Kuni's Frost Mage PVE Guide - 8.1.0

[Deleted]

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I use a simple Weak Aura to track Chain Reaction. Actually, I created the WA using the preset tool of the addon.

I agree with your statement that Frost seems with all its talents, traits and passive not as straightforward to min-max as it may seems first.

I reckon managing CR is can be a mess but did you notice any increase in your DPS? I'd like to sim this rotation but I really don't understand anything more than the basic with SimulationCraft (and I'm nowhere near perfect in my rotation to test it on dummies and see its maximum potential). Maybe I should seek some help on Altered-Time since they seems very Sim-savvy.

The problem with trying to do this, is there are SO MANY sources of FoF that optimizing them all like this seems impossible. Ebonchill, Water Jet, Winter's Touch, Frozen Orb, Blizzard ticks... keeping all these on cooldown without wasting FoF charges or using FoF without any Chain Reaction is completely impossible. It gets even harder when you factor in needing to have frost bomb up for all the FoF chains.

But, I do agree that if you have NO cds available you should fish for procs before using your extra lances, that makes sense.

I agree, I have yet to find a way to sort out everything and try to balance CDs, FoFs procs, CR procs altogether... But there must be some hidden potential in there .

About RoF with TV, I haven't really seen discussion about this, but maybe you would want to pop IV, and blaze through all of your FoF cooldowns as quick as possible, and then channel RoF during the downtime, then you can keep extending IV after it finishes. It delays RoF but the extra seconds of IV seem better.

But I think we would want to use RoF during the first 10 seconds of Icy Veins to benefits from Chilled to the Core for the whole 10 sec of channeling. Past the initial 20 sec, CttC is over and those sweet 20% aren't there anymore .


If only all the pro Mage that went Fire were Frost, we would have more in-depth research on our rotation ^^. (no offense to Kuni ofc)

[Ponkster]

Guys if you have less than 3 seconds (2 if haste allows) on chain reaction cast 1 frostbolt and then go back to FoF dumping; crit or no crit.

You can then use frostbolt after the "burst" to regain chain reaction stacks, recast frost bomb and repeat the above.

Those that are finding RoF the best damage is due to the nature of the spell during the 10 seconds your rotation is flawless no human error. The thermal build has alot of micro management where spells clash and stuff like ebonbolt feels clunky. It being so bursty also inflates dps at the start of the fight and if its less than 5 minutes will have an increased end value.

[AdrianCC100]

Sorry if this is dumb question.

What is the minimum critical strike that we want? My current stats in 855 armor are 26% critical strike/40% haste/29% Mastery/2% Versatility

[Haram]

I think the biggest issue I'm having as frost right now is due to me not having a 3rd FoF unlocked yet. It's frustrating how that is an artifact talent when it is so direly needed as a baseline passive. The design philosophy behind that baffles me. If you have a spell in your arsenal that guaranteed gives you 2 FoF charges, and you also gain FoF charges randomly through your pet and your abilities, then 2 should, by design, never be the maximum ever. There have been so many situations where during IV after casting Frozen Orb and spending the guaranteed FoF, I'm more than halfway through casting an ebonbolt and I get a FoF proc. So now my choices are either finish the cast and waste an FoF charge thereby losing dps, or cancel the cast, and have wasted 1.5 seconds doing nothing and losing dps. What a terrible system.

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Sorry if this is dumb question.

What is the minimum critical strike that we want? My current stats in 855 armor are 26% critical strike/40% haste/29% Mastery/2% Versatility

I don't think there is any minimum per se. You should sim yourself and check if Crit is being valued higher than any of your other stats. From testing it seems that Bone Chilling and Arctic Gale both favour crit (specifically in my gear: 26% crit, 36% haste), whereas Frost Bomb and Ray of Frost favour haste (that's based on my personal results). Crit is always a good stat since you can benefit from chain reaction as well as from a lowered cooldown on IV. At 26% crit I believe you will have (26 x 1.5) + 50 = 89% to crit on all 'frozen targets'.

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But I think we would want to use RoF during the first 10 seconds of Icy Veins to benefits from Chilled to the Core for the whole 10 sec of channeling. Past the initial 20 sec, CttC is over and those sweet 20% aren't there anymore .

If you're planning on using RoF with IV, you absolutely want to be making full use of Chilled to the Core. You also ideally want to be using RoP. I believe RoP's value is increased significantly when you are using RoF as it implements a burst dmg window into frost's rotation. With BC, IF and RoP are very close. Almost every mage I see on warcraftlogs who uses RoF also uses RoP by default, whereas with BC I've seen an even amount of RoP and IF.

Edit: Also wanted to point out that TV is still the default choice even when using RoF and using RoF during IV. While you probably can't get the same level of uptime on IV as you would by using BC, it's still pretty easy to extend IV for quite a while, as you have a 10 second window to dump all your generators. That being said, all those generators then go on cooldown and most likely wont be back up while IV is still up. Using those generators right at the beginning of a 20 second IV means that even if IV was extended for a total of <10 seconds, you would still have another chance to use Frozen Touch and Water Jet within the same IV window.

[Aurilias]

Guys if you have less than 3 seconds (2 if haste allows) on chain reaction cast 1 frostbolt and then go back to FoF dumping; crit or no crit.

You can then use frostbolt after the "burst" to regain chain reaction stacks, recast frost bomb and repeat the above.

Those that are finding RoF the best damage is due to the nature of the spell during the 10 seconds your rotation is flawless no human error. The thermal build has alot of micro management where spells clash and stuff like ebonbolt feels clunky. It being so bursty also inflates dps at the start of the fight and if its less than 5 minutes will have an increased end value.

You'll have to take into account the travel time for frostbolt. If you're standing at a distance that's long enough to cast a frostbolt > flurry shatter proc, then your frostbolt probably won't hit quick enough to keep the stack alive.

[nerfproof]

I very much assumed that Chain Reaction wasn't something to actively keep track of, and was mostly used as a set and forget.

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But at the same time with Frost Bomb, you have to weave in Blizzard and Frost Bomb in your rotation as well, meaning you're even less likely to be able to take advantage of Chain Reaction. At least with Arctic Gale, you get rid of the rotation-cast of Frost Bomb since you'll be casting Blizzard in your rotation in any case. As Kuni says in this guide, FB and AG are close in damage with FB having the added benefit of allowing for burst phases. As for your second point, I'm not sure. I assume that Blizz damage stacks right? Meaning when you have 2 blizz on a target, both are ticking damage.

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Really? BC with TV always sims higher for me in 5min raid fights. Even with sims on a patchwerk fight where RoF would never be interrupted BC outshines it.

Well Ray of Frost and Thermal Void are on 2 seperate tiers of our talent tree. I have both and it works our perfectly for me. And I get the sims say Bone Chilling is better but I'm personally not seeing it. I'm at almost 40% haste (39 I believe) and I've tested both on similar fights and Ray of Frost is so much better than Bone Chilling.

[Cabrian]

If you're planning on using RoF with IV, you absolutely want to be making full use of Chilled to the Core. You also ideally want to be using RoP. I believe RoP's value is increased significantly when you are using RoF as it implements a burst dmg window into frost's rotation. With BC, IF and RoP are very close. Almost every mage I see on warcraftlogs who uses RoF also uses RoP by default, whereas with BC I've seen an even amount of RoP and IF.

Edit: Also wanted to point out that TV is still the default choice even when using RoF and using RoF during IV. While you probably can't get the same level of uptime on IV as you would by using BC, it's still pretty easy to extend IV for quite a while, as you have a 10 second window to dump all your generators. That being said, all those generators then go on cooldown and most likely wont be back up while IV is still up. Using those generators right at the beginning of a 20 second IV means that even if IV was extended for a total of <10 seconds, you would still have another chance to use Frozen Touch and Water Jet within the same IV window.

To try to get the most out of both TV and RoF, I use the following burst rotation:

1. Frost Bomb
2. Frozen Orb
3. Rune of Power
4. Blizzard
5. Icy Veins
6. Ice Lance x n
7. Ebonbolt / Frozen Touch
8. Ice Lance x n
9. Rune of Power
10. Ray of Frost
11. Frost Bomb
12. Ice Lance x n

I think this gives the best of both worlds as things like Frozen Touch come off CD after Ray; need to sim it.

[Deleted]

Well Ray of Frost and Thermal Void are on 2 seperate tiers of our talent tree. I have both and it works our perfectly for me. And I get the sims say Bone Chilling is better but I'm personally not seeing it. I'm at almost 40% haste (39 I believe) and I've tested both on similar fights and Ray of Frost is so much better than Bone Chilling.

Mainproblem with RoF and RoP in my opinion is that simcraft is currently not lining them up.
Esp RoP could use some tweaking because currently it only "waits" for IV but doesn't line up with RoF/EB/FT/WJ.

[Kuni Zyrekai]

@Page 3 or whatever, stop. Guide sucked because I accidentally dumped a portion while editing. Still not sure which direction to go on artifact traits, the optimal path changes around 26 points in. Not sure if I should recommend that direction or the default. Still unsure how to deal with relics.

The Icy Veins Guide is pre-hotfix I believe.

Correct. I'm not part of the IV team, so the guide review is for whatever point in time it was asked of me. Which it was true at that point, Blizzard wasn't used. Such is the pain of hosting guides not written by the people working on the specs. I don't envy the Icy Veins team.

So back to the legendary: Does Kuni mean to say to hard-cast Flurry to get the stack for increased blizzard damage, or are we still strictly using flurry on BF procs? Also I assume that AG is a DPS loss with the legendary as we want to hold off on Blizzard until we get max stacks, which nullifies the importance of 100% uptime on blizzard for AG.

Strictly on BF procs. Blizzard is cast at 0 stacks or 5 stacks, nothing in between. I've tried simming hard casting Flurry while Blizzard cools down for sustained AOE, it doesn't work either.

I fail to understand why we should bank for 5 stacks before casting Blizzard, except for a burst phase with or without adds. Why don't we just continue casting on cooldown.

Gonna be honest, I really don't get it either. It's simply the best simulation results I'm getting out of it. It was actually born out of me trying to optimize the belt, and it started accidentally casting at 0 stacks. I have absolutely no idea why it results in that, but hey. It's very likely some combination of Blizzard is a great FoF generator on single target but Chain Reaction wants you to cast less of it.

Oh and one more question, I am at work right now so can't check but I always wondered if we had to actually cast Blizzard on cooldown or when the previous one is over? If I'm not mistaking, with high haste (so low CD on Blizzard), casting a Blizzard overrides the previous one so it won't do all its ticks. So... DPS loss on cd?

Nope. The animation is bugged and it continues for a couple seconds, but the actual ticks are over when the CD is up.

As for your second point, I'm not sure. I assume that Blizz damage stacks right? Meaning when you have 2 blizz on a target, both are ticking damage.

Doesn't ever happen due to the above.

I believe they were getting at the concept that BV always sims higher, but in actual practice RoF performs better. Kuni said something similar on the last patch. Personally it seems like the sims are off and I wouldn't be surprised if RoF is the better talent.

About chain reaction, there's no way we are expected to keep it up right? It only lasts 6 seconds, and only procs on a crit. You delay your FoF generating cooldowns way to much by trying to weave in 2+ frostbolts every 6 seconds. I can't see ever having good uptime on it, correct me if I'm wrong.

Yeah, personally I'm getting better results with Ray. It also works better for things with short burst windows, like most dungeon bosses or Il'gynoth's heart.

Chain Reaction just happens. Sim's got something like a 45% uptime, any optimization we did for it ended up being either a loss or neutral. The one thing we found was the Frostbolt -> BF-Flurry for the Frostbolt Shatter.

I would say the best RoF usage would be when hero is being used right at the beginning of a fight

Best case is Ray paired with IV.

Mainproblem with RoF and RoP in my opinion is that simcraft is currently not lining them up.
Esp RoP could use some tweaking because currently it only "waits" for IV but doesn't line up with RoF/EB/FT/WJ.

This was apparently changed at some point without my knowledge, but either I suck at RoP APL logic or this is actually better DPS. Going to try and test around the couple weeks after 7.1 hits to see.

7.1 buff hype train, go!

[FrostyButt]

So are we going to want to choose AG over Frost Bomb in 7.1? Since we already are using Blizzard in our single target rotation, at least I am..

[Kuni Zyrekai]

So are we going to want to choose AG over Frost Bomb in 7.1? Since we already are using Blizzard in our single target rotation, at least I am..

Probably not. I mean I'm still running AG anyway because fuck FBomb, but very likely FBomb's optimal. Won't know until sims update and I play around with the APL a bit though.

[Deleted]

The new 7.1 Fire nerfs and frost buffs. I'm right in thinking its still not gonna cut it?

[FrostyButt]

Probably not. I mean I'm still running AG anyway because fuck FBomb, but very likely FBomb's optimal. Won't know until sims update and I play around with the APL a bit though.

Well.. Either way.. Those buffs are nice. I went from doing 260K sustained on target dummy from live servers to 330K sustained on target dummy on PTR servers over 5 minutes.

[Kuni Zyrekai]

Well.. Either way.. Those buffs are nice. I went from doing 260K sustained on target dummy from live servers to 330K sustained on target dummy on PTR servers over 5 minutes.

That's... scarily impressive. What talents?

[FrostyButt]

That's... scarily impressive. What talents?

Bone Chilling
Shimmer (Not that it matters for stand still DPS)
Incanter's Flow
Splitting Ice (I'm sure I could get more DPS with Frozen Touch since I'm attacking 1 target dummy)
Ice Ward (Again doesn't matter)
Unstable Magic
Thermal Void

Those were my talents when I did my run on the PTR. I tested AG, but I found to be doing a little less DPS. I had REALLY good RNG on FoF procs. There was one point during the 5 minutes where I got 9 FoF procs in a row.

[Haram]

Hey Kuni, when you were mentioning when to stack Blizzard if we have the Blizz legendary, does that also infer us having AG talented? So if we did get the Blizz legendary, and we have AG talented, do we still want to use blizz only on 0 or 5 stacks?

Also if we do take RoF over BC due to the added versatility of using it during burst windows, is RoP then much more valuable over IF? I strictly despise using RoP so if it becomes a mandatory or essential talent with RoF, I rather just stick with BC. Finally, earlier in the thread you mentioned to use RoF before popping IV when running TV, but you recently said that the best time to use RoF would be during IV uptime. In this regard what would be the most ideal use of RoF in an ST boss encounter?

Once again, thanks for the guide. There's overall very little research and theorycrafting with Frost since the majority of players are playing Fire. So thanks again

Edit: Just simmed myself. Using RoP paired with RoF resulted in about a 5% increase in damage versus RoF and IF. On the other hand when using BC, the difference was about 1%

Edit 2: One last thing I wanted to ask was with regards to setting up for IV when using the TV talent. I sometimes come across a situation where Frozen Orb has just come off CD, and IV has about 30-40 seconds left on CD. At this point is it better to hold onto Frozen Orb to have it up during the start of IV, or is it better to use it on cooldown unless IV is very shortly coming off cd?

[Flumpus]

Do we know for sure whether or not Whispers in the Dark will give extra ticks on Ray of Frost? Correct me if I'm wrong, but I was under the assumption that "casting speed" is just another way of saying "Spell Haste that doesn't affect periodic effects," and I'm not completely sure whether Ray of Frost would be a periodic effect or a channel. I assume it works the way Mind Flay does, in which case I'd think Whispers would indeed generate extra ticks of RoF over its duration.

If it does in fact work that way, I'd imagine Forst would be capable of some ridiculous 10-second burst DPS with Ray of Frost and Whispers.

[Haram]

Does anyone know how valuable Unstable Arcanocrystal is for Frost Mages? I know it's a great trinket for fire, but it hasn't been simmed and lined up with other trinkets in the altered-time forums.

[FrostyButt]

Does anyone know how valuable Unstable Arcanocrystal is for Frost Mages? I know it's a great trinket for fire, but it hasn't been simmed and lined up with other trinkets in the altered-time forums.

I would assume it's a good trinket. Although I would sim it on your character.

[Deleted]

Regarding this:

"Flurry

The Winter's Chill debuff applied by Flurry, the one that allows spells to consider target frozen for 1.6 seconds, can be gamed further than explained prior. Firstly, if you Frostbolt -> Flurry -> Ice Lance, the Frostbolt will gain the benefit of Shatter if you are further than 23 yards from the target due to travel speeds. "

I can't reproduce this 100% - It is easy to check as it should give me a stack/an added stack of Chain Reaction - but i am not getting those. Testing on dummy, being 25 yards away from the target (range addon). And i am doing Frosbolt, spamming flurry keybind and then ice lance.

What could be the cause?

Uuuuuum...........your not critting with your frostbolt?

Unless your at the crit cap of 34% then your frostbolts still have a small chance to not crit. All the winters chill effect does is allow you the shatter mechanic to function on whatever you cast while it is up, critting is still dependent on your crit chance +shatter.

The tooltip is worded the way it is to let you know basically that your ice lance will do its buffed damage while WC is up, but it is also still fettered by your crit chance +shatter.