Frost mage Question

[Deleted]

Hello Guys,

I have played wow since vanilla and have leveled almost every class except for a mage.
I'm leveling as frost since i found that to be the most fun, but i have a question regarding frost in end game pve:

1. Is Frost really not viable or is frost (if played correctly) still putting up nice numbers.

Thanks for any comments.

[Kuni Zyrekai]

How do you define viable? Barring world firsts, having someone Frost on your raid team isn't going to suddenly make your raid fail, they'll just be doing lower than they could be doing. What is viable? The playerbase seems to have this very odd notion that as soon as something is slightly worse than something else, it's non-viable. You can take any spec in the game through any encounter on any difficulty without being outright carried. You might not be on par with others of the same class playing different specs, but you'll do as much as most other classes. You might not be the first to kill it, but everything works to some extent. Don't go into Gruul expecting to beat an Arcane mage. Go into Gruul and do as well as you can for your raid group. Is 45.9k impressive on Gruul? No. Was it one of the best for your raid? Sure. Did the boss die? Did you have fun?

I've pulled the spec through the entirety of BRF progression with the exception of Thogar, which I went back and did as Frost last night for completion's sake. It's viable, but not optimal in any situation.

[unbound]

You'll be fine progressing through Highmaul, but then you'll find that Frost doesn't scale currently (we'll see if it gets better with the 6.2 changes). So initially in normal BRF, you'll be okay, but gear improvements will result in smaller and smaller gains (the 2 piece bonus is basically useless, and the 4 piece bonus isn't much better). You'll find that you can't beat Fire in single target and you can't beat Arcane in AoE (where they are weakest)...which means you are way behind both specs in areas that they excel, and can't even match them in areas where they are supposed to suck.

I stopped with my Frost Mage when my Survival Hunter (about mid-pack in damage overall right now) was able to do the same damage at 11 ilvl lower in gear on most fights, behind on exactly one fight (and not by much) and much better on 3 or 4 fights.

I would recommend going slow or pausing for now and see if the 6.2 changes puts Frost at least in the middle of the pack.

[gallamann]

I stopped Frost the raid after I received 4pc T17. I maintain two sets of gear, one for Fire and one for Frost (I'd rather watch paint dry than play arcane), although I really don't use Frost. Use Frost on Blackhand sometimes, simply because Fire can so easily get hosed on Combust.

As to moving, if Frost would have been 1-2k behind the rest of my raid would still be playing it, however on most encounters frost was 7-10k behind rest of raid. Play that for a week or two and you just feel like you are being carried. With Fire, on about 3/4's of the fights I can be top 3 DPS, what is hilarious is I am usually #1 on Hans and Franz as Fire and that should be where Frost shines (my fire DPS is 10k+ better than my frost DPS).

[PootieMP]

It still has the best burst damage of the 3 specs. It just isn't as great as fire or arcane at sustainable damage. You will find more people use frost for challenge mode due to its ability to burst and its awesome cleave damage. For raiding and end game tho, go arcane or fire. Both are really good and viable for end game.

[Deleted]

It still has the best burst damage of the 3 specs. It just isn't as great as fire or arcane at sustainable damage. You will find more people use frost for challenge mode due to its ability to burst and its awesome cleave damage. For raiding and end game tho, go arcane or fire. Both are really good and viable for end game.

Whats the difference between raiding and endgame? :P In thix context it would have made no difference just saying raiding ^^

I do think arcane is slightly boring, but i'm not a big fan of frost either. Fire is the spec i would play 24/7 if it wasnt so rng on single target. Its pretty rng on aoe/cleave aswell, but it always performs well on those evenw ith bad rng.

[lukehop1]

Whats the difference between raiding and endgame? :P In thix context it would have made no difference just saying raiding ^^

I do think arcane is slightly boring, but i'm not a big fan of frost either. Fire is the spec i would play 24/7 if it wasnt so rng on single target. Its pretty rng on aoe/cleave aswell, but it always performs well on those evenw ith bad rng.

Well technically LFR is raiding but that is not endgame. I think most people consider endgame as Mythic and raiding as normal/heroic raids.

[MSioni]

Frostbolt X10 = win.

[huth]

Well technically LFR is raiding but that is not endgame. I think most people consider endgame as Mythic and raiding as normal/heroic raids.

Anything after reaching level 100 is endgame. Or whatever the level cap of the the then-current expansion happens to be. So CMs are also endgame, and PootieMP just contradicted her/himself.

[provaporous]

Hello Guys,

I have played wow since vanilla and have leveled almost every class except for a mage.
I'm leveling as frost since i found that to be the most fun, but i have a question regarding frost in end game pve:

1. Is Frost really not viable or is frost (if played correctly) still putting up nice numbers.

Thanks for any comments.

Fire mage is basically the same rotation, once you get 2pc BRF go fire and you will do fine. Like everyone has said Frost isnt scaling with gear right now.

[Frost1129]

Frost isn't scaling with gear? That's pretty impossible.

[Xires]

Frost isn't scaling with gear? That's pretty impossible.

He means Frost doesn't scale aswell with gear as arc/fire do.