Stat Priorities
Stats will always vary and change based on your gear situation, as stats can lose a lot of value once you reach certain thresholds. The best way to ensure you are using the best gear is to use Raidbots and check via the Top Gear option. You can learn how to sim your character by going to the ‘How to Sim Your Character’ section at the end of this guide.
Stat Ranking
Single Target: Strength > Crit > Mastery = Haste > Versatility
Multi-Target: Strength > Crit > Mastery > Haste > Versatility
Stat Summary
Strength - Primary stat is typically always the best. It's a simple, straightforward throughput increase to every aspect of Frost Death Knight in both single and multi-target scenarios.
Crit - Auto-attack critical strikes trigger Killing Machine, Icy Death Torrent and The Long Winter, all of which are very important for your overall damage. Crit is a stat which is the best for both single and multi-target scenarios because of this.
Mastery - Most of your damage as Frost is Frost damage, so naturally increasing your Frost damage done via Mastery: Frozen Heart is going to be good. Mastery scales exceptionally well in multi-target, so it will pull ahead of Haste in these scenarios.
Haste - Haste gives a lot of benefits to Frost, including auto-attack speed (attacking more often increases chances to proc Killing Machine, Icy Death Torrent and The Long Winter), rune regeneration and generally giving you more globals during your Pillar of Frost / Breath of Sindragosa windows.
Versatility - Versatility is a very simple stat that does what it says on the tin, it just gives you a flat damage & healing increase and some mitigation. It’s not a very valuable stat early on, but once you start hitting diminishing return thresholds on your other stats, Versatility will start to gain value but this is something that happens towards the later half of an expansion.
Races
The races are not a massive throughput gain, sometimes they are, but generally, the gain is not that big for playing ‘the best race.’ For the most part, play whatever Race you want; however, the Races listed here are the best if you want the best possible throughput.
Horde - Blood Elf
Alliance - Mechagnome
Blood Elf: The main appeal for Frost overall is the additional 1% Crit from Arcane Acuity, which is a nice bonus due to Crit being one of your best secondary stats. Blood Elf also comes with Arcane Torrent, which is a very effective ability to use to prolong your Breath of Sindragosa by granting you 20 Runic Power. It is on a 2-minute cooldown, so it will always line up with your Breath of Sindragosa.
Mechagnome: Primary stat (Strength) is the best stat for Frost Death Knight, so gaining +1532 strength after the first 50 seconds of a fight with Combat Analysis is very strong (this strength is also amplified by Pillar of Frost and Rune of the Fallen Crusader, which makes it scale really well with Frost Death Knight in general. So, Mechagnome is the best race overall and will offer the most overall throughput.
Enchants
Gems and Ring enchants heavily depend on your current stat weights and will often fluctuate depending on your current gear. I will list the enchants and gems you will generally want to use, but you should always check on Raidbots to see which are currently the most valuable for you.
General Enchants/Kits:
- Cloak: Enchant Cloak - Chant of Winged Grace
- Chest: Enchant Chest - Crystalline Radiance
- Wrist: Enchant Bracer - Chant of Armored Avoidance
- Legs: Stormbound Armor Kit
- Boots: Enchant Boots - Scout’s March
- Weapon: Rune of the Fallen Crusader / Rune of Razorice / Rune of the Stoneskin Gargoyle
Ring Enchants:
- Enchant Ring - Radiant Critical Strike: +315 Crit
- Enchant Ring - Radiant Mastery: +315 Mastery
- Enchant Ring - Radiant Haste: +315 Haste
Gems
Blasphemous Gem
Culminating Blasphemite: +181 Primary Stat + 0.15% Critical Effect per unique Algari Gem color
Gems
All gems are colored based on the stats they give:
- Emerald (Green) = Haste
- Ruby (Red) = Crit
- Onyx (Purple) = Mastery
- Sapphire (Blue) = Versatility
- Amber (Orange) = Stamina
You will always want to use the dual stat gems as they give you more stats overall (example: Masterful Emerald).
The best way to find out the best gems for your character, make sure to sim multiple gem combinations!
Consumables
Food: Beledars Bounty
Flasks: Flask of Tempered Aggression / Flask of Alchemical Chaos
Potions: Tempered Potion
Health Potions: Algari Healing Potion
Weapon Oil: Ironclaw Whetstone