Kuni's Frost Mage PVE Guide (Cataclysm)

[FYSthunderskeet]

so you wasted your time posting on here but you didn't really add anything useful. thanks

[Kuni Zyrekai]

I see some 30k DF hits, just sayin'.

Aye, I do too. I looked into the two attempts which didn't crit DF and there was for a large portion of both attempts no ISB up. Course WoL doesn't tell me when those DF hits happened so I'm going to see if I can get someone to spam ISB/scorch at a dummy and test for a few hours to see if I can get any information. Barring that, tomorrow is raid night.

FYSthunderskeet and Fifty Snakes, take it to PMs and stop the flame war in my thread. To be fair 100 instances when we're talking percentages is a tiny, inconclusive test. Sorry, but it is. We're looking for a very specific bug, one that should be -fairly- easy to track down. Do the test correctly or wait until someone who can, does. 100% uptime on ISB is required for this.

[FYSthunderskeet]

fair enough. how many IL casts would you say is a good number?

[Deleted]

Im going to do another test on the dummys as well. I will do it with approx 23.40% Crit buffed and if , let`s say 500 IL crit 99%, i would consider it as successful. But I´ll wait for your perceptions, anyway.

[Kuni Zyrekai]

fair enough. how many IL casts would you say is a good number?

Your initial results look promising, but I just want to make sure. No offense, but this is of large importance to frost theory, and I trust Swizzle. As blunt as he may be in most cases, he's usually right. So this worries me.

Im going to do another test on the dummys as well. I will do it with approx 23.40% Crit buffed and if , let`s say 500 IL crit 99%, i would consider it as successful. But I´ll wait for your perceptions, anyway.

Either use molten armour to account for the lack of feral buff or whatever, make your ice lance just barely 100% assuming all available buffs, including ISB/CM. Have your friend keep that debuff on the dummy 100%. Test around 300 or so, since we're looking for literally a boolean result. It'll always crit, or it'll not. It'll supposedly be a 15% discrepancy so if it isn't working, we'll find out really quick with that as over 1 in 10 should not crit in theory, so it'll show up soon. If it doesn't show up soon, this is why you use larger numbers, to make sure RNG gods don't love you. Closer to 1000 would be preferable but I'm sure you people have better things to do than test bugs. I know all too well how damned picky WoW's RNG can be, having run raids at 7% hit before and not missing at all the entire night, and other times missing repeatedly at under 1% miss rate.

I'll be running my own instance of this test to make sure I'm in control of the variables, because frankly and without any disrespect, I can't be 100% sure of all the variables on you guys' setups. I will post the results as soon as they're complete.

---------- Post added 2011-04-27 at 10:19 PM ----------

Frost Talent = 3%

The frost 3% crit talent shows up on the character sheet, no need to account for it by itself.

[LaplaceNoMa]

http://worldoflogs.com/reports/rt-njryq67rfmh031il/

Meh. Even with those #1 and #3 parses, the numbers are still too low.

http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/characte...lent/secondary

This spec and reforging are not final but just something I've made up quickly before the raid.

[Kuni Zyrekai]

Alright seems this was a false alarm. Swizzle, your debuffers were failing somewhere or crit suppression is a lot larger than previously thought. I'm unsure if the boss dummy has it enabled, that's a test for another day.

http://i.imgur.com/jM5O4.jpg

Sample size 306. 5% crit debuff applies to shatter. Taken at 23.56% crit and 2pT11, my wonderful girlfriend chain scorching the dummy for critical mass debuff for a total crit of 33.56%. If anyone else has conclusive proof otherwise I would love to see it.

[LaplaceNoMa]

Alright seems this was a false alarm. Swizzle, your debuffers were failing somewhere or crit suppression is a lot larger than previously thought. I'm unsure if the boss dummy has it enabled, that's a test for another day.

http://i.imgur.com/jM5O4.jpg

Sample size 306. 5% crit debuff applies to shatter. Taken at 23.56% crit and 2pT11, my wonderful girlfriend chain scorching the dummy for critical mass debuff for a total crit of 33.56%. If anyone else has conclusive proof otherwise I would love to see it.

As you can see from my links above, I was reforging under the assumption that 5% debuff wasn't taken into consideration -- I didn't have a single non-crit DF that night. I will try going for lower crit today and report the results.

Anyway, what do you think about my current spec/reforging? The fact that we don't need ignite anymore and that we probably want to go for molten armor changes the previousely used 2/8/31 spec drastically. I'm not sure I've chosen the best way to spend the points though.

[Swizzle]

Well, my Ice Lances were 100% crit as well, but it was DF and FFB that had the lower percentage, so there might be something wonky going on between how it calculates all the percentages.

[Antueater]

The fact that we don't need ignite anymore...

Wooow... Did I miss something here?

[Bombkirby]

My DPS is so erratic its getting frustrating. >:-( I feel like esploding!

The first boss in ZA I managed to do 16k DPS (plus 15% buff)

In BH 25 I did 13k DPS

On the dummies I do a measely 9k-10k

Whats going on? Is it just the randomness of the procs causing this?
---------------------------------
Second question, around about how much ilevel would one require before they can reach the soft crit cap? I'm at 349 on my Mage and its only at 18% or 20% crit unbuffed. Should I start dipping below the hit cap to try and get more?

Wooow... Did I miss something here?

Yeah same here. Do I have to redo my spec?

EDIT: Okay apparently he was confused.

[Kuni Zyrekai]

As you can see from my links above, I was reforging under the assumption that 5% debuff wasn't taken into consideration -- I didn't have a single non-crit DF that night. I will try going for lower crit today and report the results.

Lowest crit you can go for without the help of the feral/fury/whatever buff and the ISB debuff is 17.34%. This allows you 100% crit rate on ice lances but 85% on deep freeze and FoF/BF frostfire bolts in exchange for more mastery and haste.

Anyway, what do you think about my current spec/reforging? The fact that we don't need ignite anymore and that we probably want to go for molten armor changes the previousely used 2/8/31 spec drastically. I'm not sure I've chosen the best way to spend the points though.

I...

...wat

Where did you come from and where are you pulling your information? Ignite and 2/8/31 is still the best spec. Molten armour isn't required at current crit levels although is a very very slight DPS increase, although the infinite mana and damage reduction from magic is probably worth the 150 or so DPS loss.

As to your reforges, as I stated above, you can safely drop down to 17.34% for a DPS increase, as that frees up the stat points to put into haste and mastery. You should try and keep haste about 1.1 or 1.2:1 with mastery.

[LaplaceNoMa]

Oh my god I'm retarded.
For some strange reason I assumed that only the dot portion was causing ignites, so now it wouldn't -- and totally forgot that the direct damage itself was causing it too (what's even more important, the dot itself won't munch it anymore, amirite?).

...Yeah, I feel so stupid right now.

[Kuni Zyrekai]

My DPS is so erratic its getting frustrating. >:-( I feel like esploding!

...

Whats going on? Is it just the randomness of the procs causing this?
---------------------------------
Second question, around about how much ilevel would one require before they can reach the soft crit cap? I'm at 349 on my Mage and its only at 18% or 20% crit unbuffed. Should I start dipping below the hit cap to try and get more?

First answer: procs, the fact deep freeze scales better with the flat 15% than the usual caster raid buffs, dummies are self buffed DPS all contribute to the strangeness that goes on between encounters. Also how much you have to move, and how long the fight is. Frost has incredible burst, so the longer a fight goes on, the less relative time your burst has an effect on your DPS. I completely butchered that last sentence but it should get the thought across.

Second answer: crit soft cap is largely dependant on 2pT11, since there just aren't enough stat points to make it work without. Everything is relative remember. Hit is technically more important than crit cap. But if you're comparing say, 40 hit that caps you versus 160 crit, the crit is going to be higher DPS. As to the whole item level, earliest you'll probably start having no issue with crit cap is whenever you have your 2p, a couple crafted epics and heroic gear for the rest. So probably in your area, depending on how quickly you obtain your 2p.

Oh my god I'm retarded.
For some strange reason I assumed that only the dot portion was causing ignites, so now it wouldn't -- and totally forgot that the direct damage itself was causing it too (what's even more important, the dot itself won't munch it anymore, amirite?).

...Yeah, I feel so stupid right now.

Happens to the best of us and I needed the laugh. And yes, less ignite munching so this should work out in our favour, since honestly the ignite on a FFB tick was like 70.

[Bombkirby]

First answer: procs, the fact deep freeze scales better with the flat 15% than the usual caster raid buffs, dummies are self buffed DPS all contribute to the strangeness that goes on between encounters. Also how much you have to move, and how long the fight is. Frost has incredible burst, so the longer a fight goes on, the less relative time your burst has an effect on your DPS. I completely butchered that last sentence but it should get the thought across.

Second answer: crit soft cap is largely dependant on 2pT11, since there just aren't enough stat points to make it work without. Everything is relative remember. Hit is technically more important than crit cap. But if you're comparing say, 40 hit that caps you versus 160 crit, the crit is going to be higher DPS. As to the whole item level, earliest you'll probably start having no issue with crit cap is whenever you have your 2p, a couple crafted epics and heroic gear for the rest. So probably in your area, depending on how quickly you obtain your 2p.

Alrighty thanks for the advice! I suppose that explains why the long raid encounter had lower results then the shorter 5 man fight. And I guess I wont stress about the crit soft cap too much til I start working on getting at least one more T11 piece and get the bonus.

In other news I'm seeing a nice rise in popularity with Frost Mages. All the mages in the BH 25 I mentioned earlier were Frost specced too (well one was fire I think). Brought a tear to my eye. XD

[Kuni Zyrekai]

Alrighty thanks for the advice! I suppose that explains why the long raid encounter had lower results then the shorter 5 man fight. And I guess I wont stress about the crit soft cap too much til I start working on getting at least one more T11 piece and get the bonus.

A 2 minute fight with 40k burst for the start averages out a lot better than a 6 minute fight with the same start. It's frustrating for sure, since you're depending a lot more on RNG than usual for crits. Once you get your 2p, things start to even out a bit more.

In other news I'm seeing a nice rise in popularity with Frost Mages. All the mages in the BH 25 I mentioned earlier were Frost specced too (well one was fire I think). Brought a tear to my eye. XD

Yeah, I'm seeing a lot more elementals around town and in instances. You also wouldn't believe the amount of people who have read this and track me down in-game to discuss frost. It's kind of neat honestly, no one's been rude about it or grabbed me while I'm in an instance either.

---------- Post added 2011-04-28 at 12:13 AM ----------

Well, my Ice Lances were 100% crit as well, but it was DF and FFB that had the lower percentage, so there might be something wonky going on between how it calculates all the percentages.

Since LaplaceNoMa's comment caught me off-guard I never got around to this. I'll be on the look out this week for crit rates below where they should be on those two spells and hopefully I can find some reasoning for this.

[Bombkirby]

Yeah, a 2 minute fight with 40k burst for the start averages out a lot better than a 6 minute fight with the same start. It's frustrating for sure, since you're depending a lot more on RNG than usual for crits. Once you get your 2p, things start to even out a bit more.

Well I'll be eagerly awaiting the moment I nab the bonus.

Yeah, I'm seeing a lot more elementals around town and in instances. You also wouldn't believe the amount of people who have read this and track me down in-game to discuss frost. It's kind of neat honestly, no one's been rude about it or grabbed me while I'm in an instance either.

Thats pretty cool. Yer like a mini celebrity. Must be nice to be reminded once in a while of the good job you've done making this detailed guide.

[Kuni Zyrekai]

Must be nice to be reminded once in a while of the good job you've done making this detailed guide.

It is quite nice. The nice responses and such are the main reason I'll continue to keep this updated as it seems to really help a lot of people, which in turn makes me facepalm less by not seeing people without brain freeze, or only casting deep freeze as a stun.

[Tigas]

Yea looks all is fine , after bug feast on raid last night i go farm conclave 25hc and after did it i check the results..
ww.worldoflogs.com/reports/rt-75uswfy92s5tedu6/details/15/?s=8659&e=9057

I miss all the fight 5 ice lance crits and one deep freeze crit , possible changing plantaform miss some of the crit buff/debuff ..

So ..

10% crit raid buf and debuff working..

33.34~ - 10% - 5% tier bonus = 18.34~
Not counting INT consumables..
Right ?
If this conclusion is right im dam over crit .. 20.88% unbuffed :s

[Kuni Zyrekai]

possible changing plantaform miss some of the crit buff/debuff ..

Looking at your raid's crit debuff uptime, I see 42%. So that's very likely you hit during the downtime.

Also yes, 18.34%. I can't count guys, the above post I did, 18.34% not 17. I keep going 17% because flasks and kings and all that good stuff is almost 1% crit so I'm used to seeing 17% on my character sheet.

Being over crit cap isn't a bad thing, you bring your deep freeze and FFB just that much closer to 100% as well as frostbolt's crit rate higher. But it gives you room to reforge a little bit out of crit and get either haste or mastery, depending on your gear.