Kuni's Frost Mage PVE Guide (Cataclysm)

[Deleted]

It shouldn't really change the value of mastery. We just get more of it baseline.

Yeah, I guess I was a bit too hasty there (no pun intended).

My two other mains beside my frost mage is a combat rogue and a frost DK, so I'm fairly sick of having haste as the best stat. :P I just want to be able to stack mastery for once, it's the only interesting one of the three...

Another question though, we're going to pick Frost Bomb as our talent, right? Or is there something I've missed? Because I feel that the tier 5 talents offer no real choice and could easily be rolled into respective spec instead.

[huth]

No, and i don't know why everybody keeps assuming that you would take Frost Bomb as Frost. I do think that all three need a little tuning, though, as right now, they're mostly dependent on fights. Also, Frost Bomb feels really clunky and impractical.

Frost Bomb is best for large scale AoE(say, Yor'sahj), Living Bomb for light-medium AE when combined with the Fire Blast glyph(need example), and Nether Tempest is strongest for single target.

[Kuni Zyrekai]

Simply because people did want at least to attempt a thematic spec. I've since changed my mind after having a discussion with various people, but I can see why many would still want to try.

[Deleted]

I was mostly thinking about Frost Bomb scaling with our mastery, does it? Or is the damage increase too insignificant to affect our choice?

[huth]

I think you need to re-read Frost's mastery. It increases the damage against frozen targets, not the damage of frost spells. That was Frost DKs, not mages.

Simply because people did want at least to attempt a thematic spec. I've since changed my mind after having a discussion with various people, but I can see why many would still want to try.

What annoys me is that they don't even seem to consider the possibility of taking anything else.
Might have a bit to do with me having played a balance druid since the very beginning of the game.
"No, i don't have Innervate. Stop asking."

[Deleted]

I think you need to re-read Frost's mastery. It increases the damage against frozen targets, not the damage of frost spells. That was Frost DKs, not mages.

/facepalm

I think I should go to bed.

[Asmodian]

/facepalm

I think I should go to bed.

Facepalm here goes just for you. Bomb spell depends on number of targets, not on name.

[huth]

Now, don't be a jerk.


Anyway, i just tried Jade Temple for fun and poor fit(wait, that's wrong... i think...) and i must say, Frost feels a lot faster paced now.
Not having a proper display for my DoT is a bit annoying though, i keep losing track of it.

Also, just for comparisons, Fireball does around than 1% more damage than Frost Bolt. Despite having a 10% longer cast time.

[Kuni Zyrekai]

Anyway, i just tried Jade Temple for fun and poor fit(wait, that's wrong... i think...) and i must say, Frost feels a lot faster paced now.
Not having a proper display for my DoT is a bit annoying though, i keep losing track of it.

Also, just for comparisons, Fireball does around than 1% more damage than Frost Bolt. Despite having a 10% longer cast time.

Agreed. It'll probably be a bit more fluid when we're allowed addons. Making brain freeze an attractive proc will also help. Being the rarer of the two, it just lacks a punch that ice lance has. I expect a change to that next beta push, so we'll see how it plays then.

I still want a water sprite like Shu to call instead of the water elemental.

[huth]

That would be a nice minor for Frost... though i'm already having trouble deciding which minors to take. We also need a few more majors, i think. It wasn't really hard to pick out those because there really aren't that many that actually make sense.

It's also rather strange that BF is the weaker proc, yes. Hope they will be a bit creative with that one.

[Deleted]

I just found out that only Ice Lance can benefice from Mastery. If it wasn't change, it will be our weakest stat by far.

Our rotation seem to be :

Frozen orb
Bomb (nether, living or frost)
Frostfire bolt if brain freeze proc
Ice lance if FoF proc
Frostbolt

Some questions for those who already have a Beta Key :
Is FoF proc from the freeze of the Water Elem ?
Is the thirds FoF charge good or not ?

[Deleted]

It's also rather strange that BF is the weaker proc, yes. Hope they will be a bit creative with that one.

+25% dmg. Not hugely creative. A nice buff for pvp where you get those 25% on top of mastery - but still makes fof abit plain in pve dosnt it?
I wouldnt personaly mind abit more work around Frostfirebolts prismatic nature (Prismatic spells during good old paper/pen rpg had a variety of effects) for example make it ignite, shatter and do more dmg based of mana (basicly prismatic mastery during BF) - but putting it back on fof is more obvious ofc. And tbh i can live with the +25% because of the pvp buff

[huth]

It's better than nothing. At least it's roughly equivalent to Ice Lance.

To Nathyiel, yes, Freeze still gives 2 charges of FoF, it's part of Freeze's tooltip now. But don't underestimate Ice Lance. Yes, it's the only PvE spell that will regularly benefit from mastery. But it's also the only PvE spell that benefits from FoF, so you'll be casting it pretty regularly, and it hits rather hard for an instant.
Don't worry to much about the damage reduction on Ice Lance, apparently the coefficient was left untouched. Not sure why they decided that it did roughly 30 damage to much.

The new effects on the Fire Blast glyph are a bit strange... Frost Bomb is probably the least usefull in PvE, while Nether Tempest seems pretty weak(it ticks for ~2k for me right now, half of that spread to everything around isn't that great).


Not sure what to think of the chance reduction for FoF. They also removed the guaranteed charge when a freeze fails due to immunity.
Also, not sure if i mentioned this earlier, but WE damage is up ~20% compared to live since the start of beta. Health appears to be fixed at exactly 50% of our own, the glyph does nothing in regard to that(i.e. +40% health does not work).

[Deleted]

For Fire blast, I think it's a change for PvP or situational PvE.

For the 3 bomb, I'm actually working around it.
But it show that Nether tempest and Frost bomb did equivalent DPS on single target, and Living bomb is a little beyond.
For two target, Nether is ahead but followed by Living and Frost.
On 3 target, it's Living Bomb.
I will made 4 targets and more. I will also calculate the result if you cast only on 1 target or on multiple target. Etc.

But what I found is that all tree bomb have the same SP coefficient for the "other target part" (~104.4%) but Living bomb have only 50% on the "main target" (104.4% / 208%). In the same time, Living bomb can be spread so it don't have to be cast more than 1 time.


For the glyph of WE, the biggest interest is that WE can now cast while moving. it's great news. no more "out of reach" when casting freeze, no more slacking in the AOE ...

[Kuni Zyrekai]

Freeze immunity charges weren't working anyway. With ice ward on the GCD, I honestly won't really miss it. Lets us pick up frostjaw for a silence when needed or RoF for CC fights without gimping our damage.

I essentially one shot my friend for well over her max health, through the base 30% damage reduction without PVP power stat by having a frozen frost bomb, frostbolt, and FoF ice lance land in the same millisecond. Adding a +25% and shattered BF will be kinda stupid. I could see BF being put on FoF, and the flat damage mod taken away. It would make mastery more wanted in PVE, and won't turn BF into an IWIN button in PVP.

I've been informed that we're losing the FoF glyph in this push as well. Could be wrong, these changes didn't come out in the last push as I was led to believe, but they're here now. Edit: Confirmed, capped at 2 charges.

---------- Post added 2012-04-11 at 03:18 PM ----------

For the glyph of WE, the biggest interest is that WE can now cast while moving. it's great news. no more "out of reach" when casting freeze, no more slacking in the AOE ...

The AI on it needs a LOT of work. Essentially it will only cast while moving on auto attack if the target moves out of range, causing waterbolt to cancel casting. The only way to force it is to put it on passive, and macro waterbolt into everything while running around.

[huth]

Yeah, when i first saw it, i was kinda hoping it would just keep running alongside me and shoot at whatever it was shooting at, but it just keeps sitting in place most of the time, so for the most part, the glyph does a whole lot of nothing.

With the proc chance reductions across the board, losing FoF glyph probably wouldn't hurt to much.

Having BF back on FoF wouldn't help mastery much, though, since we'd still have the same number of spells affected by it.
Maybe if they changed it from a flat 25% to "is affected by your Mastery" and have that separate from FoF.

[Kuni Zyrekai]

Having BF back on FoF wouldn't help mastery much, though, since we'd still have the same number of spells affected by it.
Maybe if they changed it from a flat 25% to "is affected by your Mastery" and have that separate from FoF.

This would work better. Still solves the issue of shatter with the 25% buff on top of it.

Also the passive on incanter's ward is making it a very attractive option for a great many fights. I'm intrigued.

Edit: Having played with it, it doesn't actually seem too bad, at least at my gear level with 86 scaling. It's about 10k above a frostbolt on crit, which honestly is where it should be.

Frost is also oddly feeling really... Right? I guess. There's still the frantic need to get rid of procs without munching them, but I'm not feeling proc starved or quite as spammy as the last patch.

[Max Rebo]

Frost is also oddly feeling really... Right? I guess. There's still the frantic need to get rid of procs without munching them, but I'm not feeling proc starved or quite as spammy as the last patch.

They did decrease the proc rate on FoF, after all. I've been reading all of Lhivera's posts and he makes a good point about FoF -- that they're mostly clumped together when we use Frozen Orb. It might be more interesting to have some of those procs spread out more evenly between both Frostbolt and Frozen Orb. I realize that we have Pet Freeze to grant FoF charges and a guaranteed proc with Frost Bomb. I don't know... maybe it's enough right now? Still not sure how I feel.

[huth]

Frost Bomb does not give FoF at all, nor do the other Bombs. That's BF.

But i think we got a little to many procs at times in the previous version which made rather hard or even impossible to get rid of them fast enough, even glyphed. It was a little to frantic at times. Also, we're now guaranteed at least 5 charges per minute, up from 4.
Haven't really had a chance to futz around with the changes since Mekkatorque doesn't seem to like staying up, so can't say much about what it's like now.

[Deleted]

Frost Bomb does not give FoF at all, nor do the other Bombs. That's BF.

I guess he meant the guaranteed proc from Frozen Orb by reaching the target.