura, which boots your raid’s spell resistances by an amount equal to the death knight’s level–so, at level 80, every raid member would gain 80 spell resistance. This does not stack with a shaman’s totems or a paladin’s auras, but it does stack with the frost tree’s Acclimation.

It is common for frost DPS death knights to skip this talent, unless required by the fight or the raid leader.

Runic Power Ability

Each death knight talent tree has an ability that uses runic power as it’s 51-point talent. For frost, this ability is Hungering Cold. This ability is very situational, and seems to be most fitting for PvP, tanking, and “oh crap” moments. It does place Frost Fever on every mob in a 10 yard radius from the death knight, giving a boost to one of the frost death knight’s primary abilities–more on this later.

As mentioned above, frost death knights will find themselves casting Frost Strike as their primary runic power dump.

Raid Buffs

Frost death knights bring additional physical mitigation to the tank in the form of Improved Icy Touch–the slower the boss hits the tank, the less damage the tank takes. Furthermore, if specced into it, death knights bring melee haste in the form of Improved Icy Talons. This does not stack with a shaman’s Windfury Totem, though a shaman must spec into Improved Windfury Totem to match this death knight talent.

Frost DPS

Frost death knights will do most of their DPS via (gasp!) frost damage. This has the benefit of ignoring armor mitigation (since frost damage is magical). Frost has two double-rune abilities: Howling Blast, and (because Howling Blast has a cooldown), Obliterate. Annihilation, which allows Obliterate to deal damage without consuming diseases, is a must for this spec.

Frost DPS tends to be spikier than the other specs, do to talents like Killing Machine, Deathchill, and Rime.

Frost is also the primarily the tree that makes dual-wielding death knights viable; we will discuss this later in the article.

After Patch 3.0.8

3.0.8 will be removing Howling Blast’s cooldown, which will likely make frost DPS even more reliant on magical damage, and will also likely increase the viability of the dual-wield spec.

Frost Tanking

Frost is a very strong tanking tree, due to talents such as Lichborne, Frigid Dreadplate, Howling Blast (for AoE threat), Unbreakable Armor, Guile of Gorefiend, and Frost Strike (which cannot be avoided or mitigated, and is good for threat). Frost also offers a good amount of control, including slowing mobs melee attacks and a mass, 10-second crowd control.

Frost DPS Specs

• 17/54/0: Raid DPS
  Almost all two-handed frost DPS specs will look like this. Dark Conviction in the blood tree serves to increase the proc rate of Killing Machine.
• 15/37/19: “Tri-Spec” Dual Wield
  This is basically the only talent spec that makes dual-wielding death knights viable. You will want a slow main-hand weapon for larger ability hits and Blood-Caked Blade procs (when your offhand procs Blood-Caked Blade, it’s calculated from main-hand damage), and a fast offhand (combined with the haste) for more procs. Howling Blast is your primary double-rune ability, since it deals damage independently of weapon damage. The rotation is very simple because there are no death rune procs. After patch 3.0.8, the idea is to proc free Howling Blasts as often as possible.

Frost Tank Specs

• 11/53/7: Tank
  Frost tanking specs vary, and there is a lot of debate about which is best here and there. I would go with something along the lines of this one; you get all of the strong mitigation talents (including the spell mitigation talents in deep frost) and Bladed Armor (because you will have a ton of armor).

Rotations

I will keep track of runic power (denoted by “X RP”), but only runic power generated by runic abilities, including the Glyph of Icy Touch. I will take Chill of the Grave into account. If you have more runic power during a section where you are dumping runic power, keep doing so until you cannot any longer.

Because of the skikey, proc-ish nature of the frost tree, you will have to determine the best time to use Howling Blast (on a six-second cooldown) instead of Obliterate. You will generally want to save them for Rime procs, except in AoE situations, as Obliterate does quite a bit of damage on its own. (Remember, after patch 3.0.8, this will not be a problem.)

DPS Rotation

1. Start by applying your diseases by using Icy Touch and Plague Strike:

2. Use your blood runes to Blood Strike twice:

3. Cast Obliterate or Howling Blast:

or

4. Frost Strike to dump runic power (one global cooldown):

5. Wait for your frost rune to cool…

…and cast Icy Touch again, followed by Plague Strike:

6. Now wait for your second death rune to cool…

…and Obliterate:

7. Obliterate again:

8. You’ve got a bunch of runic power, Frost Strike it away. This will eat a couple global cooldowns:

9. Time to repeat the rotation.

Tanking Rotation

For a tanking rotation, follow the guidelines in the tanking article, using Howling Blast as your double-rune ability when you can.

Related posts:

1. So, You Wanna Play a Death Knight: Blood Tree
2. So, You Wanna Play a Death Knight: Unholy Tree
3. So, You Wanna Play a Death Knight: DPS
4. So, You Wanna Play a Death Knight
5. So, You Wanna Play a Death Knight: Basics