Frost Mage DPS Spell List and Glossary — Season 4

If you are new to Frost, it is recommended you read this before proceeding! In this section, we will discuss what abilities you have, what they are used for within the specialization, and how they interact with important cooldowns. For extra tips on utilizing certain spells, particularly ground-target effects, check our Macro section:

Frost Mage does not rely on a primary resource. Like the other Mage specs, you have a Mana bar. However, Frost relies more on generating procs through your basic spells to fuel damage output. A notable exception to this is Arcane Explosion. It has a very high Mana cost, and you should take care not to drop too low while utilizing it for AoE, lest you be unable to DPS.

Fingers of Frost is your main source of burst damage output. Fingers of Frost has a 15% chance to proc off of Frostbolt and 10% chance off of Frozen Orb. Fingers of Frost cause your next Ice Lance to be considered frozen, granting both the triple damage bonus of Ice Lance and benefit from Shatter.

Brain Freeze has a 25% chance to proc off of a Frostbolt cast causes your next Flurry to deal 50% extra damage and reset the cooldown of Flurry. Flurry applies Winter's Chill, which causes the target to behave as if it was frozen, allowing you to benefit from Shatter. You should follow up your Brain Freeze-buffed Flurry casts with 2 Ice Lances to exploit this.

Icy Veins increases your Haste by 30% for 25 seconds. This is your main DPS cooldown and is generally best used on cooldown.

Time Warp increases Haste by 30% for 40 seconds for all party and raid members within 100 yards. This ability debuffs everyone with a debuff that prevents the possibility of benefiting from Time Warp, Shaman's Heroism and Bloodlust, Hunter's Primal Rage, or Evoker's Fury of the Aspects for the next 10 minutes.

Ice Barrier is a shield that is worth 22% of your maximum Health, increased by Versatility. This is a very low cooldown when compared to other classes that have a functional Health boost and a very good button to hit if you are moving without procs available.

Ice Block will freeze you solid, making you immune to just about everything. This will also clear most debuffs. Ice Block is best served to either soak a mechanic that would otherwise kill someone or use it as a last-ditch effort to prevent your death.

Mirror Image is an interesting defensive. It temporarily drops your current threat value by -90 million, making it so that you cannot pull threat while active. In addition, while any images remain active, you take 20% reduced damage from everything. Taking direct, single-target damage will cause one of your images to fade away on a 2-second cooldown. At a minimum, this means Mirror Image is a 6-second 20% damage reduction if you are being focused down. At best, it is 40 seconds of 20% damage reduction, incredibly strong for a 2-minute cooldown.

Alter Time is a hybrid defensive/mobility ability. When activated, your current location and Health amount are snapshotted. For the next 10 seconds, or until you activate the ability again, you can move anywhere within 100 yards, and take as much damage as you can before dying. When it expires or you reactivate it, you are instantly transported to the state you were in when you started. This allows for some powerful positional gameplay when you have to take a debuff out of the raid and also is useful in keeping you alive through large hits that you know are coming. Alter Time is one of the most powerful utility cooldowns in the entire game, so you should find new and interesting ways to abuse it.

A note on abbreviations. A good number of spells share abbreviations, and knowing which one is which will depend on the context of the conversation at hand. Many are legacy, whereas the other that shares the abbreviation did not exist yet, or only existed for a certain expansion and was then gone, only to have been brought back for Dragonflight.

Ability	Abbreviation	Description
Frostbolt	FB, FrB	Main filler spell, deals damage, generates procs and applies a slow to the target.
Fire Blast	IB	Moderately strong instant cast a spell on a short cooldown. Useful for finishing off a mob, or if you get locked out of your Frost school.
Frost Nova	FN, Nova	An AoE around you that freezes anything in range. It will break on damage taken, although there is a small grace period. This is considered "frozen" and "rooted" for purposes of spells that interact with those statuses.
Blink		Teleports you in the direction you are facing. This will break stuns and roots. It can save you from fall damage if cast within 20 yards of the ground.
Conjure Refreshment	Table	Summons a consumable for you or your allies to consume to regenerate Health and Mana outside of combat. I will produce a table at higher levels while in a group, where group members can click the table to receive stacks of food.
Blizzard		A basic AoE filler spell. Duration always equals cooldown, both scale with Haste. It ticks 9 times.
Cold Snap	CS, Snap	Resets a few defensive cooldowns for Frost, notably, Ice Block.
Arcane Explosion	AE	Basic AoE spell that causes an explosion around you.
Counterspell	CS, kick	Basic spell interrupt.
Arcane Intellect	Int, AI, buff	Mage raid buff. Keep this active at all times in combat. Casting it in a group will buff everybody in range.
Slow Fall		Slows your fall speed to non-fatal damage. This can be cast on party members. It can also be cast on mounted targets or cast on yourself and then mount up to allow you speed for your jump.
Polymorph	Sheep	Single target crowd control. This will take a target out of commission for a minute, as long as no damage strikes it, including DoTs already on target. Polymorphed targets will only aggro on the the first target in their range and everyone else may pass by without being put in combat.
Cone of Cold	CoC, Cone	AoE slow and a burst of damage. This spell is extremely important to higher level Frost Mage AoE, so learning how it is angled and behaves at fairly close range is a good skill to have.
Invisibility	Invis	A 3-second fade out leading to a 20-second invisibility. If you activate any ability or item during this, it will break, as will taking damage. You are completely unable to be seen by mobs except for those with the "true sight" eye effect above them, only visible while you are invisible yourself. This will also take you out of combat if you successfully fade out fully without breaking. It can be used to skip mobs, drop combat after looting a quest item when combined with some other form of crowd control, or avoid a repair bill on a boss wipe.
Teleport: Location	Tele, Port	Teleport to all major cities and a few other select locations.
Portal: Location	Tele, Port	Same as above, but spawns a clickable object for group members to follow you through.
Mastery: Icicles		The effect the stat Mastery grants us. More information about it may be found on the stats page.
Time Warp	TW, Warp, Hero, Lust	Standard Heroism effect. Raid-wide 30% Haste cooldown.

Ability	Abbeviation	Description
Ice Barrier	IB, Barrier	A simple shield to prevent you from taking damage on a short cooldown. The shield is equivalent to 22% of your maximum Health, increased further by Versatility.
Ice Block	Block, Immune	Makes you immune to almost everything, removing debuffs and ignoring damage for the duration.
Spellsteal	SS	Dispels enemy magic and usually grants it to yourself for up to 2 minutes. Offensive dispels are somewhat rare, and usually if a target's ability can be Spellstolen; it will be glowing on the target frame.
Remove Curse	Decurse	Removes curses from friendly targets. Curses have a purple debuff icon border.
Mirror Image	MI	A threat drop and damage reduction. They do also deal an extremely minor amount of damage themselves, but they should not be used for such a purpose, given how low it is. Any mob you are in combat with will have a temporary -90 million threat modifier towards you, so this is great if you pull aggro off your tank. In addition, for the duration of any images being alive, you take 20% reduced damage from all sources. Direct damage events will kill one off with an internal cooldown of 2 seconds, so you will get, at worst, 4 seconds of damage reduction. Most instanced damage is not coded as direct damage, however, and you will generally get the full 40 seconds' worth of damage reduction, which is obscenely strong in terms of defensive utilities.
Alter Time	AT	On activation, snapshot your location and Health percent. On either the 10 seconds ending or you reactivating the spell, return to that position and Health percentage. This can be used as a second Blink to return from running a mechanic out of the group, a heal, or even if talented properly, a sprint. It has a roughly 100-yard range before you cannot return to it. Also will not save you from death.
Mass Polymorph		Polymorphs all targets around you. Does not appear to have a target limit. It has one potentially interesting use as a trash pack skip in dungeons, as sheep will only aggro on the first target in range. This will allow you to sheep an entire pack, have them all aggroed on you, let your group run by them, and then Invisibility out of combat, skipping the trash pack entirely.
Slow		Slows a target's movement speed.
Ring of Frost	RoP, Ring	Incapacitates the first 10 targets that cross the ring border along the edge of the cast reticle. Particularly powerful when combined with Mass Polymorph, as it can be cast at range where Mass Polymorph cannot. Ring, pull mobs through it, and Mass Polymorph the frozen mobs. This is considered "frozen" and "rooted" for purposes of spells that interact with those statuses.
Ice Nova	IN	Hits all targets for full damage, despite the tooltip, and freezes them for 2 seconds. This is considered "frozen" and "rooted" for purposes of spells that interact with those statuses.
Shimmer		Replaces Blink with a Blink that can Blink while casting in exchange for a significantly longer cooldown and the loss of the stun break utility. Generally considered easier to use of the two choices.
Ice Floes	IF, Floes	A spell you can cast while casting that allows you to cast while moving. Generally considered harder to use than Shimmer, although potentially better. Will not consume a charge if activated within the last 0.5 seconds of a cast, so you will not lose a charge if you cast it "early" for the spell you were trying to get with it. Takes a lot of practice to truly master.
Blast Wave	BW	Deals mediocre damage and puts enemies hit by it 8 yards away from you. To detail, this spell is built that if you are point blank on top of something and hit it, it will fly 8 yards away. If they are 6 yards away, they will move 2 yards out to 8 yards total distance from you. Applies a heavy slow that does not benefit from Frigid Winds.
Greater Invisibility	GI, GInv	An instant Invisibility. While invisible, and for 3 seconds after breaking, you take 60% reduced damage. Generally used as a defensive cooldown. Replaces Invisibility.
Dragon's Breath	DB	The same cone size as Cone of Cold, deals mediocre damage and disorients for 4 seconds instead of slowing. Useful as a pseudo-interrupt for things that cannot be interrupted.
Shifting Power	SP	Deals pulsing damage that also reduces your cooldowns. Marginally stronger and faster than hitting Arcane Explosion 4 times. Generally used as a strong AoE cooldown.
Displacement		Blink but backwards. It puts you back where you started. Leaves a little purple ball where it will put you as a visual indicator. Is not off GCD or castable while casting if you are specced into Shimmer. It also heals you for 20% of your total health.
Mass Barrier		Casts Ice Barrier on the 4 nearest targets as well as yourself. Scales off your health rather than the target.
Mass Invisibility		Casts a 12 second Invisibility on your group.
Ice Lance	IL, Lance	A spammable low-damage spell, or heavy hitter when used with procs or on a frozen target.
Frozen Orb	FO, Orb	An extremely powerful AoE spell that also generates procs. Used in single target due to sheer strength.
Flurry	Fl	An extremely important core ability. Winter's Chill is the debuff it leaves on a target, and it makes any spell that impacts during its duration be considered frozen. This is generally followed up by Ice Lance, but others can benefit greatly from this.
Icy Veins	IV	The primary cooldown ability of Frost Mage. Grants 20% Haste and prevents casting delays from being attacked directly. Summons a pet that increases your damage every time it deals damage, up to 15% after 5 hits. Can cast Freeze to gain full stacks instantly against things that can actually, be rooted.
Comet Storm	CmS	A hard-hitting AoE ability. Drops 7 comets in a small circle around the target. It does not consume Winter's Chill, but it benefits from it.
Ray of Frost	RoF, Ray	A hard-hitting single-target ability that generates 2 Fingers of Frost, one at the halfway point and one at the end of the cast. It does not consume Winter's Chill, but it benefits from it.
Glacial Spike	GS	An alternative playstyle talent. Turns Mastery: Icicles into a Combo Point system, using all five to cast the spell rather than being fired off automatically.

Ability	Abbeviation	Description
Overflowing Energy		Sets your spells to *2.1 instead of *2 damage on a Critical Strike. It has a minor effect that increases the Critical Strike chance when you fail to do so.
Winter's Protection		Makes Ice Block a 3:00 minute cooldown at max rank.
Tempest Barrier		Grants a shield for 6% of your maximum Health when you Blink or Shimmer.
Incantation of Swiftness		Turns Invisibility into an 80% sprint. Potentially useful if you do not need the invisibility itself. Works with Greater Invisibility when talented into it.
Arcane Warding		If it is not physical or any mixed element damage that contains physical, like chaos, this will reduce it.
Incanter's Flow	IF, Incanter's	A cyclical passive damage increase.
Cryo-Freeze		Heals you while you are inside Ice Block or Ice Cold.
Reduplication		Procs only from the direct damage dissipation of an image, not by the image themselves dying to damage.
Reabsorption		Same as above, and only procs from the direct damage dissipation mechanic, not the image dying. Terrible for soloing, both of them. Most instance mechanics do not proc the dissipation either.
Quick Witted		Makes it so that if you succeed at an interrupt, you have a 20-second cooldown instead of 24 on Counterspell.
Master of Time	MoT	Cooldown reduction for one of our best defenses. The Blink refund is also extremely nice for mobility purposes.
Diverted Energy		Heals you when Ice Barrier takes damage. At 40% of the Ice Barrier, this will cap out at 8.8% total Health in healing, assuming you are missing that when cast.
Mass Slow		Slow applies in AoE.
Improved Frost Nova		Brings Frost Nova to an 8-second freeze.
Rigid Ice		Increases the amount of damage a target can withstand before Frost Nova breaks on it by 80%, but +80% of extremely little damage is still extremely little.
Tome of Rhonin		Provides 2% Critical Strike chance, and you should get it.
Tome of Antonidas		Provides 2% Haste, and you should get it.
Volatile Detonation		Both provides a cooldown reduction on Blast Wave (which would be welcome on its own), and also increases the knockback. As mentioned earlier, Blast Wave will move the target 8 yards away from the Mage. This instead kicks the target 20 yards away from their current position, assuming a flat ground. The difference in how far this throws something that cannot be understated.
Energized Barriers		Makes it so that melee attacks against you can grant you Fingers of Frost if you have Ice Barrier up. More interestingly, it removes any form of movement-slowing effect currently on you when you cast Ice Barrier.
Frigid Winds		Will slow everything an additional amount. The only two slows it does not seemingly work on are Blast Wave and Freezing Cold.
Flow of Time		Reduces the cooldown of Blink and Shimmer.
Temporal Velocity		Modifies Blink to grant you a short sprint, which just helps in getting you where you want to go. Alter Time also grants you a larger, longer sprint. This allows you to double-tap Alter Time while moving and gain a sprint if you otherwise do not need Alter Time's defensive benefit.
Ice Ward		Provides your Frost Nova with 2 charges.
Time Manipulation		Makes casting Ice Lance on frozen targets reduce the cooldown of Frost Nova, Cone of Cold, Mass Polymorph, Ring of Frost, Ice Nova, and Dragon's Breath. Notably does not reduce the cooldown of Blast Wave or Freeze.
Accumulative Shielding		Makes it so that if you have Ice Barrier up, and it somehow is not consumed for the entire duration of its cooldown, this talent will take it from a 25-second cooldown to 20. It is bad.
Freezing Cold	FC	Makes Cone of Cold lose its slow for a root that has a quick decay slow after it breaks. Until this gets the Mage root break protection, this is a bad talent that breaks instantly on damage. This is considered "frozen" and "rooted" for purposes of spells that interact with those statuses.
Ice Cold	IC	Trades Ice Block for a damage reduction, but lets you continue casting and moving. Inherits talents that benefit Ice Block, but does nothing if you are not talented in Ice Block initially.
Time Anomaly	TA	Gives you a chance to gain either Time Warp, Icy Veins, or a Fingers of Frost charge every 2 seconds. It will never pick either of the Haste buffs if they are already active.
Temporal Warp	TW	Makes Time Warp not go on cooldown if it causes Temporal Displacement, allowing you a second use afterward. Or at the same time.
Fingers of Frost	FoF	Your first proc, which lets Ice Lance benefit from the frozen status on targets that are not frozen. Stacks to 2.
Shatter		The reason you care about frozen status. Functionally 100% Critical Strike chance against frozen targets at 33.34%.
Brain Freeze	BF	Your second proc. Resets the cooldown of Flurry, allowing more chances to Shatter things. It also increases the damage of your next Flurry while it is present.
Everlasting Frost	EF	Adds 20% more duration to Frozen Orb, and then 30% more damage to the entire thing.
Winter's Blessing		Increases all Haste effects and stats from gear.
Frostbite		Makes any given chill effect have a chance to freeze the target. It has nice synergy out in the world or for trash mobs in dungeons with Shatter and Subzero.
Piercing Cold		Increases the Critical Strike damage modifier of Frostbolt, Mastery: Icicles, and Glacial Spike by 20%. Functionally, if you have Overflowing Energy, this sets these spells to *2.3 normal damage.
Perpetual Winter		Makes Flurry gain a second charge. This allows you to not over-cap your charges.
Lonely Winter	LW	A passive increase to your primary single target spells.
Ice Caller	IC, Imp Blizzard	Grants you cooldown reduction for Frozen Orb. Triggers per target, per wave of Blizzard.
Bone Chilling	BC	Functionally, a passive 5% damage increase as almost all of your spells have a chill attached to them.
Glacial Assault	GA	Gives your Flurry a chance to call down a comet that deals damage. On average, each Flurry will drop a single comet out of Comet Storm at lower damage. Can trigger off any of the three bolts of Flurry, none at all, or all three if you have extreme luck. It also provides a 6% damage debuff to any target hit by either Glacial Assault or Comet Storm.
Frozen Touch	FT	Increases Brain Freeze from 25% proc chance to 30%, and Fingers of Frost from 15% to 18.75%.
Wintertide	WT	Increases Frostbolt damage, and provides a bonus to Ice Lances that you accidentally fire into Winter's Chill when you have Fingers of Frost. This will cause cases of Fingers of Frost-empowered Ice Lances fired into things that are frozen in a second way to gain the 20% damage bonus. This is not a flat 20% damage bonus to Fingers of Frost empowered Ice Lances, only to ones that are fired into double-frozen mechanics. This is not to entice you to save Fingers of Frost for Winter's Chill, but rather to not completely penalize you for having done it. It will happen; it is inevitable. This lessens the impact.
Snowstorm		Makes it so that approximately every 2 Blizzard casts, you can cast Cone of Cold for massive damage in AoE. This is a fairly strong burst AoE talent, and the stacks have a 30 second duration, despite the buff not showing it.
Flash Freeze	FF	Makes Mastery: Icicles 10% stronger, and lets it trigger Fingers of Frost.
Subzero		Only works against things that are both rooted and frozen. So this does not work for Fingers of Frost or Winter's Chill, this is specific to your roots that were called out in the list. This is for trash mobs and open-world only, not a raiding talent.
Deep Shatter	DS	Increases frozen damage by Frostbolt. Given that you can Shatter a Frostbolt if cast before a Flurry, this simply increases that damage.
Splintering Cold		Gives a 30% chance for double value from Mastery on Frostbolt and Flurry.
Freezing Rain	FR	Part of your AoE combo with Ice Caller, which allows Blizzard to be instant cast for 12 seconds after casting Frozen Orb.
Splitting Ice	SI	Increases damage of Ice Lance and Mastery: Icicles by 5%, and causes them (as well as Glacial Spike) to hit a secondary target for cleave damage.
Fractured Frost		Makes Frostbolt hit 3 targets when it procs. This will only roll once for Brain Freeze, Fingers of Frost, and only generate one Mastery: Icicles. This does grant 3 stacks towards Cold Front, however.
Slick Ice	SI	Gives subsequent Frostbolts a stacking buff that reduces cast time by 4% and increases damage by 4% per stack. It also reduces the minimum GCD, so there is no method in which you have enough Haste that causes Slick Ice itself to push you over the hard cap for Frostbolt if you were not before.
Chain Reaction	CR	Makes Ice Lances against frozen targets apply a stacking buff that makes Ice Lance hit harder.
Hailstones		Increases Mastery's value by an absurd amount, allowing the half of your casts that previously did not generate Icicles, generate them.
Cold Front	CF	Casts a Frozen Orb toward your target after you have cast 30 Frostbolts or Flurries. This Frozen Orb does not proc Freezing Rain or Freezing Winds.
Freezing Winds	FW	Makes it so that while Frozen Orb is active, you will gain Fingers of Frost every 3 seconds. Does not proc off of Cold Front.
Thermal Void	TV	Extends Icy Veins using some of the spells you cast the most ( Ice Lance and Glacial Spike).
Coldest Snap		Turns Cone of Cold into a cooldown reset for our other AoE spells and provides them with an AoE Winter's Chill proc.
Cryopathy		Adds a 1-minute duration buff that functionally buffs Ray of Frost by 50% every time you cast it.
Splintering Ray		Causes Ray of Frost ticks to hit 5 nearby targets. Cannot Crit, as damage is based on the damage dealt by Ray itself.