[Epic] Death Knight Frost DPS Guide!

[ChildeRoland]

By the author of the Death Knight Tanking Guide, here comes now the Death Knight Frost DPS guide!

This guide is a wall of text, cuz I try to explain all possibilities for DKs, even for the dummies

Shortenings:
Icy Touch: IT
Plague Strike: PS
Obliterate: OB
Howling Blast: HB
Blood Strike: BS
Frost Strike: FS
Death Coil: DC
Death and Decay: DnD
Runic Power: RP
Attack Power: AP
Death Knight: DK

Introduction
After I got bored of tanking and wanted to dps in raids, I got myself two nice one-handers, and started with the Frost spec. When I later got myself a Betrayer of Humanity I kept using frost, to see how hard my Frost Strikes and Obliterates could possibly get. This guide will help you to Dual wield dps, as well as using a two hander.

Important:
When you dps, ALWAYS stand behind the boss, unless it is not possible (Kologarn). If you stand in the front the boss will often parry attacks, which will do two things.
One: you won't deal dmg with that attack.
Two: the tank will take the next hit faster, giving the healers a hard time.

Stats
Strength: Your main stat. All my sockets are Strength ones.
Agility: Agi gives crit, but is often only gained by cloak enchant and accessories.
Stamina: Stamina is gained from almost every piece of item, and having around 20000 hit points is useful.
Spirit and Intellect: None of those gives you anything, so no need to pick them on any piece of item.

Bonus Stats:
Crit: Certainly a great stat, and it gives a lot of dps.
Hit: -for one hand dps 8% is a must. -1% from Draeneis. Dual wielders should aim for 17%, minus 3% from Virulence.
Expertise: Having 6.5% is good for some bosses, but standing behind targets means you don't need it very much.
Armor Penetration: Good enough for OB.

Specs and glyphs
Two hand frost spec:Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft
Dual Wield frost spec:Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

Deeper into the talents
Blood:
Tier one:
Butchery and Subversion. Those will reduce your aggro and increase RP gain, and are surely better than Blade Barrier for dpsing. Will also increase critical chance for some abilities.
Tier two:
Bladed Armor and Two Handed Weapon Specialization: Both of those will increase your damage output greatly.
Tier Three:
Dark Conviction: 5% critical strike I use in each spec, and crit in frost is very useful.
Frost:
Tier one:
Imp. Icy touch and RP mastery is much better than armor for dps, and is the obvious choice.
Tier two:
Black Ice: A must-have for frost DK. A big percent of your damage is frost, and therefore this increase your dmg output by a heavy amount.
Icy Reach or Nerves of Cold Steel: Those depends on your spec. Icy Reach is just a small filler, but you don't need that when you DW and got Nerves.
Tier Three:
Icy Talons and Annihilation: 20% melee haste is incredible. It's a group buff pretty equal to blood DK's and enhancement shamans 10% AP. Also, 3% crit and you won't dispel diseases is very very useful.
Tier Four:
Killing Machine, Chill of the Grave: Killing Machine gives almost each critical white hit a free crit with HB and FS, and is a insane talent. Chill of the Grave gives more RP, and therefore more FSs'.
Tier five:
Glacier Rot and Deathchill: Glacier Rot: 20% increased dmg, Deathchill, one of very few Death Knight cooldowns. Useful on some boss fights, and a Deathchill HB combo is dangerous in AoE.
Tier six:
Imp Icy Talons, Merciless Combat and Rime: 20% attack speed to raid. 12% increased dmg to targets with less than 35% hp is a great boost when you start to get 10k crits . Rime: Free HB's is really useful, especially with Killing Machine.
Tier seven:
Nothing useful for dps here.
Tier eight:
Blood of the North and Unbreakable Armor: Gives your BS more dmg, and gives some Death Runes you can use for more OBs. Also, Unbreakable is a good buff with it's 25% STR increase, that acctually got a good duration.
Tier Nine:
Frost Strike and Guile of Gorefiend: FS is one of the top damaging abilities, and Guile of Gorefiend increases crit damage to most of your abilities.
Tier ten:
Tundra Stalker: Even more damage, 15% extra as there is always at least one desease on the target.
Tier Eleven:
Howling Blast: A very useful AoE spell.
Unholy
Tier one:
Virulence: 3% more spellhit is pretty ok. The other effect is not for PvE tho.

How to DPS
Rotation: IT, PS, OB/HB, BS, BS. If your deseases are still up, or you chose to use Empowered Rune Weapon: OB, OB, OB, RP dump.
On RP dumps, use FS, or if out of range use DC untill you are in range.
Always keep deseases up on your targets, and remember: Single target= OB, AoE groups= HB.
AoE rotation:
DnD, IT, PS, Pestilence, HB, Boil Bloodx2, wait, HB, OB, Boil Blood. Repeat.

On boss fights you might want to cast Army of the Dead and Raise Dead to improve your dps.

Glyphs
You might chose between many glyphs, but here is what I use, and why.
Major Glyphs
Glyph of Frost Strike: "zomgwtfbbq", this is the best glyph available. FS is your RP dump ability, and you should spam it often. Using this glyph allows you to use it even more.
Glyph of Death and Decay: 20% increased damage is a nice amount, + 35% from talents. DnD is very very useful in AoE groups.
Glyph of Obliterate: This also will increase your dmg so greatly it is a must-have for DKs. OB is your main ability, and should be spammed ALL the time.

Minor Glyphs
Glyph of Pestilence: Bonus range is nice.
Glyph of Horn of Winter: one min increases duration from 100% to 150%. nice.
Glyph of Raise Dead: No corpse dust wasted.

Macros
I do not use any "helpful" macros when dpsing, but I do use two fun ones.

Deathchill macro: Plays "You.. Will.. Die.." when cast Deatchill:
#showtooltip Deathchill
/cast Deathchill
/script PlaySoundFile("Sound\\Creature\\CThun\\CThunYouWillDIe.wav")

Army of the Dead macro: Plays "Soildiers arise, Stand and fight! Bring victory at last, to this fallen knight." when cast Army of the Dead
#showtooltip Army of the Dead
/cast Army of the Dead
/script PlaySoundFile("Sound\\Creature\\HeadlessHorseman\\Horseman_Special_01.wav")


Your Cooldowns:
Army of the Dead: Good dmg boost.
Unbreakable Armor: 25% STR increase.
Deathchill:One crit, use this mostly in AoE and when I got crit dmg increasing effects, like Hodir's Storm Cloud.
Empower Rune Weapon: Very useful when you loose your rotation, or when all runes is on cooldown.
Blood Tap: Might give another Pestilence, that might be useful.


Sorry for the wall of text, but I think it's necessary



This guide is written completely by me. If you got anything to add or anything I should change, reply or PM me.

Latest edit: Removed [epic] tag. I finally got it into my head that it shouldn't be there

Edit: It won't go away It is not in the title on the edit, but it shows up on my Guides section. Maybe I must get a bump first, who knows?

[ChildeRoland]

Dunno about max length on posts, so here is a filler in case I will need one.

[fearedtoast]

Good to see an original guide on here, and this one's pretty handy!
+Rep

[Rocket2603]

This looks really nice!

[xfreddieleex]

If you want dps go Blood! +rep for trying

[ChildeRoland]

I was in a naxx pug yesterday. When we came to patch (started with construct), I had 5.8k dps overall, and 10% of damage done. This might sound low, but it was 25 man.
All specs works fine for dps, I ain't saying blood is bad, but this is a guide on how to dps with frost spec.

[ggshaman]

First off most of this is common knowledge, and the rest is wrong.

1). Subversion Is not good because it reduces your threat, it gives you 9% crit on Obliterate

2). Blood of the North Is extremely good now not because it increases your Blood Strike Damage by 15% it now increases your Frost Strike damage by 15%

3). Tundra Stalker also Gives you 5 expertise


Your rotation is also wrong
ST
PS > IT > BS > BS > OBL > OBL > OBL > RP dump
AoE
PS > IT > Pest > BS > HB > OB > RP dump

Death and Decay is Useless unless your a frost tank, For AoE trash tanking because Howling Blast has a 10 second Cool down, It is a waste of Runes for AoE DPS

And the reason you PS before IT is, PS will never hit as hard as a IT + 20% (from Glacier Rot)


Well i hope this helps to prevent some of the thousands of retarded death knights out there

+Rep for making me annoyed to post all this

[avatar88343]

As someone that has been a Frost DPS for a very long time, your 2H frost talents has a huge flaw. You put 1 point into icy reach over Unbreakable Armor. UA is on a completely different level than IR. An additional 25% strength every 2 minutes for 20 seconds? For me, that adds around 600 AP.

It's meant to be a defensive ability but it's a huge DPS booster. It is also very useful for fights that deal a lot of damage over time. During Anub'Rekhan I don't bother moving during the insect swarm, I pop UA/IF and for 20 seconds I take around 300 damage per tick while I continue DPSing.

UA + Greatness + FC = 20 seconds of raw power

[ggshaman]

As someone that has been a Frost DPS for a very long time, your 2H frost talents has a huge flaw. You put 1 point into icy reach over Unbreakable Armor. UA is on a completely different level than IR. An additional 25% strength every 2 minutes for 20 seconds? For me, that adds around 600 AP.

It's meant to be a defensive ability but it's a huge DPS booster. It is also very useful for fights that deal a lot of damage over time. During Anub'Rekhan I don't bother moving during the insect swarm, I pop UA/IF and for 20 seconds I take around 300 damage per tick while I continue DPSing.

Ummm how? you are pacified when you are hit by it

[avatar88343]

Ummm how? you are pacified when you are hit by it

Haven't tried it recently, but AMS prevents the application of the silence and then after it expires, even if I get hit by the swarm, I am still able to auto attack.

[ggshaman]

Haven't tried it recently, but AMS prevents the application of the silence and then after it expires, even if I get hit by the swarm, I am still able to auto attack.

Ya no AMS never did and even if it did you cant even auto swing

[ChildeRoland]

To Ggshaman, there is no "wrong" rotation. It don't exists any "wrong rotation". Rotations is personal.
To Avatar: I've acctually never thought about the strength bonus, +rep to you for telling me about it, but I'll take the rep back as you mean that one talent "mistake" is a "huge flaw".
This is a guide, not a codex or some rules I've written. This is how you can dps, but not how you have to dps.

[ggshaman]

To Ggshaman, there is no "wrong" rotation. It don't exists any "wrong rotation". Rotations is personal.
To Avatar: I've acctually never thought about the strength bonus, +rep to you for telling me about it, but I'll take the rep back as you mean that one talent "mistake" is a "huge flaw".
This is a guide, not a codex or some rules I've written. This is how you can dps, but not how you have to dps.

Lol yes there is such a thing as a "wrong" rotation, it's actuality the whole point of it, one set stander rotation that will maximize your dps. I could do

OBL > OBL > BS > BS > FS > FS > Summon Ghoul > Auto swing

but i'm not going to because that would be stupid, so yes there is a WRONG Rotation

[ChildeRoland]

Ok, so with your way the enemy maybe takes up to 150-300 extra damage. Now let's take a look on IT. It has a RANGE, which means it is casted BEFORE reaching melee. This means you can deal IT normal damage, + one tick of the dot, which is pretty much the same amount of damage.
Anyway, you think your whole dps gonna get f***d because you lose some damage from the first ability you do in the whole fight? Usually the boss/mob has a disease on him anyway.

Step one: Tank pulls.
Step two: Death Knight #1 casts IT with his Icy Reach talent, the boss is now diseased.
Step three: Instead of now casting your own IT from range, getting another tick WITH the increased damage form Glacier Rot, you WAIT untill you are in melee range before you cast your PS, then you do IT, losing your one tick of DoT.

[UNREST]

... don't dks need int if they are frost. What about icy touch and howling blast, arn't they spells, therefor benefiting from the increased crit chance. not saying that you NEED it, but i wouldn't say that is is completely useless