FROST MAGE: Thermal Void vs Glacial Spike

[Sylvaeres]

I'm looking.for more information about the pros and cons of each build. Anyone able to give me a brief summary of what each is good at?

[Carelesim]

Looking for the same thing , I was looking in frost Mage guide and there wasn't any logs about the two build .

[D3athsting]

Glacial spike performs better on fights without heavy movement and with cleave

[nerfproof]

http://www.wowhead.com/talent-calc/mage/frost/cCDM
This is considered the correct spec for going Glacial Spike. You want a heavy crit/mast build. Obviously your looking to get to 5 stacks of icicles and then use RoP and IV together then cast GS. Since your gonna wait on IV to come off of cd always try to stack RoP with GS. This spec is great in raids on single target or when there is 2-3 targets because GS will act as an Ice Lance and will split due to taking the Splitting Ice talent. However this spec, along with all frost specs, performs poorly in mythic+ dungeons due to its very poor aoe dmg. Which is why you see mainly fire mages, and some arcane mages performing better in this situation.


http://www.wowhead.com/talent-calc/mage/frost/cBNz
This is the correct spec if going with the Ray of Frost talent, which is amazing. This spec requires stacking tons of haste and trying to hit the crit soft cap. The idea with this spec is not only having a ton of haste so that you can reach certain haste caps to get you more ticks of RoF but to stack this spell with RoP and IV makes for frost mages biggest single target opener. Also with this spec because of the amount of haste required to make it viable, allows for you to gain more FoF procs which allows you to continue extending the duration of IV and at certain haste breakpoints you can actually extend it long enough to still have up when RoF comes off cd (1min cd). If played correctly Ice Lance and RoF will be your top 2 damage dealing spells which is going to give you extremely high single target and 2-3 mob target dps. The only down side to this spec is the fact that you must stay stationary while casting RoF but tbh I have yet to see a fight where you dont have time to make this happen.

As far as artifact relics go for the Glacial Spike build you'll want any relic that increases the dmg of your frostbolt. This is because the bigger frostbolt crits you can achieve make for larger icicles which means more dmg when casting GS. You could also decide to go with relics that cause frostbolt crits to reduce the cd on IV which would allow for more RoP > IV > GS opportunities.
For the RoF build I suggest going with a combo of relics that increase the crit chance of IL and ones that reduce the cd of IV from frostbolt crits. Because your going to be trying to achieve FoF often the IL relics give you a nice dps boost but the core of this spec is stacking RoP and IV together with RoF. Infact I would suggest never casting Ray of Frost unless you have both of those abilities available.

I hope this answers some questions some people have. Again this was just my suggestion and its open to interpretation. I've played both of these specs and I gotta say both are fun specs to play. The GS spec is a much simpler, much easier rotation to play where as going RoF requires a better understanding of how and when to use all of your abilities in order to maximize the usage of RoF.

[Daws001]

108 atm and have been leveling with the Ray of Frost build...dear lord. The RoP + IV + RoF combo is eye watering levels of burst. Add in Time Warp...forget about it!

I love RoF. So much.

[nerfproof]

Yea Daws001 it's pretty amazing. Just wait till you hit 110 and can start gearing properly for it. Once you start stacking tons of haste while trying to get as close to the crit soft cap as you can, the dmg gets even better.

[D3athsting]

108 atm and have been leveling with the Ray of Frost build...dear lord. The RoP + IV + RoF combo is eye watering levels of burst. Add in Time Warp...forget about it!

I love RoF. So much.

Yeah too bad RoF caps at 10 stacks

Edit: i simmed glacial spike in simc and gave me haste/crit values much higher than mastery probably because i picked bone chilling as lv15 talent

After all it looks like i can use arcane gear (mastery/crit) for GS and Fire gear (crit/haste) for RoF/BC

[Deleted]

Simming the GS build can be tricky - see the thread at altered-time for details. Haste > Crit/Mastery is definitely weird, could you provide details on what went into your sim?


Other than that, I agree with nerfproof's summary except with regards to the assessment of the Glacial Spike Build's viability in M+ dungeons.

While Fire is still the way to go in the lower and medium-range, the GS build is a beast in high M+ (11-15) due to it's massive two-target cleave. If you're either fighting 2-3 trash mobs max or a boss with massive hp, the build can be a good alternative to Fire if you were not lucky with your legendaries. You certainly still need the respective gear (Mastery=>Crit>Other) and AP investment in Frost, but it sims ahead of Fire for me, is very easy to play, not totally reliant on well-timed burst phases (good luck standing still for 10 seconds with the volcanic affix...) and the biggest weakness of the spec, its massive RNG dependency, evens out nicely over the course of a full M+ run. Also, executing trash with crits of 5-10m each (depending on critluck with the 5 FBs that go into it) is hilarious. I've had plenty of comments in TS such as "dafuq did just happen to that mob's hp bar dude!?".

As a sidenote - TV-RoF frost as suggested in this thread OWNS the single-target sims (see Simcraft Raid_T19M) and NL +15 has recently been cleared by a TV-RoF frostmage. Cheers to Raddley for his great guide as well (youtube - Addley TV. Can't post links yet).

[D3athsting]

What trinkets would you guys pick from this list for Rof and GS?
- 885 + socket Twisting wind
- 855 plaguehive
- 850 sinew
- 865 horrorslime
- 840 naraxxas
- 835 devilsaur
- 845 chrono shard

[stevenho]

As a sidenote - TV-RoF frost as suggested in this thread OWNS the single-target sims (see Simcraft Raid_T19M)

I'm looking at it, and RoF is not being used.

[D3athsting]

I'm looking at it, and RoF is not being used.

Idd it's standard bc/tv

[Deleted]

Idd it's standard bc/tv

God you're right, my apologies. Thanks for the correction. Still impressive to see frost this high up.

[nerfproof]

Yeah too bad RoF caps at 10 stacks

Edit: i simmed glacial spike in simc and gave me haste/crit values much higher than mastery probably because i picked bone chilling as lv15 talent

After all it looks like i can use arcane gear (mastery/crit) for GS and Fire gear (crit/haste) for RoF/BC

The 10 stacks refers to the point where each tick will not longer increase its dmg. However that doesnt mean you only get 10 ticks from the channel so stacking haste is still a requirement if going with the RoF build.

[jayfoe]

This is considered the correct spec for going Glacial Spike. You want a heavy crit/mast build. Obviously your looking to get to 5 stacks of icicles and then use RoP and IV together then cast GS. Since your gonna wait on IV to come off of cd always try to stack RoP with GS. This spec is great in raids on single target or when there is 2-3 targets because GS will act as an Ice Lance and will split due to taking the Splitting Ice talent. However this spec, along with all frost specs, performs poorly in mythic+ dungeons due to its very poor aoe dmg. Which is why you see mainly fire mages, and some arcane mages performing better in this situation.

So do you think this would be the ideal spec for a fire mage trying to switch to frost since we would have all crit gear anyways? Luckily mast is my next highest stat just by chance.

[Kergan]

Is BC + TV build viable as well? I've been stacking crit/haste (31%/33% atm), but I don't really like RoF. On the other hand, I feel like I'm doing really low DPS in compare to the other specs.

[readzar]

I have to say im loveing Gs build atm in item lvl 856 im doing 5m+ crits and on one boss in a hc that gives u a dmg multiplier My gs crit for 36m basicly takeing off 20% of his hp instantly and out dpsing a mythic geared warrier with 1m dps he was in disbelief and i won 1k gold for betting i could out dps him in my low geaar lol

[Marc7]

Is BC + TV build viable as well? I've been stacking crit/haste (31%/33% atm), but I don't really like RoF. On the other hand, I feel like I'm doing really low DPS in compare to the other specs.

BC + TC build is the best frost build for raids. Also, go Incanters Flow and Unstable Magic on top of that so you can maximize your focus on keeping Icy Veins up as long as possible.

You go RoF with RoP when you need insane burst for a while, and with correct gear that build can come close even on sustained single target. I like to go RoF + RoP for dungeons since with this build you can spec heavily into AoE and still do very good boss damage. The short encounters in dungeons really favor RoF.

With correct gear Glacial Spike can work, but I don't like it. You need to invest so much into gearing for it and even then it really isn't better than the other options and you can't jump between different builds since you've been stacking mastery which is like the worst stat for all other frost builds.

[Kergan]

BC + TC build is the best frost build for raids. Also, go Incanters Flow and Unstable Magic on top of that so you can maximize your focus on keeping Icy Veins up as long as possible.

You go RoF with RoP when you need insane burst for a while, and with correct gear that build can come close even on sustained single target. I like to go RoF + RoP for dungeons since with this build you can spec heavily into AoE and still do very good boss damage. The short encounters in dungeons really favor RoF.

With correct gear Glacial Spike can work, but I don't like it. You need to invest so much into gearing for it and even then it really isn't better than the other options and you can't jump between different builds since you've been stacking mastery which is like the worst stat for all other frost builds.

Thank you for your reply!

But wow, this is the first time someone even mentioned Incanter's Flow, it's pretty much RoP one man show. With this build I assume main dmg source would be Ice Lance + Frost Bolt, right? Also, I think I need to get Chilled to the Core to make it viable, eh? Seems like 20% dmg is a lot

[Deleted]

Can't talk about the Glacial Spike set up....

But i am having great succes with the Thermal Void build, I am currently itemlvl 871 and have all gold traits in my weapon.
The build have great mobility and sustain damage. I am having a blast keeping Icy Veins up as long as possible.
About viability i have around 400k dps on some of the bosses in Emerald nightmare (heroic) but struggle with AOE fights like Il'gynoth.


Edit: Can post logs, if anyone is interested.

[Sylvaeres]

I'm really enjoying getting all of these opinions on the subject. So far there have been a bunch of quality posts