Kuni's Frost Mage PVE Guide (Cataclysm)

[Alvito]

It is only viable to use Mage Armor when your Evocation on cooldown and running low on mana.

Some mages will jump into it as a combot mana bank and a way to avoid some incoming dmg. Say Majordomo when he is about to do a high stack scorpion swipe. Mixing in why ppl do or when they do things defensively and how that impacts dmg is one of the bigger wild cards for sims though.

[zjadow]

What I can see at first glance is you're not using some procs as quick as you could. Didn't use cold snap to double deep freeze/icy veins/orb.

The best technical way to use ice lance is sitting on the last charge of fingers of frost until it has 1 second left, or when moving. Actual damage differences are fairly minor, and if you end up munching or losing I believe it is 9 charges over a 5 minute fight, it's a DPS loss.

I'm still of the belief that reforging for shatter cap and using glyph of frostbolt is the higher DPS gain, as the math supports that. But to each their own. If GoMA works for you better, then use it.

Thanks for the advise Kuni; much appreciated - changed my reforging slightly now to support to shatter cap without glyph of molten armor.

Reason why i didn't cold snap there at Shannox was because i wanted to save it for the actual boss burning phase there; probably not such a great idea after all .

worldoflogs.com/reports/6p7s3n249kucz3ba/ <-- is Majordomo normal/Baleroc normal logs of yday; I'm quite a bit more positive about those; Think i improved a bit there. Thanks again for all the help

[Max Rebo]

I'm pretty stoked now. Last night, we killed Domo again and I won the roll for the Tier shoulder token. In a few days I'll have enough VP to buy the legs and that will give me my 4-piece set. I'm quite familiar with frost, but now I'm really looking forward to trying it out with this set!

[Kinmaul]

The guide seems to give two ways to handle FoF charges (assuming Pet Freeze/DF is on cd and not coming up anytime soon). One way seems to suggest using IL whenever you have FoF and the other is to only use IL when you have 2x FoF otherwise keep one banked for BF procs. Which method do most people end up using? I'm new to the class, been playing a paladin since the start of BC and a warrior in vanilla, so be gentle!

[Max Rebo]

The guide seems to give two ways to handle FoF charges (assuming Pet Freeze/DF is on cd and not coming up anytime soon). One way seems to suggest using IL whenever you have FoF and the other is to only use IL when you have 2x FoF otherwise keep one banked for BF procs. Which method do most people end up using? I'm new to the class, been playing a paladin since the start of BC and a warrior in vanilla, so be gentle!

I believe the way to do it depends on whether you have the 4p bonus. If no 4p, then bank 1 FoF charge for BF. If you do have 4p, then cast FFB whenever BF procs, independent of whether you have FoF. I think the reason behind this is because you will be seeing *many* more BF procs.

Someone will correct me if I'm wrong, but that's how I recall. I need to go back and read again to make sure.

EDIT: Directly from Kuni on the first page:

T12
Once 4pT12 is obtained, you will want to stagger your frostfire orbs at the beginning, so only one is up at a time. The reason being is that 4pT12 gives brain freeze a 30% proc chance, instead of 15%. You will not have the global cooldowns to use them all. Also a result of 4pT12, you will use brain freeze regardless of fingers of frost, as the proc rate is higher than fingers of frost with the set bonus active.

So that means you'll want to bank one FoF charge for BF procs at your gear level.

[Deleted]

Keeping one FoF is required in order to cast Deep Freeze and use BF procs.

[Kuni Zyrekai]

worldoflogs.com/reports/6p7s3n249kucz3ba/ <-- is Majordomo normal/Baleroc normal logs of yday; I'm quite a bit more positive about those; Think i improved a bit there. Thanks again for all the help

Uptimes look much better! Great job.

The guide seems to give two ways to handle FoF charges (assuming Pet Freeze/DF is on cd and not coming up anytime soon). One way seems to suggest using IL whenever you have FoF and the other is to only use IL when you have 2x FoF otherwise keep one banked for BF procs. Which method do most people end up using? I'm new to the class, been playing a paladin since the start of BC and a warrior in vanilla, so be gentle!

The technical highest DPS is holding your FoF. The list from SimC states:

actions+=/frostfire_bolt,if=buff.brain_freeze.react
actions+=/ice_lance,if=buff.fingers_of_frost.stack>1
actions+=/ice_lance,if=buff.fingers_of_frost.react&pet.water_elemental.cooldown.freeze.remains<gcd

Which means you use FFB on proc, ice lance if you have 2 stacks, and if the cooldown remains on freeze is less than a GCD you also ice lance your last charge away. This is mathematically the highest DPS. Banking charges is a DPS increase if your connection latency and your own reaction time can support not munching FoF charges. When I originally did my simulations, banking vs not banking was roughly 200 DPS difference. Now that brain freeze is showing up all the time, there's a good chance it could be a larger difference. For 4.0.6, the upper limit of munched procs per minute was 9 before it became a DPS loss.

Mathematically Perfect
The mathematically perfect rotation used by simulationcraft is much the same, with a few key differences. Firstly it uses the elemental's freeze as soon as it comes up instead of saving it for deep freeze. Secondly it only has you use ice lance if you have two fingers of frost procs, saving the last charge for either deep freeze or frostfire bolt, whichever comes up first. The exception to this is when there is less than the global cooldown left on the duration of fingers of frost, and your current frostbolt didn't proc a new stack. Alternatively if there's less than a global cooldown left on your elemental's freeze, it will also use ice lance. Now the big problem with this is that the average reaction time of a human being is in the 250 millisecond range, and in addition to network latency, you can't possibly play this perfect. You can try, go ahead. No one's stopping you. But just a couple missed procs and it's a DPS loss compared to the above. This has been argued back and forth by quite a few people, but it was found in beta that you end up gaining and losing fingers of frost charges much too easy to make it the same DPS as shown by a sim. The method described by me above has very close DPS, but is many times easier to keep track of and execute. Try them both out, use what's best for you. This guide is meant to be a starting place for frost, so please don't come back and tell me the guide's wrong simply because you were able to pull marginally better DPS using this. Congrats, you were lucky with procs not munching or you have higher than a good majority of the population's reaction time. For simplicity and almost neglible loss in DPS, the method I have described above is much easier and allows you to pay attention to more things than just fingers charges.

[daniyyel]

This thread is the reason my mage went frost (again) and it's doing really good in our raids.
Many thanks to all posters from here.

[Schmeebs]

Pulled just over 30k on Baleroc 10 man (no 5% crit debuff) as frost, http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/v...=14052&e=14295

Loving frost, every time I go back arcane I start playing like shit because I space out and stop trying.

[Max Rebo]

Pulled just over 30k on Baleroc 10 man (no 5% crit debuff) as frost, http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/v...=14052&e=14295

Loving frost, every time I go back arcane I start playing like shit because I space out and stop trying.

Dang, that's really good!

[Deleted]

The Arcane mage of my guild is trying Frost after 6 months of seeing my Frost mage in the Saturday alt raid.
He ranked <20 on every 10H fights even if he is doing less DPS than my i371 alt, that tells everything about how many people actually play the spec... x)

[Zebuh]

So, i went frost after readin this thread, been a time since. I have both 5% crit buffs and focus magic, need advice on what to do, reforge etc.
i'm waiting for rhyolith head drop(doing heroic;question: T12 head, is it good ? |: ) and majordomo neck.
armory : /character/gurubashi/Zebuhn/advanced

[Deleted]

With those buffs then :
- if you play with Molten Armor you will be above Shatter crit cap (should 663 have crit rating)
- if you play with Mage Armor you will be under Shatter crit cap (should 1201 have crit rating)
You currently have 1047.
http://opendevelop.fr/shatter/Shatter.html

[Karazee]

How is RAWR at modeling Frost?

[Zebuh]

With those buffs then :
- if you play with Molten Armor you will be above Shatter crit cap (should 663 have crit rating)
- if you play with Mage Armor you will be under Shatter crit cap (should 1201 have crit rating)
You currently have 1047.

thanks, i switched the cogwheel from crit to haste, for now, next week i'll change the 365 ring and wait for drops |:

[Hinalover]

How is RAWR at modeling Frost?

it's pretty good. Kavan has admitted that he hasn't put much effort into the frost module as he has for the arcane module (mostly because he doesn't do much in frost). However it does give a good indication of what your stat values should be.

[Karazee]

Great, thanks. I plugged my character in and the reforging and stat values do seem to jive with crit to cap>haste>mastery>crit, so I was pleased about that, especially since I can pretty easily get to crit cap without using Molten Armor (has Frost's mana situation improved any? haven't specced it since before 4.2 dropped. Molten Armor viable now without going oom?).

Of course, I still have no idea if the trinket recommendations are any decent, but I'm guessing the VPLC and DMC:V I have are good choices. they're both ranked higher than the Moonwell Chalice and Rune of Zeth, that I've got as well.

[Schmeebs]

I think Rawr undervalues mastery and overvalues haste slightly, purely based on my own tests.

[badishi]

Pulled just over 30k on Baleroc 10 man (no 5% crit debuff) as frost, http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/v...=14052&e=14295

Loving frost, every time I go back arcane I start playing like shit because I space out and stop trying.

Damn your getting tricks from the rogue

[Schmeebs]

Damn your getting tricks from the rogue

Someone has to get it.

And our rogue glyphs tricks, so its 14.8% uptime of 10% more damage, and even then some uptime can be wasted to do casts being in progress and not finished while the buff is active. So overall probably a 2% increase in damage or something like that.