Kuni's Frost Mage PVE Guide

[Deleted]

Pete: I mostly agree with your position here, I was just wanting to argue that Frost isn't as horribly behind as we might fear it to be. It's just behind. That being said, I agree: Frost needs a buff. And designwise I agree with Akraen - Arcane and Fire both need nerfs; Fire because it's just been awful this whole expansion (I should never feel punished to be casting a Fireball, yet here I am, hating it every time it happens), and Arcane is getting out of control with their mastery affecting simply everything.

That being said, we're not gonna see any of that. A cheap and dirty fix, like increasing Frostbolt damage by 5% or something, would already do the trick. But Blizzard operates on different scales. The same reason why I argue its ok to raid as Frost, even if not optimal, is the reason why Blizzard thinks its ok to leave Frost be as it is - people can play it. And the vast majority of those who care about raiding just doesn't bother with "fixing" Frost, but go to Arcane or Fire instead. This leaves us stuck with Lhivera; or in case of us poor EU-mages, pretty much nothing at all.

Maybe all of us should join the "Frost is so bad, every time you play it in a raid a kitten dies"-bandwagon that has been going around for a while, and just make a lot of noise on whatever official forum we can. Certainly has worked for Warlocks. Other than that, all we can really try is to find out how to best play the specc these days and hope for greener pastures in the future...

[Malfecto]

I don't want to sound conspiratorial here Pete, but where are the 2 Jade pots in the frost log? I mean, they are there in the arcane. If you didn't double pot in frost but you did in arcane, then you have some data that isn't analogous mate. That's an easy dps difference to make up within deviation missing those 2 pots at the right time.

[Deleted]

just to make it easy, 2 pot on a 10 minutes fight won't make it for more than 2k dps.

@Ilya: The discussion isn't frost is so bad to be un-playable. It's just that it do less than Arcane on a situation it should do better from what was stated before.
Blizzard make his balance with the +/- 10% rules. And it's clearly the case as it should be around +/-25k on normal gear and +/-40k on HM gear.
I can see Pete reaction as logical when he see Frost lacking behind by 5% in the most favorable situation, he just anticipate that it will be at 10%+ in high-end gear.

[Deleted]

Wow that hurts Malfecto! As you can see in the arcane screenshot, Pot has an uptime of 4.9%. Both Skada windows has 14 rows. Berserking is 13th with 10.1% in Arcane window and with 10.1% on 14th in frost window (Frost just has 1 buff more). I`m not sure if you think that I forgot Pot or if I wanted to cheat (dunno for what benefit), but I can assure you pot is there, but not on the screenshot. I would appreciate any test and any result you can bring on, the more tests, the better.

I´m not sure about lhivs influence on the devs, if the devs would only listen to lhivera then it is not his fault, it would be the fault of the devs. I would blame them, not lhiv.

[Mastamage]

And even if we don't look at DPS, we can see another problem that lead to choose Arca/Fire over Frost: Glyph.
Actually, we have 4 nearly mandatory glyph:

• Icy veins - always
• Splitting Ice - always
• Water Elemental - heavy movement
• Cone of Cold - AOE

I have yet to glyph Water Elemental and have never had an issue, even on heavy movement fights (Galakras towers). So in reality we have 3 mandatory.

[Deleted]

For water Elemental glyph, it's not a question to have Freeze at right distance. It's about the auto-cast that increase his DPS a lot on heavy movement fight. But because NT damage is more important, it's just not visible.
More, what the purpose of the glyph? Increase it life by 20%, then why not making the auto-cast baseline ?

[Malfecto]

Wow that hurts Malfecto! As you can see in the arcane screenshot, Pot has an uptime of 4.9%. Both Skada windows has 14 rows. Berserking is 13th with 10.1% in Arcane window and with 10.1% on 14th in frost window (Frost just has 1 buff more). I`m not sure if you think that I forgot Pot or if I wanted to cheat (dunno for what benefit), but I can assure you pot is there, but not on the screenshot. I would appreciate any test and any result you can bring on, the more tests, the better.

I´m not sure about lhivs influence on the devs, if the devs would only listen to lhivera then it is not his fault, it would be the fault of the devs. I would blame them, not lhiv.

Chill out mate, I wasn't meaning to be rude at all. That's why I said I wasn't meaning to be conspiratorial. And I think pots, if used at max haste, are very much more than 2% Nat, especially if done the way Akraen plays. I'm just trying to point out you are comparing tangerines to oranges. Close, but if we are really going to bother testing, let's be consistent. I saw the other buffs are similiar, but I didn't see the pot. It was a question, not an accusation ><

[durrtygoodz]

I got my mage into an alt run tonight for first 4 bosses, and Wow frost is so much nicer to play this patch. I enjoyed playing it on ToT hc progress but switching to adds was pretty annoying. With the frostbolt debuff gone, switching targets feels so much smoother and I'm able to change targets and use procs right away. I was playing with a raid of meta gems and cloaks and since I have neither of those things it was hard to compare DPS but I was pulling some nice numbers imo.

Mobility is great as always, ability to change targets is perfect now and I'm enjoying playing with more haste so got no reason to change spec now

[Deleted]

Got Norushen down and Sha of Pride to something like 10% or so tonight. And I was just exhausted after the raid. Having played frost since the start of the expansion and continuing to do so now have brought some new energy to me in raids.. which ends up with me being exhausted afterwards. I feel that because the spec is supposedly behind (Not at my gear level but it will be eventually) I have to work harder to remain competitive in the raid and bring my absolute A-game for every raid. It motivates me and makes me perform better.
..Which of course is fun! Multi-target fights don't feel as annoying as they used to do. Icicles are good there though of course, I fear for the future but I'll just have to deal with it then.

As it is right now, I am still in the top but we got some gear to get our hands on before I should start to fall behind if the predictions of others around here are correct. Then again, that might not be the case for me in my raid. (Casually hardcore, woo!)

[Akraen]

Starting to feel weird constantly reading "the way Akraen plays"

I think I'm going to patent it.

[oraz4000]

Is there something wrong with AMR as im gonna switch from Arcane back to Frost as i cant stand being planted in one spot, it is suggesting i use Expertise/Haste gems over Int/Haste?

[Drooul]

if 2x of your 2nd best secondary stat is better than 1 int and by gemming expertise you can reforge differently to lose the hit you just gained and turn it into that secondary stat, then gemming that way is better. it gets even better after immerseus trinket.

[Deleted]

A quick information:
Pete a found a strange behaviour that after some test should be problematic. I have confirmed it with SimC too.

What is the problem?
After reaching the GCD cap, FoF-IL is isn't only increase by Intellect. While BF-FBB keep increase by Mastery through Icicle and WB/FB by Crit and Mastery.
Haste keep increase Bomb & Waterbolt DPS, and BF proc rate.
And after sinister cap (53.85%), when FB is at 1s for more than 35% of the time, every mastery increase the value of BF-FFB, FB and WB because of Icc.
To the point that FoF-IL value less than BF-FFB+ICC and FB+ICC and began to be a dps loss.

T16 influence.
The 2-pieces bonus give +20% to the next spell after BF use. It work with FB, FFB, IL and CoC. The best rotation seem to bank one FoF to use after BF. So it increase FoF-IL value.
It result that in high-end gear (near BiS), not casting FoF-IL at all result (after some SimC run) in :

• -8k dps on 1 target (410k Vs 402k) >> -1.95%
• -28k dps on 2 targets (536 - 508) >> -5.22%
• -26k dps on 3 targets (590-564) >> -4.4%

Conclusion:
Without T16, casting FoF-IL could be a dps loss after 560 ilevel. But it will cut the game-play and reduce the burst possibility.
Having the 2p bonus should be really priority.

Through Lhiv, dev have been informed of the problem. I think it should be taken seriously because it change rotation by ignoring some mechanics completely.

[Salystra]

Thought about a possibility to progress with frost. Did a 2 dummy only (Thunder Bluff) cleave test with Frost and Arcane. This is frost strongest diszipline and I expected Frost ahead of Arcane after ~10 minutes, but surprise, surprise Arcane was ahead. Looking at some logs on WoL just backup my assumptions. Kor'kron Dark Shaman for example is a 2 target cleave fight with movement involved, but Arcane and Fire are just way ahead. But back to my tests:

Arcane 10:32



Frost 10:35



- Cloak was 1.6m stronger with Arcane
- Nether Tempest 52.5% stronger with Arcane

Played Frost with maximum haste and Arcane with maximum mastery. Icicles compensate a bit for missing NT damage, but just imagine 3+ target situations. I personally accepted that frost is not even close to well tuned this time, but when does Blizzard acknowledge this? There are enough Warlock notes, time for some Mage notes Blizzard!

No pot when playing Frost and lower uptimes on some of the abilities to boot, considering the 10kish (allow some element for play loss) ?

I would say thats pretty damn close and a frost mage given the same scenario and same uptime on procs with pot would put out the same numbers as you did as Arcane?

EDIT: see it was already mentioned now but agree that it would be more than 2k given the correct timings on their usage.

[Deleted]

You should read a few post above, where someone else thought I used no pot. Just check the rows, both have 14, but frost has just 1 buff more. Berserking is in row 13 with 10.1% in Arcane screen und Berserking is in row 14 with 10.1% in Frost screen. Trinkets are not a big deal, because one has higher uptime in the arcane screen and the other has higher uptime in frost screen.

14k are huge imho, because 2 target cleave is frost`s strongest diszipline and arcane benefit way more from raid buffs than frost. I repated tests a few times with higher outcome for arcane (339k arcane 312 frost).

After yesterday`s raid I have no doubt that frost is a good chunk weaker than the other two specs. Finding out that I can do more/even damage without casting FoF IL just showed me that Frost is just embryonic atm.

[Salystra]

Question then Pete which is your most played and preferred spec?

After all it comes down to that primarily



EDIT: Btw just had a pm in error so throwing it up here for you to respond to, which addition to recount you using to show the buffs.

[Deleted]

I'm not sure I'm reading that exactly right Nathyiel, so let me see if I understood you correctly:

The issue is that FoF-IL is only increased by intellect after a certain point (I think you accidentally wrote "isn't" there?), thereby scaling much worse then the other spells, yes?
I understand that problem, but I don't really follow your conclusion yet. Do you assume it is actually a DPS-loss to cast FoF-IL instead of just continuing with Frostbolts? And how does the 2pc-t16 actually change that, because it's increase would equally apply to every spell you use after the cast of FFB? I'm just a bit confused overall, maybe you could clear it up for me.

[Deleted]

Question then Pete which is your most played and preferred spec?

After all it comes down to that primarily



EDIT: Btw just had a pm in error so throwing it up here for you to respond to, which addition to recount you using to show the buffs.

Answer is pretty easy for both questions: It is Frost by far, worlds and universes ^^

Downed all heroic bosses in in T11 and T12 with frost (yes, even sinestra with haste buff and early frost^^). In T13 I had to switch between the 3 specs. Staying behind the pillars on morchok with 35yrds frostbolt range, but 40yrds to the boss was the most annoying thing so far. During MoP I played nearly all bosses with frost, but in SoO... I would really, really like to, but compared to the other specs and classes like warlocks, priests, rogues I don´t see a chance to continue heroic progression with frost :/ (for me, not frost in general)

@ Ilya

I tested it on 2 targets. with 48.x% haste and 49.x% mastery. Not casting FoF IL did even or more damge (RNG). With Nathyiel`s gear he did a bit less. It is not a big deal to completely ignore casting FoF procs, because if you cast it or not doesn´t really matter. I (maybe Nathyiel too) think that there are circumstances where not casting FoF is a fair dps gain (just before movement for example).
I think Nath can explain it better or more detailed.

*Edit* @Salystra

I use Skada Damage Meter

[Salystra]

Shall see how it pans out I guess, just don't seem to be getting on with the new(ish) style of arcane play even at my gear level

Ref: http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/characte...ystra/advanced

Did you see the edit note on my previous post

[mrgreenthump]

Shall see how it pans out I guess, just don't seem to be getting on with the new(ish) style of arcane play even at my gear level

Ref: http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/characte...ystra/advanced

Did you see the edit note on my previous post

All I remember from my testing was that Arcane with T16 felt a lot better to play than t15.. But they did nerf the arcane set after that if I remember it correctly. So if you don't like it now, there is still hope for you once you get t16 4-set