[Frost] Akraen's Comprehensive Guide to 5.4 Frost PvE (Advanced)

[Oltier 471]

Hey Akraen, 

 

I have been thinking about moving up to the next breakpoint to take advantage of the multi-dot on some fights. Given my current gear do you think that would be a good idea? I can go from 14242 up to 15832 easily and am comfortable snapshotting.

 

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/character/stormrage/Slapnticklee/advanced

 

Thanks for your help!

 

-Slap

I think you know the answer yourself ;)

[slap 5]

I think you know the answer yourself

LOL, Oltier you know me too well these days! :P

[endzeit 0]

AMR Value Mixture Build for Spellhit, Spellpower and Int?

[Oltier 471]

AMR Value Mixture Build for Spellhit, Spellpower and Int?

Default :)

[Final 1]

With a 225 ping from downunder is it worth stacking haste to the 1sec cooldown breakpoint? Even under lust now with 9800 or so haste my spells and GCD's start clipping...

 

I guess it will be trial and error until I find a sweet spot. SimC tells me strange things but apparently its well inaccurate so I might delete it if that's the case.

 

Low iLvls at the moment but interested in this sort of stuff and the guide is amaze: http://us.battle.net/wow/en/character/barthilas/Cyzlak/advanced

 

Cheers, any comments appreciated. I'll get some logs when I do some raids next as well

Edited February 12, 2014 by Final

[Oltier 471]

With that latency, you should use the mastery build.

Simcraft is off for frost mages you are free to delete it.

[Veltrix 3]

woot just got some heroic boots off shamans ! gg uped my dps by a few k so happy about that but i wish i could get the boots off galk and the legs off jugg unfortunately were extended a lockout for thok.... ughh up to 574 ilvl and in increase of 5k so thats always good ... but meh

[Anderson 7]

Hello everyone,

 

first of all thank you guys on icy veins for your great work, especially Akraen and Oltier. Your guides and posts helped a lot in increasing my DPS and getting a better understanding of the mechanics.

 

I have a few questions, this one is related to Akraen's awesome spread sheet:

 

How do you calculate the DPS expected?  

 

Knowing what I'm doing wrong is great and I'm looking forward to post Malkorok logs to get my personal spread sheet But I like to know in general, how much DPS I could achieve with my current gear. Posting Malkorok logs every time I get a new item and get them analysed by Akraen seems a little bit inefficient (and I guess he has better things to do) just to know my expected DPS.  

 

I appologize for my bad english, but I am not a native speaker. Correction in grammar and spelling is welcome

Edited February 13, 2014 by Anderson

[Stormy 9]

As said, Simcraft is bad. I don't think there's a  surefire way to calculate your expected other than looking at top mages parses, making an average and adding a percent or two to get a realistic idea of what you can do. Unfortunately, that only works for higher ilvls and even then, the shorter kills and possibly more yolo strats used by top guilds kind of skew it. It still works for Malkorok however.

 

Akraen's log analysis is very useful but it's not the end-all of your analysis and is hardly "everything you need to correct your play", so don't expect that much out of it, particularly if you already play at a high level. His analysis also doesn't take several factors into account since Malkorok, is only close to a pure patchwerk in normal mode, in heroic there's quite a bit more to it.

 

P.S. : Your english is better than a lot of native speakers.

Edited February 13, 2014 by Oltier
Inappropiate word

[Akraen 230]

Hello everyone,

 

first of all thank you guys on icy veins for your great work, especially Akraen and Oltier. Your guides and posts helped a lot in increasing my DPS and getting a better understanding of the mechanics.

 

I have a few questions, this one is related to Akraen's awesome spread sheet:

 

How do you calculate the DPS expected?  

 

Knowing what I'm doing wrong is great and I'm looking forward to post Malkorok logs to get my personal spread sheet But I like to know in general, how much DPS I could achieve with my current gear. Posting Malkorok logs every time I get a new item and get them analysed by Akraen seems a little bit inefficient (and I guess he has better things to do) just to know my expected DPS.  

 

I appologize for my bad english, but I am not a native speaker. Correction in grammar and spelling is welcome

Hey there - it's a calculation based off the DPET of spells for your gear (using Lhivera's calculator, which just takes the tooltips and maths it out).

 

DPET is damage per execution time, so you can take it all down to 1 sec so you can compare individual abilities against the duration of the fight. Fight duration is at the top-left of my spreadsheet and is very important. This also helps calculate buffs/procs and uptimes.

 

Expected DPS is based off ideal uptimes, so you can see your deficit. Nobody is ever perfect, though I've seen a few come in around 99%.

 

Now, there's stuff I don't take into consideration, a lot of stuff-- because my analysis only focuses on things we can readily improve, like remembering to hit evocation and refresh bombs. I also highlight just how important Alter Time is, too-- though that's a very rough calculation and would never get me a PhD.

 

 

--

 

Also as a general note to everyone. I've had very bad icy weather lately with lots of downed trees and power lines. No electricity or heat in my house. Also had flu. Also tripped and busted up my leg. All in all not a good week. So I apologize for grumpiness in my posts, as they're all being made from my phone in a freezing, candlelit room. I hope to return back to my helpful self soon.

[Oltier 471]

Also as a general note to everyone. I've had very bad icy weather lately with lots of downed trees and power lines. No electricity or heat in my house. Also had flu. Also tripped and busted up my leg. All in all not a good week. So I apologize for grumpiness in my posts, as they're all being made from my phone in a freezing, candlelit room. I hope to return back to my helpful self soon.

Don't worry Akraen, I will be able to answer anything I can meanwhile! Come back as soon as possible :)

[RejectKid 1]

Preface:  returning after a few years (Quit at end of LK), so bear with me to get caught up with MOP.

Is there such thing as a mastery soft cap for mixture build (haste @ 14242)?  To me with mixture, it would seem there isn't as it seems like it should scale perfectly as you get more mastery.

I only ask because I haven't seen anything about it yet there's a thing in AMR that's an option

BTW thanks for this amazing guide!  I did the same back(not publicly though) when I used to be hardcore in LK 

[Akraen 230]

Some mages try to keep mastery/haste equal, I don't recommend this. Mastery doesn't have any plateaus, just a nice straight linear scale. Also remember that icicles don't crit themselves, but only become larger from a FB/FFB crit. Since FFB's always* crit, you'll have less of a thirst for crit rating.

 

Haste has plateaus, some are breakpoints and some are soft caps.

 

Breakpoints happen when you squeeze an additional DoT tick into the duration of a mage bomb.

Soft caps happen when an important milestone is reached, such as reaching 1 sec Frostbolt cast with meta, with meta+hero, or even without any buffs (don't try to get the latter unless you're me/crazy).

 

So because of breakpoints & softcaps, you really should focus on getting haste to one of those comfy spots, then maximize mastery outside of it.

 

The best softcap to focus on this tier is 14242 because that's 50% haste. Some silly/bad simcraft data once said we should go to 48% then dump the rest into mastery. I called this out as rubbish. Because haste loses no value until you GCD cap, then it begins to lose value.

 

Such was the birth of the 3 completely viable frost builds. Max mastery, mixture, and haste. Back in ToT, 14242 haste was a tough thing to reach. But in current gear and with extra scaling from PBoI, that's a cinch! So 14242 became the new focal point for mixture build. It allows you to reach 1 sec GCD on frostbolt when your meta is up and it allows you to get some radical mastery numbers.

 

Take me for example, I'm at 14.2k haste and 17k mastery right now. This is the best place to be unless you want to do some difficult snapshotting (I do change back and forth regularly for fun). Having this much mastery means my icicles are nuts but I'm still reducing my cast times as low as possible as long as haste is up.

 

This means for the burst period of a fight, the big one-- the start of the fight, at least the first 45 sec, I'm as filled up with haste as functionally purposeful (sans the bomb DPS), and maximizing my icicle passive as much as possible.

 

The argument to continue going for haste beyond all this seems counterintuitive because it has an increasing decline since meta and hero will not benefit frostbolt casts. The reason I say it still matters is because for a majority of the fight you won't have a haste buff, and cast times matter then especially at high mastery. Further, your bomb DPS is such a huge portion of your damage and haste scales them whereas mastery does -nothing- for them.

 

I hope some of this background story helps you and others.

[RejectKid 1]

Some mages try to keep mastery/haste equal, I don't recommend this. Mastery doesn't have any plateaus, just a nice straight linear scale. Also remember that icicles don't crit themselves, but only become larger from a FB/FFB crit. Since FFB's always* crit, you'll have less of a thirst for crit rating.

 

Haste has plateaus, some are breakpoints and some are soft caps.

 

Breakpoints happen when you squeeze an additional DoT tick into the duration of a mage bomb.

Soft caps happen when an important milestone is reached, such as reaching 1 sec Frostbolt cast with meta, with meta+hero, or even without any buffs (don't try to get the latter unless you're me/crazy).

 

So because of breakpoints & softcaps, you really should focus on getting haste to one of those comfy spots, then maximize mastery outside of it.

 

The best softcap to focus on this tier is 14242 because that's 50% haste. Some silly/bad simcraft data once said we should go to 48% then dump the rest into mastery. I called this out as rubbish. Because haste loses no value until you GCD cap, then it begins to lose value.

 

Such was the birth of the 3 completely viable frost builds. Max mastery, mixture, and haste. Back in ToT, 14242 haste was a tough thing to reach. But in current gear and with extra scaling from PBoI, that's a cinch! So 14242 became the new focal point for mixture build. It allows you to reach 1 sec GCD on frostbolt when your meta is up and it allows you to get some radical mastery numbers.

 

Take me for example, I'm at 14.2k haste and 17k mastery right now. This is the best place to be unless you want to do some difficult snapshotting (I do change back and forth regularly for fun). Having this much mastery means my icicles are nuts but I'm still reducing my cast times as low as possible as long as haste is up.

 

This means for the burst period of a fight, the big one-- the start of the fight, at least the first 45 sec, I'm as filled up with haste as functionally purposeful (sans the bomb DPS), and maximizing my icicle passive as much as possible.

 

The argument to continue going for haste beyond all this seems counterintuitive because it has an increasing decline since meta and hero will not benefit frostbolt casts. The reason I say it still matters is because for a majority of the fight you won't have a haste buff, and cast times matter then especially at high mastery. Further, your bomb DPS is such a huge portion of your damage and haste scales them whereas mastery does -nothing- for them.

 

I hope some of this background story helps you and others.

 

 

Perfect!  Thanks so much for the background too.  It seemed like 5.4 was a big change in MOP

Anyhow alright makes perfect sense to me about mastery.  Like you said it didn't seem like it would plateau to me either.  This art of snapshotting (and my current gear) I think I'm holding off on for the most part, i mean I'll try to semi-learn it and figure out good times but with next Xpak soonish and who knows what will change then.  So I chose your mixture approach.  Quite like it too so far.  Just got the meta this week so now it all "works" for this build :-)  thanks again for the jump start!

[Blindsay 2]

Hey guys, we are 10/14H (25) now and thok should be down soon as well. Slowly getting there.

 

Curious what you guys think of my latest malk heroic log

 

http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/rt-wf9navyg6czh1dgh/details/7/?s=796&e=1118

 

And here is my current gear

 

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/character/sargeras/Blindsa/simple

 

 

My bomb time could be a little better but what else do you guys suggest and is my gear still looking good? My plan has still been 14242 haste and then 28% crit and the rest into mastery. Mostly just chasing Warforged gear now

[Elro 47]

Hey guys, we are 10/14H (25) now and thok should be down soon as well. Slowly getting there.

 

Curious what you guys think of my latest malk heroic log

 

http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/rt-wf9navyg6czh1dgh/details/7/?s=796&e=1118

 

And here is my current gear

 

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/character/sargeras/Blindsa/simple

 

 

My bomb time could be a little better but what else do you guys suggest and is my gear still looking good? My plan has still been 14242 haste and then 28% crit and the rest into mastery. Mostly just chasing Warforged gear now

-After 14242 haste, just go into mastery. It's more important than the 28% crit.

-Wasted 2 Brain Freeze procs.

-Casted 12 Ice Lances without FoF procs. Try to avoid this.

 

I'm sure there's some more, but I'll let Oltier and Akraen take a crack at it, they can dive in deeper.

[RejectKid 1]

-After 14242 haste, just go into mastery. It's more important than the 28% crit.

-Wasted 2 Brain Freeze procs.

-Casted 12 Ice Lances without FoF procs. Try to avoid this.

 

I'm sure there's some more, but I'll let Oltier and Akraen take a crack at it, they can dive in deeper.

 

In his defense with the ice lances (given i havent done the fight on heroic) but I know if I need to run around a bunch (out of breathe, or smash, or w/e) and bomb is already up I'll just lance the target until im where i need to be again.

However I could be wrong and maybe I should be casting something else? (see my previous post about being new again ex-player from LK returning)

[Akraen 230]

Glyphed CoC does substantially more damage than a non-FoF ice lance if you can get yourself near-enough to hit your target.

 

My method of movement DPS is to use Blazing Speed & Glyphed CoC. Works very well for me, but doesn't mean it will for everyone else. I only suggest giving it a try if you haven't yet.

 

I also love to bind CoC to my mouse4, very nice for AoE kiting.

[RejectKid 1]

Glyphed CoC does substantially more damage than a non-FoF ice lance if you can get yourself near-enough to hit your target.

 

My method of movement DPS is to use Blazing Speed & Glyphed CoC. Works very well for me, but doesn't mean it will for everyone else. I only suggest giving it a try if you haven't yet.

 

I also love to bind CoC to my mouse4, very nice for AoE kiting.

 

mouse4 you and your fancy mouse.  lol you'd rip out your hair if you knew my key binds

I might havta check that out, however the only question I'd have (and forgive me if this should go elsewhere considering this is about gear mainly) lets say for a fight you just cant change a glyph for CoC.  is the damage of CoC still good enough over non-FoF ice lance? given you havta be so close and all.

[Akraen 230]

Nope, example:

 

My ice lance(no FoF) hits for about 22k, averaged out with crit chance about 29k.

My CoC(unglyphed) hits for about 17k, averaged out with crit chance about 24k.

My CoC(glyphed) hits for about 53k, averaged out with crit chance about 70k.

Fireblast hits for about 44k, averaged out 57k.

Arcane Explosion hits for about 30k, averaged out 40k.

 

So for single target movement DPS:

 

Glyphed CoC > Fireblast > Arcane Explosion > Ice Lance > Unglyphed CoC

[Blindsay 2]

usually on malk I am no where near close enough to use CoC though

[RejectKid 1]

Why yes I do!

 

Maximum Haste

Maximum Mastery

BiS @ 14242

My personal BiS list

What I'll likely end up with is here

 

 

I noticed on your builds here for BiS that the Weights were different than what is stated in the flow chart.  Or possibly I'm misunderstanding.

 

I'm going to be specific to the mixture build as that's what I'm doing but I believe the others are different as well.

 

BiS@ 14242 (aka mixture build?)

• Spell Power == 7
• Haste <= 14242 == 6
• int == 6
• spell hit <=15% == 6
• Mastery == 4
• Haste > 14242 == 3
• Crit <= 25% == .8
• Crit > 25% == .75

According to flow chart only 4 "changes" seem to have been made.

• Haste <= 14242 == 3.8
• Mastery == 3.45
• Haste > 1424 == 3.38
• Crit == 1.0

 

Could you elaborate on the differences or possibly explain what I'm missing?

[Veltrix 3]

hey guys ! so im back with a few new pieces of loot heroic warforged pieces to be exact boot and chest and i was wanting to know how my gear looks and if there's anything i can change or do differently like higher haste or mastery or you know w.e you guys are the brains hahaha  http://www.askmrrobot.com/wow/gear/usa/illidan/v%C3%A9ltr%C3%ACx armory is in signature

 

also id like you to know after finding this guide ive spend SOOOOO much gold trying to optimize my gear LOLOL so i hope it looks good hahaha

Edited February 21, 2014 by Veltrix

[Veltrix 3]

this is ment for you to see as a am i doing my rotation correct? lol as youll see my armory gear i actually just re equiped KTT but yathats the only piece i changed from the vid minus obviusly gems and such but ya let me know what you think if you could not sure why it didnt catch it all but ya

 

these are as labled

 

currently wearing

http://www.dropbox.com/s/fq13i6wzzcqk9h6/Current setup.png

gear try 2
http://www.dropbox.com/s/3skvn1a2xaaaamt/Gear 2.png
gear try 3
http://www.dropbox.com/s/o7icpvm0bplseg7/Gear 3.png

 

i think the first is still my best option idk

 

ALSO i think the above video is messing up on the site youtube it works fine for some reason lol maybe its just me because im bad

Edited February 21, 2014 by Veltrix

[Akraen 230]

I noticed on your builds here for BiS that the Weights were different than what is stated in the flow chart.  Or possibly I'm misunderstanding.

 

I'm going to be specific to the mixture build as that's what I'm doing but I believe the others are different as well.

 

BiS@ 14242 (aka mixture build?)

• Spell Power == 7
• Haste <= 14242 == 6
• int == 6
• spell hit <=15% == 6
• Mastery == 4
• Haste > 14242 == 3
• Crit <= 25% == .8
• Crit > 25% == .75

According to flow chart only 4 "changes" seem to have been made.

• Haste <= 14242 == 3.8
• Mastery == 3.45
• Haste > 1424 == 3.38
• Crit == 1.0

 

Could you elaborate on the differences or possibly explain what I'm missing?

 

Sorry for the late reply, I was out for a long weekend.

 

Stat weights are never static. Everything you do from a gem swap, to your raid, to getting tricks or not, to your raid leader telling you where to stand all play a role in stat weights. RNG itself impacts stat weights, too.

 

Frost mage right now is a stat weight game, but it's far too complicated to even be worth attempting to map out the weights.

 

You can take the min/max approach to it with some examples, which I did in a couple of the lists. Also you can find the best way to reach 14242 haste and then max mastery. For these strategies, stat weights themselves don't matter at all other than to trick AMR into calculating things properly.

 

So basically yeah, ignore them-- I just used them to get AMR to behave how I wanted it to. All my data is in a spreadsheet and on Lhivera's TC Lite.