Frost Death Knight Raid Guide

Offensive Nodes

• Rider's Champion - Each Rune spent gives you a 10% chance to summon one of the following Four Horsemen:
  • Mograine
    • Puts up a Death and Decay that follows him.
      • You gain the benefit of Mograine's Might and Unholy Ground if you are standing in this.
  • Whitemane
    • Undeath is a disease with a 24 second duration that spreads and gains 1 stack every time you use Scourge Strike on the infected target.
  • Trollbane
    • Repeatedly casts Chains of Ice over his duration that gets shattered by Obliterate with Trollbane's Icy Fury.
  • Nazgrim
    • Grants you 3% Strength, increasing by 1% for every Rune spent while Nazgrim is active.
• Apocalypse Now
  • Summons all 4 Horsemen for 20 seconds after casting Frostwyrm's Fury making Absolute Zero mandatory to line this up with every other use of Pillar of Frost allowing for huge burst every 1m30s.
    • If a Horsemen is already out, it extends the current duration by 20 seconds instead.
      • Mograine does not recast his Death and Decay but all other Horsemen recast their abilities.
• Fury of the Horsemen or A Feast of Souls
  • Fury of the Horsemen increases the duration of your Horsemen while they are up but A Feast of Souls enables massive Frost Strikes periodically and is prolonged during Apocalypse Now. When combined with Shattering Blade and Shattered Frost this is especially powerful. As this is purely a numbers difference, A Feast of Souls currently wins when paired with Shattering Blade.
• Hungering Thirst
  • Passively increases Frost Fever and Frost Strike damage.
• Mawsworn Menace
  • Increases Obliterate damage by 10% and reduces the cooldown of Death and Decay by 10 seconds allowing you to use 2 charges of Death and Decay during Pillar of Frost in AoE.

Defensive Choice Nodes

• Death Charge or On a Paler Horse
  • On a Paler Horse does not work at all in this raid so you always choose Death Charge which is not a bad thing as this greatly increases your mobility and allows you to break roots and slows.
• Horsemen's Aid or Pact of the Apocalypse
  • Horsemen's Aid depends on the value of Anti-Magic Shell during the fight as this can be incredibly potent allowing you to pre-immune debuffs or randomly absorb high amounts of magic damage. On the other hand, Pact of the Apocalypse grants you 5% damage reduction per Horsemen out or a 20% damage reduction during your cooldowns with Apocalypse Now. Due to the situational value of both of these, there is no auto pick for this as it just depends on the fight.

When to use this Spec

There is not exactly a set place where you would currently use this spec as this is very fight dependent based on timers and the ability to stay in melee as well as capitalizing on the Runic Power gained from Anti-Magic Shell. Check out the Nerub-ar Palace section below to see if this is played on any bosses!

Talent Adjustments

Listing all the changes within the Class and Spec tree compared to the default build.

Spec Tree

• Added
  • Breath of Sindragosa
  • Hyperpyrexia
  • Icebreaker
  • Horn of Winter
• Removed
  • Frostwhelp's Aid
  • Avalanche
  • Shattering Blade
  • The Long Winter
  • Chill Streak

Runeforges

• Main-Hand
  • Rune of the Fallen Crusader
• Off-Hand
  • Rune of the Stoneskin Gargoyle

Opener

• This is an example of an opener on Single Target when talented into Breath of Sindragosa.

• In the Breath of Sindragosa opener, how fast you get in to Breath of Sindragosa depends on what procs you get. If you get a lot of procs you can delay up until the point where you are capped on Runic Power or when Reaper's Mark is about to explode as you want to get that in Pillar of Frost.
• In a sense, the same thing goes for Empower Rune Weapon. This can be delayed if you end up going in to Breath with high amounts of resources, but it is very normal to have to use it right with Pillar on pull as it is not normal to get an excessive amount of procs.

During Breath Priority List

• Cast Reaper's Mark when it is ready.
• Cast Pillar of Frost when it is ready.
• Cast Remorseless Winter if you are not in Pillar of Frost.
  • While in Pillar, if you are above 60 Runic Power, do not have a Killing Machine or Rime proc, and Remorseless Winter is already stacked, you can refresh Remorseless Winter.
• Cast Soul Reaper if the enemy is below 35% health and you have more than 50 Runic Power.
• Cast Obliterate if you are not above 80 Runic Power and have a Killing Machine.
• Cast Howling Blast when you have Rime and you have more than 60 Runic Power.
• Cast Obliterate if you are not above 80 Runic Power.
• Cast Horn of Winter if you are not wasting Runic Power and Runes.
• Cast Death and Decay.

Priority While not in Breath

• Cast Frost Strike if Icy Talons and Unleashed Frenzy are about to expire.
• Cast Remorseless Winter.
• Cast Reaper's Mark when it is ready.
• Cast Pillar of Frost when it is available.
• Cast Soul Reaper if the enemy is below 35% health or will be when this expires.
• Cast Obliterate when you have a Killing Machine.
• Cast Howling Blast when you have Rime.
• Cast Frost Strike.
• Cast Obliterate.
• Cast Horn of Winter if you are not wasting Runic Power and Breath of Sindragosa has more than 30 seconds remaining on its' cooldown.
• Cast Abomination Limb if you have nothing else.

During Pillar of Frost Priority

This priority is used during Pillar of Frost while not in Breath.

• Cast Obliterate when you have a Killing Machine.
• Cast Soul Reaper if the enemy is below 35% health and you do not have a Killing Machine as well as having at least 2 Runes.
• Cast Howling Blast if Frost Fever is missing.
• Cast Frost Strike if you have 5 Razorice stacks on your target.
• Cast Howling Blast when you have Rime.
• Cast Frost Strike.
• Cast Howling Blast if you do not have a Killing Machine.

In this Raid, there are no fights with AoE directly in the opener, because of that, it will not be focused on in this guide.

Opener

• This is an example of an opener on Single Target when talented into Breath of Sindragosa.

• In the Breath of Sindragosa opener, how fast you get in to Breath of Sindragosa depends on what procs you get. If you get a lot of procs you can delay up until the point where you are capped on Runic Power or when Reaper's Mark is about to explode as you want to get that in Pillar of Frost.
• In a sense, the same thing goes for Empower Rune Weapon. This can be delayed if you end up going in to Breath with high amounts of resources, but it is very normal to have to use it right with Pillar on pull as it is not normal to get an excessive amount of procs.

During Breath Priority List

• Cast Reaper's Mark when it is ready.
• Cast Pillar of Frost when it is ready.
• Cast Remorseless Winter if you are not in Pillar of Frost.
  • While in Pillar, if you are above 60 Runic Power, do not have a Killing Machine or Rime proc, and Remorseless Winter is already stacked, you can refresh Remorseless Winter.
• Cast Death and Decay.
• Cast Soul Reaper if the enemy is below 35% health and you have more than 50 Runic Power.
  • This is only cast if you have 1 or 2 targets, never 3 or above.
• Cast Obliterate if you are not above 80 Runic Power and have a Killing Machine.
• Cast Howling Blast when you have Rime and you have more than 60 Runic Power.
• Cast Obliterate if you are not above 80 Runic Power.
• Cast Horn of Winter if you are not wasting Runic Power and Runes.

Priority While not in Breath

• Cast Frost Strike if Icy Talons and Unleashed Frenzy are about to expire.
• Cast Remorseless Winter.
• Cast Reaper's Mark when it is ready.
• Cast Pillar of Frost when it is available.
• Cast Death and Decay if you have 2 charges.
• Cast Soul Reaper if the enemy is below 35% health or will be when this expires.
  • This is only cast if you have 1 or 2 targets, never above 3.
• Cast Obliterate when you have a Killing Machine.
• Cast Howling Blast when you have Rime.
• Cast Frost Strike.
• Cast Obliterate.
• Cast Horn of Winter if you are not wasting Runic Power and Breath of Sindragosa has more than 30 seconds remaining on its' cooldown.
• Cast Abomination Limb if you have nothing else.

During Pillar of Frost Priority

This priority is used during Pillar of Frost while not in Breath.

• Cast Death and Decay
  • Ideally this is cast before Pillar as in this spec Pillar only lasts for 12 seconds and Death and Decay lasts for 14 seconds assuming you are standing in it the entire time.
• Cast Obliterate when you have a Killing Machine.
• Cast Soul Reaper if the enemy is below 35% health and you do not have a Killing Machine as well as having at least 2 Runes.
• Cast Howling Blast if Frost Fever is missing.
• Cast Frost Strike if you have 5 Razorice stacks on your target.
• Cast Howling Blast when you have Rime.
• Cast Frost Strike.
• Cast Howling Blast if you do not have a Killing Machine.

Breath of Sindragosa

As you usually only talent into this with Breath of Sindragosa, this is only used when you do not have Runes to spend on an Obliterate, or a Rime empowered Howling Blast when talented in to Rage of the Frozen Champion and you do not overcap on Runic Power and Runes when casting.

You can use this once outside of Breath of Sindragosa and is generally used well around the time you cast Reaper's Mark as you are regularly running out of resources around that time.

Obliteration and Breath of Sindragosa

Chill Streak should be used on cooldown, but ideally right before Pillar of Frost and after Remorseless Winter as it gains you the most damage. Doing it this way, you do not lose a valuable global during your Pillar windows and it gains the benefits of the Pillar buffs as it takes awhile to do its damage.

Use this as a filler global when you have nothing else to press as it does not deal enough damage to be worth pressing otherwise. If you can, try to use it when you can get value going in to Pillar of Frost or after with Enduring Strength.

You should macro this in with either of Pillar of Frost or Empower Rune Weapon as this does not do enough to offset from either of these.

Boss Tips

• Anti-Magic Shell prevents the application of Black Blood when walking over the "water".
• Utilize Abomination Limb, Chains of Ice, and Death Grip for the inside phase to grip and slow the small adds spawned from Manifest Horror together.

Boss Tips

• Use Anti-Magic Shell right before Decimate goes off to immune the Cosmic Shards debuff.
  • If you are playing Unyielding Will you can also do it afterwards if necessary.
• Phase Blades deal physical damage so use Icebound Fortitude or Lichborne when targeted.

Boss Tips

• Using Anti-Magic Shell allows you to immune stacks of Lingering Erosion from Erosive Spray.
• When soaking Web Reave use Death's Advance to prevent the pull.

Boss Tips

• Use Abomination Limb, Chains of Ice, and Death Grip to help control the Blood Parasites that are close to your ranged.
  • Grip of the Dead is also an incredibly powerful slow for the ones that spawn in melee if necessary.
• Using cooldowns on pull and basically on cooldown for the remainder of this fight is extremely important as the first wave of adds spawns roughly 45 seconds but take a few seconds to stack up. You want to have Pillar of Frost and Reaper's Mark up for each wave.
• Interrupt the Voracious Worms just outside of melee since you have a kick with 15 yard range. Let the actual melee kicks do the ones under the boss.
• Playing Unyielding Will allows you to use Anti-Magic Shell to remove the healing absorb from Experimental Dosage, Unstable Infusion, and Caustic Reaction if an egg explodes. You can also pre-immune all of these instead.

Boss Tips

• Use Death's Advance to avoid the suck in from Nether Rift.
• Unyielding Will or pre-using Anti-Magic Shell does not work on any debuffs on this fight, use it purely to absorb damage.

Boss Tips

• Right after Call of the Swarm use Death Grip on one Shattershell Scarab and stand right under it to bait the Fixate on you. You should not be able to die in this fight unless you get hit by avoidable damage so the damage taken increase does not really matter.
• During the first intermission, if you mess up dodging you can Death's Advance to immune the knockback and Anti-Magic Shell to prevent getting the debuff from getting hit.
• Unyielding Will does not remove Stinging Swarm.
• Death's Advance does not prevent the pull of Web Vortex.
• On beta you were able to Icebound Fortitude out of Spike Storm's Impaled if you got hit. It is unclear if this was intended but it's worth a shot if you get hit.

Below you are presented with a good list of farmable alternatives that are obtainable outside of WoW’s weekly lockout system. While replaced in time as you progress, these offer immediate character power.