Frost w/o breath of sindragosa

Classes Death Knight
1

Hello deathknight experts.

I plan on maining my dk again next xpac, specifically as frost. I boosted my DK so i can get some practice in.

Im looking for advice on the rotation w/o breath of sindragosa. I understand it is kinda the meta option but I hate its management.

I have gone over icy veins and they dont really cover rotations w/o it much. So here are some questions:

1.) If i were to choose glacial advance is that purely an aoe ability or one i should use on cd?

2.) Same as above but with frost scythe, should that replace obliterate or is it purely aoe.

3.) Now i need to re-optimise my build but my dps feels incredibly low for frost when compared to unholy. Does breath of sindragosa really make that drastic of a difference? Should i bite the bullet and choose it?

Thanks for your time! I will post on my dk (currently blood) so you can see my talent choices atm. Please note that I need to make some changes and am currently in boosted gear which is not optimized.

2

This is the dk in question.

3

If you actually want to do good dps as frost, you have to run Breath. Who knows what 9.0 will bring.

4

Like i said i know its the meta option. But im looking for how to maximise without it as an option. I know i wont be breaking any records.

5

Having been gearing myself up the last few weeks I’ll share my experiences. Note I’m not high Mythic + or raiding (yet).

Breath management isn’t really hard so far. It’s more of encounter experience/knowledge. Biggest thing is ensure that you can get 30-40secs on your target. Sometimes it means saving it till a mechanic is finished.

Glacial advance is a use on CD, with targets in range obviously, it does a large amount of damage on its own.

Frostscythe is the Obliterate for AOE. The only time I use it outside of AOE is use a killing machine proc when I only have 1 rune to ensure I don’t lose it to another proc. (I fully admit this could be an error)

I have decent results. But I just need better gear, but in a BOS window on dungeon bosses I pull 31-40k. (1 min fights)

Take what you will and I hope it helps.

6

It does. I just have trouble not falling into my cata/mists style of gameplay during BoS. Where i start using frost strike to fill empty gcds and what not.

I can fool around with BoS a bit. Maybe im just not giving it enough if a chance.

7

I had a similar experience. What I did to help myself retrain was the following.

Get AP to 60-75 and all runes used. Pop pillar, oblliterate , pop hungering rune blade, oblit, Lucid major (training purposes) and simply spam oblit (often can’t run out of runes) it’ll give you about 30-40 seconds.

As you play around with it you’ll find ways to pace yourself.

8

I would say it depends on what you wanna do…If you are going for at least heroic raiding, you will need breath.

EDIT: plus breath is a lot of fun on mobs, they melt.

9

Your GCD will be full, trying to obliterate, rime procs and keeping up your frozen tempest

10

You can run the frozen pillar build which i within 1% of the BoS build iirc.
The only thing is BoS will outperform PoF because of mechanics, and so you’ll generally be doing the best by utilizing the breath build.
It is a pretty active build after the chances they’ve made, particularly if you’re running frozen tempest with some haste + trinkets

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11

Lfr hero and heroic dungeons mostly. No intent to raid.

Is that the one revolving around ice cap and the azerite trait thsat summons a whelp?

12

Yes, though you’ll also primarily be using the frozen tempest trait as well.
If you’re not doing any form of serious raiding you can get away with using that build. Just keep in mind it has a habit of pulling through walls

13

Good info everyone. Thanks for the advice and thoughts guys! Ive got some practicing to do when i am off work.

14

Good luck!

15

Literally any spec and any combo of talents will still let you finish heroic raids. Breath isn’t as bad as people first think once they get used to it mechanically. I don’t think Frost DK will ever go back to the heavy hitting Obliterate builds, as they are impossible to balance in PvP.

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16

You won’t need breath then. I mean you can try it, kinda of a pita to keep up. I still need horn of winter (which is the wrong talent)

17

itd be great if the other two option felt good to use

obliteration i never liked the back n forth of it.
it would be better if while Pof is up KM and Rime are on all the time and stuff doesnt cost anything

our talents need love n care

18

Google hazzed icecap guide he has pvp and mythic + guides as long as you aren’t pushing mythic raiding and high keys you’ll be ok .

19
  1. Yes, only AoE. I’d recommend picking Gathering Storm though.
  2. Yes, only AoE. Spam this in any AoE scenario.
  3. Probably not optimised? Get icy citadel when possible. Frostwhelp is great for M+ with Icecap.
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21

Please dont use my thread as a troll thread. The point was to get my questions answered by anyone with DK experience. Idc what forum avatar they use.

Anywho, just an update. I modified my build (check Darksavio above) and am doing much better! The build i chose feels much more like cata frost which i loved.

Thanks for all tbe advice given in this thread everyone.