Frost Mage 5.3 (136 replies to this topic)

This thread is for comments about our Frost Mage guide for Patch 5.3.

Note that using Living Bomb instead of Living Bomb is also viable. It performs nearly as well and has the advantage of freeing up a major glyph slot (you will not need Glyph of Fire Blast).

I think the first "Living Bomb" is supposed to be "Frost Bomb."  I was wondering where the mention for Frost Bomb was if between 2-4 mobs lol.

Also, do you ever think using Blizzard will ever be viable again?  I'm just swapping back to my mage after having not played it since BC and a bit in Wrath (I love raiding frost), and I remember then it was like Blizzard spam for mass aoe dps.  I'm not saying that's what I want, but it would be nice to see it as a viable spell.

Perhaps after putting on Frost Bomb and stuff it would be great if you could just channel Blizzard until having to rebuff the Bomb.

Edited by heath1056, 25 August 2012 - 10:17 AM.

Thank you for the typo, changes are being deployed and will fix it.

Regarding Blizzard, I'm not sure. As I say in the guide, it has its uses when you cannot get in range to cast Arcane Explosion, so you will probably get to use it. Also, Blizzard is a very efficient way to slow down enemies from a distance. Arcane Explosion is very constraining, as you need to cast it almost in melee range and it has no slowing effect, so it probably does more damage to compensate

So, Deep Freeze not doing damage isn't going to hurt our dps? I suppose the damage increase from the other spells is going to make up for it? Thanks!

gambitpma, on 26 August 2012 - 10:55 PM, said:

Yes, it more than does make up it.

A few days ago, I did some simulations with all three Mage specialisations, testing all possible Tier 5 talents. All the results were between 122k and 127k DPS in Tier 14 Heroic.

The main consequence of the removal of Deep Freeze from the rotation is that Frost Mages will not have the burst damage that they used to have and that no other class could match (save maybe Subtlety Rogues at the pull).

I'm not gonna lie... this sounds more than fantastic!  I've been waiting to go back to frost PVE for some time.  My elemental is smiling now. I can see it.

Well done on the amazing mage guides!

I've been out of the game for about a year (wasn't a fan of Firelands or Dragon Soul or the lack of other content!), but was wondering something about the Frost rotation for MoP. I understand this was a Frost talent, but does the Water Elemental's Freeze ability no longer grant FoF charges (i.e. have they not made this a part of the baseline spell)? If it still does, should that not be incorporated into the Frost rotation described? Thanks.

gambitpma, on 27 August 2012 - 01:32 AM, said:

In the latest version of Simulation Craft, which I downloaded this morning, I obtained the following results in Tier 14 Heroic: 126k for Arcane (Nether Tempest), 130k for Fire (Frost Bomb), and 125k for Frost (Nether Tempest). Looks like all specs are still viable

markstamos, on 27 August 2012 - 09:17 AM, said:

Thank you

As it stands, your Water Elemental has only one ability, which is Waterbolt. Basically, the whole thing with Freeze + Deep Freeze has been removed from your Frost Mage play style.

Thanks for clarifying that.

I was also wondering what the latest numbers are concerning the bomb talent choices.

From what I have read previously (this may be outdated), Nether Tempest is the recommended bomb choice for single target fights (i.e. raid bosses), Living Bomb is recommended when your number of targets is 3-5, and Frost Bomb when your number of targets becomes any higher.

Is this still the criteria when choosing your bomb or has that changed? It seems counter-intuitive to me that Living Bomb should not be a fire mage's go-to bomb choice, likewise Frost Bomb for a frost mage. Thanks

markstamos, on 27 August 2012 - 11:52 AM, said:

With the latest version of simcraft, there currently is, for Fire Mages, a 1.5% difference between Nether Tempest (the best option) and Frost Bomb (the "worst" option). Living Bomb is in between.

These are simulation results, so you should always take them with a pinch of salt. What can be concluded is that the Tier 5 talents seem to be pretty balanced. It seems that Blizzard wants us to choose the talent we prefer.

For multiple-target fights, Living Bomb seems slightly better than Frost Bomb (this can be argued against) when there are between 2 and 4 enemies. Then Frost Bomb becomes better.

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I strongly suggest that this nonsense be removed or at the least, very seriously revised. Contrary to popular myth, a reset clause in a castsequence is NOT the time elapsed since "first use of the macro", it is the time elapsed since the latest press of the macro. Further, a castsequence does not reset when encountering a spell on cooldown, it simply gets stuck, because that spell cannot be cast.

In general, castsequence macros are very very situational in high-performance gameplay, I only have a single one of them on one character. In this particular case, it is not even needed because neither Icy Veins, nor alter time is on the GCD

EDIT: On second thoughts, there may be an issue with the server needing to acknowledge that you have activated Icy Veins in order for it to be included in Alter Time, nessecitating a small delay between the casts of the two. In that case, a castsequence could be in order.

Edited by Nitiga, 28 August 2012 - 09:46 AM.

Nitiga, on 28 August 2012 - 08:59 AM, said:

Thank you for your comment. I agree that the castsequence was poorly explained and that the reset does indeed count from the last time you used the macro.

One reason why I started advising castsequence macros is because in Cataclysm, Mirror Image was supposed to be off the global cooldown while Arcane Power was active (thanks to Glyph of Arcane Power). Unfortunately, it was wasn't working exactly as intended and the castsequence macro was the only way I found to ensure that Mirror Image is cast after Arcane Power.

Here, I was afraid that the same thing would happen, so I defaulted to the castsequence macro. I did a bit of testing and having /cast Arcane Power followed by /cast Alter Time seems to be working for now, so I've updated the macro.

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I might be wrong, but aren't they reintroducing crit suppression to all mobs of higher level? I read on mmo-champion that this will be 1% crit suppression per level, and that it is calculated before shatter. So the crit soft cap against raid bosses is 28%.

scuac, on 28 August 2012 - 03:44 PM, said:

I haven't managed to find anything conclusive on this matter, so I will wait and see before I make an update to the guide.

With Fingers of Frost giving Blizzard ticks a 4% chance to proc Ice Lance, is there a particular strategy to use it and not waste FoF? Just use up the stacks as soon as you're done channeling? Cancel the channel to Ice Lance as soon as you hit two stacks?

Is there ever a case (besides range) you would want to use Blizzard instead of AE because of being able to generate FoF?

Damien, on 27 August 2012 - 09:56 AM, said:

Well, I can confirm that now on live the Water Elemental still has both Waterbolt and Freeze, and that Freeze generates FoF charges. Should be added to the rotation.

How many FoF charges is it generating on a single target? I have read that it no longer always generates 2 charges, but instead generates 1 charge for every enemy hit by Freeze, to a maximum of 2 charges as usual. Can anyone confirm this?

On the beta, it still doesn't have Freeze. Gotta love these stealth-mode changes

EDIT: actually, it does, it just does not appear in the pet bar... I'll do some testing and then I will update the guide

EDIT 2: Freeze seems to be randomly giving 1 or 2 charges of Fingers of Frost.

Wouldn't it therefore be better to prioritize Freeze over Frozen Orb, so that you consume any FoF charges Freeze generates before Frozen Orb produces more? If you were to cast Freeze after Frozen Orb is already on the target generating its many FoF charges, you could potentially waste some. The alternative I guess would be to wait until Frozen Orb disappears, but you could be missing out on an extra Freeze or two for a longer fight?

On a side note, did the glyph allowing FoF to stack to 3 not make it through to live?

Damien, on 29 August 2012 - 09:05 AM, said:

It is not random. It generates one charge of FoF per enemy it hits, to a maximum of two. So if you are attacking a single target it will generate one charge only.