[Frost]Akraen's Comprehensive Guide to 5.4 Frost(Advanced)V.2

[Txiv]

105% mastery isn't a thing right..

[durrtygoodz]

It's do-able atm but will be easier in the patch

[Pulski]

Yes, I do think haste/crit is one of the potential ways to go (check my armory, I've settled on haste/crit and really have been loving it). The 3 build thing might turn into a 2 build option, but I'm not sure yet.

Haste/Crit or Mastery/Crit. Either way, with 588 amplification you're going to want crit past shatter cap.

It's not ironed out yet but there will be two weird points where frost "breaks"
Extreme mastery, >105% or so, where you no longer use FoF-IceLance. Just don't bother with it.
Extreme haste, either just during unglyphed IV+meta+heroism, or if you reach true maximum haste meta+hero, where you can just spam frost bomb and FFB.

Either way, we are able to get to a point where FFB gets below the gcd in a pure haste build. That has some prospect.

I'd started some math on ignoring Ice Lance/FFB myself and it hadn't worked out yet. I'll have to take a look at that again with the higher stats and maybe give it a go with a high Crit build to offset the fact that FB doesn't shatter.

Does Simcraft support "upgrade=4" yet?

[durrtygoodz]

I'd started some math on ignoring Ice Lance/FFB myself and it hadn't worked out yet. I'll have to take a look at that again with the higher stats and maybe give it a go with a high Crit build to offset the fact that FB doesn't shatter.

Does Simcraft support "upgrade=4" yet?

Well there would never come a time to ignore FFB because it scales with mastery. Ice lance on the other hand only scales with intellect once you have 50% haste.

[Frost1129]

Does Simcraft support "upgrade=4" yet?

Yes. You can change upgrade=2 to upgrade=4 and it should work fine on the current release.

You can also put global_item_upgrade_level=2 in the override tab if you're using the GUI, and you won't need to change the upgrade=2 to upgrade=4 for everything, it'll automatically add 2 upgrades to every item you import/sim.

[aycheff]

I got impatient waiting for wowhead and AMR to update. So I made my own view of how things will look in 5.4.8



I'll be able to go for 28k breakpoint actually. I just need to switch to Blacksmithing, grab Galakras' ring, either pair of haste bracers, and switch my boots to my HWF Sha Sandals (already have).

Can't wait!

I am so... so... soooo jealous 2 months and I've yet to coin and see heroic bracers or legs drop for me lol.

[Oloden]

Hey all, I just returned to the game last week and am still using Throne of Thunder gear but am sitting at 539 ilvl. My question is if it becomes an option should i break my t15 4 piece for ilvl increases and keep 2pc bonus or is it better to stick with t15 4 piece til i can at least get 2pc tier 16?

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/characte...loden/advanced

[Akraen]

Hey all, I just returned to the game last week and am still using Throne of Thunder gear but am sitting at 539 ilvl. My question is if it becomes an option should i break my t15 4 piece for ilvl increases and keep 2pc bonus or is it better to stick with t15 4 piece til i can at least get 2pc tier 16?

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/characte...loden/advanced

The difference between you and warforged gear is like the difference in stats from ICC to Dragon Soul.

While you catch up, just go for item levels. Your set bonuses are all comparatively meaningless. Try to get Tier 16 2pc ASAP, though, regardless of its item level.

[pyrostorm9001]

Extreme mastery, >105% or so, where you no longer use FoF-IceLance. Just don't bother with it.

Just wondering if you used this http://lhiveras-library.com/wow-spells to work that out.
My understanding is that you need the half the amount of mastery you put into the program to be accurate (something in the icicle calculations required it to be done this way as far as i know).

or are you talking about frozen frostbolt targets?

[Akraen]

Just wondering if you used this http://lhiveras-library.com/wow-spells to work that out.
My understanding is that you need the half the amount of mastery you put into the program to be accurate (something in the icicle calculations required it to be done this way as far as i know).

or are you talking about frozen frostbolt targets?

With all due respect... don't you think I'd know that about the mastery calc? I'd be a pretty big disappointment if I made all my posts and guides and never bothered to double check the core math (the stuff that you don't really argue about, i.e. spell damage calcs).

When I say 105% mastery, I mean 52.5 before mage armor (i.e. just from gear). You'd use mage armor which puts the DPET of a Frostbolt+Icicle > Ice Lance(FoF).

I didn't bother do a detailed write-up about it because I loathe mastery builds. But if someone really wants me to, I guess I can.

Imo, haste is where it's at. Flamestrike is now part of my single target rotation.

[pyrostorm9001]

With all due respect... don't you think I'd know that about the mastery calc? I'd be a pretty big disappointment if I made all my posts and guides and never bothered to double check the core math (the stuff that you don't really argue about, i.e. spell damage calcs).

When I say 105% mastery, I mean 52.5 before mage armor (i.e. just from gear). You'd use mage armor which puts the DPET of a Frostbolt+Icicle > Ice Lance(FoF).

I didn't bother do a detailed write-up about it because I loathe mastery builds. But if someone really wants me to, I guess I can.

Imo, haste is where it's at. Flamestrike is now part of my single target rotation.

I only ask because I was curious and you didnt mention anything about mage armor, you did say extreme but being frost I automatically think frost not mage.
and as you didnt really clarify it I was left to speculate. Im sure im not the first person to wonder about your 105% mastery post.
and with all due respect i didnt question how you do mastery calcs. im wondering if you are aware how http://lhiveras-library.com/wow-spells does it, seeing as it wasnt created by you, but is a wildly used and freely available tool.

[Akraen]

Haha it's all good. Lhivera's calculator is like... a godsend. Saves me so much time in excel!

[CloudedInSanity]

Hey there, I will admit I am not the best at reading charts like these. However, I just started playing my Mage again and have trying to find the best way to gear it. Seems there is a lot of controversy between what is the best way to gear for Frost.

Regardless, it seems like I should be aiming for the highest haste break point I can obtain, while dumping the rest into Mastery?

Any feedback would be great thanks. :X

Edit: From looking at previous posts it seems Haste > Mastery until 14242 then Mastery > Haste otherwise? I think that is what I have gathered.

[Akraen]

Very, very pleased with just a simple haste > crit=mastery build I ran with last night.

http://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/...F2yfBh#boss=-2

With the new ilvls, don't ever try to compete with Arcane on pure multidot, and fire did very well single target, but I pulled some crazy good moves on behalf of frost on a couple fights, particularly 2-target and straight AoE. We're scaling very well for once.

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Hey there, I will admit I am not the best at reading charts like these. However, I just started playing my Mage again and have trying to find the best way to gear it. Seems there is a lot of controversy between what is the best way to gear for Frost.

Regardless, it seems like I should be aiming for the highest haste break point I can obtain, while dumping the rest into Mastery?

Any feedback would be great thanks. :X

Edit: From looking at previous posts it seems Haste > Mastery until 14242 then Mastery > Haste otherwise? I think that is what I have gathered.

There's no one way, there are 3 Link me your armory and I'll give you more detail. But beyond that, find a point of haste you're comfortable with-- if you like more haste, just keep going for haste. Once you get above ilvl 580, crit=mastery in enough situations where I think it's good to at least go for shatter cap again, and definitely justified going above shatter cap. My BiS profile is 28k haste / 7k crit / 7k mastery, for perspective-- but it's completely viable to do mastery/haste/crit, or 14242h>m>c.

[CloudedInSanity]

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/characte...urewind/simple

Just my alt atm. Not very geared, but I plan on gearing it up and getting it into normals soon. I am one those people though that has to be Min/Max'd D:

[Akraen]

updated the OP w/5.4.8 rule of thumb

[Frost1129]

updated the OP w/5.4.8 rule of thumb

Where exactly do you go into showing this to be true?

[Sarm]

I've finally, barely, managed to reach 14242 haste rating but I'm iffy if it's what I should really be doing. A small part of the problem is that my group only infrequently has a shadow priest for the haste buff so I'm often going without it, but the biggest one is that I frequently seem to have higher-than-normal latency that seems to hurt me harder than when I was just gearing for as much mastery as possible. For example, last night I spent a full hour hovering around 500 ping before rising up to around 1,000 for several minutes, before finally settling down around 200, which is typical for me. Unfortunately, I can't do anything about my internet connection short of moving to a new house just to play WoW, and...yeah.

With this in mind, would sticking with a heavy mastery build (despite the guide's suggestions of either the haste or mixture build) end up being better for me? Or would it not really matter? Frost is basically the only spec I can play since arcane requires rune of power and my latency fluctuations make fire unreasonable even if I had the crit for it, so I'm feeling stuck on what to do.

[Akraen]

Where exactly do you go into showing this to be true?

"Consider"

And the trend is why I ask frost mages to consider, plug the values into TC lite yourself. I didn't do a heavy analysis.

- - - Updated - - -

I've finally, barely, managed to reach 14242 haste rating but I'm iffy if it's what I should really be doing. A small part of the problem is that my group only infrequently has a shadow priest for the haste buff so I'm often going without it, but the biggest one is that I frequently seem to have higher-than-normal latency that seems to hurt me harder than when I was just gearing for as much mastery as possible. For example, last night I spent a full hour hovering around 500 ping before rising up to around 1,000 for several minutes, before finally settling down around 200, which is typical for me. Unfortunately, I can't do anything about my internet connection short of moving to a new house just to play WoW, and...yeah.

With this in mind, would sticking with a heavy mastery build (despite the guide's suggestions of either the haste or mixture build) end up being better for me? Or would it not really matter? Frost is basically the only spec I can play since arcane requires rune of power and my latency fluctuations make fire unreasonable even if I had the crit for it, so I'm feeling stuck on what to do.

If you don't have a shadowpriest, literally all of this advice goes out the window. In this particular scenario, I'd probably just set haste=mastery=critto25%>crit25%+, and let AMR maximize your total stats instead of min/max or breakpoints. I know that seems odd, but you are limited by too many factors to take advantage of a min/max approach.

[Sarm]

I'll give that a try, thanks. I just felt unsure because despite how well I'd actually play, I had the impression that at least following a min/maxing reforging guide is the least amount of effort required for best results and that it'd reflect on me worse as a player for not doing that at the bare minimum.