Kuni's Frost Mage PVE Guide - 8.1.0

[Cosmic Janitor]

Yes you need to stay at range from the target so the travel time of your GS is long enough for your flurry to actually hit the target first. Should be safe from like 10-15 yards, never ever GS when in melee range Then if it still doesn't crit, we'll just have to hit the crit cap, which is hardly doable at this moment anyway :/

Ah thanks that explains it. Guess I need to cheese a few boss tactics where we are supposed to stack behind the boss.

[Kuni Zyrekai]

Ah thanks that explains it. Guess I need to cheese a few boss tactics where we are supposed to stack behind the boss.

It's 10-11 yards to spell impact point of boss. It's a bit hard to judge on taller bosses that you're up close on. In most cases you can take a step or two back and you're likely fine on something the size of a raid boss.


Meaningless info:

The game is segmented into 40ms slices, where all actions that happened in that 40ms are considered at the same time. Winter's Chill actually applies one 40ms slice after Flurry's impact/chill application for some reason, and Glacial Spike hits in that same slice, so GS can't consider WC since WC isn't up the slice prior. If Blizz ever fixes it to properly apply with the chill, this will disappear entirely.

[Sitoy]

Is anyone else noticing some weird stuff happening with your water elemental and other pets in general? There is a few times in mythic+ where we finish off a trashpack and I catch my water elemental starting to cast on some totally random un-pulled mob which would lead to total disaster if I didn't interrupt its cast. There is also times my water elemental decides to just wander off after we have finished some trash or sometimes he wont follow me and a patrol comes and he pulls it.

From my impression the water elemental and pets in general isn't be able to pull stuff without the player actively telling it to do so, but some weird stuff is going on. My friend who is a warlock has even more annoyances with his pet doing the same stuff but more frequent.

[Kuni Zyrekai]

Haven't had mine freak out and go after unrelated things, but it not having the old Glyph of Water Elemental functionality is a bit of a pain.

[Cosmic Janitor]

Is anyone else noticing some weird stuff happening with your water elemental and other pets in general? There is a few times in mythic+ where we finish off a trashpack and I catch my water elemental starting to cast on some totally random un-pulled mob which would lead to total disaster if I didn't interrupt its cast. There is also times my water elemental decides to just wander off after we have finished some trash or sometimes he wont follow me and a patrol comes and he pulls it.

From my impression the water elemental and pets in general isn't be able to pull stuff without the player actively telling it to do so, but some weird stuff is going on. My friend who is a warlock has even more annoyances with his pet doing the same stuff but more frequent.

Siege of Boralus. It randomly starts fighting enemies in the background (luckily non-elite) for what ever reason, despite me fighting on the other side of a plaza, so it couldn't even have been a tab target mistake.

[Sitoy]

Yo, I watched a PoV of a Mage on G'huun and noticed his rotation was very different from what I'm used to. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IG-iZNXrZcQ&t=1s
He basicly always use Glacial Spike whenever it is avaible, he also casts Ebonbolt to just use Flurry and Ice Lance. Anyone knows why he does this?

[Kuni Zyrekai]

Yo, I watched a PoV of a Mage on G'huun and noticed his rotation was very different from what I'm used to. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IG-iZNXrZcQ&t=1s
He basicly always use Glacial Spike whenever it is avaible, he also casts Ebonbolt to just use Flurry and Ice Lance. Anyone knows why he does this?

He replied to a comment saying he doesn't like fishing for procs. Fair I guess? Still suboptimal.

[Sitoy]

Yeah I asked him :P I also realized he went Splitting Ice so it would be worth casting Glacial Spike when it cleaves

[m2k]

Did something change with shattering glacial spike? I cant manage to get over 55% crit against the dungeon training dummy in dazar'alor. my crit ingame is 19.2%.

I thought that would mean 78% crit chance?

[Kuni Zyrekai]

Nothing in hotfix data, seems like bad luck?

[m2k]

Yeah i guess so... did i new test with more haste and i ended up with 70%.

[zeq]

I've healed for nearly every xpac now and I feel like I'm missing something on my mage. First xpac I've played the mage into raiding. Fights where I can sit still and cast, I feel like my damage just isn't there. Another mage that isn't quite as geared in my guild is smoking me by 3k more DPS.

https://worldofwarcraft.com/en-us/ch.../illidan/macki

I prioritize glacial spike, ice lance with procs and frozen orb. Spam frostbolt unti a proc, ebonbolt to get a flurry proc with a ice lance after each flurry.

[kheath812]

I've healed for nearly every xpac now and I feel like I'm missing something on my mage. First xpac I've played the mage into raiding. Fights where I can sit still and cast, I feel like my damage just isn't there. Another mage that isn't quite as geared in my guild is smoking me by 3k more DPS.

https://worldofwarcraft.com/en-us/ch.../illidan/macki

I prioritize glacial spike, ice lance with procs and frozen orb. Spam frostbolt unti a proc, ebonbolt to get a flurry proc with a ice lance after each flurry.

are you saving glacial for when you have a brain freeze proc to shatter it with? glacial -> flurry -> il. dont use glacial without a brain freeze and only use ebonbolt to get a brain freeze for a glacial spike.

[zeq]

are you saving glacial for when you have a brain freeze proc to shatter it with? glacial -> flurry -> il. dont use glacial without a brain freeze and only use ebonbolt to get a brain freeze for a glacial spike.

Feel like I'm missing something on that. BF is for flurry mainly, isn't it? And flurry puts on winters chil, but that's gone far too quickly for a GS to get off.

[Nikkaszal]

Feel like I'm missing something on that. BF is for flurry mainly, isn't it? And flurry puts on winters chil, but that's gone far too quickly for a GS to get off.

For Frost (and Frost ONLY), spells calculate their crit rolls on impact, not when they leave your hand.

When you cast an instant Flurry from a BF proc, the missiles travel so fast that they impact the target before the missile from your previous cast. Therefore, if you have a BF proc and GS available, you cast GS and then immediately Flurry. They hit before the GS missile, letting it benefit from Winters Chill.

[Deleted]

Question!
When you get a FoF charge on your fifth Frostbolt, where you go into casting Glacial Spike. And you spot it early in the cast. Do you.. Cancel Glacial Spike > Ice Lance > Glacial Spike > Flurry > Ice Lance. Or do you just eat that proc? Same with if you have Ebonbolt and you're casting that.
I think someone asked this about when you're casting Frostbolts and you have two charges of FoF up, you could cancel it and -maybe- get a bit of a gain but it's not worth doing in the grand scheme of things. How does that work with Glacial Spike/Ebonbolt?

[Kuni Zyrekai]

You just eat the proc. Lance is honestly really bad right now, and you would have still eaten the proc during Legion when Lance was ridiculous.

GS/EB aren't worth the cancel in the long run.

[EliteNightKnight]

Nice guide, thank you. Gameplay and rotation is pretty same like in MoP, when I last time played frost mage. I really miss frostfire bolt though, don't like this new flurry thing.

Also, I'm pretty surprised we have an option to play without pet, but don't have a talent to make it super tanky for open-world content. Would be pretty cool for a filthy casual like me to steamroll open-world content, especially elites.

[Kuni Zyrekai]

Guess I should ask for a title update since we're 8.1 and I'm home again.

[Kuni Zyrekai]

I suppose we're 8.2 now too.