PVE Frost mage for Cata

[lookerr]

I asked this question in another thread and figured it would be easier to just start a new thread on the subject

given the reports of mana issues for fire mages in Cata, Frost seems to be the spec of choice to start out with in 5/10 man runs at 80 Cata

is there a thread for PVE Frost Mage specs for Cata 5/10 man raids giving the following info:

1) talent tree
2) gems
3) stats:
mastery
crit
haste
int/sp

thanks in advance

[nerfproof]

Talent tree- http://wowtal.com/#k=lBIr6mtl.a8t.mage.R8Owvk

Gems- Haste - Int gems (orange)

Stats- Hit Cap > Int > Haste > Crit (till 33%)

[Jontus]

Talent tree- http://wowtal.com/#k=lBIr6mtl.a8t.mage.R8Owvk

Gems- Haste - Int gems (orange)

Stats- Hit Cap > Int > Haste > Crit (till 33%)

You are completely ignoring a stat that is much better than haste, Mastery.

[lookerr]

I have been reading the Frost mage thread on EJ and they are saying:

1) Hit to cap
2) Crit to 33%...as in this is the second most important thing for mages which makes us at pretty much 100% crit chance whenever FoF is up, (reforged all haste into mastery and crit)
3) Mastery -> Considering how often FoF activated, mastery is heavily beneficial to our overall dps.
4) Crit. Yes crit is still better than haste even after getting to 33%
5) Haste

[takolin]

Talent tree- http://wowtal.com/#k=lBIr6mtl.a8t.mage.R8Owvk

Gems- Haste - Int gems (orange)

Stats- Hit Cap > Int > Haste > Crit (till 33%)

No burning soul?

[DeathDefier]

This is what I've been using on beta. http://wowtal.com/#k=ew15QcMe.a67.mage.

[Imnick]

No burning soul?

Well firstly we don't know how much pushback there is in Cataclysm, personally hoping to put either 0 or 1 points in this talent (1 only if I am fire).
Secondly frost has more instant cast spells than both other trees (that being every spell other than frostbolt) and so that probably makes it less valuable.

[nerfproof]

Ok you right, i did forget mastery. Mastery should be the second stat you gear for.
Hit (till cap) > Mastery (not sure what soft cap will be), Int, Haste, Crit (till 33%).
And looker Frost Mages should NOT be look to stack as much crit as your talking about. And no one should be reforging mastery and haste into crit...unless your way past the gcd on frostbolt then people can reforge some haste. Also there is hardly any pushback in Cata, atleast from the content Ive played, to warrant speccing into Burning Soul. Those 2 points can be spent into other things that carry more value.

[lookerr]

Ok you right, i did forget mastery. Mastery should be the second stat you gear for.
Hit (till cap) > Mastery (not sure what soft cap will be), Int, Haste, Crit (till 33%).
And looker Frost Mages should NOT be look to stack as much crit as your talking about. And no one should be reforging mastery and haste into crit...unless your way past the gcd on frostbolt then people can reforge some haste. Also there is hardly any pushback in Cata, atleast from the content Ive played, to warrant speccing into Burning Soul. Those 2 points can be spent into other things that carry more value.

thanks for the feedback

and its not what I am saying - its what the general consensus seems to be on Elitist Jerks (not that that means its chiseled in stone):

http://elitistjerks.com/f75/t104774-...discussion/p8/

[DeiVias]

Ok you right, i did forget mastery. Mastery should be the second stat you gear for.
Hit (till cap) > Mastery (not sure what soft cap will be), Int, Haste, Crit (till 33%).
And looker Frost Mages should NOT be look to stack as much crit as your talking about. And no one should be reforging mastery and haste into crit...unless your way past the gcd on frostbolt then people can reforge some haste.

He never said to reforge mastery into crit, just haste into crit.

To much of our damage comes from instants atm.

The only way haste is gonna be any decent for Frost is if the Deep Freeze cooldown effected my haste change makes it to Live.

[sparks]

I have been running frost on a crap 219-232 geared mage and its a blast.

big thanks for this discussion I didn't know what to do about stats

[Lyren]

To much of our damage comes from instants atm.

Haste *kinda* affects GCD for all those instants.

Also the true softcap for crit is 23.34%, assuming there is a 5% crit debuff and 5% crit buff.

The haste soft cap is 19%, given 5% haste buff and IV. Er, that doesn't take into account the 3 points in arcane though, just saying, it's low soft cap for both stats, which is rather unfortunate.

[Kuni Zyrekai]

For 85 raiding:

int to 10200 SP > hit to cap > more int > crit to 33.34% raid buffed > mastery > more crit > haste

http://wowtal.com/#k=RBkn_L5i.a67.mage.-UGaff with a few point options here and there. The big one is netherwind presence to fire power. Fire power wins out if there's two targets in a fight, NP if only one. Ignite is required as FFB should be critting most of the time and provides the best DPS boost for the points. Frost optionals include enduring winter and permafrost in my build, although at least one point in each is a great thing to have.

Use mage armour. Fights are too long to sustain molten as frost without scraping the end of your bar multiple times through a fight.

Ember over chaotic for metas in my opinion. So you spam +int gems except for two orange int/mastery, preferably lining them up for int socket bonuses. The math was pointed out on EJ in favour of chaotic, but only by 0.25% and declining as you gain sockets. You should avoid gemming for green stats, as int is roughly worth 3 times mastery/crit/haste, and very slightly over 1:1 with hit, due to mana and crit gains from int.

[Deleted]

For 85 raiding:

int to 10200 SP > hit to cap > more int > crit to 33.34% raid buffed > mastery > more crit > haste

http://wowtal.com/#k=RBkn_L5i.a67.mage.-UGaff with a few point options here and there. The big one is netherwind presence to fire power. Fire power wins out if there's two targets in a fight, NP if only one. Ignite is required as FFB should be critting most of the time and provides the best DPS boost for the points. Frost optionals include enduring winter and permafrost in my build, although at least one point in each is a great thing to have.

Use mage armour. Fights are too long to sustain molten as frost without scraping the end of your bar multiple times through a fight.

Ember over chaotic for metas in my opinion. So you spam +int gems except for two orange int/mastery, preferably lining them up for int socket bonuses. The math was pointed out on EJ in favour of chaotic, but only by 0.25% and declining as you gain sockets. You should avoid gemming for green stats, as int is roughly worth 3 times mastery/crit/haste, and very slightly over 1:1 with hit, due to mana and crit gains from int.

So many stupid responses in this thread, especially this one. The only thing u did right was the specc.

Don't use mage armor as frost, use Fire. You won't go oom as Frost in PvE.


Then about stats;
Hit Cap ALWAYS trumps every other stat in PvE, period.
As someone with a clue pointed out earlier, getting crit to 33% is a waste due to 5% crit buff + 5% crit debuffs in raid environment.
Mastery is a REALLY nice stat that many underestimate.

so here it goes (numbers are approx);
17% hit cap > 23% crit "soft cap" > int > mastery > haste


And about burning soul, you can't really put the points anywhere anyway so go for it, even if cataclysm heroics+most of the raids isnt that full of pushbacks.

[Deleted]

Actually no it does not. I'd tell you where it does not, but you 'so may stupid reponses' bit was annoying, so I'll leave you to wallow in your ignorance.

What game are you playing, sir?

[Kuni Zyrekai]

Snip

I'd love to see you not OOM yourself on the 8 minute fights using molten. Really. I'd love to see you do it. Mage+all mana conservation talents gets you just slightly over 9 minutes.

I said 33.34% raid buffed. That includes the 5% buff and 5% debuff.

As for the whole hit thing. Rating scaling have screwed us. It's 102 hit rating for 1% hit. Lhivera has mathed out our DPS gains for hit and int at 100 int is equal to 147 hit. DPS increase for 100 points of int is 1.39%, 100 points of hit is 0.94%. The break point on this is when you hit 10200 SP, where hit begins to overtake int again.

Do not lecture me on frost PVE.

[Lyren]

Ah, thanks for clarifying 10200.

Also, refer to Cats and Fury pre-4.0 if you'd like a good example of when Hit didn't matter. I believe Hit is still minimal for Cats now. Regardless, Hit and Int only really compete in gems, where it has never been reasonable to choose Hit over pure SP (now Int), even more so now that gemming for it provides regen and scales up several times from Armor spec, Motw/Kings, ToW/AI/Whatever else.

[Skarrd]

What game are you playing, sir?

This one. If you're under hit cap by 4 and you sac 80 crit to get hit capped then you made a bad decision. This is less likely to happen given reforging, but I sat a few hundreths of a percent under hit cap in my raid gear a number of times because the trade off wasn't worth it.

I used an extreme example, but it's just to show that hit isn't a be-all-end-all stat. If you need one or two hit rating and you gem a 10int/10hit gem, then you're losing dps as well.

[Kuni Zyrekai]

This one. If you're under hit cap by 4 and you sac 80 crit to get hit capped then you made a bad decision. This is less likely to happen given reforging, but I sat a few hundreths of a percent under hit cap in my raid gear a number of times because the trade off wasn't worth it.

I used an extreme example, but it's just to show that hit isn't a be-all-end-all stat. If you need one or two hit rating and you gem a 10int/10hit gem, then you're losing dps as well.

Actually, on this topic, this is an amazing tool to have to help plan out reforges around caps. Just be wary that it doesn't include enchants, socket bonuses, talents or racials. But still a very cool thing to have.

Proof is in the sig. 17.00% hit cap, baby.

[Deleted]

so here it goes (numbers are approx);
17% hit cap > 23% crit "soft cap" > int > mastery > haste

I'd argue you get 10% crit from raid buffs and 5% from your molten armour plus glyph.

The exact glyph setup I am not 100% on at the moment - essentially you got 4 viable ones: FFB, Deep Freeze, Frostbolt and Molten Armour. (I will most likely leave out frostbolt as it's the only one that doesn't scale with mastery)