Kuni's Frost Mage PVE Guide - 8.1.0

[Deleted]

Osanger - yes!

Indeed, not critting with frostbolt. I believe cap is 36%? 33+3 for boss?

I'm at 34% crit, but the way i understand is that flurry should travel faster than frostbolt, hence give the frostbolt crit, but this is not what i see happening.

But maybe it will be the same after flurry buff. Because then perhaps you don't want to munch a potential new flurry proc.

On PTR flurry is almost doing as much dmg as frostbolt with a LW/IF/FT/UM/TV build, and in general i notice a dps increase around 20% from live with this build.

[Kuni Zyrekai]

Hey Kuni, when you were mentioning when to stack Blizzard if we have the Blizz legendary, does that also infer us having AG talented? So if we did get the Blizz legendary, and we have AG talented, do we still want to use blizz only on 0 or 5 stacks?

Yes. Although this apparently might change as we found the cause of the 0/5 thing. Stay tuned for 7.1 I guess?

Also if we do take RoF over BC due to the added versatility of using it during burst windows, is RoP then much more valuable over IF? I strictly despise using RoP so if it becomes a mandatory or essential talent with RoF, I rather just stick with BC. Finally, earlier in the thread you mentioned to use RoF before popping IV when running TV, but you recently said that the best time to use RoF would be during IV uptime. In this regard what would be the most ideal use of RoF in an ST boss encounter?

Yes, Rune and Ray complement each other quite well. I guess you found that yourself in your edit.

I can't find any statement I made saying that? Pretty sure the sim sits on third Ray for the IV cooldown, it's stupid good with IV. Buuuut now everything is in flux because of buffs, so we have to recheck everything. Fun times.

Edit 2: One last thing I wanted to ask was with regards to setting up for IV when using the TV talent. I sometimes come across a situation where Frozen Orb has just come off CD, and IV has about 30-40 seconds left on CD. At this point is it better to hold onto Frozen Orb to have it up during the start of IV, or is it better to use it on cooldown unless IV is very shortly coming off cd?

I'd probably just use Orb at that point, but I haven't done anything to confirm it. The TV sim is ridiculously well played by robomage, to a point that I don't think any human will see the numbers that it gets.

Do we know for sure whether or not Whispers in the Dark will give extra ticks on Ray of Frost?

It should, but no way to confirm as Gul'dan wasn't tested on beta. Biggest issue is it's RPPM and you want to drop Rune beforehand. Dunno how this is going to work out.

Indeed, not critting with frostbolt. I believe cap is 36%? 33+3 for boss?

Crit suppression removed, you can drop the +3.

I'm at 34% crit, but the way i understand is that flurry should travel faster than frostbolt, hence give the frostbolt crit, but this is not what i see happening.

But maybe it will be the same after flurry buff. Because then perhaps you don't want to munch a potential new flurry proc.

Flurry travels faster at certain distances, but it's also going to be latency dependant. Dunno why it's not working for you though, that's quite odd.

I have a hunch we'll want to remove that for 7.1 for much the same reasons. The buff to BF-Flurry is pretty obscene. 788% SP, and 2/3rds of it will auto-Shatter...

[Skeletontree]

How hard were you hitting with the new BF-Flurry buffs?

[Kuni Zyrekai]

@Giant, still working on PTR, not sure what you're doing wrong.

[Deleted]

@Kuni Zyrekai

this is what i am getting - on ptr too.

https://i.imgsafe.org/89b982ee22.png

[Silentbob78]

I´m completely convinced I saw a patch note/hotfix on the front page of MMO Champion mentioning a 5% buff to Lonely Winter. Though I can´t for the life of me find it again.

1) Am I remembering correctly in Lonely Winter is getting a 5% buff?
2) Is a 5% buff going to change anything to the recommendations for Frost tier 1 talent?

[Kuni Zyrekai]

1) Am I remembering correctly in Lonely Winter is getting a 5% buff?
2) Is a 5% buff going to change anything to the recommendations for Frost tier 1 talent?

Yes, and very unlikely. The same build had a 25% Waterbolt and 100% Water Jet buff.

[Silentbob78]

Yes, and very unlikely. The same build had a 25% Waterbolt and 100% Water Jet buff.

Ahh yeah, that kind of negates the whole buff aspect.

[Deleted]

I think i could really use some help here. I haven't really seen any dps outputs from anyone in this guide and i 'd like to know im on the right track. i'm at 855 ilvl and usually do around 220k dps on the dummy (no food/BL/flask etc) for a 4-5 minit fight. The thing is sim has me way higher than that and i dont know if its a problem on my end or its just the way sim goes. By the way same fights on PTR today and i did around 255k ( the fights were not optimized to 100% though cauz i had some lag issues and missing some addons) but still its considerably higher for long fights.

[Kuni Zyrekai]

If you're running BC/TV, it's very likely you'll be significantly lower than the sim. It plays too well. I'm actually a bit worried about it, we're going to see some significant influx of people rerolling Frost due to it simming so well, but not able to get that point in practice.

[Deleted]

If you're running BC/TV, it's very likely you'll be significantly lower than the sim. It plays too well. I'm actually a bit worried about it, we're going to see some significant influx of people rerolling Frost due to it simming so well, but not able to get that point in practice.

i indeed play BC/TV . If that's the problem i hope getting fixed will jhelp me see some more accurate to the "reality" numbers

[Flumpus]

It should, but no way to confirm as Gul'dan wasn't tested on beta. Biggest issue is it's RPPM and you want to drop Rune beforehand. Dunno how this is going to work out.

Coming from an ex-Warlock player who had the privilege of playing the UVLS Demo spec in Throne of Thunder, I think if it does in fact work that way, there's just gonna be a reactionary skillcap to it, just like there was with UVLS. With UVLS, there was only a 4 second window for us to react to, and inside this window, we had to pop as many available CDs as we had in order to snapshot the most Haste-laden Dooms across as many targets as possible.

I think with Ray of Frost, it'll just be a matter of acting as quickly as possible in order to get as many extra RoF ticks in as possible, and considering that Rune of Power could potentially rob us of 5 or more additional ticks, it'd have to be heavily math'd out as to whether or not dropping a Rune will be worth it.

[FrostyButt]

Coming from an ex-Warlock player who had the privilege of playing the UVLS Demo spec in Throne of Thunder, I think if it does in fact work that way, there's just gonna be a reactionary skillcap to it, just like there was with UVLS. With UVLS, there was only a 4 second window for us to react to, and inside this window, we had to pop as many available CDs as we had in order to snapshot the most Haste-laden Dooms across as many targets as possible.

I think with Ray of Frost, it'll just be a matter of acting as quickly as possible in order to get as many extra RoF ticks in as possible, and considering that Rune of Power could potentially rob us of 5 or more additional ticks, it'd have to be heavily math'd out as to whether or not dropping a Rune will be worth it.

Rune of Power isn't even necessary. It may be slightly ahead of Incanter's Flow, but not by much. I've been parsing in the top 10 of Frost Mages (Not THAT impressive since only like 200 people are parsing as frost) on many fights and I don't run Rune.

[Deleted]

Rune of Power isn't even necessary. It may be slightly ahead of Incanter's Flow, but not by much. I've been parsing in the top 10 of Frost Mages (Not THAT impressive since only like 200 people are parsing as frost) on many fights and I don't run Rune.

I'm seeing this as well, currently my gear is set for fire(over 10k crit atm) so i'm pretty much forced to run BC/TV anyways to make best use of it. Having RoP doesn't really make that much of a difference from IF and ofc you can just ignore IF and concentrate on the BC/TV rotation which i think will yield better results due to the sheer amount of stuff to manage (same reason i ended up dumping Frost Bomb and went with AG).

RoP definitely feels like it wants to be in a high haste RoF build, where you bank one RoP always to line up with it, basically exactly what you do with combustion for fire atm. With the patch hitting on weds i doubt i'll be able to make the switch straight away as it will hurt our mythic progress, but i'm slowly building up my gear ready to switch, the hype train is in full effect!!!

[FrostyButt]

I think i could really use some help here. I haven't really seen any dps outputs from anyone in this guide and i 'd like to know im on the right track. i'm at 855 ilvl and usually do around 220k dps on the dummy (no food/BL/flask etc) for a 4-5 minit fight. The thing is sim has me way higher than that and i dont know if its a problem on my end or its just the way sim goes. By the way same fights on PTR today and i did around 255k ( the fights were not optimized to 100% though cauz i had some lag issues and missing some addons) but still its considerably higher for long fights.

Frost is actually really simple once you think about it. I'm not saying you don't know how to play Frost, but this is how I handle Fingers of Frost and Brain Freeze procs. Only reason why I mention this is because I also didn't fully understand how they worked. I simply used to cast whatever proc popped up... Which is what you essentially do, but there is a little bit of thought behind it.

So for example!

So when you have a Brain Freeze (Flurry) and Ice Lance (Fingers of Frost) pop at the same time, this is the combination you want to do.

Ice Lance (You want to dump all your Finger of Frost procs before dumping your Brain Freeze proc)
Flurry
Ice Lance (You Ice Lance after Flurry even when you don't have a Fingers of Frost proc because Ice Lance will still benefit from the Flurry debuff)

Other than that combination above, you for the most part pop things as they light up. Again, you always want to cast an Ice Lance after using a Brain Freeze proc. That was the part that I didn't understand at first. As for Ebonbolt/Frozen Orb usage. I usually cast them on cooldown. OH! If you are really good and get used to the rotation, I would recommend weaving in a Blizzard here or there. Blizzard will also give you more chances for procs.

Sorry if this is useless to you, but hopefully it helps at least one person who may read it.

[Deleted]

Frost is actually really simple once you think about it. I'm not saying you don't know how to play Frost, but this is how I handle Fingers of Frost and Brain Freeze procs. Only reason why I mention this is because I also didn't fully understand how they worked. I simply used to cast whatever proc popped up... Which is what you essentially do, but there is a little bit of thought behind it.

So for example!

So when you have a Brain Freeze (Flurry) and Ice Lance (Fingers of Frost) pop at the same time, this is the combination you want to do.

Ice Lance (You want to dump all your Finger of Frost procs before dumping your Brain Freeze proc)
Flurry
Ice Lance (You Ice Lance after Flurry even when you don't have a Fingers of Frost proc because Ice Lance will still benefit from the Flurry debuff)

Other than that combination above, you for the most part pop things as they light up. Again, you always want to cast an Ice Lance after using a Brain Freeze proc. That was the part that I didn't understand at first. As for Ebonbolt/Frozen Orb usage. I usually cast them on cooldown. OH! If you are really good and get used to the rotation, I would recommend weaving in a Blizzard here or there. Blizzard will also give you more chances for procs.

Sorry if this is useless to you, but hopefully it helps at least one person who may read it.

It's basically the rotation i follow . My initial doubt was dps being somehow low though after a while i did realise its just what frost right now can do.. I added around 15-20k to my dps tracking chain reaction and by this sometimes(really specific moments though) i find it more useful dumping the flurry first so i can make my frostbolt crit and stuck up that chain reaction buff so FoF gets more dmg . But thats a little depended on the procs you have that moment , because you re gonna miss on the after flurry ice lance but you gain more dmg overall if you re at least at 2 stucks of the buff.

Blizzard does help in the roatation but doesnt make that much of a difference from what i ve noticed..Still a plus is a plus.

[Haram]

To add onto this, you also want to try and save up for your IV usage if you're taking Thermal Void. In that way it plays quite similar to fire except the setup isn't as frequent. With fire, you're setting up for your combustion window by saving your flame on, your fireblast charges and some phoenix flame charges.

Similarly in IV's case, you want to try and set up and have as many of the following up when IV comes off cooldown: Frozen Orb, Frozen Touch, Water Jet, Ebonbolt. However you CAN be a bit more relaxed with the setup when it comes to frost, as IV lasts quite a long time, and as long as you have, I would say, at least 2 of the 4 available, then you should be fine! So in the circumstance where you would have Frozen Orb off cooldown with about 25 sec on IV, you can go ahead and use it as long as you can ensure that you have some guaranteed FoF charges available for IV.

I also found pre-casting Blizzard instead of FB to be more beneficial. Not only do you stack up BC faster, but you get higher proc chances on FoF, which is really important for extending IV. If you want to ideally maximize your FoF uptime and don't feel like weaving in Blizzards into your rotation, you can take Arctic Gale as a talent, and simply just use it on cooldown. The damage becomes much more valuable and you will get more FoF charges. Not to mention Blizz crits quite often as well due to your artifact talent.

[FrostyButt]

Kuni, is there an updated Trinket list for Frost? I'm not 100% sure if the one on Altered-Time is update/current.

[Deleted]

With the fire nerfs too can we guess where frost and fire will be vs eachother in 7.1?

[FrostyButt]

I just got the Frost waist legendary.

With 5 stacks plus AG, Blizzard is hitting like a fucking truck.