Kuni's Frost Mage PVE Guide (Cataclysm)

[Kuni Zyrekai]

Kuni: Is the 4T13 bug still here?

It is, as of 4.3.2.

Edit: http://www.worldoflogs.com/rankings/...5N/Frost_Mage/ Not a terrible return to frost.

[mostlyharmless]

this thread is sad and pathetic

fire is the BEST dps spec ingame and people are like...please fix frost

first shouldnt blizzard fix other classes who are really low on the dps meter in all specs, instead of making 1 class have 3 great dps specs while some dont even have 1.

its cool people want to play it and ofc everyone theorycrafts best dps, but dont ask for a fix when mages is probably the best pve class to be playing atm, if u dont like frost u could re-roll hunter and have 3 pretty bad dps specs.

loads of really selfish ungreatful mages in this thread, also frost is like #1/2 1v1 class....jeez what more do people want

This guy makes some really good points. Frost mage is one of the best pvp specs in the game, everyone else is always crying about how OP frost mages are in pvp. Fire spec is the best overall raiding dps in the game, it's interesting, has awesome aoe and single target, great mobility, strong synergy with DTR and 4pc, crazy survivability (cauterize is ridiculous), scales incredibly well with crit, haste and mastery, can keep going with 0 mana... Between fire PVE and frost PVP, we really, really don't have anything to complain about, we are super spoiled. I love it, not gonna lie.

[Beppo1]

My suggestion would be to change the 4pT13 to reduce the CD of FFO by 2 sec per stack of stolen time. This would help with both mobility, as it would increase your proc chance while moving, plus give a significant damage increase while stationary, as the bursts during FFO are significant. The effect on PvP would be limited as well, since it would be hard to justify dropping the PvP gear for that bonus.

DWT needs to be fixed.

As far as AoE goes, I am fine with frost being lack luster on that aspect. If all 3 specs were great at everything, it would severely diminish the customization/choices that come from the core of an MMO. (I am also severely disappointed with the talent system coming up in MoP due to this reason).

[scuac]

Ok, I just read this from a blue post (its on front page of mmo-champion), talking about Frost mages and MoP, and how they moved all the frost control abilities (for pvp) to the talent tree (I added emphasis):

The overall effect of this is that Arcane and Fire should stay about neutral in regards to their control, but frost will lose some of it. On the other hand though, it is possible for a Frost's damage to go up and be competitive with that of the other mages if they do not go for the control talents.

This statement worries me a lot. First, it implies that in MoP Frost's baseline dmg will still be lower than Fire or Arcane. Second, it implies that there actually are talents in these new system that affect pve dmg, or at least that there are talents that Frost HAS to take to be competitive (while Fire and Arcane are free to chose whatever they want). This is contrary to everything that the developers talked about the new talent system and it seems that Frost will not be competitive in pve after all.

[Holtzmann]

This statement worries me a lot. First, it implies that in MoP Frost's baseline dmg will still be lower than Fire or Arcane. Second, it implies that there actually are talents in these new system that affect pve dmg, or at least that there are talents that Frost HAS to take to be competitive (while Fire and Arcane are free to chose whatever they want). This is contrary to everything that the developers talked about the new talent system and it seems that Frost will not be competitive in pve after all.

I think your worry is misplaced. There aren't many talents in the Mists previews we've seen so far that actually affect DPS in a non-situational way, and Blizz has stated they want to keep tiers thematically consistent: some will help your DPS, some will help your utility, and so on. If Frost will be able to be competitive by not taking control talents (which doesn't make sense to me, given there are entire tiers of control talents), then Fire and Arcane must also take the damage talents to be competitive. If Frost is 80% of Arcane's damage and needs to take specific talents to climb up to 100%, Arcane would just be able to take the same talents and get up to 120% and we'd be back to square one. If Frost has to take Arcane Bomb or Living Bomb to be competitive, then so be it. Arcane and Fire will have to do the same.

Also, from the current calculator, it looks like Frost will be able to take a DPS talent in a control Tier. Level 45: Frostjaw would probably let us proc the new Fingers of Frost on a boss and let us squeeze in some extra damage. Not sure what to make of that. It really looks like the Frost spec abilities and interactions haven't been ironed out yet.

[huth]

I don't think Frostjaw will really be a damage talent when you take it's cast time into consideration. Spending a GCD not doing any damage for a single FoF charge sounds like a bad trade.

I agree on your first point, though. It was probably just a badly worded "if all three specs take DPS talents, they will do roughly the same damage".


It's kind of interesting that they removed Arcane and Fire Orb, but left Frozen in and made it generate AoE, to boot.
They also "fixed" FoF for PvE... Frostbolt now has a 20% chance to trigger it, and Frozen Orb a whopping 50% per hit(did i mention that it's AoE now?). It's also capped at 3 charges instead of 2.
All three bombs now deal roughly the same damage and Frost Bomb only slows instead of freezing, so that's also up to personal preference now. You will have to use them, though, as Brain Freeze now triggers from the bombs instead of snares.

[Kuni Zyrekai]

Level 45: Frostjaw would probably let us proc the new Fingers of Frost on a boss and let us squeeze in some extra damage. Not sure what to make of that. It really looks like the Frost spec abilities and interactions haven't been ironed out yet.

I don't think Frostjaw will really be a damage talent when you take it's cast time into consideration. Spending a GCD not doing any damage for a single FoF charge sounds like a bad trade.

I think you guys are overlooking ice ward as a viable DPS talent, since it's off the GCD. /cast @targetoftarget so it'll proc off the tank, free charge every 20 seconds without the cast and range limits of frostjaw.

Brain freeze is an interesting change. I'm not sure what to make of it at the moment, given the loss of FoF and ignite interactions. Also does it proc off casts or damage ticks? Living bomb would be the better one in case of damage, but frost bomb looks like it might hit harder with enough haste to bring the cooldown/countdown far enough down. More unmodified FFBs with LB or less with enough haste to push frost bomb over the other bombs' DPS? We'll find out when beta starts and we can add feedback to get them in line, numbers-wise.

[Bombkirby]

Oh yeah! I was thinking Frostjaw was the better option...but with a macro, Ice Ward would be automatic FoF charges.

[dormontius]

So far I think I'll enjoy it, what about deep freeze as a damaging spell, I couldn't figure out for sure if it will be the same thing?

[Kuni Zyrekai]

Oh yeah! I was thinking Frostjaw was the better option...but with a macro, Ice Ward would be automatic FoF charges.

Aye. If you somehow have multiple immune mobs, more charges as well. At least that's how I'm reading FoF.

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/game/mis...ator#eb!201021 This seems to be a decent starting point, assuming frost bomb can keep up. Given the quoted 1% max mana/1 sec base regen; 2% base mana regen for a GCD every minute with 15% damage boost seems a better deal than no mana regen, 5-6s channel time for 20% power every 30 seconds. Incanter's shield looks interesting but I'm not a fan of the 25s CD with 15s duration. This is of course assuming that casting it and either letting it wear off, absorb to full, or an automatic /cancelaura will provide the benefit of it "breaking". To get the full benefit, you'd have to throw it on cooldown, regardless of raid damage going out.

Invis vs cauterize, I personally think the dispersion style buff to invis provides better protection to most raid mechanics. Ultraxion, Algalon, a couple of ticks on Baleroc. Surviving a wipe through raid damage, such as transition phase Ragnaros. Greater invis works out in favour more often than cauterize, I believe. There are situations in which cauterize would be better, but this seems like a more solid general base, in the case you weren't ever changing your talents for some reason.

---------- Post added 2012-02-16 at 04:08 PM ----------

So far I think I'll enjoy it, what about deep freeze as a damaging spell, I couldn't figure out for sure if it will be the same thing?

It currently isn't a damaging spell, but honestly too many people enjoy the large numbers. I could see the damage component come in as a glyph, in exchange for never stunning or some such thing. I can also equally see it not doing damage at all, as Blizz hates the PVP/PVE split skills. Although this makes little sense as warriors seem to have gotten their own version of deep freeze in storm bolt.

A glyph or a passive that hasn't been added yet seems most likely. We lost a lot of damage from the loss of 100% crit FFB and ignite. I don't see them realistically taking away deep freeze's damage for good.

[Bombkirby]

I have a feeling Deep Freeze is just not going to do damage. It's a very messy spell and in non-boss situations or add based fights, you'll end up doing less damage as it will merely stun the mobs. Hopefully they'll add something to replace it. Maybe they wont add anything at all. In fact let me check the main spells in each rotation....

Frost: Frostbolt, Ice Lance, Frostfire Bolt, Frozen Orb, x Bomb, Icy Veins (6 spells)

Arcane: Arcane Blast, Arcane Missiles, Arcane Barrage, x Bomb, Arcane Power (5 spells)

Fire: Fireball, Pyroblast, Inferno Blast (multi targets only), x Bomb, Combustion (4 spells)

Okay that... SHOULD be the main spells of each spec unless I forgot something. By the looks of it Frost has a lot of spells in its rotation already. I can see why they'd trim down the amount of spells in their rotation by one.

[Kuni Zyrekai]

Nice Thread.. but i thought i read on elitistjerks that Haste > Mastery

Likely a spam bot based on post history, but whatever. Haste > mastery until GCD hits 1 second, as covered in the guide.

Edit: From Lhivera on the offical forums:

Brain Freeze: Proc rate is normalized to ensure a similar number of procs per minute regardless of the Bomb spell you are specced for. In other words, the proc rate for Frost Bomb will be higher than for the other Bombs, because it generates less frequent events. Confirmed

I don't know where it was confirmed, but that does make the choices a lot more stylistic if true.

[huth]

I think you guys are overlooking ice ward as a viable DPS talent, since it's off the GCD. /cast @targetoftarget so it'll proc off the tank, free charge every 20 seconds without the cast and range limits of frostjaw.

Possible, though i could see Blizzard changing it so it either will only give FoF if it procs of you or simply does not give charges at all to keep all options on that tier equal.

[Bombkirby]

Possible, though i could see Blizzard changing it so it either will only give FoF if it procs of you or simply does not give charges at all to keep all options on that tier equal.

In that case we better keep this on the down low until release. =P

[TheBaron87]

As someone who has mained nothing but a PvE frost mage since 0.8, all I have to say is that nearly all of WoW's balance problems could be solved if Blizzard would stop trying to force PvE and PvP to share and just give every skill two sets of numbers. They like to say that would be too confusing or too inconsistent but they already do this to all CC, why won't they do it to damage? PvP already has resilience which causes skills to do less damage than in PvE, and people can figure that out. They cause all CCs to last only 8 seconds, and have diminishing returns, and people can figure that out. Why couldn't people be able to figure out that frostbolt does 30k in PvE and 25k in PvP, or something of that nature? If you guys want PvE to be balanced you should all go to the forums and start campaigning to get it unhooked from PvP. Tell Blizzard that balance is more important to us than consistency between two totally different types of games, especially for those who are only interested in one side. I think I'm the only frost mage in the game that doesn't PvP.

[Petrus]

I love playing my mage as frost in PvE but my goodness it just feels like I hit like a wet noodle.

What's this 4pc t13 bug that's been mentioned? I tend just to pop IV anytime I see I have 8+ stacks of Stolen Time.

[Kuni Zyrekai]

I love playing my mage as frost in PvE but my goodness it just feels like I hit like a wet noodle.

What's this 4pc t13 bug that's been mentioned? I tend just to pop IV anytime I see I have 8+ stacks of Stolen Time.

Your second icy veins, after popping cold snap, doesn't benefit from the current stack you had built up before the end of the first icy veins. It'll say it does on the tooltip, but it doesn't actually reduce the cooldown until the first buff drops the first stack and stacks up again.

[huth]

I don't think that's a bug, nor unintended. It's just down to the order the events are processed. Old IV is removed => Stacks drop => Cooldown for new IV is calculated and applied. They probably did it to prevent unintended behavior when effects that reset cooldowns are involved, possibly not even for the 4t13 specificially. (What would happen if you cast Combustion while it's already active? Combustception?)

[Kuni Zyrekai]

I don't think that's a bug, nor unintended. It's just down to the order the events are processed. Old IV is removed => Stacks drop => Cooldown for new IV is calculated and applied. They probably did it to prevent unintended behavior when effects that reset cooldowns are involved, possibly not even for the 4t13 specificially. (What would happen if you cast Combustion while it's already active? Combustception?)

I'm aware it's likely an intended deal, but in the order of IV > snap > 10 stacks > second IV at 2 seconds left on the first, the second IV's tooltip does actually display the 24 second cooldown due to still having 10 stacks active, but triggers a 2.4m one. Fixing the tooltip would go a ways towards clearing confusion.

At any rate, minor issues are minor.

[huth]

Might be a technical issue that doesn't allow for this, similar to how buff tooltips couldn't scale for most of WoW. I doubt it's really worth fixing it for this one specific situation unless they intend to use the mechanic again in MoP.

Besides, technically the tooltip is right, the CD would be that low if you could use IV without the stacks dropping.