Everyone's Neglecting Frost :(

[cornymorty]

Been browsing around a bit on here, and it seems everyone is obsessed with huge arcane crits, and fire is doing awesome damage as usual, but not much attention has gone to frost. Has anybody even bothered to test it out? On a target dummy, after about 2 million damage, I was sustaining 10-10.5k dps and was at full mana. And that's self buffed, still learning the rotation.

Anyone else tried this in a raid environment? My damage is gimped on a dummy anyway cause they don't count as permanently immune so DF doesn't do any damage (consequently, I was leaving it out of the rotation and just using ice lances instead).

[Nekrow Stilborne]

I've tested Frost out, lovin' the spec, but in my current gear, I can't sustain more than 7k DPS on a dummy. That might be because I like to spam Ice Lance mindlessly when FoF procs... which means two will hit for 12k, but the other 3 will hit for 2k =P. Seems like FFB does a good lot of DPS too. I've seen Frostbolt barely scratch 11k, and Ice Lance go for about 10-12k, but FFB goes for roughly 12-17k. Only thing stronger is DF, and I LOVE seeing the 28k crit every time I proc it on a boss =D.

TL;DR: Could care less if Fire and Arcane are more "L33T", Frost is way more fun!

[cornymorty]

What glyphs are you running? I know the primes still can't be socketed, but putting them in majors still ups your dps.

[Nikoll]

My ret buddy rerolled fost Mage for cata. Said he was doing 30k with a bit over 6k gs in icc. Forgot to ask what boss/bosses and his guild neglected to parse. He isn't one to big fish the numbers.

[Juber]

Viva la frost baby!

Tried Arcane, Fire & Frost and Arcane is pulling head a little bit. To be honest, I see very little difference in my DPS regardless of spec.

I find myself doing more DPS as Frost without using icelances at all. Ignoring Icelances almost guarantee a FoF being up everytime your brain freeze procs the instant FFB. And the FFB debuff dosn't tick off. Running with DF, FFB & FB glyphs. Molten armor on. I'm having around 1000 more DPS as frost when I ignore icelancing. Maybe this will get fixed, maybe not.

Maybe it's because the DF Glyph that makes it out-perform IL'ing, or if IL is going to scale better with Cataclysm gear.
On my mage, I've reforged everything to mastery. Would be interesting to see if other frost mages gets higher results when they're ignorning IL or if it's just me.

Edit: The delay from you, to the server and back to you often screws up IL'es. You think you got it procced, but when it hits it dosn't crit. May be a reason for IL to feel rather screwed.

[Yoshimiko]

Heroics? I go arcane. I generally pull betwen 15 and 45k DPS group setting/boss dependant on bosses.

Anything else, or bad tank in heroic? FROST FTW!

Simply put, you can't touch arcanes burst dps. When you can kill a boss 100->0 in 10 hits, it's *really* hard to play anything else. Frost is damn nice though, I'm working on soloing heroics as frost now. I can kill almost any trash It's a lot of fun.

Anything outside of WOTLK heroics, I'll be frost. When cata comes out, Arcane will be respeced to pvp frost. :P

[Odina]

Been frost since the patch hit and loving it! Not sure why Juber isnt using ice lance... Mine are hitting for 18k...seems like quite a waste of dps to not use an icelance that hits that hard! Only issue I had was when I would have a 2 stack of FoF and I woudl use BF it wuodl consume both charges >.< Thus I have been using IL> BF on 2 charges.

Overall it is really fun and I have had the fortune to reforge just about every piece of gear I had to remove crit and add mastery. I still have my 33.33% + crit so shatter is capped and god is it fun!

[Deleted]

Been frost since the patch hit and loving it! Not sure why Juber isnt using ice lance... Mine are hitting for 18k...seems like quite a waste of dps to not use an icelance that hits that hard! Only issue I had was when I would have a 2 stack of FoF and I woudl use BF it wuodl consume both charges >.< Thus I have been using IL> BF on 2 charges.

Overall it is really fun and I have had the fortune to reforge just about every piece of gear I had to remove crit and add mastery. I still have my 33.33% + crit so shatter is capped and god is it fun!

I feel you bro! After having done the good 'ol spec try on the Beta, I fell head over heels for frost. And as many of you have mentioned I reforged my stats to mastery keeping hit at 17% and crit at 33,3%... haven't really figured out what haste I should be at to optimize, maybe some1 can enlighten me about this bit.

The thing with frost imo isn't just the dps and the control you have, but it's the synergy between the different abilities, the procs and the priority-system in general. And ofc lets not forget about the machine gun pew pew fast paced style that is frost today.

The BF bug is horrendous, never had anything like it on the Beta so I was suprised to see it on live after patch. This changes the priority to actually use IL on 2 FoF stacks and BF only when u have 1 stack of FoF, otherwise u loose out on a IL which u should be weaving in between your Frostbolts. Im currently trying to always have at least one stack of FoF up, but this bug is making that a lot more challenging.

And don't get me started on Frostfire orb and Ring of Frost when Cata hits as a Frost mage... it's freakin' fingerlickin' delicious!

---------- Post added 2010-10-15 at 09:25 AM ----------

What glyphs are you running? I know the primes still can't be socketed, but putting them in majors still ups your dps.

Atm Im running with the following glyphs (remember that Blue have confirmed that mage-glyphs are broken):

Prime: DF, IL, Mage armor
Major: FB, FFB and Molten armor
Minor: Slowfall... rest is meh

[Alicella]

One of the other mages in my guild went frost for our Heroic ICC 25 clear. Did around 15-20k Dps on most fights. Here are logs from that night, the frost mage was Lyriana.
http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/r...?s=4941&e=5090

[Deleted]

Arcane for Dungeons is NICE The Burst-damage is excellent for short fights.

Tbh, I've tried all specs and the diffrence in damage is not big.

Spamming Scorch with Firespec is pretty fun Especially with fights where you have to run around a lot. And, you never get oom doing that.

Overall feeling: Overall damage is higher than before patch ^^

[irogar]

I've been play testing all 3 specs and I've gotta say, frost is definitely the most fun for single target dps. As far as numbers go, self buffed, no cooldowns, heroic target dummy:

Arcane - 7.7k sustained dps
Fire - 6.7k sustained dps
Frost - 6.6k sustained dps

Each of these numbers are in 251 - 264 gear with no outside debuffs or buffs, and no cooldowns to create spikes in dps. I also tinkered with reforging hit to mastery/crit/haste for each spec and these are the highest numbers I've achieved so far (post nerf).

I'm a little disappointed that arcane can be completely facerolled and is still significantly higher dps. The play style with frost seems much more polished (other than FFB eating both FoF stacks).

[Deleted]

I guess fire still gonna be superior to other specs as it's dots still do damage while you have to move (whereas you don't have to while spamming on dummies).

[Gamdwelf]

I've been play testing all 3 specs and I've gotta say, frost is definitely the most fun for single target dps. As far as numbers go, self buffed, no cooldowns, heroic target dummy:

Arcane - 7.7k sustained dps
Fire - 6.7k sustained dps
Frost - 6.6k sustained dps

Each of these numbers are in 251 - 264 gear with no outside debuffs or buffs, and no cooldowns to create spikes in dps. I also tinkered with reforging hit to mastery/crit/haste for each spec and these are the highest numbers I've achieved so far (post nerf).

I'm a little disappointed that arcane can be completely facerolled and is still significantly higher dps. The play style with frost seems much more polished (other than FFB eating both FoF stacks).

If you were using the dummy then your frost damage would have been higher on an acctual boss since all of your DF will not do any damage.

[DirewolfX]

Dots doing damage while you move is a fallacy, since you already spent the casting time to do the damage of the DoT in advance. It's all about DPET (Damage Per Execute Time). And both Arcane and Frost have things to do on the move; especially frost which has 3 instants in its rotation.

Anyway, I tried frost and fire last night in ICC25 last night. Did like 12k on Fester with frost and 15k on Rotface with fire. No Heroism. Also, I was geared heavily for mastery, which should benefit frost more than fire (I'm thinking crit/haste is way better for fire). It could partially be rotational issues (I'm way more experienced with fire, obviously, since I've been raiding that for a year now and it hasn't changed much).

[Odina]

After having done VOA last night I'm pretty happy with the frost rotation over all on thoes faster fights. The thing I can't stand at the moment is still the FFB bug consuming 2 charges of FoF. With trying to time freeze and DF optimization it's just a pain in the ass to have the added "don't use BF on 2 proc" ...worst is hitting BF out of instinct when I see FoF aura and BF aura only to see my IL hit for peanuts!

In almost all 277 gear I just made sure I had crit & hit cap then reforged the extra crit to mastery and left the haste I had alone. Seems to have worked out pretty well.

The only thing I miss from fire is magexecute! Then again agro is a really big issue for myself at the moment so maybe it's a good thing frost doesnt have it!

[Potato Bus]

I took off my FFB Glyph and FFB is no longer consuming both stacks of FoF.

[Heilige]

I'm thinking crit/haste is way better for fire). It could partially be rotational issues (I'm way more experienced with fire, obviously, since I've been raiding that for a year now and it hasn't changed much).

Mastery is quite bad for fire right now... Int>Crit>Haste>Mastery should be your stat priority.

That being said, your familiarity with fire can probably negate the differences on itemization, and thus frost is still ~10-15% behind fire.

[Snekilito]

Frost is so incredibly boring, i wouldnt use it even if it was 10k higher dps than both Arcane and Fire. Its just... Lame, fire is like "FUCK YEAH EXPLODE NAGA" and Frost is more like "freeze pew pew"

[mindfulcorvus]

Im fire just because I started her as fire and it will forever be her main spec. However, that being said, my second spec is frost (havent messed around with it yet though). What I am liking right now is that you can be any talent tree atm without people barking at you for not being <insert spec here>.

[Odina]

Frost is so incredibly boring, i wouldnt use it even if it was 10k higher dps than both Arcane and Fire."

Does this imply that arcane is less boring than frost? Have you even tried frost since the patch? There are as many CD's and procs to watch playing frost (if not more reactions) than fire now!