Frost Death Knight Guide for The War Within (2024)

Last updated on Jun 18, 2024 at 21:00by Bicepspump44 comments

Welcome to our War Within expansion guide for Frost Death Knight.Ahead of launch, this page will contain everything you need to know about theFrost Death Knight spec in the forthcoming The War Within expansion,including changes, Hero Talent Trees, and some light predictions on the stateof the spec going into the expansion.

This page is a constantly evolving work in progress, with regularchanges expected as updates hit the War Within beta. This is not meant to bea launch guide for Frost Death Knight, but instead serves as aresource for you to keep up to date with how the spec is evolving on Beta, andwhat you can expect from its playstyle and feel on launch.

Frost Death Knight has received a number of changes in The WarWithin so far, primarily in the form of new talents as well as talent treerestructuring. Notable new talents are Unyielding Will, Null Magic, Festering Scythe, Arctic Assault and Shattered Frost.

Furthermore, Frostscythe is now a big-hitting cooldown usable every 30 seconds. The CDis reduced every time one consumes Killing Machine. It now costs 2 Runesand has a lot more oomph to it. Death and Decay also has a lingeringeffect in The War Within. After you leave the area, you retain the cleavebonus for 4 seconds. This also effectively buffs the total duration from10 seconds to 14 seconds, allowing us use it before our Pillar of Frostwindows!

Breath of Sindragosa uptime has been significantly nerfed through theremoval of Rune of Hysteria as well as the second charge of Empower Rune Weapon.Realistic lengths are now in the 30-45 seconds range, significantly less thanthe permanent Breath we saw in Dragonflight.

While nothing changed for Frost Death Knight's core features,The War Within still has major implications for all specs thanks to the HeroTalent Tree system, new tier sets, and the natural reduction in secondarystats when entering a new expansion.

Frost Death Knight gets to choose between the Rider of the Apocalypseand Deathbringer Hero Talent Trees. In sections below, we will talk moredeeply about the implications of these Hero Talent Trees for the spec, and somethoughts on what looks strong and weak ahead of launch.

The Rider of the Apocalypse Hero Talent tree is mainly a passive treewithout much interaction with our kit. We randomly summon Horsem*n to aid usin our fight, which use their own abilities. Mograine does cast Death and Decayand provides some extra cleave whenever this happens. Furthermore, you will summonall four horsem*n every 3/1.5 minutes with your Frostwyrm's Fury to aid you.Some good synergy with Breath of Sindragosa via A Feast of Soulswhich helps with Breath uptime.

On a Paler Horse is probably the most interesting talent in the tree,at least for non-instanced content. This allows you to stay mounted in combat,fighting your enemies off the back of a horse. A major speed-up to questingand leveling as well as a really cool addition to the game. It's a shame itdoesn't work in dungeons and raids but that also probably would've been too powerful.

In terms of tuning, the rider tree relies heavily on the raw damage of theriders themselves. You do get some synergy with the rest of your kit via A Feast of Soulsbut we'll have to rely on that raw damage when picking up the hero talents.

The Deathbringer Hero Talents revolve around the active ability Reaper's Mark.This starts as a 1 minute cooldown ability which leaves a debuff on the enemy.This debuff will stack up over time as you deal shadow and frost damage to theenemy, ultimate exploding when reaching 40 stacks (or if the 12 seconds durationfinishes). Really quite satisfying to use before your Pillar of Frost, gettinga huge explosion towards the end when you've stacked up your strength to the max!

Achieving the 40-stack burst is currently not a problem and is achieved everytime you press Reaper's Mark, as long as you execute your standard rotation properly.You can also reduce the cooldown of the ability to 30 seconds by taking Swift End,potentially leading to aligning it with every single Pillar of Frost window!

You get some strong defensive value from the tree as well via Rune Carved Plates.This passive magic and physical reduction stack up quite high over any fight, leadingto significant amounts of raw reduction for you.

Below are the Tier Set Bonuses for Frost Death Knight in The WarWithin. After the wording of the bonus, you will find a brief note/commentarythat is italicized.

• Death Knight Frost Season 1 2pc — Your Runic Power spendingabilities deal 8% increased damage. Good synergy with Breath of Sindragosabut also works quite nicely with Obliteration due to Arctic Assault.
• Death Knight Frost Season 1 4pc — Consuming Runic Power has a chanceto increase your Strength by 10% for 8 sec.Nice passive buff that workswell for both builds.

Both set bonuses are completely passive and are not expected to have anygameplay impact.

The tier set is relatively bland with purely passive components. Still, thismeans that balancing will be relatively easy as there aren't any second-ordereffects to consider. I expect it to be roughly as powerful as other tier setsat 10% DPS increase.