Thread: PvE Frost Mage

  1. #1

    PvE Frost Mage

    Alright, I know a few people may bitch, but I've been in love with Frost ever since I've been playing my Mage(beginning of BC).

    I'm working towards a competent PvE Frost build, and I think I've found one, but the biggest issue I'm facing is threat generation. I understand that Frost as among one of the highest critical multipliers in the game, but its almost impossible for me to really DPS near the beginning of a fight. After any pull, I typically count to five, I even do this as Fire, but the threat is outrageous.

    I just need suggestions on building up this Frost spec properly, and some answers on threat generation problems.
    http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Sen'jin&n=Zarathrusta
    I mostly play fighting games these days.

  2. #2

  3. #3

    Re: PvE Frost Mage

    Your spec looks passable for pve. Whats your standard rotation going into a fight. With the tanking mechanics being the way they are, you should have no problem keeping right behind the tank in threat.

    Btw i understand your delimea. You pve frost. I pvp fire.

  4. #4

    Re: PvE Frost Mage

    Quote Originally Posted by Merzbow
    Thank you very much. I'll be reading this throughly.
    I mostly play fighting games these days.

  5. #5

    Re: PvE Frost Mage

    Quote Originally Posted by sethgallows
    Your spec looks passable for pve. Whats your standard rotation going into a fight. With the tanking mechanics being the way they are, you should have no problem keeping right behind the tank in threat.

    Btw i understand your delimea. You pve frost. I pvp fire.
    I PvP Frost mostly. I tried Fire, just couldn't dig it.

    My rotation is basically spamming Frostbolt, with the occasional Fireball from Brain Freeze. I try to ghost FoF with Ice Lance every now and then. Its about a 50% success rate.
    I mostly play fighting games these days.

  6. #6
    Deleted

    Re: PvE Frost Mage

    id go for something closer 2 this

    http://www.wowarmory.com/talent-calc...00230052201350

  7. #7

    Re: PvE Frost Mage

    IF you are having threat issues in the beggining, use MI.

    Honestly frost should have no issues at all with threat (ok, maybe in the first 2 seconds...) - not only the damage is - to put it mildly - subpar, as it is divided between the player and the elemental.

    Of course I'm refering to boss fights environment. Frost is ok for instances and farming.

    Regarding build, EJ has way more than I could tell about the issue


  8. #8

    Re: PvE Frost Mage

    Quote Originally Posted by Illusion
    I mostly agree. I'd definitely put a point in Imp. Blizzard though. One of the best parts of raiding as Frost is massive AoE damage. I know, no one cares about trash, but you don't really need 3 points in reducing mana/threat, and AoE is nice on some bosses too.
    And sure, your son may find a women on warcraft. Just beware that she is probably whoring herself off to get mounted or partcipates in one of those secret guild orgies Pastor Jack warned us about.

  9. #9

    Re: PvE Frost Mage

    Quote Originally Posted by Pyrostemplar
    IF you are having threat issues in the beggining, use MI.

    Honestly frost should have no issues at all with threat (ok, maybe in the first 2 seconds...) - not only the damage is - to put it mildly - subpar, as it is divided between the player and the elemental.

    Of course I'm refering to boss fights environment. Frost is ok for instances and farming.

    Regarding build, EJ has way more than I could tell about the issue

    I've tried using MI, but it seems like it doesn't do anything. Of course, 1 second Frostbolts doing around 9-12k damage is sure to pull threat >.>

    Invisibility gets the job done, but only for a while.

    The elemental really isn't a big boost to DPS from what I've experienced. It helps, but not like a Hunter or Warlock pet helps.
    I mostly play fighting games these days.

  10. #10

    Re: PvE Frost Mage

    Mages got the best threat management tools in the game, learn to use them;

    1. When you are close to pulling aggro, use Mirror Images. They remove you from the mob threat tables for their duration (30sec, even if they die). During that time you can push even more
    2. 3 sec before Mirror Images run out, if you're above tank go Invisible, if you are under him save Invis for later

    You can use these two tools every 3 min, so threat should be a non issue on bosses. For trash, good luck ^^

  11. #11

    Re: PvE Frost Mage

    If you are having threat issues as frost it probably is a problem with you tank, because unfortunately frost PVE dps is the worst of any dps spec in the game.

    This of course assumes that you are using MI and invis correctly. If you MI early in the fight and then invis so that you are a 0 threat 45s-1m and are still pulling aggro its definitely a tank issue, frost dmg is just not good enough to catch up to a competent tank at that point

  12. #12

    Re: PvE Frost Mage

    Ah, Frost. I raid as Fire but I decided to give it a shot for heroics and things, just to see how it did. I'd be shot if I actually went to a raid.

    Calling it a "rotation" for Frost is a terrible, terrible joke: All you do is spam Frostbolt. After getting full Nax25 gear, you don't even have to try to 'shatter' with Ice lance; just spam Frostbolt.

    It's lower DPS, and simply not competetive at all.

  13. #13

    Re: PvE Frost Mage

    Quote Originally Posted by Inoxia
    Ah, Frost. I raid as Fire but I decided to give it a shot for heroics and things, just to see how it did. I'd be shot if I actually went to a raid.

    Calling it a "rotation" for Frost is a terrible, terrible joke: All you do is spam Frostbolt. After getting full Nax25 gear, you don't even have to try to 'shatter' with Ice lance; just spam Frostbolt.

    It's lower DPS, and simply not competetive at all.
    This. The idea of manipulating the elemental makes it sound fun. In practice the simple rotation and the fragility of the elemental make it boring and a liability.

    Add another spell to the rotation, fix the elemental, and make http://www.wowhead.com/?spell=56716 a 'shadowform' type deep frost talent (which modifies coeff and makes Ice Lance have a cast time for balance) and the spec would be PVE viable, not OP in PVP and much more interesting.

  14. #14

    Re: PvE Frost Mage

    Quote Originally Posted by Illusion
    Out of interest, why not put the point in PoM ?

    Personally I wouldnt raid with this build. It might be slightly higher single target dps (ever so slightly), but you lose some of the things that make frost "adaptable" in a raid - ice barrier makes healing easier, brain freeze procs when you have to move increase your damage output, improved blizzard is situationally useful too.

  15. #15

    Re: PvE Frost Mage

    Quote Originally Posted by Fearlezz
    1. When you are close to pulling aggro, use Mirror Images. They remove you from the mob threat tables for their duration (30sec, even if they die). During that time you can push even more
    This is not true afaik. The threat is evenly spread between you and your Images instead (so theoretically you could still pull aggro if you had >4x more threat than your tank, which usually is quite unlikely^^).

    But otherwise I have to agree with the others. No Raid, that's being half-way serious, would let you join as Frost. The DPS and damage output simply isn't near to being competitive with arcane or fire. ;/

  16. #16

    Re: PvE Frost Mage

    http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?mage...wI7z,IJN,10433

    try this for PvE frost

    make a macro for racials, trinkets, blah blah blah

    for example (troll mage):
    #showtooltip
    /cast Berserking
    /cast Icy Veins
    /use <trinket name>
    /cast Mirror Image

    and then cast elemental.... once elemental "dies": cold snap, icy veins, elemental

    and dont forget to fireball when you get the brain freeze proc
    Oh yes, there is a method to my madness O.o
    Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment
    We generally consider 0 / 0 / 71 builds to be a failure.
    ^win

  17. #17

    Re: PvE Frost Mage

    Quote Originally Posted by Cracka_Bob
    and dont forget to fireball when you get the brain freeze proc
    Pretty sure that PvE Frost Mages don't pick up Brain Freeze due to the fact it's actually less dps than spamming Frostbolts at decent levels of gear.

  18. #18

    Re: PvE Frost Mage

    Brain freeze is one of the most retarded ideas for a talent imo.

    Spec into a frost tree to hope for a fire-school spell proc? Lame (even if it is mainly for pvp). If they wanted to add burst, i think they should've made it frostbolt instant cast, with a damage increase (i.e doubles the damage of your FB).

    On a more related note, It'd be nice to see frost as a viable raiding spec and not just fire trees. Though arc is getting another breath of life it appears.

  19. #19

    Re: PvE Frost Mage

    As others have mentiond you can easily manage threat by poping mirror image at the start, using invis.

    To be honest I realy cant figure out how a frost mage would end up with agro at any point in a raid with equally geard players because to put it nicely frost dps is a joke.

    Blizz seem to want to keep it as a PvP only tree. The only time I see it getting used in raids is for gimicky fights that require AoE ing adds.

    As for using it in PvP, its slow as get out at killing somone and the whole freeze somone in place and then try to crit them is very easily counterd by anyone with half a brain and a pvp trinket available.

  20. #20

    Re: PvE Frost Mage

    Mirror images puts you at negative threat for 30 seconds...It's like a priest fade with extended duration. If nothing else has threat on the target, your negative threat can still cause the mob to come and hit you or the mirror images. In a raiding situation, it will prevent you from pulling aggro from any target that is tanked or being attacked by something else.

    After the 30 seconds, your negative offset is removed, but in general good tanks will have pulled ahead of you in that time, so you don't need to go invisible. Hodir and Vezax are examples of fights where you may have to use invisibility before the images expire. If your tank is bad at generating threat, you may have to do it on other fights too.

    Frost does roughly 80% (10% reduction & pet damage) threat per damage compared to fire's 90% and arcane's 60%.

    I think brain freeze is a DPS small increase and it's certainly a good mana efficiency talent. With the amounts of haste that I stack for raiding and given that I have only 4 points in clearcasting (2 in magic absorption for extra survivability in harsh conditions).

    Frost is a bit low at the moment and Blizzard seems a bit reluctant to buff it. It's not as low as a lot of people think though, especially if you specifically gear for it.

    One signficant difference between fire and frost is that fire does a lot more damage automatically in the molten fury range, whereas frost has active DPS cooldowns (water elemental, IV, cold snap). If there's a time-restricted burn phase early on, frost can amp up the damage (relatively speaking, at least).

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