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Icy Touch
  • Icy Touch
  • Instant
  • 20 yd range
  • 1 Frost Rune
  • Chills the target for X Frost damage and infects them with Frost Fever, a disease that deals periodic damage and reduces melee and ranged attack speed by 14% for 15 sec. Very high threat when in Frost Presence.
Usable by
ClassDeath knight
Properties
TypeOffensive, Utility
SchoolFrost
Cooldown6 seconds
Talents
Improvement
talents
Improved Icy Touch, Glacier Rot, Icy Reach, Chill of the Grave, Merciless Combat, Rime
Other information
Ranks5
Related debuff
  • Magic
  • Icy Touch
  • Melee and ranged attack speed reduced by 14%.
  • Duration: 15 seconds
Related debuff
  • Disease
  • Frost Fever
  • Deals Frost damage over 15 sec.
    Reduces melee and ranged attack speed.
  • Duration: 15 seconds

Icy Touch is a Death knight ability that deals moderate Frost damage and applies Frost Fever, which slows the target's melee and ranged attack speed by 14%. When in Frost Presence, it generates a very high amount of threat. The additional threat is based on the damage done by the ability, so any effect that increases the damage done by Icy Touch also increases the threat caused by the same amount.

Because of the low damage done by Icy Touch, its main use when dealing damage is to afflict the target with Frost Fever. When tanking, however, the spell is very useful because of its high threat, and if you are having trouble holding aggro, use it as a crutch if it is up.

Contents

Rank table

Rank Level Damage Cost
1 55 127 - 137 Free
2 61 144 - 156 6g 10s
3 67 161 - 173 6g 70s
4 73 187 - 203 36g
5 78 227 - 245 36g

Improvements

Talents

  • Improved Icy Touch increases damage by 5/10/15%
  • Glacier Rot increases damage by 7/13/20% against diseased enemies.
  • Merciless Combat increases damage by 6/12% on enemies with less than 35% health.
  • Rime increases the critical strike chance by 5/10/15%
  • Icy Reach increases range by 5/10 yards.
  • Chill of the Grave generates 2.5/5 additional runic power on hit (normally 10 runic power)

Tips and tactics

  • Only spam Icy Touch for threat if you are having severe trouble holding aggro. Among other things, many fights are balanced around the tank(s) doing a modest amount of DPS as well, and because Icy Touch deals very low damage, it should not be used often if you can avoid it. In general, a good Death Knight tank will seldom need to use Icy Touch except to apply Frost Fever.
  • Since Icy Touch generates a large amount of threat, it is very useful as an opening ability while tanking. Starting a fight with Icy Touch generally means that the target will stick to you for at least several seconds, allowing you to follow through with other abilities.
  • When tanking two enemies at the same time, it can be very helpful to start the fight by using your frost runes to cast Icy Touch once on each of them. This will cause significantly more initial threat than you would if you used Pestilence or some other ability to apply Frost Fever instead, buying you enough time to build threat on both targets. Note that this only applies when fighting two enemies; fighting three or more will require different tactics, as you normally only have two frost runes available.


Glyphs

2020
  • Glyph of Icy Touch
  • Major Glyph
  • Classes: Death Knight
  • Requires Level 55
  • Item Level 55Disenchants into:
    Not disenchantable
  • Use: Your Frost Fever disease deals 20% additional damage.
  • Sell Price: 37s 50c

Patch changes

  • Patch 3.3.3 (2010-03-23): This ability now causes a very high amount of threat while the death knight is in Frost Presence.

External links


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Facts about Icy TouchRDF feed
Patch date23 March 2010  +