Frost Death Knight DPS Stat Priority — 12.0.5

For raiding and Mythic+, the secondary stat priority for Frost Death Knight is as follows.

Crit and Haste have special synergy with Frost Death Knight kit due to several abilities being based off Critical Auto Attacks, which themselves scale via Critical Strike and Haste. Killing Machine, Icy Death Torrent, and The Long Winter, to name a few, are all scaled with the number of critical autos you can get off. At the same time, our manual Killing Machine generators counteract this effect as guaranteed Critical Strikes devalue Crit value.

Optimization

Simulations and Tools

While a generalized stat priority will assist new players, there really is no substitute for simming your character. Learn more with this guide!

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Strength is your primary statistic. You should look for it in all of your upgrades. It provides you with Attack Power, which determines the damage your abilities do.

Haste increases your attack speed and your Rune regeneration rate while decreasing the global cooldown. It increases the number of Killing Machine procs via the increased attack speed.

Critical Strike increases your chance to critically hit with all spells and abilities. Crits deal double damage by default, but several effects can increase your crit damage, and make crits even stronger.

Crit also increases the number of Killing Machine procs since it increases the number of critical auto attacks you do! Furthermore, it scales well with several abilities in Frost Death Knight kit like Icy Death Torrent, The Long Winter and Bind in Darkness. At the same time, it is devalued by your manually generated Killing Machines that automatically Crit.

Mastery, through Mastery: Frozen Heart, increases your Frost damage. Frost damage makes up a great part of your total damage.

Versatility increases all your damage and healing done, and decreases all damage taken.

Every stat has a limit where they will begin to offer less increase per point gained, which are known as the points of diminishing return. Once you have reached these amounts, stats will become progressively less valuable and may fall behind other options. The current breakpoints are:

Itemization

Gearing and Enchants

Your stat priority extends to enchants, consumables, and gear. Take what you learned on this page and apply it to your gameplay with these two guides!

GearEnchants

Bicepspump

Guide Author

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This guide has been written by Bicepspump, a semi-hardcore player raiding with Pixelbased Lifeforms on Kazzak. He is heavily involved in the DK DPS theorycrafting community, testing hyoptheses and investigating the correct priority to use. He produces guide content on YouTube and frequently streams on Twitch.