Spell Spotlight will be a series of posts that will cover in depth all of the Death Knight spells based off of Alpha information. (keep in mind that this information is subject to and most likely will change)

Frost

Next up in our three part series covering starting spells is the Frost tree. This post will be easy because the only Frost spell you start with currently is Icy Touch. Here is a look at the Frost section of your spell book upon creation:

Icy Touch is an instant cast direct damage spell that costs two frost runes and slows the enemies attack speed (ranged, melee, and spell casting). Here is the tooltip:

Instead of focusing on every talent from every tree that has an effect on or increases the damage on Icy Touch, I am only going to focus on the Frost talents. I believe the Frost talents where built around Icy Touch and think that it will be the main attack for deep frost specced Death Knights.

There are 8 Frost talents that are focused around Icy Touch.

Frostbite scales 5/10/15% chance to freeze per point spent.

 

Improved Icy Touch scales 5/10% chance at no rune cost per point spent.

 
                                                                  
Chillbanes scales 50/100/150% more runic power per point spent. 

 

Glacier Rot scales 5/10/15% more damage to diseased targets.

 

Permafrost scales 10/20/30% reduced movement speed and 2/4/6% duration per point spent.

 

Endless Winter scales 1/2/3/4/5 second longer slowing effect per point spent.

 

Chill of the Grave scales 10/20/30/40/50% increases critical damage bonus per point spent.

 

Tundra Stalker scales 2/4/6/8/10% more damage to targets under the effect of Icy Touch per point spent

 

Speccing deep into the frost tree can really make Icy Touch a very powerful spell. There is tons of work being done in our forums in regards to number crunching our spells. Crazy, bazz, and many others are testing each spell to get specifics such as base damages, how each spell scales with AP, how each talent changes the spells damage and so on. Here is an example of their work on Icy Touch:

 Crazy ran damage vs. AP tests and came up with the following:

Tooltip scales with attack power, but states only a fixed amount.

“Deals X Frost damage and reduces the target’s ranged, melee attack and casting speed by 15% for 20 sec.”

Tooltip Number: (No Impurity/Frost Talents)
650 AP: 347 Frost Damage
600 AP: 337 Frost Damage
552 AP: 327 Frost Damage
498 AP: 317 Frost Damage

~200 base damage roughly id say?

This enabled bazz to calculate base damage numbers for rank 1 Icy Touch:

Icy Touch BaseDMG+(AP*0.2) Rank 1 BaseDMG = 219

Lots of effort being put into analyzing it all, if that sort of math crunching is your thing then I would advise checking it out!
 

Last but not least here is a shot of Icy Touch in action:

Stay tuned for the Unholy starting spells!