[Frost]Akraen's Comprehensive Guide to 5.4 Frost(Advanced)V.2

[Silentbob78]

Thank you for the quick response. I think I will give Frost with Arcane stat priority a chance this reset since I don´t have time to regem before tonights raid and full hast next reset and see how it goes. Just regret I didnt switch to Frost sooner. Would have saved me a lot of headache.

Just on more question. My curiosity just got the better of me and I´m sure I will regret it.

I have a hard time finding out DPS levels as Frost since not many is playing it. About 190k DPS on Thok with ilvl 545, 4set T 15 and Legenday Cloak. Is that in the neighbourhood of "God awful" or "You are no pro by a long shot, but acceptabel for a casual"?

[Deleted]

Is it worth trying Frost without 2p T16?
Yeah I'm one of those arcane mages not rolling on t16 tilll now....

[Akraen]

Thank you for the quick response. I think I will give Frost with Arcane stat priority a chance this reset since I don´t have time to regem before tonights raid and full hast next reset and see how it goes. Just regret I didnt switch to Frost sooner. Would have saved me a lot of headache.

Just on more question. My curiosity just got the better of me and I´m sure I will regret it.

I have a hard time finding out DPS levels as Frost since not many is playing it. About 190k DPS on Thok with ilvl 545, 4set T 15 and Legenday Cloak. Is that in the neighbourhood of "God awful" or "You are no pro by a long shot, but acceptabel for a casual"?

It's pretty low but not horrible. Thok isn't a good fight for any mage spec lol. You'll do better once you get some more haste on that fight because of the constant interrupts.

2pc is very strong but you can play without it. There are situations where for parsing I will wear heroic wf in every slot and skip even 2pc, but that's not until I'm bored with the tier and ranking time begins.

[Salystra]

Is it worth trying Frost without 2p T16?
Yeah I'm one of those arcane mages not rolling on t16 tilll now....

You best start rolling given that even for arcane t15hc is now dead in the water with the blizz nerf

[Silentbob78]

It's pretty low but not horrible. Thok isn't a good fight for any mage spec lol. You'll do better once you get some more haste on that fight because of the constant interrupts.

I knew I would regret asking But thanks for answering.

Regarding T16 I was actually pretty lucky. Got the chest since nobody wanted it and hands on a coin role for a different item. So switched from T15 4 set to T16 2 set + T15 2 set yesterday.

Looking forward to trying it out.

[Libretto]

Heroic Thok as frost is fine playing at the 9762 (9522) breakpoint, but is the lone fight I'd definitely play the "haste" style for. At 9762 it really depends how your raid is handling aura mastery. Ours used the first AM at roughly 1:05 into the pull so I'd go around 10 seconds without the invocation buff, but unless the meta has procced you cannot evocate beyond roar 6 or so. If you have enough haste from procs or whatever to have frostbolt well below 1s cast, you can cast two frostbolts between roars, otherwise the priority is to be on GCD when the roar goes off. The "on-GCD" priority for me was BF FFB -> FoF IL 2 stacks -> Bomb refresh below 1.5s -> FoF IL -> Fire blast -> Non-FoF IL. You can do this all the way to roar 30. Being around 12K haste is the optimal level here because to get two frostbolts off between roars (after roar 6) requires either lust + meta, meta + IV or lust + IV, and both lust and IV should be unavailable by this time. At 12K you have a short enough GCD and frostbolt cast to always be casting regardless of whether meta procs. Below this you will eventually "fall behind" every 4-5 roars and have your frostbolt hardcast line up with getting locked out, requiring you to use two instants in a row, or skip casting one instant, to "catch back up".

Third frozen orb was off cooldown for us when the boss was being kited back towards the middle after two towards the front door, so it could hit both the jailer and boss, then fourth lines up with the bats + 3-minute cooldowns, you really need the boss on focus to watch his castbar so you can flamestrike / frostbolt while targeting bats without being locked out.

Thok is a fight fire is better on not so much for damage so much as because as fire you glyph armors and take 16% less damage during acceleration phases, which is rather huge during progression especially on 10-man. You could of course use molten armor as arcane or frost, but it would be a huge DPS loss, so you're better off going fire.

(I did about 300K as frost on our kill, for what it's worth.)

[Akraen]

It's tricky but you can time glyph of ice block to negate the interruption too, towards the end of frenzy when it is moving fast. Obv take cold snap then.

[Deleted]

Thank you for the quick response. I think I will give Frost with Arcane stat priority a chance this reset since I don´t have time to regem before tonights raid and full hast next reset and see how it goes. Just regret I didnt switch to Frost sooner. Would have saved me a lot of headache.

Just on more question. My curiosity just got the better of me and I´m sure I will regret it.

I have a hard time finding out DPS levels as Frost since not many is playing it. About 190k DPS on Thok with ilvl 545, 4set T 15 and Legenday Cloak. Is that in the neighbourhood of "God awful" or "You are no pro by a long shot, but acceptabel for a casual"?

Im arcane frost mage for a while now and im really enjoying it. I dont posses a legendary cloak or gem and i also dont have any set bonus. However i pull ~200k on a sinlge target fight with 545 ilvl gear. So if you have all the legendary items and at least a 2set you should be pulling ~300k IMO.

[Libretto]

Cauterize is considerably more useful for heroic on Thok as you -will- randomly die from poison + roars or poison + shock blasts while kiting. I might mess with glyphing ice block when the fight is trivial and we're going for parses or something. Cauterize is the go-to for just about every fight this tier and is always the go-to when learning a fight, barring you needing greater invis to soak some mechanic.

I'm doing blackfuse at the 12.1K breakpoint for now to see how it goes. Frost might actually be solid for doing the belts as frozen orb should be off CD whenever you go up if doing a two-group rotation.

[Fahrenheit451]

I did some sims today on trinkets, I thought I would share them. This is more geared towards your average player than you HC guys. If you are trying to evaluate your trinkets, this may give some insight.

I started with a baseline of Woosh/Breath normal trinkets upgraded twice, since they should be fairly easily obtainable for almost all mages out there. The gear is 553 average ilvl.

I understand that this is not perfect in any way, and may not tell most of you anything you don't already know. Hopefully someone finds it of use.


MASTERY BUILD



HASTE BUILD



edit** fixed highlighting error

[Akraen]

That's some good stuff Fahrenheit. It's mostly what I would suggest, though the bomb choice might change the results of BBoY.

Thing is you don't want to use that over the cleave trinket and PBoI is the best in all situations.

I think I'll be a nice guy and pass on KTT to my guildies and grab FCoR, then just use BBoY single target. Little highlighting glitch, 11924 is in fact greater than 11369 :P so KTT would only be best single target in haste build.

[Fahrenheit451]

Little highlighting glitch, 11924 is in fact greater than 11369 :P

Indeed....staring at numbers all day, sometimes they tend to move while looking at them. :P

[Ruak]

Ok, I went with the mastery build (went for the ~9.7k haste breakpoint) because I still want to be able to freely swap back and forth between Arcane and Frost and be 100% effective in both with the same gear.

I think I am blind, but I couldn't find out the rotation here and more specifically - the Ice Lance casts and proc usages. In a mastery build it says you want to maximize icicle generators - FB and FFB. That's cool, but when do you throw in Ice Lances (FoF ice lances of course)? Whenever you got a single proc you use it immediately regardless of current icicle number, etc? Or you spam frostbolts regardless of Ice Lances? Do you prioritize FoF IL over FFB proc or the opposite? Can someone write a priority rotation for that build in different scenarios (actually 2 scenarios - under BL and outside of BL)? Sorry if this has been mentioned, but like I said, I'm blind or I just couldn't find it. Thanks in advance.

P.S. Oh, and also what is the priority of using the T16 2p bonus in this build?

[buffmageslol]

generally for mastery build you would just play normally. if you get proc's for Icelance or FFB use them, but icicles will just get used on its own. their is no need to clear them or manage them. upon building more than 5 stacks 1 of them will automatically shoot to the target(s) anyway. i dont pay any attention to icicles because it will even out through the course of the fight anyway.

[D3athsting]

P.S. Oh, and also what is the priority of using the T16 2p bonus in this build?

Try to consume 2pc bonus with IL (with FoF obviously) or instant FFB due to higher crit chance and higher dmg than FB.

[t3kneek]

I was wondering how everyone felt about the affdots - mage addon? I'm a 565~ warlock main, and just fell in love with my wittle baby frost mage in my spare time Coming from a warlock background, i love the idea of snapshotting, and was wondering if you mage god's were actually using this addon or just refreshing on last tick.

On a side note, the "opener's" of frost that I've found between this and Kuni's guide are somewhat conflicting. Taking full advantage of snapshot mechanics etc, is there anything you guys suggest? Went with mixture build until higher Ilvl, btw.

[pyrostorm9001]

I was wondering how everyone felt about the affdots - mage addon? I'm a 565~ warlock main, and just fell in love with my wittle baby frost mage in my spare time Coming from a warlock background, i love the idea of snapshotting, and was wondering if you mage god's were actually using this addon or just refreshing on last tick.

On a side note, the "opener's" of frost that I've found between this and Kuni's guide are somewhat conflicting. Taking full advantage of snapshot mechanics etc, is there anything you guys suggest? Went with mixture build until higher Ilvl, btw.

Im using it and I like it, but im getting an odd Lua error. Doesnt seem to effect the mod as far as tracking the potential of my LB/NT.
And im not smart enough to fix it myself.

[Nightfall]

Heroic Thok as frost is fine playing at the 9762 (9522) breakpoint <...>

Can you please enlighten me what is that 9762 haste break point I keep hearing about? 9522 is for LB tick, 9602 is for another NT tick during TW/Meta, but what is 9762?

I try to choose a softcap spot for haste to put everything else in mastery and it seems there are mainly two candidates - 9522(or 9602 as it's close) and 12684. Since I mostly use LB, the first seems to be a better choice, but then there's this mysterious 9762!

[Deleted]

9762 would most likely be the fourth extra tick for NT without frost armor. Offtopic but it is an arcane offspec gearing choice more or less.

[Nightfall]

9762 would most likely be the fourth extra tick for NT without frost armor. Offtopic but it is an arcane offspec gearing choice more or less.

Yeah, it is, just checked. Thanks for clarification!