Runic Power: Frost Spec
This is Frost Strike. Get used to looking at it, Frost DKs, you’ll be using it quite a bit if you’re soloing and probably even more if you’re in a group. Frost Strike does 60% of your weapon damage, plus 52-150 more (depending on rank), and can’t be parried, dodged, or blocked. It’s sort of like a mini-Rune Strike you can use anytime you have 40 runic power (yes, it costs the same as a Death Coil). Ideally, you would probably want to pair it with Deathchill anytime it’s up. In fact, you could make a macro that looks like this, because Deathchill doesn’t activate the global cooldown:
#showtooltip Frost Strike
/console Sound_EnableSFX 0
/script UIErrorsFrame:Hide()
/cast Deathchill
/script UIErrorsFrame:Clear(); UIErrorsFrame:Show()
/console Sound_EnableSFX 1
/cast Frost Strike
This will cast a Deathchill before your Frost Strike every time it’s up, giving you an unavoidable critical hit to use on your foes. Additionally, you won’t have to hear your death knight constantly complaining that “that ability isn’t ready yet.”
And yes, the capstone of the Frost tree is also a runic power ability – Hungering Cold. It’s a giant frost trap, plus it applies Frost Fever to anyone it freezes, plus it doesn’t break from damage from your diseases – or, apparently, from Death and Decay.
Andrea (of Altoholics Are Us) sends along this little gem for those of you with Hungering Cold – a high-damage, high-crit AOE spell rotation. Frost DKs may not be Unholy DKs, but you guys can dream. 
It should be fairly obvious what’s going on here: Hungering Cold freezes everything around you and gives it Frost Fever, Deathchill guarantees you a crit on certain abilities, and Howling Blast is one of those abilities. Pretty smart. Andrea reports seeing crits of up to 5.1k as early as 61 using this rotation!
You, my good sir, are awesome. I have been looking for a beginners guide to play my Death Knight. Now I can finally stop mashing buttons.
[...] Direct link to article. [...]
OMG, you just posted what I’ve been screaming in my head to noobie death knights everywhere!
Too many players never graduate from “mashing buttons” to “mashing buttons with a purpose”.
This is a must read for every new DK.
Aurdons last blog post..Death Knight Outland Gear Guide: 64-65
[...] Grinding Fishing and Cooking from 375 – 450 Stop: How to play a Death Knight Behemothdan: The Combat Rating [...]
Thank you!
Something to consider for Frost is that many times, (though not always), Howling blast is for all intents and purposes interchangable with Obliterate in their rotation. As well, in solo play, Death Strike is often used significantly more then obliterate for the self heal. Otherwise, good stuff.
Awesome post! I’m excited to try out your rotations. Thanks for adding mine!
AltoholicsAreUss last blog post..Style Changes
@Atros: I considered including that rotation, but IMO it tends to lower damage. At least, I never found Howling Blast to be doing more than a two-disease Obliterate would. It’s definitely an option to keep in mind for Frost-speccers, I’d say.
Very awesome guide. I’ve been looking for something like this because, just like your article stated, I just felt like I was mashing whatever wasn’t on a cooldown.
I’ve opted for Unholy but I’ll most likely be soloing my way to 70 so I think i’ll respec and give Blood a shot instead. Thanks again for the awesome article.
Fear.Wins last blog post..L2P – Gundrak
[...] The Stoppable Force has an amazing article on how to mash your DK buttons correctly and also goes in to why Blood is a good leveling spec. [...]
Great post, and what’s even more awesome is your DK is a female troll! (as is my Horde DK)
Mama Druids last blog post..The Best Spec for a Tank, Solo, or PvP Death Knight
Very nice guide. I will be making a death knight soon, just to experience the lore and history. More importantly, this helps me understand the mechanics of death knights to better counter them in PVP or perhaps even help them in groups.
Ayebas last blog post..Quick delivery, elemental buffed.
[...] might’ve noticed, back when I did my previous lrn2deathknight post, that all the attack rotations started off in a very similar fashion: Icy Touch, Plague Strike. [...]
[...] Stop mashing buttons and learn to kill things: TSF Teaches You How To Start Playing Your Death Knigh… will doubtless come in handy when I start playing my death knight. My problems with playing my death knight are twofold – first I have to find the time to play him instead of my other toons (not going to happen till I have at least 2 at level 80) and second I want him to be a dual gatherer which means probably a day’s worth of dull while I wander around picking pretty flowers and smashing shiny rocks. I don’t want to miss out on nodes while I’m questing. Someday I’ll get around to playing him. [...]
[...] Stop says, stop the mashing! Learn to play a DK… [...]
Great post! Totally consistent with my own observations overall.
Quick correction, because I was confused on this very point- Rune Strike activates when YOU dodge or parry an attack (like Revenge for Warriors), not when your attacks are dodged or parried (like Overpower). The niftiest thing about it (aside from the insane damage it does) is that it is off the GCD, and is used on your next melee auto attack (like Heroic Strike).
A personal preference thing, but I don’t see Death and Decay as all that good in AoE situations for DPSing in groups/soloing. Its costly to use, the damage is pretty unimpressive, and if you are a DPS in a group, it adds a lot of threat for relatively little return as well.
Use Pestilence and Blood Boil in place of Blood/Heart Strike, instead, otherwise keeping to the ability rotation you layed out above, and I’m willing to bet your DPS will be much better overall.
A quiet disagreement on your frost rotation:
If you’re going down the frost tree, Obliterate is /bad/, mmkay? (There /is/ a frost talent that makes it good again (you don’t consume diseases!) .. but I am assuming you’re not taking that one in favor of Other Stuff.)
If you’ve talented frost, then losing your diseases on the enemy absolutely cripples your Icy Touch… one of the very early frost talents gives you extra damage as long as your target has frost fever. Obliterating and then reapplying means you actually /miss/ this extra damage in every rotation, on top of having ticks where the diseases don’t apply damage.
Instead – with a deep frost build including Killing Machine and Blood of the North (two necessities, in my opinion) .. try the much more involved:
Icy Touch->Plague Strike->Blood Strike->Blood Strike->Icy Touch->Icy Touch->Icy Touch->Icy Touch->(repeat).
Toss in runic abilities if your runes are ever all on cooldown (filling in with Death Coil and Frost strike to wait on a rune keeps your damage high) and watch for the Rime procs to get in free howling blasts along with Killing Machine procs to get in guaranteed Icy Touch crits. In group fights, try the rotation:
Icy Touch->Plague Strike->Pestilence->Blood Boil->Howling BLast->Howling Blast (repeat).
Howling blast benefits dramatically from Frost Fever (doubling damage + your frost boosts /on top of that/) as well as from Killing Machine.
But obliterates just completely break the cycle and cripple your damage from Icy Touch in the rotation.
Grimm
@Grimm: Every frost leveling build I’ve ever seen, and even some that were NOT frost, took 3/3 Annihilation. I tend to operate under the assumption that everyone who bothers to take Frost as their primary tree takes Annihilation.
[...] TSF Teaches You How To Start Playing Your Death Knight [...]
[...] a quick note to add that my guide to quit randomly mashing buttons and learn to kill things with your Death Knight (or for a less-unwieldy title, the guide to lrn2deathknight) has been updated to incorporate both [...]
Thank you sir! You are a veritable senseii of button mashing, and i no longer have bruises from rolling my face on the keyboard.
Your second rotation is messed up. If you use PS, IT, IT, IT, IT then you are left with an extra Unholy rune. A better rotation would be:
PS, IT, BS, BS, HB
PS, IT, IT, IT, HB
[...] my alts, particularly, my Death Knight. She’s level 70 now, and thanks to a little post about not mashing buttons, she’s making progess rather quickly. Now my guild knows who my alts are, but I don’t [...]
I seem to go the other way in that I’ve spent most of my time as Frost spec, and although it seems counter-intuitive for anyone starting off as a Death Knight, once you have Obliterate and Frost Strike, you actually get more damage ignoring Plague Strike entirely. Using an IT-Ob-Ob-BS-DUmp runic power into Frost Strike, repeat until target is dead. You start the cycle by hitting Blood Tap, which gives you the Death Rune you need to run the first cycle.
Awesome guide, but your earlier statement about rolling a warlock if you want to roll your face over a keyboard… well it just pisses me off. Locks ftw
Well, y’know what? Welcome to my world. I play a class where the general impression of it is “lol so OP, just faceroll to victory,” and yet every day people bitch, moan, and complain about DKs that do 800 DPS in Naxx epics in a heroic.
[...] So I read over the Big Bear Butt Blogger post today entitled: An open letter to a Death Knoob. It was a fun post but really it just kind of outlined what a lot of Death Knights are going through, which is, learning how to play an integral raiding class from level 55. It can be a bit challenging if you’ve never played a taking class before, and it can be really frustrating for folks you’re running with. It helps if you’re in a good guild that’s willing to help you get the experience you need to learn the ropes. But if one of those aren’t around, getting some reading in can’t hurt. Well except for the repair bills and the noob comments, but come on, if you’ve been playing WoW long enough to have a level 55, then well you know. On that note there were some links in the comments section of the B4s post to The Stoppable Force and this author’s Death Knight guide entitled ‘Stop mashing buttons and learn to kill things‘. [...]
[...] my alts, particularly, my Death Knight. She’s level 70 now, and thanks to a little post about not mashing buttons, she’s making progess rather quickly. Now my guild knows who my alts are, but I don’t [...]