[Mage] The Ultimate Guide to Frost

[Clarise]

I do between 14-18k dps on bosses as frost. While it's certainly not the top dps spec, it's a lot more viable than it used to be. The added utility+raidbuffs it provides makes up for the slighter less dps.

WWO logs plz

[cfeuer1]

1.) frost pve can't contend with the other specs, no matter how long it may take you to go oom.
2.) your 2 pet macro's arn't that great

these are what i have been using since quite some time before cata came out.


Frostbolt / petbolt
#showtooltip Frostbolt
/petattack [target=pettarget,noexists]
/cast [harm] [target=targettarget] Frostbolt

~ what does it do? if your pet has no target, he will attack the one you are on. say you have multiple targets, your pet will stay on the designated one until it dies.
Also!!! if you are targeting a friendly(such as a tank) you will attack his target through him, the target of target.

Summon pet /Petnova(201 character macro)
#showtooltip [@pet,nodead,exists]Freeze;Summon Water Elemental
/cast [nopet] Summon Water Elemental
/cast [@pet,dead] Summon Water Elemental
/stopmacro [@pet,dead]
/cast Freeze
/petpassive
/petattack

~ tries to summon your pet if you don't have one out(it will say that you have no pet if you are mounted, which can waste the CD if you hit it too ealrly. then it will use the nova(and also show the nova CD while the pet is active). it will ensure your pet is passive at ALL times. and remember how the frost bolt macro will leave your pet on its first target, this macro lets you change your pets target with ease.
~ it checks for dead, because in early wotlk arena, a dead water elemental would remain for some time. and this made it difficult for most pet macros to work, since you still "had a pet out"

these 2 macros work great together for being able to solo.
1.) set the pet to attack a mob or even old content raid boss(midnight in kara or anzu in sethekk). stand idle to ensure your pet holds aggro for as long as you would like.
2.) when your pet gets to around 40% health or something close, use the pet nova, then DF and lance until you have no FoF or DF wears off.
3.) you pull aggro, and heal your pet to full. in the case of kara, as soon as the huntsman comes out, you can send your pet on him, and you focus midnight.
4.) just kill the boss by whatever means.

[ribeye steak]

Great guide! Keep in mind cold snap also resets the cooldown of ice block (although you still have to wait for hypothermia to wear off). This is great for fights like the first boss in heroic sfk where you can ice block two of his asphyxiates. Also, I would personally take two points out of ice shards and put them in enduring winter. One point in ice shards can be useful for fights with adds. Blizzard has stated that they want to leave each spec a few points they can play around with (obviously some specs have more than others.) You could also take that point from ice shards and put them in pretty much any other talent if you were expected to kite something, or survivability was an issue, or take more out of enduring winter if mana isn't an issue or you just plan to keep mage armor up.

Edit: I would also like to add that haste lowers the cooldown of deep freeze, but crit is still more desirable. And yes, frost is very rng based, but fire is too, maybe even more so. With current gear levels crit is very low, and getting a bad run as fire with only a few crits kills your dps. Combustion is kind of a gimmick, and blast waving a pack of mobs isn't even a guaranteed way to get an impact to spread the dot. Scorch weaving to manage mana is ok, but knowing that every scorch you cast you are sacrificing a chance to cast a fireball is kind of discouraging. Obviously this is all my opinion from my experience. I'm not trying to whine, I play both specs frequently and enjoy them both, but frost is a lot of fun and definitely viable at this point.

[Frostyflaked]

Best Frost PvE Prime glyphs according to EJ are:

Frostfire
Molten Armor
Deep Freeze

[BillyMole]

The amount of ill-informed comments in this thread is quite impressive, though totally unsurprising. Yes, in previous expansions and in vanilla, Frost was not a viable spec (excluding Molten Core, which required frost spec due to fire immunity). This, however, is no longer the case. Fire is currently approximately 8% better than Frost or Arcane when all are played optimally in equal levels of gear. Frost and Arcane are almost identical in terms of dps potential, with Arcane being SLIGHTLY ahead, though the difference is negligible enough to be nonexistent. This can all be viewed here for a basic 6 minute fight with little movement, for T11 gear manoutoftime.org/misc/sc403/raid/T11_372/basic.html

I reiterate, the above is OPTIMAL and T11 GEAR. Just because your fire mage does 8k dps in your heroics does not make Fire weak.

However, I acknowledge that real numbers and facts are irrelevant. There will still be plenty who refuse to accept that times change, and that frost is just as viable as the other specs. This will certainly be true if Blizzard actually goes through with evening out the highs (unholy dk, fire mage), and lows (ret paladins, warriors). Until then, Fire is best if you want to optimize, but this really only matters if you're trying to do cutting edge progression. For most people, the specs are close enough that as long as you know what you're doing and execute it properly, the DPS should be fine.

Edit : A note on the opening rotation. It is all correct, except for burning Time Warp at the beginning. Enough classes still have low-health damage bonus talents that Time Warp should not be used until 35% or so, or your raid will not get the best benefit.. This is, of course, only true for raids. For heroics and others, the fight is short enough that time warp will probably last the whole duration.

[schwegburt]

Very informative primer for Frost Mages. I like guides that spell things out without the inane statistical babble and number crunching one's required to sift through in order to find answers to basic queries. Doesn't hurt that you made the guide amusing to read as well.

[Clarise]

The amount of ill-informed comments in this thread is quite impressive, though totally unsurprising. Yes, in previous expansions and in vanilla, Frost was not a viable spec (excluding Molten Core, which required frost spec due to fire immunity). This, however, is no longer the case. Fire is currently approximately 8% better than Frost or Arcane when all are played optimally in equal levels of gear. Frost and Arcane are almost identical in terms of dps potential, with Arcane being SLIGHTLY ahead, though the difference is negligible enough to be nonexistent. This can all be viewed here for a basic 6 minute fight with little movement, for T11 gear manoutoftime.org/misc/sc403/raid/T11_372/basic.html

I reiterate, the above is OPTIMAL and T11 GEAR. Just because your fire mage does 8k dps in your heroics does not make Fire weak.

However, I acknowledge that real numbers and facts are irrelevant. There will still be plenty who refuse to accept that times change, and that frost is just as viable as the other specs. This will certainly be true if Blizzard actually goes through with evening out the highs (unholy dk, fire mage), and lows (ret paladins, warriors). Until then, Fire is best if you want to optimize, but this really only matters if you're trying to do cutting edge progression. For most people, the specs are close enough that as long as you know what you're doing and execute it properly, the DPS should be fine.

Edit : A note on the opening rotation. It is all correct, except for burning Time Warp at the beginning. Enough classes still have low-health damage bonus talents that Time Warp should not be used until 35% or so, or your raid will not get the best benefit.. This is, of course, only true for raids. For heroics and others, the fight is short enough that time warp will probably last the whole duration.

WWO log on an actual fight plz

[Potatoofdoom]

It's generally accepted that you use glyph of Molten Armor instead of Frostfire. Think about it. Molten armor gives you that increase on crit for all spells, and the proc rate on frostfire bolt isnt high at all.

[(Insert Name Here)]

six digit crits? lol what?
and by lots of instants, u mean ice lance spam?

Deep Freeze can easily crit over 100k with raid gear... As for the instant casts - ice lance, cold snap, ice barrier (if you wanna help out your healers), deep freee, pet freeze, icy veins, frostfire orb, etc...

[Toxile]

Since when did frost need a guide? We've all seen steering wheel mage..Thanks for the effort tho.

---------- Post added 2011-01-02 at 09:11 PM ----------

Your honestly telling people intel is more important then hit before cap, are you joking? How are you going to do good dps if you miss a cast thats a good 3 seconds of dps lost, HIT > INT till capped.

[daniyyel]

nice guide

the damage from frost is very close with fire atm. we have fire, frost and arcane mages in our guild, raiding guild. fire is no1, followed very very closely by frost, even with lower gear, and arcane is in the last place, far-far away.
if you feel that fire is not for you, you should really really try frost. i had a huge surprise by being able to keep up with our better equipped fire mage.
oh and this is the first time ever i tried frost, really fun to play it.

again, nice guide.

[BillyMole]

WWO log on an actual fight plz

Find it yourself. They're quite easy to look up, you know the URL and how to browse. By asking me to do it for you, you are really saying "lol you're wrong."

As I already pointed out, these are 100% optimal performances in T11 gear for a 6 minute fight with little to no movement. It is not a true reflection of reality, since almost no raid fights are straight up tank and spank anymore, and no human can duplicate 100% optimal performance due to lag, mistakes, etc. It IS, however, an accurate reflection of the relative potential of each spec. Errors bring that down varying amounts for each spec. Fire is the easiest, since you only need to scorch weave and fish for Combustion procs, the latter of which doesn't actually make a huge difference if you screw it up. Frost is in the middle, since they have more procs to manage and cooldowns to juggle. Arcane is, obviously, the hardest, since it appears that next to nobody understands what a burn/conserve cycle is, let alone can execute it properly.

If you have a rational argument as to why this would not be an accurate reflection of the spec potential, I'd like to hear it.

[Karrok]

Thanks for the feedback guys. I'm sure there were many mage guides submitted that were all deserving of a top-20 prize, and I'm pretty curious to see them as they get "unlocked".

For now, I'm gonna spend a couple minutes answering some of the questions or correcting stuff I see in the thread.

Question:
Why do Frost mages (PvE) have mastery rating (Frostburn, ''All your spells deal 20% increased damage against Frozen targets.'')
FoF doesn't benefit from mastery. I hope blizzard fix this..

Mastery does affect FoF spells.

Ok so to me, atleast, the spec you posted is broken. Speccing into Ice Shards is pointless because you are never going to use Blizzard on trash pulls, since we will do more dmg doing single target, and also because since IL is going to have to same range as all of your other spells you dont need the additional 5 yards. On trash your going to use RoF and FFO to gain FoF procs for IL and FFB spamming. In my personal opinion http://www.wowhead.com/talent#o0hZfM...szMo:aMmMqk0oM is the spec you should be using for raids. Also taking the FFB glyph over IL is a dps loss. You are going to be spamming IL alot more on FoF procs than you will FFB when BF procs. The FFB glyph is a high priority glyph for Fire...not frost.

Ice shards is useful whenever your target would normally be out of range due to movement, knockbacks, etc. Another point in permafrost and enduring winter isn't that much more helpful, so it's really a wash between them, but saying ice shards is pointless is simply short-sighted. Also, 2/3 ignite vs 3/3 NP and IL glyph > FFB glyph are both incorrect.

Lastly, neither of the specs we use is 'broken'.

What happened to the long convoluted discussion of FoF and why you need 2 charges before casting Ice Lance?

It's there in the rotation section, but it never did turn out convoluted:

"For optimal dps and to make sure you don't hit a dry period of no procs when you need them, don't use Ice Lance when you only have 1 charge unless you have a Freeze ready or that charge is about to expire"

Also, your macro
#showtooltip
/cast frostbolt
/petattack
/cast waterbolt
doesn't quite work in Frostbolt spamming situations. The pet never completes his cast.

That's odd. I use this exact macro, and the elemental always finishes his casts. I'd go ahead and look at the other macros posted in this thread though, since the ones in my guide are more of idea outlines than really fleshed out macros (I'm not good at those).

Question:

The guide repeatedly states that Frostfire bolt should be used when mind freeze AND fingers of frost are up. This would be to ensure that frostfire bolt benefits from the fingers of frost increased critical strike chance.

...But as I read it, Fingers of Frost states: "Gives your Chill effects a 20% chance to grant you the Fingers of Frost effect, which causes your next Ice Lance or Deep Freeze spell to act as if your target were frozen."
Frostfire bolt isn't mentioned.

Is this an error in the talent description, or in the guide?

Brain Freeze tooltip correctly states it benefits from FoF.

You don't need a macro for Freeze, you can just get it from your pet's spellbook like any other spell.

True. But on some bar setups (not sure if it affects the default UI) you can't place a pet ability on to your personal actionbar, which is what you'd use a macro for. You can simply keybind the button on your pet's bar, but some people like to have Freeze on their own bar so you can see its cooldown more clearly, etc

I would also like to add that haste lowers the cooldown of deep freeze

No, it doesn't. Though we all wish it did.

It's generally accepted that you use glyph of Molten Armor instead of Frostfire. Think about it. Molten armor gives you that increase on crit for all spells, and the proc rate on frostfire bolt isnt high at all.

Generally accepted by whom? The math has been done by folks who spend many hours simming the game that FFB > Molten. Don't get me wrong, an extra 6% shatter crit is enticing, but in raids (and some heroic bosses depending on your gear) you won't always be using molten armor for the whole duration of the fight.

Your honestly telling people intel is more important then hit before cap, are you joking? How are you going to do good dps if you miss a cast thats a good 3 seconds of dps lost, HIT > INT till capped.

Your incredibly insightful post before you edited it makes me loathe to bother giving you a reply, but I figure it would help others reading to understand:

http://manoutoftime.org/misc/sc403/m...372/basic.html

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'll make a change in my guide.

[Televators]

I'm confused on the bit about Ignite and FFB. I'm aware that FFB can be either Fire or Frost damage, but does it deal Fire damage as its default to a target with no resistances?

[bkizzle]

couldnt this guide just have had huge letters that said ICELANCE

[Samaster]

Karrok!! Huge guide thanks man! Hows CM going? I sure do miss u and all of D-rock. Love all the work u did on this and u deserve mad props! lol dont mind the haters running thier jaws about lol IL and PvP? really great work and thanks a ton!!!!!

tempted to log an alt on your realm and talk mage w u like the good old days!!!!!!!!

[SyanideLS]

Ok so to me, atleast, the spec you posted is broken. Speccing into Ice Shards is pointless because you are never going to use Blizzard on trash pulls, since we will do more dmg doing single target, and also because since IL is going to have to same range as all of your other spells you dont need the additional 5 yards. On trash your going to use RoF and FFO to gain FoF procs for IL and FFB spamming. In my personal opinion LINK is the spec you should be using for raids. Also taking the FFB glyph over IL is a dps loss. You are going to be spamming IL alot more on FoF procs than you will FFB when BF procs. The FFB glyph is a high priority glyph for Fire...not frost.

You spec, Logic, rotation, and clarity of thought are all wrong.

Do not post misinformation.

[Yondame]

Dear Karrok. I could be wrong, but is this armory you: http://us.battle.net/wow/en/characte.../karrok/simple

If so... you are 9% under hit cap. Your gear is completely weak from my stand point. I know these guides are for contests on MMO champ.. but saddly it's misleading to the community. And I say that with great disgust to your knowledge of frost mage.

I've played a mage now since closed beta of original WoW. And frost mage has had a history of raiding. It was one of the best raiding speccs back in original. BC it was the best specc to start out with especially with fires nerfs that got handed to it after naxx. Where fire was only great for there. Rolling ignites. Bc kept going up and down on frost, but kept being a contender in raiding. WOLK frost yet again was good as a starter but quickly was surpassed by fire until uld, where it was optional for most, but needed for some. TOC frost was needed part time as well. Then arcane came in and has carried thru ICC until cata where frost right now for progression stand points is the best raiding specc until you get the gear for fire.

As for those who go "link me logs no frost mage can do well blah blah blah"

http://worldoflogs.com/reports/rt-7r...?s=2160&e=2381
http://worldoflogs.com/reports/rt-7r...=11586&e=12027
http://worldoflogs.com/reports/rt-7r...=13111&e=13479

Mastery is not tied for the 2nd best stat. Mastery by common sense alone is actually the worst. Much like it is for fire.

Right now according to a blue post, frost is being watched over because it's not getting the better numbers it should right now.

In a more informative note... Icelance IMHO.. is less dmg then a properly specced frost mage with the FFB glyph and ignite. Since doing that I've seen a small but better jump in dmg/dps. It also effects a already extremely WEAK aoe frost has. Pretty much single target>aoe at the moment. Though if you DO have ignite then drop a flamestrike and continue to pew pew with single target. Blizzard in its current condition is retardedly weak.

Also on the mastery note. when I first hit 85 had more mastery then I knew what to do with... I've still got mastery thats been forced upon me by blizzard who goes "its optional fun stat" BS. Mastery is fun if a target is frozen or in a deep freeze. Aside from that... if you are planning to MAXIMIZE your dps/dmg.. you use deep freeze whenever its up. You also HAVE to use FFB orb whenever its up. Why? It plays into ignite, as well as giving FOF proccs. As for starting the fight with that rotation? Potions shouldn't be used right off the bat.. especially in that HORRIBLE rotation listed. I looked at it and saw already 10 secs wasted and thats not counting GCD's. By the time you even use any attacks to benefit your dps.. the pots got maybe 5 seconds left?

Pretty much a good player is a good one.. and a bad one will listen to this guide. I wonder why MMOchamp didn't go to someone of knowledge about this before going ahead and posting this was a decent guide. Honestly scrapping alittle bit from Elitistjerks woulda been better then this guide. Even rawr lists mastery low.

There is no real "guide" for frost. No real guide for any class IMHO. Because a person needs to do their own research on their class. And needs to look up other top ranking mages and compare themselves. If a fight lasts such and such time.. you need to use your cold snap at the right time. Pop it to late, you lose an incredible amount of dps.. Pop it to early and get the same result.

Learn your class. Don't go off some guide which may or may not be true. Everyone handles the class, let alone specc differently. Mastery is only good for if your target is always frozen. At a given notice your FOF can disappear in a heartbeat. Don't rely on a state like that... versus another stat which will give you better and longer results.

[_Khasim_]

I have mage alt, and I have a question regarding Deep Freeze:
If a mob is NOT immune to stuns (think trash in heroics or adds on a boss fight), then should I use Deep Freeze and then spam Ice Lance or BFFFB, or should I just ignore DF completely and only FB/FoF IL/FoF BFFFB?

[Yondame]

It depends on your haste. haste being an issue right now.. Usually right now with my mage, I do one frostbolt and then either FFB if procc is up for the bigger crit and ignite.. or use frostbolt followed by an icelance or two.