Raiding ICC as Frost

[krysak]

Hi guys , well th purpose of this thread is to encourage my fellow mages to raid as frost.

Since 3.3.3 i've ben playing around with fire and frost to see if it was worth it.

First thing i noted was that Nibelung is really worth for frost , especially on trash mobs , on ICC i got around 7 valkyrs up at a time, this never happened to me with arcane.

Well i tried frost on a couple of bosses namely saurfang and festergut, and the dps was good , about 5% bellow the other mage on the guild(arcane) , but on bosses that my guild was yet to kill(queen) i went arcane.

Well we were having trouble on her Incite Terror cuz too many ppl were dying and i started to ice block on the terrors , the proble is that with arcane you only get to use 1 IB and the other form of protection would be mana shield but we are never gonna use that.

So yesterday i decided to try frost on the queen.

And it was just amazing , first tries on the burst i was neck to neck with the arcane mage of the guild , he was about 14k on the burst and i was about 13k. After that he got bitten and there's no way to compare after that.

But around the fourth try i really "burst" and got bitten first .... my god amazing i did a 76k Deep Freeze on her.

But what i mean is that the overall dps of my arcane friend and me was just the same on most tries we ended at 10k each.

So from now on i personally am gonna raid frost.

Just so you guys don't think we are noobs , here are the armories.
Mine:
http://www.wowarmory.com/character-s...ashi&cn=Krysak

My Arcane friend:
http://www.wowarmory.com/character-s...cn=mark%C3%A3o

[Brandoh]

i would deff try this i had a bit more hit gear

[taureninator]

frost brings alot of utility to fights and might be wroth it on some fights - i know i personally can solo the bombs on princes with my frost spec

that said arcane parses much higher in ideal situations - if your parsing the same as an arcane mage then the arcane mage isnt pushing as well as you are - frost initial burst is good because you can deep freeze which is a huge hitter - in terms of sustained boss dps tho, arcane will always pull ahead - numbers dont lie

couple of notes:
your arcane buddy is way over hit cap - he should swap some peices out to get more SP
frost pushes way higher with the more haste you have - so having more haste will def increase your frost dps along with arcane

[Gasillio]

A few questions about your armory.

1) Is the int trinket any good for frost? I don't really see oom as frost's problem, but then again I haven't been frost since BC. Can you shed some light?
2)What's the purpose of your enduring winter (2/3)? You glyphed for the elemental to never die, why are you talenting for it too. Or, is it for replenishment, in which case, don't other people in your raid (Surv Hunters / SPriests / Destro Locks / Retadins) have it? Wouldn't these two points be better in Frost Warding so you can get a different trinket?
3) Haste or Crit? Most of your gems are haste, but you do have some crit ones. Which is it?

[krysak]

To answer Gasillio.
I'm using the int because of the on use of it really. I was thinking on getting the emblems of frost trink (+hit and on use 700 something sp) and with that hit i could change my wrist, and my back.

And about the enduring winter , it was just a test , but on heroics i get in some mana issues , but gonna try to drop them on the icc 25 to see how it goes.

About crit , the only crit gem i have is on the wrist which im specifically using for the frost build, my arcane gear is really mostly haste.


Actually im gonna use this thread a bit more.

Im gonna raid as frost.

Should i focus on haste or crit?

I was thinking on getting the frost emblem cloak.
An changing some gems as well.

What you guys think?

[Gasillio]

I'd suggest the hit trinket then. Or, you could get Purified Lunar Dust. Probably not ideal compared to DFO or Reign obviously, but the static spell power is probably better than the on use of the hit trinket.

[Skarrd]

If you were bitten first and tied the arcane mage in damage, you lost.

[Nirual]

I checked a dps calculator. The estimates correlated pretty much with my own impression of going frost not being a noticable dps loss with my gear. I suspect the gap would be bigger if my gear was better, but frost has other advantages.

In reality, my dps was quite a bit lower until I macroed Waterbolt into my Frostbolt casts and made some adjustments to my gear to better suit frost. Pretty happy with how the spec turned out so far, and it feels a bit more involved than arcane did.

Should i focus on haste or crit?

Haste, easily. The faster you push out frostbolts, the more chances you get to proc FoF and Brainfreeze, and the previous one makes your spells crit a lot anyway.

A few questions about your armory.

1) Is the int trinket any good for frost? I don't really see oom as frost's problem, but then again I haven't been frost since BC. Can you shed some light?
2)What's the purpose of your enduring winter (2/3)? You glyphed for the elemental to never die, why are you talenting for it too. Or, is it for replenishment, in which case, don't other people in your raid (Surv Hunters / SPriests / Destro Locks / Retadins) have it? Wouldn't these two points be better in Frost Warding so you can get a different trinket?

Int still is a pretty decent stat, though frost doesn't benefit from it as much as arcane. 2/3 EW is a valid choice for a somewhat more reliable replenishment uptime if your raid group tends to lack other specs (which was the case for my ICC10 this week, although one of the hunters could've gone surv in a pinch).

[Siddarta]

7/12 in 25man?

[Kelesti]

2)What's the purpose of your enduring winter (2/3)? You glyphed for the elemental to never die, why are you talenting for it too. Or, is it for replenishment, in which case, don't other people in your raid (Surv Hunters / SPriests / Destro Locks / Retadins) have it? Wouldn't these two points be better in Frost Warding so you can get a different trinket?

Survival Hunters don't really exist anymore. Well they do, but rarely. Most of the time they're wanting to go Marksman with all that ArPen gear and just start drooling at the DPS increase. The same can be said about Destruction Warlocks. Some may like the playstyle, but it's like the Arcane vs Fire debate, before the fire buffs.

Destro "looks" like it gets buffed, but really it's only bringing Demonology up higher. In t10, Shadow Priests take Mind Blast out of their rotation after a certain SP level.
Ret Paladins are the only DPS spec that is actually required to take Replenishment to its full extent for their own viable DPS.

So if you lack a Ret Paladin, or you're working on 10's, there isn't really a "bad reason" to take 2/3 Enduring Winter.

[Swizzle]

If you were bitten first and tied the arcane mage in damage, you lost.

i flipped through their WoL...yeah...i would not base any impressions about the viability of frost from this fellow.