Frost dps verse the fire mage in my guild. keep in mind this is an aoe fight.
http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/r...?s=2920&e=3302
Frost dps verse the fire mage in my guild. keep in mind this is an aoe fight.
http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/r...?s=2920&e=3302
In short, yes. Frost has some of the best burst damage around. With clever use of Cold Snap you can munch out over 200k damage in a matter of a few GCD's. That of course means that you need to plan ahead for when it would be clever to pop Snap.
The only type of encounter where you will get into trouble with frost is those that feature stunable adds which basically transform DF from the best damage spell in the game to be nothing more than a nuisance for the tank. For the specific example for HoO hc our arcane mage actually suggested leaving the (unstunable) portals up and dps'ing the (stunable) seeker adds instead. Sure it wouldn't make much difference in the damage output for him, but it would render me (frost mage) completely unable to do anything useful. Thus far, the only heroic encounter I've been consistently unable to complete as frost is Netulon in Throne of the Tides heroic.
And a replenishment buff, not to forget. This was actually the prime reason I made a frost spec in the first place. This buff practically mandatory to have in heroics these days, so if there is no spriest/ret paladin/destro lock around, you better go respec to frost.
Nice guide, definitely a lot of good information in there. I do have one point of feedback:
and thenIntellect is by far your best stat. Yes, even better than hit rating before the cap
and later:Let me clarify that while Int is theoretically a higher-scaling stat than hit, it is still not practical to sacrifice hit for Int. Cap your hit first.
Maybe I'm not awake yet, or maybe I'm the "lowest common denominator", but you seem to be contradicting yourself. You obviously have a good grasp of the statistics of maximizing your character, so it leads me to believe I'm not understanding something. Either int is > than hit before the hit cap, or it isn't. It doesn't matter if your miss hits combustion from now until eternity, if the math says it's better, it's better, and unless you're one of those people who keeps on gambling when they're losing because the odds just gotta turn around, you follow the math.Look at the scale factors. Yes, int > hit. Is it practical to stack int at the expense of hit? No, and in the hit section and FAQ section of my guide I list several ways to cap hit, which heavily implies that is what you should focus on. Sims average out results, which is what differentiates it from real playing. You might miss a scorch, which is no big deal, or you can miss a combustion and rip out all your hair. I hoped people would see how valuable capping hit is despite its theoretically lower scaling than int, but I guess the lowest common denominator (ie. you) falls below the threshold of understanding that.
I'm not trying to be snarky or deliberately obtuse, I just found that confusing and either a) I don't understand your logic, or b) you're forgetting that a well done statistical analysis will include the results from even the worst case scenario.
Maybe you're saying that the situation changes with gear below T11, or there are non-dps reasons hit cap is important, or ??
Could you please elaborate?
Thanks again for the work.
Frost
* Deep Freeze damage done has been reduced by 20%.
* Fingers of Frost can no longer be dispelled and now also increases Ice Lance damage by 15%.
* Frost Specialization now only grants 2 base points of mastery (instead of 8), reducing all Frost damage to frozen targets by 15% from previous values. However, Frost Specialization now increases base Frostbolt damage by 15%.
please update
In regards to the patch changes, so far none of the balance tweaks alter frost's playstyle in any way. About int being better than hit, it's because simulators don't model the immense frustration you get from terrible rng. Int is mathematically higher dps than hit, but you are still going to cap your hit beforehand anyway. It works the same way in pvp, as an example - sure, 50 int may be better than 50 hit, but you cannot afford to miss that counterspell much in the way you cannot afford to miss a deep freeze in pve. Simulations are averaged out, but it doesn't work that way in practice.
Oh, and if anyone was being snarky or obtuse, it was me because I was frustrated with the person I was originally replying to.
I am very much looking forward to your thoughts on the upcoming patch and changes to frost. But I agree, I think we need to give it a try before we freak out over dps loss. From what I gather so far, it seems as though our main nuke (frostbolt) is getting a buff and we will be using ice lance a lot more. Make sense to me. Hopefully this means more pew pew on the run, without worrying about the dps loss. I am going to miss the big crits on Deep Freeze though. Do you think that higher crit rating can help maintain expected crits in spite of the 20% decrease?
Another question: How can you get the best benefit from the warlock's Dark Intent? My lock buddy and I were discussing this yesterday. Which spells can I use to best maximize the buff?
Thanks so much for the post! Thanks to you this is the first time I am rolling a frost mage since I started this toon 4 years ago. This is so much fun.
If you're Frost, the only way to have DI up for both yourself and the Lock is to make sure you keep your FFB DoT rolling.
BfA Beta Time
Heres an even simpiler leveling guide for frost: Spam frostbolt!
Okay..now I'm very anxious to hear what people's observations are in terms of DPS output post-patch. Are we feeling the nerf to DF? Is it time to re-glyph for ice lance?
Same here. So, frostbolt has been increased by 15% base damage, ice lance does roughly the same with fingers of frost and Deep Freeze damage was nerfed so Frost didn't take off too much in PvE after the frostbolt buff.
What I am curious about is whether to try to cast faster frost bolts (haste) or go for mastery (more damage to Deep Freeze, Ice Lance, and FoF enhanced Brain Freeze). This is all after the crit soft cap. Hrm
---------- Post added 2011-02-09 at 09:35 AM ----------
Well after looking on EJ I found this
This was posted BEFORE he knew about-Using Lhivera's ilvl 359 Simcraft output and some rough napkin math for a 5 minute patchwerk style fight:
DF currently hits for ~85000 and is cast about 11 times, so ((85000 -(85000 * .8)) * 11)/ 300s = 623.33 dps loss.
FoF IL currently hits for ~23500 and is cast about 38 times, so (((23500 * 1.15) - 23500) * 38)/ 300s = 446.5 dps gain.
FrB currently hits for ~10500 and is cast about 142 times, so (((10500 * 1.15) - 10500) * 142)/ 300s = 745.5 dps gain.
So 446.5 + 745.5 - 623.33 = ~569 dps gain. These changes should close the gap between frost and fire.
# Frost Specialization now only grants 2 base points of mastery (instead of 8), reducing all Frost damage to frozen targets by 15% from previous values. However, Frost Specialization now increases base Frostbolt damage by 15%.
So after fixing it and taking the additional 15% off of his first equation of DF it looks like it would be a 997 Dps loss instead of a623.33 dps loss.
His second equation can be roughly ruled out since Ice Lance stays about the same since it received a 15% increase from frost spec so it stays competitive in PvE with FoF procs (less damage to nova'd targets / cone of cold / PVP ect)
His third one is the Frost Bolt calc with the 15% damage increase which would still be accurate.
So ROUGHLY a nerf to pve and this is where it gets even more interesting......This is not including reduced damage from Brain Freeze + Fingers of Frost which to quote from another post.
Source- Frostfire Bolt is also effected by 15% less damage from mastery. (Glyph of Frostfire Bolt awards slightly less dps.)
- Thus Ignite will also be effected
Just trying to dig a little bit since I really enjoy PvE frost. I plan on running a few sims with different gear to make sure it can't be helped. But yeah Blizz did what they said it seems but with a nerf to PvE
Blizz Post
^^Notice no mention of Frostfire Bolt (BF + FoF)We did buff Frost Bolt. And we did buff Ice Lance when Fingers of Frost is up. However, we've decreased all Frost damage to Frozen targets by about 15% from previous values. The net result is intended to be that Frost Bolt is a little better against non-Frozen targets, and about the same versus Frozen targets. Ice Lance with FoF is still good, but Ice lance damage against Frozen targets is down a bit.
The intent isn't to nerf PvE frost at all, but instead reward Frost Bolt use in PvP a bit more, and reduce the damage and effectiveness of Ice Lance in PvP.
The important take away here is that datamined changes from pre-release builds and tests are not accurate ways for you to get information on intended game adjustments. Take it with a grain of salt, and approach it with a giant cup of curiosity.
Last edited by clickerflipper; 2011-02-09 at 09:39 AM.
I ran through the guide and made a couple small updates, but the entire guide is basically still relevant. The patch didn't change frost's playstyle one bit. You're just going to see smaller deep freezes and BFFFBs, and some bigger frostbolts.
This is not true.
Frost has changed it's rotation regarding BFFFB. It's now better to use BFFFB right as it comes - with or without FoF - to get the best DPS.
E: And Dummies now receive damage from DF =)
E: Crit is only better than haste & mastery BEFORE the soft-critcap of Ice Lance.
Else it's Haste > Mastery > Crit
Last edited by mmoc3873951f6b; 2011-02-13 at 08:33 PM.
Awesome and entertaining guide, made me want to get my Mage to 85 that much faster :P Frost PvE is looking incredibly fun.
Me spending 3 nights running multiple simulations.
There is a mathematical perfection in holding a FoF for BF/DF and using freeze on cooldown, but honestly once you start accounting for human reaction time/network latency it starts to get fuzzy. The continued leader for the majority of the tests was burning BF soon as it comes, using FoF soon as they come, holding freeze for DF.
Is this guide still up to date?