2/19/2013

PVP Frost Death Knight Cataclysm Guide

On 2:43 PM by Site Admin in , , ,
By Turbolqk

Welcome to my guide. I will help all of you newbs or pros with some tips on everything a Frost death knight should know. Let us go now.

Some useful tips:

● Running with two weapons, one enchanted with Rune of the Fallen Crusader and and the other with Rune of Swordshattering, is always good. Switch weapons when you think you will get disarmed.

● Using Death Grip on a mage and casting Dark Simulacrum after that would probably get you a Blink. I rather wait them Blink and then Death Grip. Pro mages can waste your Dark Simulacrum.

● If you steal Deep Freeze from a mage, Chains of Ice/Hungering Cold him and enjoy the stun.

● Always watch you runic power and be sure to spend it if It's about to reach 130 runic power. And for newbs, Death Coil if you are getting kited.

● Necrotic Strike's casting increase debuff also causes warlock's DoTs to tick slower. QQ.

● Using Pillar of Frost when Lichborne + Death Coil healing will result in bigger heals due to the huge attack power increase. Almost as Unholy!

● Anti-Magic Shell can be used both to prevent a burst and to prevent ccs (Polymorph) when bursting someone. Hex and Cyclone are bugged and go through the spell. Watch out!

● Using Death & Decay wont break Hungering Cold.

● Priests hate when you Chains of Ice their Shadow Fiend.

● Howling Blast is a great CC breaker. Be careful not to screw up a cc chain.

● Death Pact works on Army of the Dead ghouls too. Too bad Army does not work in arena.

● Using Death Coil on a kiting foe will probably get you some runes refreshed for some more Howling Blast ownage.

● Just to note, Howling Blast generates additional runic power when striking more then one targets.

● Always keep Plague Strike bound. You can't rely on Outbreak if you need both diseases for Obliterate. Also, Cloack of Shadows + Plague Strike = CoS fail.

● Since Blood Presence makes you heal less due to Dark Succor working only in Unholy or Frost presence you will stay in Unholy. There is a good use for Blood presence thought: when waiting for this annoying stealth class to open on you. Switch back to Unholy ASAP! Forget about Frost presence.
Jigslol says some pro stuff:

I go blood sometimes, but it's only if I see trouble coming well ahead of time. Going blood when you are almost dead is too little too late. If we are playing something like rogue/feral and they are sitting on me all game. Once I cycle through some defensive CD's and know my healer is vulnerable i will go into blood presence and deathstrike for a bit while my CD's get a bit to catch up.Most of the time blood presence is pretty worthless.

● Lichborne can be used for many things other than just breaking fear. It also prevents:
- Seduce (Will also break this effect on use)
- Sap
- Polymorph
- Hex
- Any form of fear (Will also break this effect on use)
- Mind Control (Will also break this effect on use)
Note: Using Lichborne while bursting someone would probably save you from getting Poly/Hex/Feared or whatever. Also, using it while you are in a crowd effect might spare you a cc. Warstormp -> Hex etc.

● Death and Decay is a great ability to get drinking casters/healers in combat and so is Dark Command.

● Death Grip is also a great interrupt.

● Poisons and Nature's Grasp can't be applied through Anti-Magic Shell.

● Mind Freeze will remove Spell Reflection.

● Dark Command can proc Unholy Strength.

● Using Death Grip on a bladestorming warrior can still pull him next to you. That can help your partner survive.

● Glyph of Chains of Ice's damage portion works through hunter's Deterence.

● Very pro info:
-1 rune ability = 10 runic power;
-2 runes ability = 20 runic power;
-3 runes ability = 30 runic power;

● When kited by a pet class, use his pet to Death Strike on It if you need healing. The enemy will probably remove the pet from you after that. You can still Dark Command It and make it attack you again. Taunting pets on you might also break a cc.

● Macro Dark Command to most of your abilities to prevent casters from getting out of combat without actually pressing it. It's off GCD I beleve.

● If a dk have lots of Necrotic Strikes stacked simply immobilize the him with CoI and run away. The stacks will wear off. QQ.

● Use Outbreak before Obliterate for the bonus damage.

Runeblade

So, let's check out the weapon we can wear. Both two-hand and dual wield are pretty awsome imo, but which one is better theoretically?

● Dual wield does more melee damage. Not really like twice more but still a noticable amount.

● Dual wield has two runeforges. 10% more frost damage if you go with Razorice (like 5 points in mastery, tho it doesn't add up to the mastery itself. It increases the damage already increased by mastery).

● Dual wield goes mastery. Two-hand goes haste. It has been confirmed by gladiators and arena-junkies from posts by the time of patch 4.0.6. Both are very very close in this patch, so close that theyre almost personal choices. The reason two-hand goes haste is Might of the Frozen Wastes. Also, you will be Obliterating cloth/leather targets and mastery wont help in any way.

● Dual wield and two-hand have almost the same Killing Machine proc rate. Their weapon speed is close due to two-hand going for haste (faster hits) and dual wield for mastery (a little slower hits).

● Dual wield gets more mastery thanks to Nerves of Cold Steel. 3% hit allowes you to reforge quite the stats. The weapons themselves combined give less stats than a two-hander though.

● Two-hand gets more runic power. 50% chance pet hit but a fact. More Frost Strikes from time to time.

● Two-hand bursts a little more since the damage is one big hit instead of two small melee damages. Dual wield does more sustained.

● We can safely say that the bonus dual wield damage = the 12% strike damage from Might of the Frozen Wastes.

● Necrotic Strike as a two-hand hits twice the damage dual wield does. Reason is It's not in Treat of Thassarian.

● Dual wield is forced to drop some points for Nerves of Cold Steel. That means you ether lose Obliterate, Runic Power Mastery, Blade Barrier or anything else useful.

It's basically:
● The same KM procs;
● Around same damage;
● More runic power, harder Necrotic Strike and a little more burst as two-hand;
● More mastery, another runeforge and a little higher sustained damage as dual wield;


Runeforging
What kind of runeforges should you emblazon you blade with?

Two-hand
Rune of the Fallen Crusader. Always.

Dual wield
The offhand (or main hand, idk if it matters) should be Rune of the Fallen Crusader. As for the main hand:
● Rune of Razorice - Increases Frost damage by 10% and deals 2% weapon damage as Frost damage. Id choose that.
● Rune of Swordbreaking - Reduces disarms by 60% at all times and increases parry rating by 2%. Id keep another one-handed blade emblazoned with this runeforge for the disarms.

Talents

The talents. Ofcourse, you go deep in the Frost tree. Then you can choose between Blood and Frost subtrees. Lets check out the bonuses of speccing into Frost and It's talents.:



More peels and control.


More CC due to the 1 min Strangulate.


Leaves RPM because of the less runic power generated via dual wield.


Drop Oblit from your bars.
Scent of Blood - Very good talent, especially for dual wield. Runic power will definetly increase.
Epidemic - Dropping Virulence for Epidemic is not a bad idea tbh. Our damage does not come from diseases like unholy, so we can increase our disease duration for more Obliterates rather then reapplying Blood Plague.

Glyphs
Go with these:

Prime Glyphs

● Glyph of Frost Strike - Reduces the cost of your Frost Strike by 8 Runic Power.
● Glyph of Howling Blast - Your Howling Blast ability now infects targets with Frost Fever.
● Glyph of Obliterate - Increases the damage of you Obliterate ability by 20%. Use only if specced into Annihilation.
● Glyph of Death Coil - Increases the damage and healing of your Death Coil by 15%. You could use this instead of Obliterate if you have no Annihilation.
● Glyph of Icy Touch - You Frost Fever disease deals 20% increased damage. Thats the other choice for Annihilationless spec.

Major Glyphs

● Glyph of Anti-Magic Shell - Increases the duration of your Anti-Magic Shell by 2 sec.
● Glyph of Hungering Cold - Your Hungering Cold ability no longer costs runic power.
● Glyph of Dark Succor - Your Death Strike now restores at least 15% while in Unholy or Frost Presence.

Minor Glyphs

● Glyph of Horn of Winter - Your Horn of Winter lasts 1 min longer.
● Glyph of Resilient Grip - When your Death Grip Ability fails because Its target is immune, Its cooldown is reset. (Broken)
● Glyph of Deaths Embrace - Your Death Coil refunds 20 Runic Power when used to heal
● Glyph of Blood Tap - Your Blood Tap no longer deals you damage. Use in place of Resilent Grip until It's fixed.

Stat Priority, Reforging, Gemming, Enchanting and Professions
How to set your gear.

Stat priority
2H
Code:
5% Hit rating -> 195 Spell Penetration -> Resilience/Strength -> Haste -> Mastery -> Crit -> Expertise

DW
Code:
2% Hit rating -> 195 Spell Penetration -> Resilience/Strength -> Mastery -> Haste -> Crit -> Expertise

● Hit rating - Hit rating prevents you from missing and you don't want to miss. Always reforge to hit rating, never gem for it.
● Spell penetration - The "resist" part is broken in Molten, but cap it for your Frost Strike and Howling Blast will do low damage.
● Resilience/Strength - I don't think I need to explain here. Be sure to have at least 3800 resi in full Vicious gear.
● Haste - Reduces your rune cooldown, increases your melee speed and your Killing Machine procs. Very close to Mastery for 2H, with It being better only because of Might of the Frozen Wastes.
● Mastery- Increases your Frost damage. Howling and Frost strike will pawn hard.
● Crit - We already have Killing Machine. I don't think It's that useful.

Reforging
If using a 2H you can reforge all mastery, critical strike and expertise to haste, or all haste, critical strike and expertise to mastery. TBH I tried both, both work and the difference is very small. Mastery gives you bigger crits/damage, haste gives you more melees/rp.
Dual wield reforges all haste, critical strike and expertise to mastery. The reason is that you don't have Might of the Frozen Wastes, which makes haste good for 2H anyway.

Gems
We have three types of gemming: offensively, balanced and defensively.
● Meta:
+54 Strength & 3% Increased Critical Damage;
+54 Critical Strike Rating and 1% Spell Reflect;
● Prismatic:
+40 Resilience - If you have less then 3800 resilience;
+40 Strength - If you need more strength;
● Balanced:
Red: 40 Strength (67 for Jewelcrafters);
Yellow: 40 Resilience;
Blue: 50 Spell penetration (84 for Jewelcrafters);

● Defensively
Red: 20 Strength and 20 Resilience;
Yellow: 40 Resilience (67 for Jewelcrafters);
Blue: 50 Spell penetration (84 for Jewelcrafters);

● Offensively
Red: 40 Strength (67 for Jewelcrafters);
Yellow: 20 Strength and 20 Resilience;
Blue: 50 Spell penetration (86 for Jewelcrafters);
Tip:Reaching the spell penetration cap can be achieved by 2x50 Spell Penetration gems, 20 Resilience & 20 Spell Penetration gem and Spell Piercing cloak enchant.
Tip 2:20 Strength and 20 Resilience gems don't have their recipes in the JC vendors atm. QQ.

Enchants
● Head: +60 Strength & +35 Resi
● Shoulders: +50 Strength & +25 Resi
● Cloak: +70 Spell Pen
● Chest: +40 Resil
● Bracers: +65 Haste/Major Strength
● Gloves: +50 Strength
● Belt: Eternium Belt Buckle (40 Strength in the bonus gem)
● Legs: Dragonscale Leg Armor
● Boots: +50 Hit

Professions
Jewelcrafting is quite good for death knights. All professions give good bonuses, simply choose one. The most common pair of professions is Jewelcrafting and Blacksmithing.

Rotation, Priority
Frost has a very basic priority, rotation or whatever. The things you want to do are:

● Create Death runes - 2xBlood Strike is enough;
● Use Unholy runes - Necrotic Strike/Plague Strike or maybe a Death & Decay. Plague Strike should only be used on a CoS rogue or when you want to Obliterate;
● Use the Frost Runes - Howling Blast/Icy Touch/Pillar of Frost/whatever. Icy Touch can be used when you don't want to break a CC. Pillar of Frost is your "pawnage" cd;
● Use the Death Runes - They are a bit situational. Can be used for Necrotic Striking or Howling Blasting. That depends if your target is standing next to a healer/can heal himself or not. Id use Howling Blast if the target is warrior without Enraged Regeneration, a Mage, Feral in cat form without Barkskin.

When do I Obliterate?
It depends. Do you have Annihilation + Oblit glyph? If you do the strike can be used as a good finisher. To properly use Obliterate the target should have:
● 35% or less health;
● You have Killing Machine proc;
● The target isn't wearing plate;

Pillar of Frost:
It is good to cast PoF on a Frost rune. Death rune can be used for a Necrotic Strike. PoF has two types of uses:
Code:

Offensive - Use it to burst someonel. Higher Necrotic Strike absorbs and stronger Howling Blasts;
Defensive - Use it to increase the healing of Death Coil + Lichborne;


Macros
Using macros is a must. Focus macros are one of the most important ones. They allow a player to do things to two different players without changing targets. You must have such macros for Chains of Ice, Mind Freeze, Strangilate and Death Grip. Dark Simulacrum and Outbreak can be macroed too. This macro below is example of a focus macro.
Code:
#show Chains of Ice
/cast [target=focus] Chains of Ice

Lichborne selfheal macro:
Code:
#showtooltip Lichborne
/cast !lichborne
/cast [@player] Death Coil


A macro to cancel Lichborne when you see a priest or a paladin casting anti-undead spell:
Code:
/cancelaura Lichborne

A macro to remove immunities stolen by Dark Simulacrum:
Code:
/cancelaura Divine Shield
/cancelaura Ice Block
/cancelaura Hand of Protection


A good thing is macroing focus cast Dark Command to your main strikes. It prevents your focus targets from leaving combat. It's good to write /startattack in any ability for easy switches. Here is one such macro:
Code:
#showtooltip obliterate
/startattack
/cast obliterate
/cast [@focus] dark command


A macro activating your vicious/bloodthursty trinket and your Pillar of Frost. 13 is the upper trinket slot, 14 is the second lower one. The macro:
Code:
#showtooltip Pillar of Frost
/cast Pillar of Frost
/cast 13

Focus Chains of Ice + Death Grip by Skarthis
Code:
#showtooltip Death Grip
/castsequence [target=focus] reset=25 Death Grip, Chains of Ice

Here is one mouseover macro posted by RicardoMP:
Code:
/cast [@museover, harm, nodead] [@focus, harm , nodead] [@target, harm, nodead] Death Grip

Here is a simple version of it:
Code:
/cast [@museover, harm, nodead] Death Grip

It basicly Death Grips the target you are pointing with your mouse. Ricardos macro is a bit different.
Prime objective is your mouseover, but if dead or friendly, it cast it in your focus, it the focus isn´t a valid target, it cast it in your target.
I havent really tried such macros except mouseover pet attack when I was Unholy. Use them if you wish, change Death Grip to any other ability.


Dark Simulacrum
A very rolfpawnage spell. Both fun and useful. Dark Simulacrum stals all kind of spells except physical abilities (Crusader Strike). Pet abilities can be copied, but pet summons can't. The copied spells are always casted instantly and have cooldown. The most useful spells to copy are:
● Mage - Polymorph, Blink, Ice Block;
● Warlock - Fear, Death Coil, Howl of Terror;
● Shaman - Hex;
● Druid - Cyclone, Root;
● Priest - Fear, Psychic Horror;
● Paladin - Hammer of Justice, Avenging Wrath, Divine Shield, Hand of Freedom, Divine Protection;

You want to steal mainly cc abilities. Stealing some heals isn't bad if you or your partner really need them.

Addons
Addons improve your gameplay. Most of them are a preferrence. Gladius is a must imo.

● Gladius
What is Gladius? - Gladius adds enemy unit frames to arenas for easier targeting and focusing. It is highly configurable and you can disable most features of this addon.
URL: http://www.curse.com/addons/wow/gladius


● OmniCC
What is OmniCC? - OmniCC is an addon that adds text to items, spell and abilities that are on cooldown to indicate when they will be ready to use. In other words: it turns all the standard analogue cooldowns into digital ones.
URL: http://www.curse.com/addons/wow/omni-cc


● Necrotic Track
What is Necrotic Track? - NecroticTrack tracks Necrotic Strike absorption amount and time on various units. This is not only useful for Death Knights since the Target module works for friendly units as well and the Player module tracks the amount on yourself.
URL: http://www.curse.com/addons/wow/necrotictrack


● Engraved
What is Engraved? - Engraved is a compact rune display for Death Knights. Runes icons glow when they are ready to be used and partially glow when they are almost ready (less than one global cooldown away, for example). Rune display can be prioritized so that, for runes of the same type, the one with the shortest remaining cooldown is always shown in the same on-screen position. Runes are individually moveable and sizeable.
URL: http://www.curse.com/addons/wow/engraved


● Dominos
What is Dominos? - Dominos is a full ActionBar replacement mod. It provides you with all the features needed to fully customization most aspects of your action and related bars.
URL: http://www.curse.com/addons/wow/dominos


● Bartender4
What is Bartender4? - Bartender4 is an addon simular to Dominos. It customizes your action bar.
URL: http://www.curse.com/addons/wow/bartender4


● Power Auras Classic
What is Power Auras Classic? - Power Auras Classic is an addon created to provide visual cues (auras) when you gain buffs, debuffs and many more. Very useful for shorts buffs or debuffs, it allows you to draw in the center of the screen, or around your character, very customizable visual effects, rather than having to look at or mouseover buff/debuff icons/actionbars.
URL: http://www.curse.com/addons/wow/powerauras-classic


● Snowfall Keypress
What is Snowfall Keypress? - Snowfall Keypress is an addon that makes your abilities activate when you press the button instead of when you release it. The time difference is very very small, but any bonus time you can get is good. Use it! Btw, the 3.3.5 version works perfectly on Cataclysm.
URL: http://www.wowinterface.com/download...lKeyPress.html