Kuni's Frost Mage PVE Guide (Cataclysm)

[Antueater]

SimCraft actually has the trinkets modeled now. Let me run a quick comparison.

Haven't seen that. I'm really looking forward to your results!

[Swizzle]

All sims run using BiS T11 gear outside of trinkets.

Hit Capped:

DMC: V + H TM= 29,014 DPS
DMC: V + H NMF= 29,241 DPS
DMC: V + H VPLC= 29,104 DPS (Charge DPS= 494)

15.88% Hit:

H TM + H VPLC= 28,793 (Charge DPS= 485)
H TM + H NMF= 28,936 DPS
H VPLC + H NMF= 29,019 DPS (Charge DPS= 486)

So, if we assume H TM to be a 0 DPS point, then, when Frost is hit capped, H NMF is 227 more DPS and H VPLC is 90 more DPS. When both trinkets are combined, even dropping under the hit cap, they still grant 5 more DPS than the current best combo.

[Antueater]

All sims run using BiS T11 gear outside of trinkets.
[...]

Maybe I missed sth here, but how is Frost going to achieve the stacking mastery effect from Necromantic Focus? The dot + ignite from FFB? Maybe FFO? Or is it BiS just because the massive chunk of int?

[Swizzle]

Maybe I missed sth here, but how is Frost going to achieve the stacking mastery effect from Necromantic Focus? The dot + ignite from FFB? Maybe FFO? Or is it BiS just because the massive chunk of int?

Frost maintains a 92% uptime on NMF, probably because it doesn't open up a fight with a DoT, but yes, Ignite and FFB DoT keep the stacking Mastery proc up.

[Deleted]

Well, i think the NMF is a good trinket with the 4pT12. The 30% BF proc chance should equalize our lack of different dot spells.

[Kuni Zyrekai]

very interesting post. I didn't know that we casting FFB upon proc without FoF was a dps gain (good to know... much easier).
I have a question.
When I pop icy vein. Does it reduce my global cooldown ?
Why I'm asking this is. half of our spells are instant. So 1.5sec cast. It's quite easy to bust the "haste cap for instant" during heroisme. Just wondering if it does the same with icy vein.

If it does. Should we still stack haste over mastery when we'll reach 33.34% haste ?

It was a certain level of gear, I'm unsure of this at the moment currently. I can easily see it being true again in 4pT12 due to brain freeze proc chance being higher than fingers.

IV reduces global cooldown. GCD is haste capped at 50%. Haste has no real obtainable cap due to the fact that frostbolt almost always has a casting time longer than the GCD until you start hitting absurd haste levels. Honestly to your specific question I don't know. It depends on how much mastery you've obtained at the same time when we finally hit that point of haste. I haven't been able to sim for next patch as my computer is quite possibly one of the worst machines I've dealt with and windows decided it didn't like running simc in ramdisk for speed anymore. Simming is almost unbearably slow so I haven't been keeping up with changes.

[Kuni Zyrekai]

Well that's interesting. Preliminary theory for 4.2 with T12 apparently shows that ice lance might be relegated to moving only. There's also the matter of an AOE spec that uses impact, somewhat related to that change... I'll have to get back into simulating, this looks interesting. Hopefully I can get something faster than this computer to sim on soon. Molten vs mage looks a bit better now as well, molten up being nearly 2/3rds the fight. Between this and the side project, this could streamline frost a lot...

Anyway, enough of my rambling. http://manoutoftime.org/simc/opt/391.html Lhivera's first set of sims. Not optimal gear nor rotation, things like heroic Rune of Zeth can't be obtained, no Dragonwrath, but still interesting as a starting point. Interesting things that pop out at me right away, frost having a better scale factor for int than arcane does, and hit being above int despite 16.97%.

Edit: And this didn't add to my above post. How odd.

[Swizzle]

If too much time passes between posts, it doesn't edit them together anymore, so way to double post bro. As to Lhivera's sims, I feel it odd that he went through the trouble of simming everything but not using the best gear. If I recall, Nemex went ahead and simmed everything using full BiS and Arcane gained 6 DPS from Int where the other specs gained 3-4, so I'm guessing it's just gear choices that are creating discrepancies.

It's good to see the set bonus doing as much DPS as our 3 minute CD though, that's not a bad thing I guess.

[Holtzmann]

Preliminary theory for 4.2 with T12 apparently shows that ice lance might be relegated to moving only. There's also the matter of an AOE spec that uses impact, somewhat related to that change...

What do you mean there, Kuni? Can you specify why Ice Lance would be used only while moving? Is it a matter of scaling with the spells or something like that? Also... I know something about picking up Ignite to rack up more Frostfire Bolt damage, but why Impact?

[Swizzle]

What do you mean there, Kuni? Can you specify why Ice Lance would be used only while moving? Is it a matter of scaling with the spells or something like that? Also... I know something about picking up Ignite to rack up more Frostfire Bolt damage, but why Impact?

For an AoE spec which spreads Ignite and the FFB DoT since the 4-piece bonus increases BF chance to proc by 30% or up to 30%. FFB will be used far more than IL now that it will share more up-time with FoF.

[Holtzmann]

In that case, wouldn't it simply be easier to say Ice Lance will be dropped altogether in favor of FFB when you have the 4-piece bonus? The way it was worded, I wasn't sure whether he was talking about full T12 gear set or the whole Firelands level of gear. The first would be talking about the 4p bonus, the second would be talking about scaling.

Thanks for the quick clarification, though.

[Swizzle]

Well, what he did say is the same as what you're saying, only he just states WHEN IL would be used instead of simply saying it will be dropped. The reason it's used on movement is because you can't get BF procs on the move, so you only have IL to use. If we had a spell to cast while moving that could proc BF, IL wouldn't be used at all.

[Brother]

Hey, currently I'm playing Arcane, with everything reforged to mastery, and I want to switch my second specc, which is fire atm, to frost.
How much crit do I need for icelance crit cap ( i got t11), what stat priority do I need, and is it possible to keep my stats for both speccs?

[JP1o]

Hey, currently I'm playing Arcane, with everything reforged to mastery, and I want to switch my second specc, which is fire atm, to frost.
How much crit do I need for icelance crit cap ( i got t11), what stat priority do I need, and is it possible to keep my stats for both speccs?

Why dont you take a look at what this thread is about, by reading what the OP Originally posted, that is a complete guide to frost dps, regarding the shatter cap etc.

[Brother]

I read it but Kunai stated that with T11 you want the Ice lance crit cap, not the full shatter cap, and also the guide does not give me any tipps for merging this to speccs reforge wise. I want to know if I could go for shatter cap + haste and perform as good with arcane as fully reforged to mastery.

[Edit] Now reading my post the second time, I might imaging me sim'ing this on my own^^
But i'd like to know how much crit I need for IL-critcap....which...might just be 5% lower than full shattercap like stated on the t11 set...thanks mates, I clearly underistimated myself

[Edit2] You are right swizzle, reaching iceland crit cap is impossible!

[Swizzle]

I wish I could reach the Iceland crit cap. Sadly, I can barely crit cap the Netherlands.

[Holtzmann]

You really need to stack your trinkets to get there. But don't overdo it, or you might end up hitting the Arctic crit cap, and that's too cold, even for Frost Mages. Not to mention connection options there suck.

[Kuni Zyrekai]

If too much time passes between posts, it doesn't edit them together anymore, so way to double post bro.

Well shit. Good to know then.

As to Lhivera's sims, I feel it odd that he went through the trouble of simming everything but not using the best gear. If I recall, Nemex went ahead and simmed everything using full BiS and Arcane gained 6 DPS from Int where the other specs gained 3-4, so I'm guessing it's just gear choices that are creating discrepancies.

It's good to see the set bonus doing as much DPS as our 3 minute CD though, that's not a bad thing I guess.

I found it odd as well, until I looked into why he was using what he was. I personally don't care for the excuse, but using things that were apparently widely available such as not Ragnaros heroic gear and not Dragonwrath. This is also the gear set being put into SimC's default 391 set. I hope they change it when they realize you can't get the heroic version of some of those pieces. Or Blizz actually adds them for once.

The set bonus is indeed better than I anticipated, although having toyed with it on PTR, I wish it lasted a second longer to get the last cast it does off, instead of 4 and most of a 5th before disappearing.

What do you mean there, Kuni? Can you specify why Ice Lance would be used only while moving? Is it a matter of scaling with the spells or something like that? Also... I know something about picking up Ignite to rack up more Frostfire Bolt damage, but why Impact?

For an AoE spec which spreads Ignite and the FFB DoT since the 4-piece bonus increases BF chance to proc by 30% or up to 30%. FFB will be used far more than IL now that it will share more up-time with FoF.

Ice lance would be dropped unless moving if I'm right. A 20% FoF and 30% BF proc rate should have FFB using majority of FoF procs.

As to the AOE, I'll have to play with it, but a talented blizzard to gain FoF/BF procs and impact over NP might very well give the possibility to impact ignite and 3 stack FFB to all targets while dropping blizzard to both proc FoF/BF again and impact again, allowing you to refresh the FFB stack and a new ignite, spread it, then blizzard again. It won't touch fire, but it should be a bit better than blizzard spamming. The question of course is if it's worth having a frost AOE spec when you could just go fire.

But i'd like to know how much crit I need for IL-critcap

18% if you have both crit buffs in the raid.

[Deleted]

Well shit. Good to know then.


As to the AOE, I'll have to play with it, but a talented blizzard to gain FoF/BF procs and impact over NP might very well give the possibility to impact ignite and 3 stack FFB to all targets while dropping blizzard to both proc FoF/BF again and impact again, allowing you to refresh the FFB stack and a new ignite, spread it, then blizzard again. It won't touch fire, but it should be a bit better than blizzard spamming. The question of course is if it's worth having a frost AOE spec when you could just go fire.

This is really really smart Would be complex to get the hang of, you'd have to wait for BF + FOF + Impact then hit FFB, FB then continue blizzarding until you get all 3 up again.

I'd love to know how viable this is

[Kuni Zyrekai]

This is really really smart Would be complex to get the hang of, you'd have to wait for BF + FOF + Impact then hit FFB, FB then continue blizzarding until you get all 3 up again.

I'd love to know how viable this is

Well it wouldn't be too hard to fish for procs given 30, 20 and 10% respectively by throwing at least a 1/2 ice shards blizzard over a group. It's a matter of at what point does interrupting the blizzard to FFB/impact work for better DPS, if at all. Waiting between blizzard casts could work if it's a lot of AOE damage needing to go out, but again I have to play with it. It could be that the 2% haste works out better just spamming blizzard. We'll see.

The only reason I even considered it is the fact that there's a good chance we'll drop ice lance except for movement, and because of it, haste devalues just ever so slightly since more of our DPS is coming from our instants which benefit a lot more from mastery than haste. Lhiv's sim, however flawed it might be, has a near 100% uptime on the mastery proc trinket which means FFB is ticking constantly. It wasn't even modified to account for the extra procs in relation to FoF. So uptime is of no issue, it becomes a matter of when breaking blizzard for 2 GCDs for effectively a ~10-12s minor DoT and a 4s major DoT becomes a good idea.