Welcome to Skill Capped’s Guide on the Best PvP Talents & Hero Talents for Frost Death Knights in The War Within 11.0

All sections for Frost Death Knight PvP have been divided into corresponding sections for the most optimal hero talents, class talents, spec talents, race, stats, gear, enchants, gems, and macros. This will help you have a good understanding of Frost Death Knights in PvP for The War Within, the strengths and weaknesses associated with this specialization, and help you conquer the arena. This section will guide you on the best Frost Death Knight PvP Talents in The War Within.

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Hero Talents: Rider of the Apocalypse
Hero Talents: Deathbringer
Class Talents
Spec Talents
PvP Talents

The War Within expands our arsenal of talent options, which include our new talent hero talent trees, Rider of the Apocalypse and Deathbringer. Rider of the Apocalypse is our more preferred pickup out of the two Hero trees, but you can opt for Deathbringer in non-solo shuffles games where you want more coordinated burst during setups.

Hero Talents: Rider of the Apocalypse

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Rider of the Apocalypse will be your default hero tree in competitive play. Let’s look at the core talents chosen that make up this build.

Rider’s Champion is potent to this build, as it occasionally spawns a Horseman to aid you from spending your Runes. The two most impactful Horsemen you can summon are Mograine and Trollbane. Morgraine applies a Death and Decay always beneath his feet, which allows you to benefit from Cleaving Strikes and Unholy Ground more often thanks to Mograine’s Might. Trollbane on the other hand applies Chains of Ice to your current target, minimizing globals used when peeling or kiting away.
Death Charge enhances our Death’s Advance for a huge boost to our movement speed, and allows us to break free from any root effect.
Apocalypse Now makes Frostwyrm’s Fury important to use during your Pillar of Frost burst windows, as you can summon all 4 Horsemen after using it.

Alternatively, you can select Horsemen’s Aid instead of Pact of the Apocalypse if you are facing a double caster composition. Every 45 seconds your Horseman will apply an Anti-Magic Shield on your character at slightly reduced effectiveness.

Hero Talents: Deathbringer

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As an alternative Hero build, we have Deathbringer. The focal point of this build is our hallmark talent, Reaper’s Mark, that is usable every 45 seconds. Upon using it, this deals some solid initial damage and applies a stacking debuff that we can ramp up to 40 stacks. We are constantly building our stacks from our Frost and Shadow school damaging spells, and once it expires or 40 stacks are generated it explodes for some hefty damage to the affected target and nearby players thanks to Soul Rupture.

We also recommend playing Breath of Sindragosa as this build. With this talent, we can generate our Reaper’s Mark stacks way faster and have it explode quicker during our burst sequence.

Now, let’s delve deeper and understand more about other talents located in this Hero tree.

Wave of Souls can make it important with how you position your character in order to optimize its effects. This deals damage as a frontal wave and comes back to your character, making it important to position in front of all targets to benefit off its damage modifier when it crits.
Bind in Darkness makes Howling Blast when affected by Rime more useful for generating our Reaper’s Mark stacks. This helps generate 40 stacks as soon as we can to make our Reaper’s Mark debuff explode sooner.
Exterminate is quite beneficial in practice as it can help you unexpectedly close out games right after or during your main burst sequence. This applies some solid cleave damage, applies our Frost Fever DoT to all nearby targets affected, and can apply another Reaper’s Mark debuff for more burst.

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Death Knight Class Talents

In the Death Knight Class talent tree, most of your talent choices will be mandatory when advancing onto each tier. Some of most noteworthy talents are:

Blinding Sleet as an AoE blind effect, allowing us to easily set up our burst windows or to peel for your allies by pairing this with Death Grip.
Cleaving Strikes in combination with Unholy Ground to land some massive cleave on targets while in Death and Decay.
Anti-Magic Zone to negate a solid portion of magic damage whenever you or allies stay inside of it.
Death’s Echo for an additional charge on our primary utility spells, as well as Death and Decay for more cleave action.

There’s also the selection between Osmosis and Insidious Chill.

Osmosis is our default pickup, as we already have so many core talents selected that buff Anti-Magic Shell. This allows us to help our team recover a bit easier after applying Anti-Magic Shell on yourself or allies with Spellwarden.
Insidious Chill is selected against specific melees, especially into other Death Knights to reduce their Sudden Doom procs. This is because Sudden Doom‘s proc rate is dependent on attack speed.

There will then be a few points which can be moved around depending on the composition that you are facing.

For your flexible class talents, Abomination Limb, Subduing Grasp, and Wraith Walk can be more swapped around with other talents offered to us, depending on what makes the most sense.

Vestigial Shell to apply 2 additional Anti-Magic Shields on nearby targets after Anti-Magic Shield has been used. This can apply to minions and pets, which makes it more promising if you aren’t playing with another pet-oriented spec.
Gloom Ward if you end up playing with a Disc Priest to buff their Power Word: Shield whenever it is applied to you.
Blood Draw for some additional survivability in cases where you are focused down as the primary target.

Frost Spec Talents

For our spec talents, most of these will be mandatory as you advance onto each tier. Some of the most noteworthy talents are:

Killing Machine, and in combination with Bonegrinder, allows you to increase your Frost damage after consuming Killing Machine with 5 Bonegrinder stacks. Although it is optimal to ramp up this buff before your next Pillar of Frost burst window, you don’t have to always have to wait before sending your burst. Not to mention, you become more likely to receive this buff during your Pillar of Frost windows thanks to Obliteration.
Absolute Zero gives you more Frostwyrm’s Fury uptime, which synergizes well with Apocalypse Now in our Rider of the Apocalypse tree for more Horsemen uptime.
Empower Rune Weapon when combined with Pillar of Frost will be your way of delivering the most burst damage possible. You can hold this cooldown for your second Blinding Sleet and Pillar of Frost setup to throw your opponents off guard and execute them when their cooldowns are down.

However, we do have some flexible talents that are situationally valuable depending on how you gear your character.

If you play with a 2-hander weapon, we recommend selecting Icebreaker and Hyperpyrexia in the final tier of our spec tree. Not to mention, if you decide to play Deathbringer instead of Rider of the Apocalypse we advise opting out of Shattering Blade for Breath of Sindragosa. This talent assists us with our Reaper’s Mark stacks.
If you play with 2 1-hander weapons, we suggest opting out of Icebreaker and Hyperpyrexia in favor of Smothering Offense, Icy Death Torrent, and The Long Winter. With 1-handers providing us a faster attack speed, and with Icy Talons increasing our melee attack speed naturally by spending Runes, we receive way more value out of these talents.

Frost Death Knight PvP Talents

For our default Frost Death Knight PvP talent loadout, we recommend selecting Dead of Winter, Strangulate, and Spellwarden.

Dead of Winter enhances our Remorseless Winter to also have a stun effect attached to it. This is best used right after Blinding Sleet is used, since it takes a bit of time for it to stack up and stun nearby targets.
Strangulate grants you access to a separate CC located on the Silence DR. Be mindful, as this replaces Asphyxiate, causing you to lose out on your primary stun.
Spellwarden is a great pick as our toolkit synergizes quite nicely with Anti-Magic Shell. This gives you the opportunity to prevent incoming control and burst by applying it on your teammate, while also having it on a reduced cooldown.

Finally, you can swap to/from Spellwarden depending on the matchup at hand, including some of these optional talents:

Dark Simulacrum can be a complete game-changer of a spell if you are more of an experienced player, as you can end up stealing some important defensives or CC from enemy casters.
Bloodforged Armor is recommended against melee cleaves that prioritize you as a target, adding some variance in your toolkit as this provides you with some solid damage reduction whenever you use Death Strike.
Deathchill makes it easier to land your Remorseless Winter stun on multiple enemy players, as it applies a root effect to all targets nearby once Remorseless Winter is pressed. Additionally, this helps you kite away more effectively, as it applies the root effect to players affected by Chains of Ice if Chains of Ice is casted on them again.