Frost has received the most changes in 3.3.3. These changes make Frost Death Knights both attractive and powerful. You’ll notice there’s been a nice bump in the amount of high-end Death Knights that have chosen to raid as frost. I really enjoy frost because the style suits me. Its been my favorite spec since the beginning.

Raid Utility

Frost will enjoy improved raid utility now that he raid buff Improved Icy Talons is now a passive ability as of this patch, instead of having its uptime linked to an ability. The upside to these changes is that it now provides even more haste to the you. With Improved Icy Talons, you now have a permanent passive haste buff of 25%. When you use Icy Talons, you gain an additional 20% for a total of 45% haste buff. However, the finally 20% in raids still does not stack with Windfury. This is still an additional 20% haste that you didn’t have before. For more specifics, see this post where I explain the changes more thoroughly.

This puts Frost Death Knights in an attractive raiding position because you now provide similar buffs to an enhancement shaman, but those buffs are passive and not dependent on attacks or uptime.

Talent Changes

The talent Endless Winter was mostly pvp-centric. It has been redesigned and is now part of the standard Frost build. It used to be “Your Chains of Ice has a 100% chance to cause Frost Fever and the cost of your Mind Freeze is reduced to no runic power”, but is now “Your strength is increased by 4% and your Mind Freeze no longer costs runic power” … yes plz.

Nerves of Cold Steel has been buffed. It previously granted 5/10/15% off-hand damage. That increase has been raised to 8/16/25%.

Ability Changes

Icy Touch now causes a very high amount of threat while in Frost Presence. I’ve heard a lot of people say that this really isn’t that super, but it’s an improvement. This change will help Death Knights tanks to retain a little more threat on the pull. Also, Chains of Ice now innately applies Frost Fever instead of merely being a talented effect. This makes a useless ability a little more worthwhile (I’m not a Pvp’er, maybe this change means a little more to you guys than me).

Another notable change is that the effect of the Rune of Razorice has been changed so that it applies its full effect faster and its chance is now 100%. Instead of applying 10 1% stacks of Frost Vulnerability, it now applies 5 2% stacks.

What does this all mean?

These changes are good news for Frost which has been lacking some punch in ICC. The priority list on your abilities pretty much stays the same as well, so you’re not going to have to alter your playing style.

Spec: [0/53/18]

Glyphs: Obliterate, Frost Strike, Disease (ugg, I hate this one, but it’s recommended)

Stats: Hit (till capped 164 rating with full Nerves of Cold Steel), Expertise (till capped 172.2 with full Tundra Stalker), Strength, Crit Rating, Armor Pen.

Ability Priority

Killing Machine -> Frost Strike
Keep Frost Fever up
Keep Blood Plague up
Obliterate
Blood Strike
Frost Strike
Rime
Horn of Winter

Now that Dual-Wield dps is viable again, many people also want to extend the dual-wield happiness to tanking. There are many myths and misconceptions about dual-wield tanking throughout the wow community. When I heard dual-wield tanking, the next word that immediately pops into my head is deathn00b. The vast majority of death knights which I’ve run into while leveling tend to dps as dual-wield, many don’t understand the trees and assume they can just dual-wield with anything.

On the contrary, as of 3.3, Dual-Wield Frost tanking is a viable, though niche, option. Patch 3.3 adds new runeforges and allows Frost to attain above average threat performance.

The Spec: Frost DW Tanking
10/54/7