World of Warcraft™

Rotation

Now please please please keep in mind that there is no set rotation in arena. This is a basic concept that you are going to basically adjust around. With the new changes in the recent patches you will now be using a Necrotic Strike/Howling Blast rotation. You basically want to get as many Necrotic Strikes in as possible.

Your strongest opening usually goes something like this. Make sure you do not waste runic power meaning that you should use frost strike if you are getting close to 130 runic power.

Outbreak – Necrotic Strike - Necrotic Strike - Necrotic Strike - Necrotic Strike - Howling Blast - Howling Blast - Frost Strike Dump

This is the basic idea of what your rotation per say will be. You should really never have to worry about diseases since you will always be howling blast. Some people worry about getting plague strike up on the target. For me it is really dependant on the situation.

Your normal rotation will be pretty much your opener minus the outbreak unless it is up.

If the target gets out of range you want to be using howling blast as much as possible to keep up pressure. I will say though that sometimes it is just good to save your runes for burst when you get back up to them. As long as they still have a frost fever up on them. If you find you are getting kited way too much or he gets out of your range right before a kill use the rotation below.

Howling blast - Howling blast - Death Coil - Howling Blast - Howling Blast - Death Coil

Basically this is going to allow you to put out a good amount of ranged damage. If they get out of your range and you are clearly not going to kill them dont bother using this rotation because you will just waste your runic power.

Also keep in mind that if your you get thrown off you rotation you can stagger frost strikes in between your runes to keep up pressure. <strong/>

Best Times to use Obliterate

1) On anything besides plate I will use obliterate on every Killing Machine proc.

2) Also if you have a opp low on health and he has a decent amount of necrotic strikes on him I will usually use obliterate to go for the kill.

3) When you are on a class that cannot self heal (like a mage) and that person does not have healer. Keep in mind you do want to still use necrotic strike to keep up the 30% casting debuff though.

So please realize when I said that the rotation is VERY situational....you do want to use obliterate from time to time.


Best Times to use Necrotic Strike

Since the changes Necrotic Strike has become more useful, but I think this part of the thread is still quite useful with regards to is information. It is good to know that the absorb is not effected by certain things.

1) To slow down incoming damage from a caster. Usually this is going to be in 2’s against a double dps team. Generally speaking if you are needing to go so defensive that you need to use necrotic strike you should be using death strike to keep yourself up, however it is good to throw out a necrotic strike just to slow the caster down a bit. It will greatly decrease there damage done.

2) When the person you are attacking pops a cooldown which will in turn make them take less damage. I just want you to know during these times that Necrotic Strike is EXTREMELY useful since you do not have to pull off the target if they pop a cooldown. In fact you can keep up a considerable amount of pressure going even with these cooldowns popped due to necrotic strikes absorb going right through.

Shadow Priest – Dispersion
Warrior – Shield Wall
Priest – Pain Suppression
Druid – Bear Form
Death Knight – Icebound Fortitude, AMS

I am pretty sure there are a couple more, but you get an idea.

Focus Macros

Focus macros are absolutely imperative to any Death Knight who would like to be successful in arena. If you do not have focus or mouse over macros you have destined your team to fail in arena. The concept behind focus macros is that you can be doing 2 things at the same time to 2 different players while never changing your target.

Now before we actually go into the focus macros what you need to do is go into your key bindings and under TARGETTING FUNCTIONS you will find a set focus. You want to bind this to a button you can remember.

Focus macro can be used in multiple ways, but the main two way are for peeling, and for crowd controlling.

The most basic focus macro is as follows

#show Strangulate
/cast [target=focus] Strangulate

Once you have set a focus what this will do is strangulate that person as long as they are in range of the strangulate. Make sure you are also facing that person. This is a great macro when you pull off a great hungering cold or if you see that your target is about to die. Make sure you get that strangulate off on the healer. This can however also be used defensively against DK’s, Paladin’s, and Caster’s.

#show Chains of Ice
/cast [target=focus] Chains of Ice

This is best used against a DPS if you are trying to peel for your healer. For all of you that do not know peeling means pulling that DPS off your healer so that your healer has a chance to catch up on healing. You can just throw this out anytime you have a free frost rune and keep that person pretty annoyed all the meanwhile beating on your target. Keep in mind that this can be used against casters to help your healer get out of line of sight of them.

#show Death Grip
/cast [target=focus] Death Grip

This has a couple applications. One of the obvious ones is to help peel. Every time it is up just death grip them in and chains of ice them in place. This is great against casters or warriors to get them out of line of sight of your healer. This is also great against any melee dps that will pretty much be forced to use cooldowns if they wish to get back to your healer.

This can also be used to pull in for a hungering cold. If you want to get a guaranteed 2 people with a hungering cold while there whole team is spread out this is the way to do so

The last way it can be used is as an interrupt. If you are up against a healer that is casting to heal you can death grip them in mid cast to interrupt their casting.

#show Mind Freeze
/cast [target=focus] Mind Freeze

This is great if you are close to a healer or if you just death gripped a healer to interrupt their cast. I cannot tell you how many times after the death grip they will just stand there and spam heals. Many good healers will watch your target to see quick switches so if you are not targeting them they assume they are good to just spam casts.

/target [target=arena1, exists, nodead, harm] arena1
/target [target=focus, exists, nodead] focus
/click BT4Button4
/targetlasttarget

This I will go into more detail a bit later in this guide. Set "BT4Button4" to whatever button you have dark simulacrum attached to. I use bartender so I have it set differently.

Hungering Cold

Well we all know what happened to Hungering Cold. It was an amazing ability now it is pretty much sub par. The best way to use this is by using it after another CC....so stun into a hungering cold.

One of the best ways to use this ability is the Tauren War Stomp. It is an AoE stun that gives you just enough time to get off hungering cold. I have seen this being used very effectively, by death gripping in - war stomp - hungering cold.

Do not expect hungering cold to be a game changer though.

Dark Simulacrum

Now that I have gone over focus macros, this is a great way to put those focus macros to use. There is a way to take the luck out of it and look for things using focus macros. Just make a focus macro for dark silum. Then pick the class that has to cast their

Mage - Polymorph
Warlock - Fear
Shaman - Hex
Druid - Cyclone
Priest - Fear,
you just have to watch for when he starts running in towards your team, takes a bit more of a watchful eye

Anyways essentially this is the best way to use DARK SILUM

Start of the match storm in and hungering cold their team (they are usually grouped up in the beginning) MAKE SURE NOT TO LINE OF SIGHT YOUR HEALER...Just get an immediate chain of CC going after this in my case warrior fear into a hex into a stangulate.

This will absolutely force the healer to blow his trinket. If you do not get a kill immediately then you will have one 1 minute later. I set one of the above classes as my focus...

The second my hungering cold is back up I watch for his cast. While they are your focus you can see their cast bar even if you do not have them targetted. I dark silum their cast and use it to CC the healer. Now here is the CC chain...MAKE SURE YOU CHANGE YOUR FOCUS FOR YOUR FOCUS MACROS TO THE HEALER

Dark Silum - Death Grip, Hungering Cold (usually you can nab a dps at the same time) - Teammate #1 CC - Teammate #2 CC - strangulate

I play TSG with a shaman so in that case teammate 1 is my warrior with a fear and teammate 2 is my shamans hex.

This takes a bit of practice yourself and a lot of practice to get it down with your team...but once you have it down you will win a TON of games. After you have this down the only teams you will have trouble with is teams with double dispel.

Enchants
Head - 60 Strength/35 Resilence
Shoulder - 50 Strength/25 Resilience
Back - 70 Spell Penetration
Chest - 40 Resilience
Bracers - 50 Strength
Gloves - 50 Strength
Legs - 190 Attack Power/55 Critical Strike
Boots - 50 Mastery
2H Weapon - Rune of Fallen Crusader
DW Weapon - Razorice Main Hand/Fallen Crusader Off Hand

Helpful Links


http://www.arenajunkies.com/topic/189982-a-simple-addon-to-move-default-unit-frames/page__p__3056642__hl__frames__fromsearch__1#entry3056642


JW, why do you use strangulate right after you use hungering cold. Or do you mean you use it once they trinket out?

01/21/2011 11:06 AMPosted by Darkcore

Please let me know any suggestions you might have I would like to keep updating this and adding to it.

Great read, great information.

I might add that in 4.0.6 and beyond, the succor glyph is an excellent choice for major's. It's probably a much bigger defensive boon in 3v3 than the AMS glyph.

We'll probably end up with HC, Dark Succor, and choice of Strangulate or Death Grip for final 4.0.6 2h frost major glyphs.


I'm personally leaning towards dropping strangulate as I'll often use the spell in 2h frost as a blanket silence to follow hungering cold, or chaining it right after another CC like throwdown.

I feel like as frost I hit an active cast less often with strangulate than I do with unholy and it's more often used for blanket silence following another CC.

If using the cd in this fashion, you aren't getting any benefit from the glyph anyways.

Glyph of Death Grip while often underappreciated on the other hand has won me more matches. Being able to grip a healer into a HC from 35 yds away when they thought they were safe and peaked out from the pillar to heal just a bit..... it's nice.

01/21/2011 11:42 AMPosted by Sikish

JW, why do you use strangulate right after you use hungering cold. Or do you mean you use it once they trinket out?

110% certain he meant strangulate when HC breaks due to duration expiration or trinketing.

01/21/2011 11:42 AMPosted by Sikish

JW, why do you use strangulate right after you use hungering cold. Or do you mean you use it once they trinket out?

In reality you can use strangulate multiple way's...i most likely like to use it to force a trinket. I do not always have the luxury of great partners so a lot of the time they mess up the CC chain. If I can put together a dark simulacrum CC, death grip into a hungering cold, into strangulate i can always force the trinket myself.

If your team is good at CC chains however you can just use hungering cold and a CC chain in the first minute to force the trinket and can then just use strangulate defensively.

Unless you are really close to getting a kill or have a couple more CC's that to throw out do not bother using strangulate as it would just be a waste...you already forced a trinket.

Please let me know any suggestions you might have I would like to keep updating this and adding to it.

Great read, great information.

I might add that in 4.0.6 and beyond, the succor glyph is an excellent choice for major's. It's probably a much bigger defensive boon in 3v3 than the AMS glyph.

We'll probably end up with HC, Dark Succor, and choice of Strangulate or Death Grip for final 4.0.6 2h frost major glyphs.


I'm personally leaning towards dropping strangulate as I'll often use the spell in 2h frost as a blanket silence to follow hungering cold, or chaining it right after another CC like throwdown.

I feel like as frost I hit an active cast less often with strangulate than I do with unholy and it's more often used for blanket silence following another CC.

If using the cd in this fashion, you aren't getting any benefit from the glyph anyways.

Glyph of Death Grip while often underappreciated on the other hand has won me more matches. Being able to grip a healer into a HC from 35 yds away when they thought they were safe and peaked out from the pillar to heal just a bit..... it's nice.

Great suggestion about the glyph...i completely forgot about it while i was writting this up. It is added now thanks.

As for everything else...what i try to convey in the post is this is just a guide that you have to adjust to your playstyle and comp....it is not a bible of exactly what to do with frost in PvP.

@OP
you are hedious!

Nice info. Question, is Haste > Mastery only true on the PTR atm? Isn't it the other way around with the current (non-PTR) patch?

bump and ty

Bump. Good work.

01/21/2011 1:29 PMPosted by Nisco

Nice info. Question, is Haste > Mastery only true on the PTR atm? Isn't it the other way around with the current (non-PTR) patch?

It is true for both now and pst patch 4.0.6

Glyph of Death's Embrace no longer refunds RP when you heal yourself.

/bump

good info/read, should get this stickied.

Now if someone knowledgeable would just do this for unholy.

Hey great write up, thanks. I have to say I'm leery regarding your downplay of Necrotic Strike's usage. Even with the current hotfix it still "feels" very strong to me. Granted "feel" =/= actual numbers, but do you have a more in depth number crunch of why you support moving back to Obliterate as a primary choice over stacking NS?

Not saying you're wrong per se, I'd just love some more info supporting your view. Thanks again though, I got alot out of this.

inb4 lol1600

Perfect I was waiting for this. I saw you mentioned earlier in the 2.3k thread that we should compile this information, and I was about to work on it like you said, but you beat me to it :). Great info, good read. Just a couple things I'd like to add.

-Pillar of Frost can be used defensively with Lichborne heal. If used while you're lichborne healing, it'll increase each heal ~4-5k depending on your strength.

-Minor glyph of Death's Embrace will be dropped next patch, just pointing this out.

I'll keep bumping this because this is what I was trying to accomplish, and now with all the questions that have been asked in previous threads, this has been a perfect guide.

Well done mate.

Question, Andry in your post you strongly supported NS spam and on this post we see Obliterate focus. I'm wondering in both your opinions where NS actually falls in importance in comparison to Obliterate. I just hit 85 and plan on hitting arena in not too long. I've found the information both of you have provided to be EXTREMELY helpful and already started implementing a lot of it in BGs to very good effect. There is just this 1 issue I am wondering about and would love to see it cleared up. I can see by previous posts I'm not the only one wondering.

Edit: You guys also varied on your opinions of Mastery. What's up with that?

Thanks again guys, you're a great help to the DK community.

01/22/2011 9:09 AMPosted by Gingerkiller

Question, Andry in your post you strongly supported NS spam and on this post we see Obliterate focus. I'm wondering in both your opinions where NS actually falls in importance in comparison to Obliterate. I just hit 85 and plan on hitting arena in not too long. I've found the information both of you have provided to be EXTREMELY helpful and already started implementing a lot of it in BGs to very good effect. There is just this 1 issue I am wondering about and would love to see it cleared up. I can see by previous posts I'm not the only one wondering.

Edit: You guys also varied on your opinions of Mastery. What's up with that?

Thanks again guys, you're a great help to the DK community.

So much this.