Kuni's Frost Mage PVE Guide (Cataclysm)

[Potato Bus]

Looks more like Fire is actually doing to much to me(whether that's a mistake in the sim or just being to strong). More than 10% over the average and 2,5k over Arcane, which is the biggest jump in the entire list.

It does seem too high (not complaining), but keep in mind that RNG will make a parse like that difficult to duplicate in a dependable manner. Just look at the "range" stat (should be some form of a standard deviation of the data): Arcane 2230 dps/4.1%, Frost 1700 dps/3.7%, Fire 3663 dps/6.5%.

Now, I don't fully understand exactly what this number represents, but I would hazard to say it's the average swing of dps based on the range from the different iterations of the sims, probably reduced with regards to a standard deviation (since, for example, arcane's max dps was 58494 and min of 49148 - obviously larger than the 2230 range). I don't know if any of that makes sense how I wrote it *shrug*

Anyway, Fire has a larger swing in it's parses than either frost or arcane, so you may have those omgwtfbbq pulls where you're pimping the meters, but you may also have those WTFYUNOCRITMOARSMASHKEYBOARD pulls where the RNG gods are sticking it to you.

[Jonerthemage]

To make this short and sweet, after taking a 6 month break for school and RL, I will be coming back full force and wondering if frost is a real viable raiding spec to start going into the first tier Cata raids, IE BH, Bot, etc. I really like the CC ability that frost brings to a raid. I also don't really have the gear to switch to much else. Haste is too low for arcane and crit is too low for fire.

Feel free to flame my toon....

Morictond @ Area 52.

Thanks.

[dormontius]

So has anyone done any DS as frost, either with your guild or in the raid finder? I have been going in as arcane so far but this week coming up im gonna try both wings as frost. Just wanted to see how other people did. If you say how much your dps was, try to say if u have t12 4 piece or what ur item lvl is for comparison.

[Deleted]

I did DS as Frost the first two weeks and as Fire this time (alt run on saturday nights).
I have (or used to have until this week) all the world Ranks 1 as Frost in 10N and I did 5k more on each boss as Fire this week, and I played really badly (3k damage combustion ticks yay).
That's quite depressing !

If you want too have a look here are our logs from last week (as Frost) :
http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/rt-qzvvducsz7mmcnlb/

[badishi]

Ok so last night i was going to mess around with the 4pc in lfr but just for fun i wanted to see if glyping icy veina would work with the set but dunno if it was just for me but doing a normal frost rotation the 4 pc stopped working just wondering if any of you tryied this and got the same results as it would mean blizzaed doesnt want pve mages having all movemnt and casting speed reductons removed 100 % of the time xd

Also sorry if some words ended up choppy ect phone is really acting up

[Delendrid]

First of all kuni i wanted to express my gratitude to you for fighting all those months against all ods for all of us who believe that playing the spec you love and performing as best as possible is the true goal.

Having that in mind i strongly belive that you have to update the guide for 4.3 .I dont care if we are ages behind fire or arcane we need your help to keep maximising our performance and be proud for our choices.

I hope my message makes you think about it before its to late and the thread gets dumped to oblivion.

[Kuni Zyrekai]

Ok so last night i was going to mess around with the 4pc in lfr but just for fun i wanted to see if glyping icy veina would work with the set but dunno if it was just for me but doing a normal frost rotation the 4 pc stopped working just wondering if any of you tryied this and got the same results as it would mean blizzaed doesnt want pve mages having all movemnt and casting speed reductons removed 100 % of the time xd

Also sorry if some words ended up choppy ect phone is really acting up

I'll check on that. I haven't heard any other reports of such, although it is admittedly an odd glyph to use in frost PVE.

Edit: I have no issues with that glyph and T13 interaction. I'm not sure what you're seeing.

First of all kuni i wanted to express my gratitude to you for fighting all those months against all ods for all of us who believe that playing the spec you love and performing as best as possible is the true goal.

Having that in mind i strongly belive that you have to update the guide for 4.3 .I dont care if we are ages behind fire or arcane we need your help to keep maximising our performance and be proud for our choices.

I hope my message makes you think about it before its to late and the thread gets dumped to oblivion.

I've actually been toying with frost after having recently picking up 4pT13, just to see how it plays in practice in relation to SimC action list. I'll likely be updating it when I have another sleepless night with random inspiration to write, after I've had a couple more runs with it. I would have done it two nights back, but I was in the middle of a rebuild of my machine. But at any rate, there will be an update for 4.3, I'm just not sure quite when yet.

Random note, 4p takes untalented time on IV, then drops 20% off of the new cooldown as opposed to the 100% uptime that was theorized. 24 second cooldown at 10 stacks.

[Delendrid]

Thanx god ! Please when you decide to update it make a referance to how secondary stats value change with obtaining T13 gear.

[Jona52]

Being an arcane mage gone frost main for cata, I can really appreciate this. I like that it's straight and to the point. When I read things on EJ I often get overwhelmed by all the things they pile into guides. While they do have useful information, I like to look on MMO-C when I'm looking for a simple answer.

[Siri]

What is the ideal usage of Icy Veins (and cold snap as an extension I suppose?) if you have 4t13? I just love messing around in a frost pve spec.

[Kuni Zyrekai]

What is the ideal usage of Icy Veins (and cold snap as an extension I suppose?) if you have 4t13? I just love messing around in a frost pve spec.

IV -> cold snap -> 7 or more stacks -> IV. I've got dragonwrath so my stacking might be skewed compared to most people, but after a 7 stack cooldown, I'm usually sitting on 10 stacks for a long time before the next one comes up. It likely means for most people it'll be 0, cold snap, 7+, 7+, 7+. Mostly depends on luck.

[IngileifMage]

What I loved about 4t13 set bonus is that you can use two IWs in a row.
I wish Blizz will make frost viable for PvE. They only need to buff DF damage 5-10 times.

[huth]

The new system in MoP should make that a lot easier. Most of the utility of frost was turned into general mage utility, freeing Blizz up from having to keep frost damage down to adjust for it, so it should be mostly about whether you want to do blue, red or sparkly DPS.

[Kuni Zyrekai]

Updated for 4.3, at least as much as I can remember there are changes, and removed sections that no longer apply due to being made baseline. I have also added a section on oddities with dragonwrath's interaction with frost.

Having considered the spec's downfalls and ongoing PVE issues at this point in time, I've decided to post a list of potential fixes that should make the spec viable to an acceptable degree. On answering concerns with them here, I'll cross-post the list to the official forums for Blizz's inspection. With any luck at all, some may be implemented before 5.0.


Lack of AOE DPS.

As it stands, my 360some-odd holy priest's non-chakra mind sear is better DPS than Blizzard is in 392 gear. This is fixed entirely by letting Blizzard benefit from Fingers of Frost, when specced into Ice Shards. Given the developers' love of at least one AOE fight per tier, this has become a fairly large issue. So much so that Arcane Explosion spamming from arcane was made viable, and quite effective, AOE.


Lack of combat rating scaling.

Crit, and now haste, both have effective caps in which they become eclipsed in effectiveness by mastery. I will be using my own stat weights as indicated by SimulationCraft for these numbers.

34% crit for shatter is obtained at my level of gear with under 600 rating, and a mere 51 rating if given Focus Magic. Above this, crit is valued around 0.6 DPS/point.

Between the 2p and the 4p of tier 13, and raid buffs, the haste cap without Dark Intent is around 1642 rating unbuffed, at which point our GCDs are haste capped and haste drops in value down to around 1 DPS/point.

This means the only stat we scale continually with, is mastery. This means that on fights such as Sinestra and Alysrazor, frost is of little value compared to just about any other spec. To both of these issues, there is no real clean solution. Haste could potentially be solved by changing the FFB glyph, moving the 15% direct damage bonus to a heavier DoT, along the lines of Pyroblast's current DoT damage. Remember, it has to make up for losing 15% direct damage, and damage lost on ignite itself, as well as being a meaningful DPS buff. The stacking should remain, as it allows our unpredictable re-applications of it room to not be screwed by DoT clipping. This serves a dual purpose of providing frost some movement DPS protection as well as haste scaling due to meaningful DoT DPS contributions. Make sure dispel removes the entire stack, to prevent too many tears in PVP.

Fixing crit is a different story. I've gone through so many different versions of how to fix crit, but none of them really work without splitting PVP and PVE mechanics for this spec a little bit more. The one I keep coming back to is either a specialization passive or a talent that allows crit over 100% to grant a chance at a double crit. Think of warrior critical block. At 120% shatter crit rate, 20% chance to crit for an extra 1.5x. 50k crit becomes 75k, 20% of the time. Or potentially, 50k crit with 25k frostbite DoT, much like ignite. The specific number would have to be tweaked, and the effective critical rate against players would have to cap at 100%. I personally don't like the DoT idea, due to the issues that ignite has with munching combined with how often and quickly frost tends to crit.


Movement

Frost, along with arcane, is one of the few caster specs that can't keep up at least a fair amount of their damage while moving for any extended distance. Druid's Shooting Stars and Lunar Shower. Priest's DoTs and Shadowy Apparition. Shaman's Glyph of Unleashed Lightning and Spiritwalker's Grace. Warlock's pet damage and DoTs, combined with Fel Flame's, admittedly low, DPS contribution. Fire's Scorch, LB and Hot Streak. All of these allow the spec or class to continue DPS to some fair extent during movement. Frost's limit is how many procs you can potentially get while moving, which isn't many. Our contribution to DPS on Hagara's ice phase leaves a lot to be desired. I propose a glyph or talent, much like Glyph of Unleashed Lightning, that allows the casting of Frostbolt while on the move, at the exchange of 1/3 damage of Frostbolt against frozen targets. This prevents mages from kiting in PVP while producing their standard damage, as their Deep Freeze shatters would be effectively neutered.


Dragonwrath interaction

This one hurt. Months spent obtaining this weapon, only to have it be a minor DPS upgrade when compared to every other caster. The reason lies within the mechanics of our procs. It doesn't copy spell states. If it copies Brain Freeze+Fingers of Frost(1), the copy will most likely not crit, and not benefit from mastery, and potentially munch the first Ignite with a lower one. FoF(2) Ice Lance, it will use both charges, both will benefit from mastery and shatter. If FoF(1), then only one will, and the duplicate will hit for around 5k. Deep Freeze is the same as Ice Lance. I sadly do not know what an appropriate back-end fix would be to this issue, but I am certain that a fix can be implemented in some fashion, even if frost's instant casts specifically have to be handled by Wrath of Tarecgosa to duplicate damage exactly.


Deep Freeze damage

Since this is PVE DPS, Deep Freeze is one of the easier fixes. It was nerfed early on in Cataclysm, along with our base mastery. This is presumably due to vehicle PVP. Make them immune to Deep Freeze damage and revert the 20% nerf, as that would go a bit towards fixing frost's DPS. Again, you can easily buff this as it has no bearing on PVP at all after the above fix, and is entirely PVE DPS oriented.


Range

40 yards. Enough said.


As I cannot access the PTR due to some strange back-end issue, I was told by a GM during the 4.2 PTR:

I understand you're interested in testing Frost Mage viability, however it's extremely unlikely that changes to the classes will adversely, or negatively affect classes mid-expansion.

This has been proven wrong. I, along with many others, feel let down. Many people use the argument that frost has great survivability, so it should do less damage than arcane or fire. Well fire has ~80% mobile DPS, ignore mechanics once every minute talent, excellent scaling, and RNG permitting, the best AOE in the game. It also helps that it seems just about every encounter in Dragon Soul was designed around fire's strengths. And it does better single target DPS on average than any other spec in the game. I find this argument used to hold frost down to be the same with different results, and as such I don't accept it. There are ways around buffing frost raiding without breaking PVP.

[Siri]

Making shatters potentially do triple damage compared to a normal hit (instead of double) would be insanely broken in PvP, shatters already do a lot of damage, with this the damage potential is increased by 50%. I doubt you can fix the haste/crit scaling without breaking something but it's not really a problem unless the itemization forces more of a stat on you than you can get rid of. There is, of course, Alysrazor but I wouldn't really call that a problem since Frost isn't the only spec that would have to change something to do well there

The AoE, as you pointed out, is completely atrocious. I don't even know why they changed FoFs interaction with Blizzard+talent, it just makes little sense to me.

[Socialhealer]

this thread is sad and pathetic

fire is the BEST dps spec ingame and people are like...please fix frost

first shouldnt blizzard fix other classes who are really low on the dps meter in all specs, instead of making 1 class have 3 great dps specs while some dont even have 1.

its cool people want to play it and ofc everyone theorycrafts best dps, but dont ask for a fix when mages is probably the best pve class to be playing atm, if u dont like frost u could re-roll hunter and have 3 pretty bad dps specs.

loads of really selfish ungreatful mages in this thread, also frost is like #1/2 1v1 class....jeez what more do people want

[Siri]

if u dont like frost u could re-roll hunter and have 3 pretty bad dps specs.

How is that any more valid than telling all the hunters to just reroll? People would prefer to play what they find the most fun so they'll obviously be pushing for buffs for that spec. It's really not a hard concept to understand.

[Kuni Zyrekai]

Making shatters potentially do triple damage compared to a normal hit (instead of double) would be insanely broken in PvP, shatters already do a lot of damage, with this the damage potential is increased by 50%.

none of them really work without splitting PVP and PVE mechanics for this spec a little bit more.
(...)
the effective critical rate against players would have to cap at 100%

I did account for that, as I'm well aware how broken that would be against another player. 100% crit, meaning as is currently. I tried my best to keep PVP changes to a minimum or out of it entirely.

this thread is sad and pathetic

fire is the BEST dps spec ingame and people are like...please fix frost

first shouldnt blizzard fix other classes who are really low on the dps meter in all specs, instead of making 1 class have 3 great dps specs while some dont even have 1.

its cool people want to play it and ofc everyone theorycrafts best dps, but dont ask for a fix when mages is probably the best pve class to be playing atm, if u dont like frost u could re-roll hunter and have 3 pretty bad dps specs.

loads of really selfish ungreatful mages in this thread, also frost is like #1/2 1v1 class....jeez what more do people want

It's quite clear you didn't read this thread, as the vast majority is Q&A on practical raiding, how-to, and theorycraft. Frost was viable up until 4.3, although not top, and quite common in 4.0.3. It was created in response to the absolutely staggering amount of ill-advised "help" people were posting in question threads. I am asking the community here if they see anything I have left out of my concerns or if there are any glaring issues with it

This spec can, in the short term, be quite easily fixed in terms of PVE DPS without so much as blinking at PVP damage by tuning DF.

By extension, if you don't like hunter, you could reroll fire mage. New alts take about a week of played time to gear and level up these days. But that isn't the point, is it?

[Myrrar]

FYI, coming into another classes spec guide to call them all pathetic for wishing their spec was better gets you banned.

[Max Rebo]

Updated for 4.3, . . . . .

That's a good assessment, Kuni. Much appreciated.

I do agree that Blizzard could easily band-aid fix Frost for the short term, namely with a DF tweak and by allowing Blizzard AoE to interact with FoF. True, we do have two other good dps specs, but I also happen to enjoy frost the most, same as many of us here.

Let's hope their new talent system will fix Frost so they can freely tweak the PvE end without having to worry so much about PvP implications.