Kuni's Frost Mage PVE Guide (Cataclysm)

[Asera]

It also has a lot to do with frost just being difficult to play at a competitive level. There are literally hundreds of thousands of magi out there that simply can't play it well enough or just don't attempt to because they either don't care enough about it or are just lazy (Both high-end and at a casual level).

If I saw your application as main spec frost I would scrutinize you very harshly even though I know full well on an intimate level what it's capable of. Its just that frost actually takes quite a bit of effort to get good at it and be able to push respectable single target numbers. If you can provide logs from BH or some Pug raid it would go a long way to proving yourself.

Even then if your single target is up to snuff, any encounter where you cleave adds or aoe, you're going to fall behind the pack and there is nothing you can do as an individual, no matter how skilled or amazing you are that's going help. Blizzard needs to make the necessarily adjustments to fix this issue, which I personally don't foresee happening until 5.0 or in MoP beta when spells can be added or taken away more freely. You simply cant buff the crap out of Blizzard because then you'll just make it more appealing to use in other specs and Arcanes mastery will scale incredibly well with it, but I digress.

If you want to take my advice, play arcane (Yes it sucks I know) until you can get yourself settled down as a proven individual then gradually make the swap.

I'm probably going to have to, I cant get a decent parse to save my life recently, network performance from Halifax to the Los Angeles datacentre (where Nathrezim is) is really hurting me. ><

[SqueaksX]

RNG is still RNG and still moody as always. I thought the same as you, until I did BH today, where I was swimming in procs.

You say "fairly" equivalent, what does this mean exactly? What was your raid comp last week and this week? Logs, as always, will help diagnose the problem or at least see that there was indeed a lowered proc chance/bad luck.

Hey guys,

I've check with the guild leader and sadly he didn't log the other night, which is unfortunate for this discussion. We're going back in tonight, so perhaps I'll have something later to help.

As for raid comp, we had 6 dps for the Baleroc fight (which is the closest I can get to Patchwerk test atm). Melee were warrior, rogue and feral, but I had an elemental shaman, arcane mage and hunter with 8% spell damage pet on the Baleroc fight, and I came out about 18k average in 6th place... which was disappointing. Having done some more research, I think I may have been managing my FoF procs badly.

Anyway, hopefully I'll get some logs for tonight. In which case, consider this to be continued...

Thanks for replying.

Squeaks

[Tokagawa]

Thanks for the guide it was a great help.

[citizenpete]

Just downloaded SimC 422-4 and I´m absolutely bewildered. I´ve took 4.2 T12H BiS and runned it with PTR settings (25.000 Iterations). The results are as following:

Mage Fire T12H DTR: 42234 DPS
Mage Arcane T12H DTR: 40948 DPS
Mage Fire T12H: 38884 DPS
Mage Frost T12H DTR: 38690 DPS
Mage Arcane T12H: 38314 DPS
Mage Frost T12H: 36309 DPS


Arcane without DTR very close to Frost DTR and Fire without DTR ahead Frost DTR. Thats very frustrating to be honest.

[I-Swizzle-I]

Keep in mind that the only spec to receive buffs on the PTR is Fire. There are more builds to go before live, give it time.

[Fulmetal]

3) Break my 4pT11 bonus and get a mix of 2pT11 and 2pT12


Does any of that sound crazy or is it sound advice?

my guess for the mixed t11 and t12 set is that frost has a crit cap of 33%, which will then give you a 100% crit chance if you have FoF proc. since the t11 2 set gives you a 5% extra crit chance it might be better dps increase than the 15% extra proc chance for the brain freeze.

this is just a guess, havent done any math behind it.

[citizenpete]

Keep in mind that the only spec to receive buffs on the PTR is Fire. There are more builds to go before live, give it time.

Let's hope so, by goodness! I wish I had your optimism : )

[Dynn]

Awesome man!

User was infracted for this post.

[Bombkirby]

Approx. how much of a DPS increase is 4p T12? Just curious to know how much of a loss/gain it is to gain/ditch the bonus. And on the front page it says Haste devalues when you get the bonus. Does that mean I start ditching Haste in favor of Mastery and reforge everything I'm wearing? Or is it really not a big deal?

[citizenpete]

The difference is approx 2k DPS (with 2p only) with BiS gear. I try to reforge to mastery as much as i can at the moment - after hit and crit cap of course.

[Bombkirby]

The difference is approx 2k DPS (with 2p only) with BiS gear. I try to reforge to mastery as much as i can at the moment - after hit and crit cap of course.

Okay got it. Thanks!

[Zumzumzum]

(4) Set: Each stack of Stolen Time also reduces the cooldown of Arcane Power by 7 sec, Combustion by 5 sec, and Icy Veins by 10 sec.

would be so much better as

(4) Set: Each stack of Stolen Time also reduces the cooldown of Arcane Power by 7 sec, Combustion by 5 sec, and Deep Freeze by 2 sec.

[markdead]

I would just like to see thanks for keeping the thread alive it helped me quite allot.

Its verry fun to see people's reaction the second you join a ZA/ZG the first comments about you're Frost spec.
Then at the end of the dungeon there are still a few hotheads moaning about not doing enough dps on trash ( really? )
I have since recently joined a verry fun 10 man guild that raids on a rather high progression ( 6/7 heroic firelands pre nerf ) and since we only raid 2 days a week we havent really bothered trying on ragg heroic, the first day i got into a new raid ( it was acctualy a BWD heroic acievement run, they lacked a dps )
they gave me a rather hard time about being frost, although i sticked with my "excuse" that frost was a viable spec. at the end of the night i got a couple of
reactions from them that they did not expect a frost mage to do that ammount of damage. because i left a good impression they invited me to join there 6/7 heroic "farm" night, and get some free loot :P, here comes the fun part ( keep in mind all these raiders i joined had like 5-6 parts BiS gear cause they have been farming firelands for a while. ) on most bosses that did not require AoE, i ended up in the top 3 of total damage done, they got insanely suprised and gave me a permanent spot in there raiding team. ( they lacked a mage for over 6 months CAN YOU BELIEVE THAT!? ) now my gear isnt really high end ( il give link in a sec ) and i did the same damage output as they did in full heroic gear, so i felt good :P.

TLR

-Stick with frost if you enjoy it it does competitive dps.
-If people wont accept you for being frost, its there loss if played correctly it can be a good mage spec.
-Frost is awesome

Since its 03:11 here now im pretty damn tired and i will clean up this post tommorow, i just wanted to thank the original poster for creating this topic, since without him i still think i would have been rotting away in the dull arcane spec ( YES I SAID IT BIACHES ) and i would like to tell all the mages that are tempting to go back to fire/arcane not to do it, cause if you get frost under control, its one of the most fun specs to play,

Goodnight world! and fellow frost PVE friends, hang on! our time shall be soon


-edit- SEE HOW TIRED I AM?! I FORGOT TO POST MY ARMORY

http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/characte.../Karudo/simple

[Bombkirby]

When does the DMF Volcano trinket get outclassed? The Electro....magnetic...pulse...thingy ma-bob might drop when we finally kill Rag and I was curious if it's even close to being a suitable replacement.

[citizenpete]

There are only 3 stronger trinkets out there: VPLC 384 and 397. Theoretical Necromantic Focus 391 is better than DMC:V, but the difference is very small. If u lack some hit, then use DMC:V. You can reach higher (and of course lower) parses with DMC:V (proc during BL together with FFO for example).


@markdead

Welcome to the club : ) Let´s hope frost will be playable - or is the word really "viable" ? Things look black at the moment: The T13 4p is pretty bad and a pain in the ass to play with and frost with legendary is horrible. So don´t bury your arcane and fire spec too deeply : /

[Bombkirby]

There are only 3 stronger trinkets out there: VPLC 384 and 397. Theoretical Necromantic Focus 391 is better than DMC:V, but the difference is very small. If u lack some hit, then use DMC:V. You can reach higher (and of course lower) parses with DMC:V (proc during BL together with FFO for example).

Wow I'm surprised Blizzard (accidentally) made the card so powerful. Well hopefully I get that VPLC.

Currently I have Rune of Zeth and DMF Card. If I got that VPLC would I replace the Rune then since its not one of the 3 trinkets better than DMF Card?

[citizenpete]

Switching Rune of Zeth with VPLC will be a 500 - 700 DPS gain.

391/397

VPLC
NF
DMC:V

378/384

VPLC
DMC:V
NF

[Phair]

I just found out the other day that I now have enough base crit to completely forgo Glyph of Molten armor and instead use Glyph of frostbolt.


WHAT DOES IT MEAN?! I don't know but things are about to get crazy-go-nuts!


To frost.

[Bombkirby]

Switching Rune of Zeth with VPLC will be a 500 - 700 DPS gain.

391/397

VPLC
NF
DMC:V

378/384

VPLC
DMC:V
NF

Sweet. Thanks for the help/info.

[Zumzumzum]

I hope 4.3 isn't coming too soon, at this rate we might get a Set bonus that just resets Icy Veins duration at each Frost Bolt

This is comiiiing x)
They stilll have some time to implement that.

Now seriously :
I might be wrong but if each stack reduces Icy Veins CD by 15 sec, and we need 2-3 seconds by stack, it looks like we will have 50% uptime of Icy Veins ?