Kuni's Frost Mage PVE Guide - 8.1.0

[Ponkster]

I just got the Frost waist legendary.

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

Whats it ticking for?

[FrostyButt]

Whats it ticking for?

130K per tick at 5 stacks.

[Ponkster]

130K per tick at 5 stacks.

Thats pretty good

[Bombkirby]

Flurry's animation seems a bit different. Anyone notice? Seems like it gets bigger near the end of the spell.

[Deleted]

Wriggling Sinew is this good for a frost mage? triggers in rof? And twisting wind is annoying for frost? (trinkets)

[ataraxey]

Hi Kuni,

I know you're updating the guide for all the 7.1 changes, but will you be posting a opener/standard rotation as well? Would love to see what you recommend instead of the out of date Icy Veins guide.

[Deleted]

Flurry's animation seems a bit different. Anyone notice? Seems like it gets bigger near the end of the spell.

Yep the animation seems a lot quicker, before it behaved pretty much like penance. Now it seems like all three bolts come out a split second after each other.

They hit so quickly in succession that MSBT registers the damage as a clump of three hits rather than single notifications like before. Also it feels like it applies the winters chill effect faster making shattering a frostbolt/spike under max range more reliable.

[Nefarious Tea]

I find Flurry hits so quickly that its buff has worn off by the time the Ice Lance has gotten to the target, because of the GCD+travel time.

[Deleted]

How big a deal is getting the "Chilled to the core" elite trait?

[FrostyButt]

How big a deal is getting the "Chilled to the core" elite trait?

It buffs your damage by 20%. I think it's a mandatory trait you should rush for.

[shoops]

How big a deal is getting the "Chilled to the core" elite trait?

I would say pretty huge. Picking up Icy Hands on the way should be a priority as well. Both those combined with Thermal Void would make a big impact in any bursting phases.

[Deleted]

Frost simming kinda strong in Night Hold gear?

thoughts?

[Deleted]

Frost simming kinda strong in Night Hold gear?

thoughts?

I would have thought this was going to happen with the buffs, but i also do think that the actual human performance of the spec will not reflect the sims.

We had this before where BC/TV sims very high, but actually being able to execute it in game is very different and does not return the numbers you would expect due to player errors.

Hope i'm wrong and that SC is actually accurate, still collecting Haste/Crit gear to give it a go as atm too much Crit/Haste, Crit/mastery to be worth the switch.

[Amsden]

Frost is a little less forgiving for movement and error than fire, so I suspect they will even out a bit with the human element. Still that is great to see .

[Deleted]

Frost is a little less forgiving for movement and error than fire, so I suspect they will even out a bit with the human element. Still that is great to see .

I was mulling this over last night in bed and i definetly think that the BC/TV spec sims way too high to be a proportionate and accurate representation of how it will perform in raids. It is way way less forgiving than the other frost builds.

Main reasons being, the whole spec revolves around keeping IV up as much as possible with TV (BC is pretty easy between FB and Blizz) so every mistake you make has a knock on effect. Even missing 2gcds through a bad choice, movement or hesitation for example, which is quite easy to even for very skilled players, can mean 4s lost uptime on IV which can be huge, since you are chaining cooldowns (Orb,FT,WJ,EB) to maintain your IV.

Quite often you are in the last 10s of IV when these abilities start to come off cooldown to start the cycle again, so missing those GCDs can cause you're IV to expire thus breaking the chain and resulting in a huge dps loss (sometimes a potential 15-20s of IV uptime with lucky procs).

So yeah i hope people do no blindly look at these sims and go, "wow frost is amazing now, i'm gonna switch" because the reality of how it will perform, especially in the average players hands will be very very different.

One thing is for certain, this build is going to utterly LOVE the lady vashj legendary hands!!!

[LordAmbrosia]

I was mulling this over last night in bed and i definetly think that the BC/TV spec sims way too high to be a proportionate and accurate representation of how it will perform in raids. It is way way less forgiving than the other frost builds

I still think BC or RoF is simmed wrong. Using RoF instead of BC gives a massive increase in damage in actual real logs, according to many people who are very good at the spec (including the author of the thread). Given that RoF is harder to use... it makes no sense.

[Nefarious Tea]

Frost simming kinda strong in Night Hold gear?

thoughts?

*image snip*

What's causing this? Just raw stats? The set bonuses for Frost don't seem that great. The 2-set sounds pretty strong (+10% brain freeze proc chance), but the 4-set just seems so awful: +5% chance to proc FoF from Frozen Orb. Doesn't it pretty much only proc FoF with the guaranteed one from every initial hit? What about a single target fight where it hits, passes through, and then does nothing but look pretty because it's sitting out of range?

[Deleted]

What's causing this? Just raw stats? The set bonuses for Frost don't seem that great. The 2-set sounds pretty strong (+10% brain freeze proc chance), but the 4-set just seems so awful: +5% chance to proc FoF from Frozen Orb. Doesn't it pretty much only proc FoF with the guaranteed one from every initial hit? What about a single target fight where it hits, passes through, and then does nothing but look pretty because it's sitting out of range?

The sim is done in 865 ilvl gear, not the actual t19 so no bonuses. As to the reason for the jump, frost received significant damage buffs in the 7.1 patch, however as we a discussing above, we think the sim is overvalued in terms of unrealistic ability to execute the rotation in real time during raids therefore the sim is not a great metric for normal play since is suffers significantly if you make mistakes, and whether talents such as BC and RoF are actually being simmed wrong further providing inaccurate numbers.

As for the set bonuses, the 2p is certainly very nice with the recent buffs to brainfreeze and flurry, the 4p is also very good if you are running thermal void, since an additive 5% onto frozen orb will be amazing for sustaining longer icy veins and even out bad rng which can cripple the talent at times.

[Nefarious Tea]

The sim is done in 865 ilvl gear, not the actual t19 so no bonuses. As to the reason for the jump, frost received significant damage buffs in the 7.1 patch, however as we a discussing above, we think the sim is overvalued in terms of unrealistic ability to execute the rotation in real time during raids therefore the sim is not a great metric for normal play since is suffers significantly if you make mistakes, and whether talents such as BC and RoF are actually being simmed wrong further providing inaccurate numbers.

As for the set bonuses, the 2p is certainly very nice with the recent buffs to brainfreeze and flurry, the 4p is also very good if you are running thermal void, since an additive 5% onto frozen orb will be amazing for sustaining longer icy veins and even out bad rng which can cripple the talent at times.

Oh, ok. I suppose I've made the same mistake I've seen others accused of as well - seeing T19 and thinking it's "with the t19 set bonuses" when really simcraft is just being formatted to consider EN and TOV as part of NH's t19. Thanks for not being awful about that :P

Not that I understand a lot of the math that goes into simcrafting, but how would you know if certain spells/talents are being simulated incorrectly (and as a corollary, how would you be able to tell)?

[Deleted]

Oh, ok. I suppose I've made the same mistake I've seen others accused of as well - seeing T19 and thinking it's "with the t19 set bonuses" when really simcraft is just being formatted to consider EN and TOV as part of NH's t19. Thanks for not being awful about that :P

Not that I understand a lot of the math that goes into simcrafting, but how would you know if certain spells/talents are being simulated incorrectly (and as a corollary, how would you be able to tell)?

No worries mate, its an easy mistake to make. Although i use simcraft for my personal min/maxing i am no way an expert, but for future reference when you open the page you can navigate below the sim results and there is a list of the actual sim data, click on the class/spec you want and it will take you into the full breakdown of things like the Attack Priority List(APL), damage distribution breakdown, damage per execute times and lots of other stuff that you can use to gauge how the class/spec performs. Further below there is also info on the gear used during the sim so you can check for stuff like T19 bonuses etc.

As to the inaccuracy's and possible mistakes, for me certainly it is more of physically trying to replicate what the sim wants you to do as accurately as possible. With regards to the BC/TV build it is my feeling that the sim performs too well, as in on paper it returns extremely high dps numbers but due to the way the spec plays even the smallest mistake can grossly reduce these numbers giving a false impression that the spec is better than it actually plays.

With regards to other stuff like RoF, as Lord Ambrosia was saying, even tho the talent is a lot harder to use in real time the general consensus is that it is returning much better numbers in real raids, which makes no sense if you go by the sim data, so the next logical step is either BC is being overvalued and simmed wrong or RoF is being undervalued and also simmed wrong.

Like i said once you get the hang of interpreting the data correctly and are regularly trying to min/max with your spec/priority list/ and execute as best to 100% you can, things start to throw up questions because they are not behaving as they should.

More in depth than that is way above my head, and more in the realms of the guys to write the sims(who do a great job!!).

Hope that helps!!