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

[aggixx]

The problem would be that you wouldn't know when the icicles stopped firing, especially when terminated early when something dies.

Ah ok, I knew there was a delay on them firing when you trigger them all but didn't know there could be complications like that. It would likely only be possible if you could consider all of the Icicles permanently gone the instant the player uses Ice Lance (regardless of the fact that it would take time for that to happen).

[Kuni Zyrekai]

Now I don't play frost so I'm not familiar, but even if there's no buffs or otherwise API available to get information about your Icicles, could you not just replicate the logic the game code would use to track icicles? Watch for any actions the user does that would add or remove an icicle and just maintain that information completely independent of the API telling you how many icicles you have. Should be possible, just not particularly easy.

I've been working with a couple friends to try to, but the issue is ice lance's barrage. The fact that you can barrage more than the 5 you have if you're generating quick enough makes it really inaccurate to measure when it ends.

[Akraen]

@Aoeina:


disregard the EoY & Frozen Orb #s, I've taken them out of the formulas.

[theripfire]

im at 18.94% hit i cannot reforge it away but i can change a couple of hit/haste gems but is it worth losing the intell since it 660 intell lost? fill it with pure intell ? or pure haste ? or fill it with mastery? or just leave it alone?

thanks!

[Deleted]

@Tsuruai

the question is quite simple to answer.... following akraens guide you would like 320 haste or mastery (depending on build...) over 160 int or the mix 80 int +160 secondary
so you are using hit/haste in a socket and get 60 int bonus per socket on an item.
the hit is wasted, as you are over the cap.... the question comes down to: 160 secondary stat + 60 int or 320 secondary....
Answer (look at akraens advice): use the 320 haste or mastery gem and ignore the socketbonus.

[Sinergy]

TL: DR, Casual player that's not going to increase in ilvl quickly, should I transition more mastery around ilvl 534

Armory: edit - as a long time reader, first time poster it won't let me link it: Sargeras - Blackstryke
Mian Spec: Frost
ilvl: 534

I've read through all of the threads here as well as a lot of other research. That said, most of the optimization content is aimed at more serious players with more serious ilvls. As a more casual player, even getting the legendary cloak is still a task to me (recently back after a long time off) let alone getting more impressive gear throughout.

I've tried to follow the guides as best as I can, but I'm hitting an issue at the moment. I haven't had the chance to fully test it yet, but as I can barely scrape my way to the first haste breakpoint, I'm thinking mastery may be better for me at my current gear until I can get some marked improvements.

What got me here is taking the AMR information from post 1 in this thread, askmrrobot tells me to totally switch my haste to mastery. Assuming that I'm going to be only marginally able to increase my ilvl in the next few weeks, it does make sense to me that this could work.

Most posts were people ask this, they are advised to go haste. But if they aren't able to get past the base level haste breakpoint for a longer period of time, does this still make sense. Can anyone else chime on this? (i.e. would mastery create more dps in the mean time)

Also, the AMR number for Crit is very low (1.0) compared to the baseline in askrobot - is that correct?

Thank you very much in advance for any advice any one can offer, I really do appreciate it.

[Deleted]

TL: DR, Casual player that's not going to increase in ilvl quickly, should I transition more mastery around ilvl 534

Armory: edit - as a long time reader, first time poster it won't let me link it: Sargeras - Blackstryke
Mian Spec: Frost
ilvl: 534

I've read through all of the threads here as well as a lot of other research. That said, most of the optimization content is aimed at more serious players with more serious ilvls. As a more casual player, even getting the legendary cloak is still a task to me (recently back after a long time off) let alone getting more impressive gear throughout.

I've tried to follow the guides as best as I can, but I'm hitting an issue at the moment. I haven't had the chance to fully test it yet, but as I can barely scrape my way to the first haste breakpoint, I'm thinking mastery may be better for me at my current gear until I can get some marked improvements.

What got me here is taking the AMR information from post 1 in this thread, askmrrobot tells me to totally switch my haste to mastery. Assuming that I'm going to be only marginally able to increase my ilvl in the next few weeks, it does make sense to me that this could work.

Most posts were people ask this, they are advised to go haste. But if they aren't able to get past the base level haste breakpoint for a longer period of time, does this still make sense. Can anyone else chime on this? (i.e. would mastery create more dps in the mean time)

Also, the AMR number for Crit is very low (1.0) compared to the baseline in askrobot - is that correct?

Thank you very much in advance for any advice any one can offer, I really do appreciate it.

What Akraen recommends in his guide for AMR is not a set of stat weights, it is a priority for AMR. You could go haste 1.3, mastery 1.2 and crit 1.1 and it would yield roughly the same result. By putting crit on 1.0 you make sure that it wants to get rid of crit at any cost. Just like us frost mages. Also, I would say that for your gear it would be easiest to stick to 9522 haste cap and go from there.

However, I must urge you to keep in mind that builds are a playstyle preference, not a game changer. Each build works just as well as the other one. Sure, they all have their individual strengths and weaknesses, but they all work competitively. I'd advise focusing on improving play(Uptimes, snapshotting, Alter Time and other forms of play) rather than a build.

[Deleted]

What Draghonfourt says is correct. Just be carefull not to lower the AMR values of haste and mastery below half of the int value (currently default in AMR is 6.35) as it will have you gemming full int gems in red slots (a big no-no for mages at the moment).

Holding to the AMR values Akraen describes will get you your desired optimal gemming/enchanting.

[Sinergy]

Thank you very much for the feedback, it's always appreciated!

I'm going to give the Mastery focus a route, and do some testing to see where it gets me relative to my play style. Just to check, the AMR values in the first post are:

Mastery 3.6
Haste 3.38
Crit 1.0

Does it make sense to leave that as is, with Crit so low? My assumption would be yes at a lower ilvl as there won't be enough in the secondary stats to focus on more than one of them anyway.

[Aeres]

Yes, just make sure you've set your haste soft cap while in your weight edit page as well.

[holistra]

Morning All.
eu . battle . net/wow/en/character/twilights-hammer/Valhella/advanced
www . worldoflogs . com/reports/73s2dgsxfs72fgoi/details/15/

[Akraen]

Hi - this isn't exactly a "please fix me" helpline, Holistra/Valhella. I'd appreciate it if you could ask a question or two maybe. If you do, I'll gladly help you out

[Jalanna]

Just got turned onto this thread by a fellow mage in my guild, and I just want to make sure I'm understanding how to optimize gear through AMR correctly.

I'm ilvl 562, and just went with default settings in AMR for gear optimization. I can get to 14242 haste rating effectively enough, so I should set that as my "Manual" Cap, and then edit stat weights for Haste (to 14242) at 3.8, Mastery at 3.45, Haste (14242+) at 3.38, and then lower both Crit categories to 1.0?

Just a quick confirmation is all I need. Thanks in advance for the work done guys. I appreciate what you're doing for the mage community. This is a long thread to read through, and I have a lot of work to do on that front.

[Deleted]

Are the haste rating recommendations for unbuffed mages? Frost Armour and the haste raid buff doesn't give rating, just pure percentages right?

[robjah]

Hey Akrean,

Long time reader, first time poster ;-)
First i'd like to thank you for this guide, and the kindness of helping people improve!
After a long time I have returned playing WOW, and since I never played a mage, I thought hell, why not!
I've been playing for some weeks now, and my current max level obtainable gear is NORMAL SoO.
I think my rotation is pretty good already, I am however in great doubt of how to reforge my stats optimally.
So I decided to read up the last couple of days, and I started out with your 'mastery build' (which, as far as understand correctly, is get haste to 9522 then reforge to mastery whilst using your recommended AMR value's). I also premiumed AMR to make use of the 'best in bags' feature to help me decide what items to pick.
The result is in my armory which can be fount at ; eu.battle.net/wow/en/character/ravencrest/jamli/simple

My questions are basically ;

Am I walking the right path stats wise, considering my (poor) gear? (I don't really raided that much the last days so I can't provide worldoflogs yet, but i'm pretty confident with my rotation).

And more important, how shall I continue? If I check ARM, I can also get a lot more haste while re-gemming and reforging, but i have no clue WHEN i should go for the haste build (and if that's even applicable when you only do normal). I also read guide's which just say HASTE all the way, also your TL;DR states that one should go for cap then the rest in mastery, but i'm confused when a softcap is called 'obtainable'.

Hope i'm not to fuzzy in the questioning and hope you (and maybe some other guys) can help me out.

Cheers!

[Deleted]

@Jalanna:
Your way will get you the correct results. Good luck reading through the thread, though it may seem daunting it does get quite amusing at times


@Pulkan:
The haste ratings mentioned are what you see in your character screen, both the haste buff and our armor don't change that (be carefull with PBOI as that does alter your ratings). Both armor and buff are multiplicative meaning they add a flat percentage as well as interact with your current haste percentage (ie. at 10% haste you gain 7.7% haste from frost armor to a total of 17.7%)

it gets explained in more detail here: http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/...2#post23281192

@Robjah:
For your current gear I think your not doing anything wrong if you are going for the mastery build. How you continue is up to you really, all three build have been proven to be viable and eventhough each shines in their own area all do fairly well regardless. As for what's the best reforge path for you is something you'll have to find out for yourself by experimenting. When raiding “only” normal you can still go for the haste build fairly easy, I'm not much further ahead progression wise and the haste build is the one I prefer actually.

A softcap being obtainable implies that if you can reach a breakpoint (for our dot) or the GCD fairly easily without bending over backwards to reach the cap/breakpoint you should as it'll up your damage slightly. In your case you'd definitely have the option of going for the 12,684 breakpoint, which would put you into the mixture build range basically.

All this said, it's more important to get uptime for invocation and bomb to near perfect than a few points shuffled around between haste and mastery. Play what you enjoy most and the damage will come naturally.

[Akraen]

Cryogenics covered you all well

[robjah]

Cheers Cyro, gonna try the mixture out for tonight!

[Deleted]

Akraen, I was applying to a guild not long ago and when I mentioned that I enjoyed frost and I was happy to see it being played in pve loads of people disagreed and told me I was stupid and that fire was the best. Only one of these people played mage, the rest didn't. How can I argue my point that frost is not useless? Because it feels like everyone is stuck in their old ways.

[Akraen]

Show them logs?

I mean, if their leadership is that ignorant this deep into the expansion then you probably wouldn't want to join them anyway :P