Hello, I'm Gresan of Neltharion | Jyx of Frostwolf . Highest ratings: 2.5k in 2v2 and 2.4k in 3v3.
Or on Retail as Kemii of Tarren Mill EU | Kemii of Ravencrest EU .
So there has been a lot about Unholy. Lets get Frost sorted out. This isn't finished, but from my experience on Warsong/Sarg with the new patch I put this together to help those struggling with the changes.
Please feel free to tell me I'm wrong, add anything you think I missed too.
OK so 4.3 brought a lot of changed to Frost, most of them are a nerf and we gotta live with them. It's hard to be frost now, those of you who relied on death strike spamming, roll blood, you wont cope with it.
No more obliterate. Take that **** off you bars.
First up are the patch notes. You will find all the changes that happened between 4.0.6 to 4.3.4 below.
General
- [Raise Ally] has been redesigned to be a battle resurrection, analogous to [Rebirth]. It is instant cast, but costs 50 Runic Power to use, and has a 10-minute cooldown. It shares the same global battle resurrection cap with Rebirth and Soulstone.
- [Obliterate] base damage has been reduced to 150% weapon damage, down from 160%.
- [Death Strike] now heals the death knight whether or not the attack misses, or is dodged/parried. As a result of this change, Death Strike no longer refunds its rune cost if it fails to hit the target, as the death knight will still receive the healing effect.
- [Blood Presence] now provides an armor bonus of 55%, up from 30%.
Frost
- [Blood of the North] (passive) now permanently converts both Blood Runes into Death Runes. There is no longer any proc interaction with [Blood Strike] required to activate Death Runes.
- [Frost Strike] now deals 130% of weapon damage, up from 110%.
- [Howling Blast] damage has been increased by 20%. To compensate, the area-of-effect splash now does 50% of the single-target damage, down from 60%. The net result of this change leaves the area-of-effect damage roughly the same as 4.0.6 numbers. In addition, Howling Blast now has a facing requirement.
- [Hungering Cold] now has a 1.5-second cast time.
- [Might of the Frozen Wastes] now increases two-handed weapon damage by 3/7/10%, down from 4/8/12%.
Blood Talents
- [Blade Barrier] has been redesigned. It now passively reduces damage taken.
Unholy Talents
- [Desecration] no longer triggers when an applicable strike hits a snare-immune target. This is primarily to avoid unnecessary spell effect clutter during boss encounters.
Glyphs
- [Glyph of Raise Ally] is now [Glyph of Death Gate], and makes [Death Gate] cast 60% faster.
- [Glyph of Dark Succor] has been redesigned. Rather than placing a 15% maximum health floor on [Death Strike] healing while in Frost or [Unholy Presence], it causes the next Death Strike within 15 seconds after killing a foe that yields experience or [Honor Points] to heal for at least 20% of the death knight's maximum health (still requires Frost or Unholy Presence).
Fixes
- [Rune Strike] and [Festering Strike] now correctly have their damage increased by [Might of the Frozen Wastes].
- The talent [Killing Machine] can now properly be triggered from off-hand attacks as well as main-hand attacks.
This is for my 2h "Necromaster" spec, healers in elwynn are terrified of me :(
Spec:
Can be found here
Note the 1 in Obliterate is only to allow you to fill the required 31 points in frost to open the other trees, it is of no use at all.
Glyphs:
*Removed until able to log on and get new image*
Prime:
Howling Blast
Frost Strike
Death Coil
Major:
AMS
Strangulate
Hungering Cold
Minor:
Blood Tap
Horn of Winter
Resilient Grip
So your glyphs are pretty simple, removing Obliterate, for obvious reasons and replacing it Death Coil for the extra healing from Lichborne to make up for the lack healing from Death Strike.
We are still keeping the Hungering Cold Glyph as 40 Ruinc is just too valueable to lose on the CC when we are using Frost Strike as our main offensive skill.
AMS is more useful than Dark Succor in arenas, as your most likely with a healer, take AMS for the extra duration, much more helpful in an arena situation.
Death Strike (Dark Succor) has changed to a Victory Rush style skill. Only on the killing blow do we get our epic 20%+ heal. Which means that yes we are lacking the suriviablity but when we get the Killing Blow its a minimum of 20% healing. This is mostly if your a BG hero and there are a lack of healers in crowd situations.
Stat Priority:
Things change here a bit, nothing major but still changes.
Hit 5% > Strength > Expertise (15*) > Mastery > Haste > Crit
Why Mastery over haste? We are no long using Oblit, so our KM procs are not of major importance as such. Mastery benefits the damage of Howling Blast, Frost Strike and Frost Fever (Disease). Therefore you want to be taking mastery as your main secondary stat as we are playing with these three abilities the most.
* I have been running with 15 Expertise for months, never had much of a problem with this.
Spell Penetration:
You should get at least 200 Spell Penetration, maybe up to 250 if you are having issues with mages.
Gear:
Gear:
Red: [Resplendent Lava Coral]
Yellow: [Mystic Lightstone]
Blue: Stormy Deepholm Iolite
Enchants:
Helm: Str+Resil
Shoulder: Str+Resil
Chest: 40 Resilience
Cloak: 70 Spell Pen / Swordguard (Tailoring)
Bracers: 50 Expertise
Gloves: 50 Strength
Legs: Strength + Crit
Boots: 50 Mastery
Weapon: Rune of Fallen Crusader
Presences
First and fore most you play in UNHOLY presence.... Unless your being tunneled, then you switch to Blood... I NEVER want to see you in Frost presence.... ever!
Skills:
OK so we have Death Runes as standard, bye bye Blood Strike. Use this to your advantage to get in extra 2 Howling/Necrotic in.
Personally I find that using Necro on Healers such as Paladins, Holy Priests and Resto Druids best, so use the extra two death runes on necrotic rather than howling to keep the pressure to a max. This can also be very helpful against DPS classes such as Ret Paladins, Rogues, Feral Druids. Since these classes can heal a lot on their own.
Other than that use your 2 death runes on Howling Blast, for the damage. (Also another reason to use mastery = OP Howling damage which is semi-spamable)
There are other things you can use death runes on, like Chains to stop kiting, opening with Plague Strike to keep diseases up constantly. Learn to love that you never have to blood strike again!
Survivability:
No more Death Strike spamming... You gotta learn to live without it now. Clever use of your defensive CDs will be needed. I also Presence dance. Say your against a rogue/feral/warr start the fight in Blood Presence. Their opening damage hurts, we can mitigate it a little. Switch back to UH when it's over. When they pop CDs again back into Blood. Yes its a GCD but it's gonna save your *** when you take 8% less damage. Using Icebound when they burst (Melee classes) and AMS to avoid terrifying damage from casters. Using Death Pact accordingly as it's our big instant heal, don't waste it too early on and remember it costs 40 Runic to use.
Lichborne is our saviour. This is why you might wanna take both Glyph of Death Coil and Glyph of Death's Embrace. The extra healing is a must, and the refund of it is just too good to give up.
You might wanna macro this and replace your normal Lichborne on your bars.
Code:
#showtooltip Lichborne
/cast Lichborne
/cast [target=player] Death Coil
This will use Lichborne and then spam Death Coil until you run out of runic. It's 10s, you should be able to get in 4 Death Coils fine, and with the death runes you can use Howling Blast really quickly to get runic back so you can Death Coil more. This is where you gotta get the skill of knowing when to use it and when not to.
Don't just pop it off the bat when your feared, unless the kill target is low health or your needing to peel from your partner. Save it for healing yourself later on.
Crowd Control:
Hungering Cold now has a Cast Time.
WE CAN BE SPELL LOCKED!
You get interrupted during cast you can be locked out of the Frost school, which means no Howling, Chains of Ice. Such as sad nerf. Learn to fake cast. No joke.
Viable Arena Comps
For 2s and 3s your comps are limited, due to most teams working better with an UH DK, but you still preform well alongside a burst class.
2s:
Disc/Frost = Disc needs to know what the **** Mana Burn and Fear is.
Ret/Frost = Ret need to know how to play support, since you will be targeted a lot.
3s:
Shadowfrost = DK/Spriest/Healer (Rdruid is the best)
Vanguards = DK/Ret/Healer (Priest/Rsham)
Macros:
There are quite a few macros that you will learn to love, I already gave you the Lichborne heal one.
Howling Blast - Your gonna take HB off your bars and replace it with this.... cos it likes to bug out AutoAttack sometimes.
Code:
#showtooltip Howling Blast
/cast Howling Blast
/startattack
Raise Dead/Death Pact - Big Healing, 3 Min CD
Code:
#showtooltip
#show
/castsequence Raise Dead, Death Pact
Burst Macro - Can be used once every minute (every 2 trinket will be used if equipped)
Code:
#showtooltip Pillar of Frost
/cast Outbreak
/cast Blood Tap
/cast Pillar of Frost
/cast Horn of Winter
/use 14
Focus Strangulate - Strangs your Focus Target (If you have one, if not then current target)
Code:
#showtooltip Strangulate
/cast [target=focus,harm] Strangulate [harm] Strangulate
Focus Mind Freeze - Mind Freese your nearby Focus (without having to change targets)
Code:
#showtooltip Mind Freeze
/cast [target=focus,harm] Mind Freeze
Focus Death Grip - Long range interrupting
Code:
#showtooltip Death Grip
/cast [target=focus,harm] Death Grip
Focus Chains of Ice - Great for keeping a DPS off your *** when your on their partner.
Code:
#showtooltip Chains of Ice
/cast [target=focus,harm] Chains of Ice
I will be updating this as things go along, so keep an eye out.
OK so I think thats about it mainly. Nothing more major changed, we got a battle res, that **** is OP. 50 Runic but its instant.
Thanks Ceironn for the edit to Glyphs.
Edits:
14/12/2013 - Changed URL to different Wow Tal Calc. Also changed Glyphs due to fixed exploits.
06/03/2014 - Added Gear section - Gems and Enchants.
08/04/2014 - Added Arena Comp section - As Suggested by Akken.
03/03/2022 - Fixed dead link to talent tree and reuploaded images.
Banned
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