Kuni's Frost Mage PVE Guide

[huth]

It's still a clunky, overcomplicated mastery that will result in insane spell clutter with IV glyph, and is still dismal in PVP.

It might not be the most elegant, but calling something that is essentially "Your Frostbolt, Frostfire Bolt and Water Bolt do x% more damage" clunky is rather silly. You don't even have to do anything to use it.

[Libretto]

It might not be the most elegant, but calling something that is essentially "Your Frostbolt, Frostfire Bolt and Water Bolt do x% more damage" clunky is rather silly. You don't even have to do anything to use it.

It's not quite that simple. The travel time on the icicles and them firing at one per second once ice lance goes off, means that it becomes progressively more useless on adds with lower health. You essentially throw the entire mastery stack out the window if you ice lance an add that will die within a second or two. This mastery is actually worse than the current one from what I can tell, both damage wise and implementation wise. The combat log clutter from this mastery with glyphed IV during frozen orb may turn us into the new BM hunters with stampede, lagging the raid out every time we use IV.

[Kuni Zyrekai]

It won't fire on adds with 1 HP, and it will stop firing if the target dies.

Also, it's 1s intervals at 0 haste. I'm over 54% raid buffed, so it's below 0.75s, and at 0.5s with the meta up.

[unholyness]

Was watching various guilds swapping players in and out, BL frost mage was dead last 30 million behind everyone else and about 40k dps behind in last. Zonkers came in as Fire and was first at 200k dps with Atarax at 125k dps, ready to play fire yet lol?

[Frost1129]

Was watching various guilds swapping players in and out, BL frost mage was dead last 30 million behind everyone else and about 40k dps behind in last. Zonkers came in as Fire and was first at 200k dps with Atarax at 125k dps, ready to play fire yet lol?

The PTR isn't even close to being finished. Why do people keep acting like every build that comes out is final? There will be more frost changes, and fire nerfs. You can make your choice then.

[Deleted]

Posted again in the wrong thread, made this post for this thread:

Puh okay, with "Spoils of Pandaria", "Thok the Bloodthirsty" and Raid Dummy testing, I spent approx 5 hours with the new Frost Mastery. A quick summary:

- Frostbolt debuff has to go or otherwise Frost will not be a viable spec in SoO (Multi target boss fights)

- More spells than Frostbolt, Frostfirebolt and Waterbolt should store Icicles (benefit from mastery). "Spoils of Pandaria" perfectly showed Frost´s weakness. The new ´mastery with a lot of target switching and a lot of multidotting is not working well for Frost (Tries with only 3 - 5% percent Icicles damage). Ice Lance, Blizzard, Frozen Orb, Cone of Cold and the Bombs should benefit from mastery.

- Frost still scales poorly. On the pull with amplifier Trinket and Wusho 2.0 Fire and Arcane pulled 1 - 1.3 million DPS, frost around 500 - 600k with ilvl 540! As mentioned before, more spells should benefit from our new mastery. Even after a few minutes, the gap was very huge between frost and the other two specs, no matter what kind of fight (Spoils or Thok).

- Not the oldest icicle , the weakest one should fired automaticly. Icicles should not launched by ice lance, they should launched by a spell that is off the GCD (maybe a reworked deep freeze?)

- Lost a few icicles during Spoils of Pandaria, because of target switch and adds dying pretty fast, which felt not rewarding. Icicles should refresh.

- Frostbolt need to be nerfed (if more spells will benefit from mastery) or BF FFB need to be buffed. This is not about numbers, it´s about the feeling. Back in Cataclysm, a "Finger of Frost Brain Freeze Frostfirebolt" hit like a truck . Let me always grin like a Cheshire cat everytime I had it up (and Deep Freeze was the other one )

- Letting Waterbolt benefit from mastery (storing icicles) would be okay if (as mentioned above) the lowest icicle will be fired automaticly @ 5 stacks.

- Icy Veins need a rework or the glyph should be baseline and a the old baseline (+20% haste) should be a glyph (switch). We need more room for glyphs (make glyph of water elemental baseline would be another good thing).

- I don´t like the interaction between Icicles and Alter Time and Icicles and Icy Veins. Firing the weakest Icicle instead of the oldest would allow the frost mage to build up a decent Alter Time.

I like the idea and the approach, also the frosty topic of the icicles is much appreciated, but a lot of work has to be done!!

[Akraen]

Only comment on that Pete is that I don't want to have to cram yet another thing into Alter Time.

I think we rely too much on Alter Time for DPS as it is so that we never use it for creative means. I'd personally be happier if Alter Time never extended procs or DPS cooldowns, and just became a survival/fun ability.

Either way I'm concerned about the playstyle that could suggest you forego trinkets/procs sometimes, put your elemental on passive sometimes, in order to have the best AT. I love the skill cap of frost but that's just excessive.

Frost feels fine except when you're in something scaling you backwards to 496 like the LFR or 463 like challenge modes. In those situations you don't generate icicles fast enough to feel like it's remotely rewarding. This also worries me for players below ilvl 522ish. At my ilvl, 544, it feels incredible and I love it-- the damage is just too low.

I did some SoO last night and the fights make you not even want to play. The constant movement and target switching is not fun play, it's not challenging play, it's punishing play. I really want them to understand this fact. My hunter friend and raid leader was with me and he couldn't understand what I was saying.

[voltaa]

Akraen, why would you ever dismiss your elemental in combat? I don't understand what you are getting at with that.

As for the comment about this mastery change at low ilevels...that's not good, if frost isn't feeling good at low ilvl...then mages are pretty much DoA when they first hit 90

[Deleted]

The best mages obviously dismiss the water ele instead of putting it on passive... Sick gamerz.

As for alter time. I am currently in murica so i have not Tried it yet with The new mastery although i see some room for minmaxing your iceicles by putting pet on passive. Frozen orb is gonna be a must for This To Work as you're gonna want to have 2x il, bf up before using those into normal cast frostbolt into another proc. At This point you're trouble is whether you wanna blizzard for procs or frostbolt (ruining your iceicles), obviously water ele freeze IF you can, and obviously do The normal at with full procs asap.

Scrub version is obv, Passive water ele until altertime is done.


Pps sry for all The Capital letters... iPhone

[Deleted]

Did you calculate how DPS you will lose with putting Wally on passive/dismiss it ??
This mastery isn't done like a resource not ignite. There's no way to know if they are good or not because want them all : the little one and the bigger one.

Water Elemental in addition to generate charge can help you by putting pressure on your target.
Don't you think it could be great to have some DPS while being CC ? And Icicle will continue to be generate/release ...

[Akraen]

I meant passive, you know I meant passive. Pedantic arcane mage <3

[Deleted]

Well Akraen, I know exactly what you mean. It was pure horror in Spoils of Pandaria. So many adds that just died and you get a FoF stack in that moment, double ramp up with debuff and icicles, refreshing level 90 buff, trying to get the Icicles on a nearly full HP add, NT on adds that died 5 - 6s later etc. - just a desaster and very frustrating. As fire it was just all about "lets open a big box, gather some adds around it and lets go with amplifier". Arcane was pretty lame with just AE spamming.

The alter time thing, well I really miss the way of frost as it was in cataclysm. It nice to have 1 or 2 big hits from time to time and alter time is the only thing left what you could count as a big hit. Now with icicles, the last one is gone. Hope you understand my concern and why I want to have an interaction with AT. Sure I would like to used it the way you want to use it, but just with a compensation.

There is really nothing left for me what I liked and loved, execpt the blue color of the spells and the welly. No Deep Freeze crits anymore, no FoF BF FFBs, Ice Lance doesn´t feel like Ice lance anymore, Cold Snap mutilated, FoF on demand with pet nova and interaction with Welly completley gone - I don´t know what to think about all the changes since mop.

In Cataclysm, people flamed/blamed Frost because of PvP and for beeing not the top mage PvE spec, but they all lauded the fun and fresh style of play with frost.

[Sombrelune]

"There is really nothing left for me what I liked and loved, execpt the blue color of the spells and the welly. No Deep Freeze crits anymore, no FoF BF FFBs, Ice Lance doesn´t feel like Ice lance anymore, Cold Snap mutilated, FoF on demand with pet nova and interaction with Welly completley gone - I don´t know what to think about all the changes since mop."

What else to say ?

100% true

[Boxedwaffle]

Pete, do you have any of your PTR fights archived? I've been really busy with work and soccer and haven't gotten a chance to test much.

[Deleted]

Yeah, but it was laggy as hell! So don´t be confused about some actions I made ^^

http://de.twitch.tv/citizenpete/b/432832034
http://de.twitch.tv/citizenpete/b/432961334

[Akraen]

Yeah, but it was laggy as hell! So don´t be confused about some actions I made ^^

http://de.twitch.tv/citizenpete/b/432832034
http://de.twitch.tv/citizenpete/b/432961334

Watching this reminds me that I need to study my conversational German more if I intend to job hunt there. (I like to travel to Tubingen, my favorite place in the world, idk if you're near there)

Also reminds me how much target switching sucks.

[Leviatron]

Like I said in another post, with the changes to the stacking debuff from frostbolt not affecting frostbolt damage this would be a good opportunity to buff frostbolt again to help compensate the target switching issues that we still have. Icelance was already buffed by 29%, I forget and am to lazy to go look it up right now, but even then with the changes to mastery it just is not enough to accommodate the damage loss from higher gear levels of mastery at least not by itself in an overall damage point-of-view. Frostfire bolt also needs to be buffed to compensate for the loss of damage from the old mastery: frostburn.

[Deleted]

Tübingen is only 45km away from me : ) Definitively a nice place to hang out.

I think Frost Bomb would be the perfect bomb for a fight like spoils of pandaria, but if you have trinkets like Breath of the Hydra ... Another thing what makes me really mad. Oh and the Water Elemental not jumping down with me is just ....@!)%!

[Deleted]

Verdammte Schwaben. Try Heidelberg Akraen, we have cookies - and the better university

That being said, Spoils of Pandaria seems to be a huge issue right now in terms of playstyle. I wouldn't put too much attention on it right now though, single fights will always favour certain speccs, or disadvantage others. The issues of rapidly dying adds are bad for Frost, but in all fairness, Fire doesn't like that stuff too much either. Moving away from that though, the underlying themes of intense movement and target switching certainly are present in SoO. Frost simply cannot handle those, and will not be able to handle those well without massive overhauls, which we won't see soon. Ironically, the fact that raiding sometimes feels more like PvP in terms of movement right now is directly responsible for Frost being mediocre.

[Deleted]

Ah well, don´t see it like you Ilya. Spoils is just the pinnacle of movement and target switching.

Iimmerseus: Lot´s of little blobs = movement & target switching
THe Fallen Proctectors; Council fight with more adds, more target switch and more movement
Norushen: Upstairs movement involved "downstairs" a lot of adds for movement and target switch
Sha of Pride: Well I don´t know, would say it is more bomb than target switch as it was on PTR - but we have no appropriate tool for that
Iron Juggernaut: That is what comes close to a tank and spank fight
General Nazgrim: Lots of movement lots of target switch
Spoils of Pandaria: The pinnacle of movement and target switch
Thok the BLoodthristy: It´s just an annoying fight ^^
Siegecrafter Blackfuse: Damn, another hardcore movement and target switch fight
Paragons of the KLaxxi: Well a council fight with a lot of cleave, short periods with adds and little bit of target switch

As said before: There has a lot of work to be done with frost to make frost an appropriate tool for SoO

*Edit* Stat Priorites have to change, with Ilvl 551 and the reworked amplification trinket, I`m @ 55.09% selfbuffed (19103) haste.