Kuni's Frost Mage PVE Guide (Cataclysm)

[citizenpete]

Item - Mage T13 4P Bonus (Arcane Power, Combustion, and Icy Veins) now reduces the cooldown of Icy Veins by 15 sec, up from 10 sec. Icy Veins will be ready every 8 - 9 stacks - maybe sooner. The 4p is still bad, even if you have icy veins all the time +20% haste. Haste near or beyond GCD (50% Haste) is waste. Frost 4.3 is really bad at the moment : / I am used to frost in the past few months, I`m really sad.

[Kuni Zyrekai]

It still reduces frostbolt's cast time beyond GCD's haste cap. Frostbolt won't meet GCD duration until 100% haste. Doesn't make 4.3 better for us, just confirming facts.

[citizenpete]

Instants are capped with 50% haste, thats approx 60% of our current damage. Beyond 50% only Frostbolt benefits from haste and that´s waste in my opinion.

[Bombkirby]

Hmm better report the bad news on the official forums. There were quite a few threads (surprisingly) on the official PTR forums this week pointing out that the 4P bonus for frost isn't so great. This MIGHT have been a response to those, so that would mean they are listening to an extent.

[Kuni Zyrekai]

Hmm better report the bad news on the official forums. There were quite a few threads on the official PTR forums this week pointing out that the 4P bonus for frost isn't so great. This MIGHT have been a response to those, so that would mean they are listening to an extent.

http://elitistjerks.com/f75/t110187-...7/#post2039296 Pre-today's change. I'm still hoping there's some changes to the spells/talents themselves yet to come. But we're getting really damned close to the end of PTR.

[Bombkirby]

http://elitistjerks.com/f75/t110187-...7/#post2039296 Pre-today's change. I'm still hoping there's some changes to the spells/talents themselves yet to come. But we're getting really damned close to the end of PTR.

Yeah release should be soon...and I'm betting they're not going to totally balance the specs (aka rehaul them or make any drastic changes) for 4.3 since they're just going to redo everything in MoP. So yeah...I'll keep pleading for a quick fix solution on the forums. Hopefully something happens. ^_^'

[citizenpete]

We have a very bad T13 4p and a Legendary wich is consuming FoF stacks. I did damage with all 3 specs to 10 Million 3 times on dummies (full buffed) and the result is not very satisfying. With my gear (without shard of woe) Arcane was ahead 7.9%, 11.8% and 9.1% ahead frost. Fire didn´t overtaken frost but came a fair bit closer with Legendary.
I´ve did the same tests bevor I´ve got a "proud owner" of the Legendary and results were

Frost 0.3%, 1.1% and 0.6% ahead arcane.

The gap between fire/arcane and frost will be huge with T13H and DTR. (and without DTR). So the first sentence in my german Frost Mage Guide 4.3 (thank you for your inspiration Kuni : ) will be "spec fire or arcane".

That´s pretty sad.

[Bombkirby]

We have a very bad T13 4p and a Legendary wich is consuming FoF stacks. I did damage with all 3 specs to 10 Million 3 times on dummies (full buffed) and the result is not very satisfying. With my gear (without shard of woe) Arcane was ahead 7.9%, 11.8% and 9.1% ahead frost. Fire didn´t overtaken frost but came a fair bit closer with Legendary.
I´ve did the same tests bevor I´ve got a "proud owner" of the Legendary and results were

Frost 0.3%, 1.1% and 0.6% ahead arcane.

The gap between fire/arcane and frost will be huge with T13H and DTR. (and without DTR). So the first sentence in my german Frost Mage Guide 4.3 (thank you for your inspiration Kuni : ) will be "spec fire or arcane".

That´s pretty sad.

The PTR has been updated with it's release patch.... the deal is SEALED! D: We're gonna suck!



Well it could be worse. MUCH worse.

[Redsparowe]

Just levelled up my mage with the intent of raiding pve as frost.

I was running simcraft on my toon to try and get more accurate stat weights for reforging.
In the guide it says crit to cap > haste > mastery > crit
from SimC I got crit to cap > mastery > crit > haste

any idea why this would be?
I changed the priority system to fill with frostbolt instead of FFB (not sure why that's default?)

http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/character/azuremyst/Byrd/advanced

armory there, ofc ignore reforging and stuff as I'm still trying to figure out these stat weights

[ciaro]

don't know if this has been posted, but here's a great tool to calculate the exact crit cap for shatter
http://opendevelop.fr/shatter/Shatter.html

[citizenpete]

We offered some buffs to Fire mages to help them compete with Arcane. Frost is viable in PvE, but at high-end raiding we understand that its damage isn’t perceived as comparable to Arcane or Fire. The problem is that Frost has a lot of control and survivability, and if their damage were also identical, there would be no reason to choose Arcane or Fire. Note that the 5.0 talent design is partially to fix this specific problem, where specs have either higher DPS or higher utility.


Thats a pretty poor excuse. They have tried everything to buff Frost. First T13 4P reduced cooldown on Icy Veins by 60, then by 100 and now by 150 seconds (Icy Veins cooldown only lasts 144 seconds). T13H BiS with T12H 4p is better than T13h 4p. That´s a damn bad joke. Viable? Really? T13H Fire DTR is 12k DPS ahead Frost DTR (First SimCs). T12H 4.3 Fire is ahead T12H DTR Frost.

Lets talk about "control and survivability:"

Cauterize > Ice Barrier in PvE.

I never used Frostnova, Shattered Barrier, Reactive Barrier or Improved Cone of Cold in Firelands nor would I in DS. That´s just stupefaction of the people! Blizzard is just lazy and resistant to advice.

[Asera]

They have to cater to the PvP side of the game. If they make frost too good in PvE, it will carry over and be even more ridiculous in PvP. The survivability aspect is mostly in regards to PvP as well. Every survivability quirk of frost far outweighs cauterize in PvP.

If they actually buffed frost's damage to match the other two specs in PvE all the time (as in without the coincidence of Arcane losing 4 piece T11 making frost scale as well for a while in Firelands), they would have to counterbalance everything else to keep from every 2400+ rated team being composed of frost mages, which would result in fire/frost/arcane being within marginal percentiles of each other, but probably near the bottom of a complete list of every class in sustained damage.

At the very least, frost is viable enough to go 6/7 heroic without being entirely worthless for the raid, and we will have two specs to choose from in T13 most likely (with frost still being viable for more casual oriented raiding guilds honestly). Sit back and wait for 5.0 to (hopefully) solve everything. Frost has come a long way since being condemned after AQ40 5 years ago, honestly. I'm really happy I could effectively raid as frost for as long as I have in T12.

[citizenpete]

Just read the proper Frost threads or guides (this one for example). There are enough suggestions to buff frost without touching pvp. The pvp excuse is just tiring. Frost is very good at the moment. Damage is better than arcane (without SoW) and much better the more movement you need (Ragnaros). Just have a look at Ragnaros 25 HC. Only 5 logs with Frost. There is no run on frost, because frost is hard to learn and hard to master. They´re really resistant to advice.

[Zumzumzum]

If they actually buffed frost's damage to match the other two specs in PvE all the time (as in without the coincidence of Arcane losing 4 piece T11 making frost scale as well for a while in Firelands), they would have to counterbalance everything else to keep from every 2400+ rated team being composed of frost mages

That's totally wrong, buffing Deep Freeze's and Blizzard's damages would have 0 impact on PvP and they know it. As citizenpete said, they have just been lazy with this and didn't care enough to fix Frost, apart from the ridiculous series of buffs to the T134P.

[I-Swizzle-I]

Just read the proper Frost threads or guides (this one for example). There are enough suggestions to buff frost without touching pvp. The pvp excuse is just tiring. Frost is very good at the moment. Damage is better than arcane (without SoW) and much better the more movement you need (Ragnaros). Just have a look at Ragnaros 25 HC. Only 5 logs with Frost. There is no run on frost, because frost is hard to learn and hard to master. They´re really resistant to advice.

Don't ignore the most important part of the quote, "Note that the 5.0 talent design is partially to fix this specific problem, where specs have either higher DPS or higher utility".

[Bombkirby]

I never used Frostnova, Shattered Barrier, Reactive Barrier or Improved Cone of Cold in Firelands nor would I in DS. That´s just stupefaction of the people! Blizzard is just lazy and resistant to advice.
[/COLOR]

It's not lazy, its just they probably are unaware of....most of these things. This is common in video games. In like super competitive fighting games many companies forget to balance some blatantly cheap things no matter how many patches, or versions of the game come out. No matter how much feedback they get they just don't quite see what we're talking about, mostly because they're not out testing it the way we're testing things.

So while I do want to slap them and tell them that Frost isn't brought for control and survivability (and that Arcane will always be more attractive with Focus Magic and its 3% dmg buff) I've been through this enough with other games that I won't throw a hissy fit on the official forums about it. ^_^'

---------- Post added 2011-11-12 at 06:15 PM ----------

They have to cater to the PvP side of the game. If they make frost too good in PvE, it will carry over and be even more ridiculous in PvP. The survivability aspect is mostly in regards to PvP as well. Every survivability quirk of frost far outweighs cauterize in PvP.

If they actually buffed frost's damage to match the other two specs in PvE all the time (as in without the coincidence of Arcane losing 4 piece T11 making frost scale as well for a while in Firelands), they would have to counterbalance everything else to keep from every 2400+ rated team being composed of frost mages, which would result in fire/frost/arcane being within marginal percentiles of each other, but probably near the bottom of a complete list of every class in sustained damage.

At the very least, frost is viable enough to go 6/7 heroic without being entirely worthless for the raid, and we will have two specs to choose from in T13 most likely (with frost still being viable for more casual oriented raiding guilds honestly). Sit back and wait for 5.0 to (hopefully) solve everything. Frost has come a long way since being condemned after AQ40 5 years ago, honestly. I'm really happy I could effectively raid as frost for as long as I have in T12.

That's not exactly a problem. If they mess with Deep Freeze a bit more it'll be on par with the other specs. If Deep Freeze gave us a buff when it dealt damage (which happens only on bosses and etc) then Frost would deal more damage without harming PvP (remove the Demo damage that DF can do and we're good) or if the set bonus boosted its DPS enough (PvP players wouldn't wear 4p and lose all of that bonus resilience anyways) it'd be fine too.

Don't ignore the most important part of the quote, "Note that the 5.0 talent design is partially to fix this specific problem, where specs have either higher DPS or higher utility".

But I haaate waiting. XD

[Asera]

That's not exactly a problem. If they mess with Deep Freeze a bit more it'll be on par with the other specs. If Deep Freeze gave us a buff when it dealt damage (which happens only on bosses and etc) then Frost would deal more damage without harming PvP (remove the Demo damage that DF can do and we're good) or if the set bonus boosted its DPS enough (PvP players wouldn't wear 4p and lose all of that bonus resilience anyways) it'd be fine too.

There's a few instances in PvP where DFs damage component works (ie, vehicles in SotA). Blizzard tends to think in the 'big picture', which in PvP, is random/pug battlegrounds, not necessarily high end rated battlegrounds and arena. As for the resilience, I don't even bother with PvP gear in the majority figure of PvP because 4 piece T12 is absolutely retarded and I can pretty well destroy anyone that comes at me save from someone 2600 rated with every piece of the highest iLevel PvP gear... and I'm really not too great at PvP. :P

Anyway, if they gave DF a damage buff, or a buff that increases frost damage, that's an avenue (while minor) where frost mages can dominate even more in the larger scope of PvP events across the entirety of the game.

That's totally wrong, buffing Deep Freeze's and Blizzard's damages would have 0 impact on PvP and they know it. As citizenpete said, they have just been lazy with this and didn't care enough to fix Frost, apart from the ridiculous series of buffs to the T134P.

I agree with the Blizzard part... there's no excuse for that spell to suck as much as it does... =/

Just read the proper Frost threads or guides (this one for example).

...I do. I've been raiding PvE frost since Firelands went live.

[citizenpete]

Don't ignore the most important part of the quote, "Note that the 5.0 talent design is partially to fix this specific problem, where specs have either higher DPS or higher utility".

MoP will hit the servers in 6 - 9 months? I received DTR last sunday and i wanted to progress with DTR and frost. Only 2 - 3 farm raids till 4.3 hit the live. That is frustrating.

T

Anyway, if they gave DF a damage buff, or a buff that increases frost damage, that's an avenue (while minor) where frost mages can dominate even more in the larger scope of PvP events across the entirety of the game.

There are waaaay more suggestions and solution approaches than buffing DF. Fine you`re playing since FL, I´m playing since cataclysm and progressed every boss as frost (even Sinestra). Don´t want to say I´m better, or whatever, just want to point out, that frost was viable before t12 4p. Not as strong as now, but you could get the job done. 4.3 is the first time I have to respec to fire or arcane.

[Nicc]

4.3 is the first time I have to respec to fire or arcane.

You won't HAVE to, considering you were willing to do Sinestra as frost (When the other specs were SOOOOOOOOO much better) I think you can stay Frost without too much heartache since you were willing to do so before.

[citizenpete]

That is not true. Frost was very strong on Cho gall, Magmaw, Omnotron (slow and freeze was very important for adds), Chimaeron and Nefarian. good on Valiona heroic, Top on Sinestra during P1 and P2.
In Firelands Frost was very strong on Shannox, Beth, Balo, Majordomo and Ragnaros.

4.3 no viable @ Yor sahj (26k DPS as Forst and 54k as Fire) and Hagara (24k as Frost 37k as Fire) heroic, weak on Morchok and Zon`ozz (35 yrds as frost) heroic. Didn´t had time to test the other heroic encounter.

The gap is huge : /