Kuni's Frost Mage PVE Guide - 8.1.0

[Deleted]

I get it completely. Like people said, we are already at 70% uptimes, 100% uptime isn't really that much more extreme. If you get stunned during evocation for any reason, then Arcane falls off a cliffs. Designed around a lengthy cooldown? you mean like Combustion, where 10 seconds does as much damage as a minute outside of it?

10s cooldowns are not comparable to at 70% uptime buff that if you lose 4s off you can end up dropping the buff before cooldowns come back to extend it. 10s cooldowns can be planned and are short enough that you can make sure that you know you can get them off without disruption. IV is up all the time during all mechanics, you are fettered into keeping it running through those mechanics and if one of those mechanics disrupts that flow it can totally fuck your damage. Have you even raided with frost on mythic? Because your comments really don't sound like you get how punishing the spec is in actual real raiding content?

Or what if, the buff drops and you fucking DIE. Oh wait, shadow has that. And its the coolest fucking spell in the game. Do you think every class in the game hits like a "wet noodle" when Lust falls off? Lol

No class is balanced around bloodlust, hence why it is such a powerful cooldown. STM is only usable in the execute phase of a fight, not the whole duration, and it brings far far more damage than IV does that is why it is cool. Because IV has such a high uptime, the spec is balanced around that, therefore not achieving that uptime means that the spec massively under performs, i cannot think of a more punishing maintenance buff attached to a spec in the whole history of wow apart from savage roar which still doesn't even come close. Again it just feels quite obvious that you don't raid mythic with this spec enough to warrant taking your opinions(which of course you are entitled to) seriously because you are missing the fundamental reasons why the spec needs changing.

[LordAmbrosia]

I don't raid mythic, my guild is too small. We are finished with heroic content, for a while in EN. I've played frost for ever fight and never had a problem with losing IV too soon. If there's some mythic mechanics that make the spec weak, well that's why we have 2 other specs to play.

[Deleted]

I don't raid mythic, my guild is too small. We are finished with heroic content, for a while in EN. I've played frost for ever fight and never had a problem with losing IV too soon. If there's some mythic mechanics that make the spec weak, well that's why we have 2 other specs to play.

As i suspected, ok mate no worries.

[nickseng]

Also, since you brought up combustion and s2m as comparison for gameplay revolving around long cds .... you know they're getting nerfed, right?

Blizz really doesn't like that.

[D3athsting]

Can some1 post a build for hc odyn? BC doesn't seem to work with frequent target switching

[Deleted]

Can some1 post a build for hc odyn? BC doesn't seem to work with frequent target switching

What version of the BC build are you running??? Unfortunately unless you have mastery gear and the right traits for the glacial spike build, BC/TV is still the best you are going to get, even with a movement heavy fight like Odyn. Through phase 1 and 2 with proper positioning the spec is fine as it has enough utility to keep up with the movement and as for target switching i have no issues as i am running UM instead of frost bomb so those globals are pretty much taken up by frostbolts, so BC never drops. It's phase three that is the issue, but tbh its a hard phase for all casters.

For Odyn and heavy movement mythic fights my build is BC/S/IF/FT/IF/UM/TV, its far more forgiving than the RoP/FB version which i have found to be a nightmare in mythic content. For more static fights i run RoF/S/RoP/FT/IF/UM/TV since i prefer the front loaded damage of RoF when i know i can channel it without disruption.

[D3athsting]

Do i have to save ice lances when i only have 1 charge (2 with trait) and use only one at 2/3 charges if i'm not at chain reaction cap like you do with arcane missiles with <4 arcane charges?

[Deleted]

Do i have to save ice lances when i only have 1 charge (2 with trait) and use only one at 2/3 charges if i'm not at chain reaction cap like you do with arcane missiles with <4 arcane charges?

Generally yep, i burn through all my cooldowns at the start to get IV upto the max then concentrate on extending as much as possible, when IV drops, i switch to never delaying cooldowns and trying to spend icelances on 3xcr stacks as much as possible. The actual most important thing for getting high uptime on CR is doing the Frostbolt>flurry combo, so you have to try to stay 23y away from your target. It cannot be understated enough IMO, getting the most out of CR is what is propping the spec up if you have bad RNG and drop veins early.

[Krazzorx]

Was wondering where I could post looking for some help using my logs and what I'm doing wrong?

[D3athsting]

Did they change ice floes recently? i did some testing a month ago and it was working with ray of frost but it no longer works, only with norgannon works now...

[pkm]

Did they change ice floes recently? i did some testing a month and it was working with ray of frost but it no longer works anymore, only works with norgannon now...

Ray of frost was never working with ice floes...

[Deleted]

Blizzard (New) Each time Blizzard deals damage, the cooldown of Frozen Orb is reduced by 0.5 sec. Mage - Frost Spec.

Blizzard Ice shards pelt the target area, dealing [ 8 + 396% of Spell Power ] Frost damage over 8 sec and reducing movement speed by 50% for 15 sec. Each time Blizzard deals damage, the cooldown of Frozen Orb is reduced by 0.5[/ins] sec. Mage - Frost Spec. 2.5% of Base Mana. 35 yd range. 8 sec cast (Channeled). 8 sec cooldown.

Cold Snap Resets the cooldown of your Frost Nova, Cone of Cold, Ice Barrier, and Ice Block. Mage - Frost Spec. Instant. 6 min cooldown. 5 min cooldown.

Fingers of Frost Frostbolt and Frozen Orb damage have a 12% chance, and Blizzard damage has a 2% chance, to grant a charge of Fingers of Frost. Fingers of Frost causes your next Ice Lance to deal damage as if the target were frozen. Maximum 2 charges. Mage - Frost Spec.

Ice Barrier Shields you for 30 60 sec, absorbing [ 1,000% of Frost Spell Power ] damage. Melee attacks against you reduce the attacker's movement speed by 50%. Mage - Frost Spec. 3% of Base Mana. Instant. 30 sec cooldown. 25 sec cooldown.

Still not sure if that blizzard is a now back to a channel is a typo, tho i'm not convinced it's not. Certainly its removal from FoF kills it from the ST rotation now, so it being a channel would be the final nail in the coffin it needs to achieve this. However even with it reducing the cooldown of frozen orb it still needs a massive raise in coefficient if they want us to use it for mass aoe and especially if this is to address frosts woeful weakness in M+ where the average pull is ~5mobs so you are going to need 2 full channels to get FO back, sure it can't be buffed to the level of some snap aoe that melee has, but to a sufficient level that when sustained for more than 2 channels it will catch up with the FO reset making it much more useful at +10 M+ where we will ordinarily never get an invite.

I don't mind having to channel for our aoe, sure it's boring but if thats what i have to put up with to do semi-decent aoe, then thats fine by me, since we are strong at ST and cleave to compensate.

From a PvP aspect these changes are pretty amazing for our survivability, getting cold snap back baseline is so good as it allows us to keep shimmer against caster comps and the new glacial insulation talent synergizes really well with cold snap and frigid winds so against high physical damage melee comps that like to stun you so you get the old blink back for avoiding that and are way more tanky as well as better at snaring. I can feel godcomp being top tier again with these changes for sure.

No changes to our T19 4p bonus yet, just hoping they are getting to that as clearly it was made to sinergize with the old beta build that was based around resetting frozen orb.

[Deleted]

Im pretty sure the channeled isnt typo since now it even says its 8sec cast(channel) which didnt happen before with the typo

[Deleted]

Blizzard is not channelled on the PTR! Same as live fire and forget.

[FrostyButt]

Blizzard is not channelled on the PTR! Same as live fire and forget.

Good. Because that would completely make the legendary belt useless.

[Deleted]

Blizzard is not channelled on the PTR! Same as live fire and forget.

Good news, haven't had a chance to get on the PTR to test myself today. Still tho that now means the coefficient won't get a hike so actual sustained aoe will be worse, since it doesn't proc fingers anymore, as i doubt the orb reset will currently will be quick enough. Perhaps if they raised it to 0.75s or 1s per target.

Better still if blizzard applied the winters chill effect when it hits 4+ mobs, then that would open up the doors to use shatter mechanics for aoe, something that really resonates with class fantasy in my eyes, as well as having zero effect on ST damage.

[Gavran]

I just got legendary braceres. Is anything change in rotation? Should i ever cast normal icy lance to keep up stacks?
Thx

[Deleted]

I just got legendary braceres. Is anything change in rotation? Should i ever cast normal icy lance to keep up stacks?
Thx

I asked this and apparently the answer is no because it's more important to ensure uptime on chain reaction stacks and brain freeze procs by casting frostbolt. Though, in the next patch, chain reaction is being nerfed and ice lance buffed, so perhaps this will change.

[Deleted]

Still really missing that 8% haste though on PTR. Even though number tuning can make things like live, i'm no fan of it.

[Deleted]

Still really missing that 8% haste though on PTR. Even though number tuning can make things like live, i'm no fan of it.

Yer, looking more and more like TV will be the only viable build at this rate currently. The buff to GS is no where near high enough with the FB nerf and 8% haste lost to make up for it. Once again another example of how crap our mastery is, they should just put it back to the old mastery since now we have separate pvp modifiers to deal with the old issues of damage in pvp.