[Frost] Challenge mode bis list

[Deleted]

Hello everybody

Me and my buddies are starting to take challenge timers seriously. So I have leveled another mage for this, and I'm trying to enhance my gear as much as possible.

So, I have made a little wishlist:

Head: Lightweight Retinal Armor
Neck: Necklace of the Terra-Cotta Invoker
Shoulder: Mantle of the Chromatic Hydra
Back: Deadly Glare Cape
Chest: Robes of Nova (and Robes of Mutagenic Blood if you couldn't afford to Ra'den)
Wirst: Twisting Wind Bracers
Hands: Lifedrainer's Sordid Grip
Waist: Cord of Cacophonous Cawing
Legs: Dreadwoven Leggings of Failure
Feet: Dam'ren's Frozen Footguards
Ring1: Simple Harmonius Ring
Ring2: Ra-den's Summoning Band (and Malevolent Gladiator's Band of Accuracy if you couldn't afford to Ra'den)
Trinket1: Zen Alchemist Stone
Trinket2: Relic of Yu'lon


Any idea or suggestion ?

[Deleted]

Good idea because challenge, like proving ground, will have an hit problem because of lack of hit on high-end gear.

For trinket, I'm not sure those are the best choice. I think the primary choice would be up-time.

[Deleted]

Both trinket are here because they are really much overbudgeted, and as a consequence they are really powerful compared to other 463 downgraded trinkets. For example, even if mastery is not that good for frost, alchemy stone gives almost 5k intellect proc with a ~30% uptime and at this ilvl it's near to a 50% total intellect.

And on the other hand, end game trinkets are generally not that attractive because the lack of haste in challenge.

[Deleted]

and for on Alchemist, you propose witch trinket ?

(I'm note sure to have kept my relic ..)

[Deleted]

For non-alchemist I'm not really sure, I have used Static-Caster's Medallion from 5.1 on my first mage, it was pretty efficient on par with frozen orb and synapse springs. Breath of the Hydra would be really nice if that rppm system was not so awful on challenge. And Light of the Cosmos would be strong too if it was not proccing only off dot... :/

[Libretto]

bis chest ring boots and legs are off ra-den

alternative boots are the crafted 522 ones

other bis ring is off iron qon

legendary cloak is bis

bis weapon is dark animus dagger / offhand is lei shen or megaera one

can't recall if 500 stat legendary gem works in CMs or not, if it does then tsulong sword would be bis

[Huevos]

can't recall if 500 stat legendary gem works in CMs or not, if it does then tsulong sword would be bis

The legendary gem does not work in CMs, though the extra gem slot from the questline does work.

[pyrostorm9001]

@ op
you have Cord of Cacophonous Cawing as wrist AND waist. Sorry to nitpick.

[Polarthief]

Something to keep in mind is the huge nerf coming to Frost in regards to Challenge Modes. Haven't seen/done Proving Grounds yet, so unless you need amazing AoE to the point where you use Frost Bomb, it shouldn't be affected (otherwise, nerf there too).

Just throwing this out there

[Arold]

legendary cloak is bis

What makes you say this?

Something to keep in mind is the huge nerf coming to Frost in regards to Challenge Modes.

I won't start this debate again in this thread. I'll just say that I, as someone who actively shoots for and achieves world best times in challenge modes, am excited for the mastery change and feel I will be even more of an asset to my group in 5.4.

[Psychokwak]

I don't think you should put much efforts in looking for a BiS list and spend time managing to get those items.
I have done CMs as a frost mage in the middle of the T14 content, simply by specing frost (captain obvious) and reforging for maxing haste and having the right amount of hit with the downgrade.
In my humble opinion, any time spent optimizing your runs smartly depending on your group composition and juggling with choice of talents is much more important than working on a BiS list! I found stuff simply not important, feeling that the CMs are well designed.
But it's just my two cents! Not to crush your way to tackling the "problem", simply to give a little feedback.

Good luck with your attempts!

[Arold]

Well, I'm assuming he's trying to improve his times in challenge modes to make them competitive, not just get gold rating. Optimized gear will give him an edge and help his times.

[voltaa]

Is the engi helm actually the BiS helm for CMs still? I personally use it but was debating the other day whether or not a well itemized helm (animus) would be better since the stats from the helm with the extra gem slot come close as far as raw stats go

[Deleted]

Yeah, the medaillon, I forgot about this one.
In rppm, I would have go for Cha'ye since he still scale with Crit but Relic is surely better.

[Pharm]

Tier 15 chest has 3 sockets brah

[Deleted]

@ op
you have Cord of Cacophonous Cawing as wrist AND waist. Sorry to nitpick.

You're right, I'm french and my english is pretty bad. I'm always confused between wrist and waist, dunno why ahah. Thanks for the correction !

bis chest ring boots and legs are off ra-den
alternative boots are the crafted 522 ones
other bis ring is off iron qon
legendary cloak is bis
bis weapon is dark animus dagger / offhand is lei shen or megaera one
can't recall if 500 stat legendary gem works in CMs or not, if it does then tsulong sword would be bis

Lot of nice ideas here !
- I didnt looked at raden droplist because that's impossible to me aiming at it on my crappy geared mage, but all these socket are pretty sexy.
- The crafted boots are not that good imho, you only gain 1 sock for a 80 int gain and you loose a ton of haste. Maybe in 5.4, depending of the new mastery weight.
- Legendary cloak is awful, I don't understand why you suggest it. Scaling is just terrible on every caster with it, and you allready have a socket on the durumu's one.
- As stated by Huevos, legendary gem does not work but extra socket does. So bis weapon might be either horridon rod or animus dagger, you trade ton of mastery+80int for ton of crit+160hit, animus might be slightly better but I think it's pretty much the same.

Is the engi helm actually the BiS helm for CMs still? I personally use it but was debating the other day whether or not a well itemized helm (animus) would be better since the stats from the helm with the extra gem slot come close as far as raw stats go

Except from trinkets, engi helm is really the best item you can wear in CM because its stats do not scale down, so you gain ~300stats (and it has a red socket

Tier 15 chest has 3 sockets brah

But it has a blue, a yellow socket, and a shitload of mastery on it. It might be that bad but I doubt this is actually better than primordius' one.


It's pretty hard to compare items between them without having them in game and check how the game scales them down. Anyone knows if a calculator on something like this exists ?

[Deleted]

Beware with high-end gear (522+), there's little Hit on it.
on PTR, I was under capped because of it. We will need 5100 hit after the reduction to 463. So blue and red gem are good.

[voltaa]

Beware with high-end gear (522+), there's little Hit on it.
on PTR, I was under capped because of it. We will need 5100 hit after the reduction to 463. So blue and red gem are good.

hit isn't scaled, if you have 5100 hit before scaling, you have it after (for CMs) PTR raid testing doesn't take this into account for one reason or another and hit is scaled

[Vakna]

What makes you say this?



I won't start this debate again in this thread. I'll just say that I, as someone who actively shoots for and achieves world best times in challenge modes, am excited for the mastery change and feel I will be even more of an asset to my group in 5.4.

You shoot for world best CM times and you are asking why a cloak with a gem slot and 3 secondary stats is BiS?

[Deleted]

The scaling on the cloak is terrible. You got 188 crit / haste / mastery, it's way less than what you have on the durumu's one, and even worst than on a regular cloak with no socket.

It has a slightly chance to change with 5.4 if they decide to allow the legendary proc on CM, but I highly doubt that a dumbass cleave proc on every spell has a little chance to be given to us.