Frost Mage 7.3

[Eukray 5]

Tier 6 (90 talents) 

 Unstable Magic grants  Arcane Blast a 15% chance to splash for 50% additional damage to all targets within 8-yards of the target.

But it's frost mage here :p

[Valks 2,373]

2 hours ago, Eukray said:

Tier 6 (90 talents) 

 Unstable Magic grants  Arcane Blast a 15% chance to splash for 50% additional damage to all targets within 8-yards of the target.

But it's frost mage here :p

Good catch! I'll get it updated :)

[Guest Rhino]

I checked the guide, but i couldnt see any mention of Ebonbolt being used, or the fact that it now gives Brain Freeze, rather than 2 chargest of FoF. I hope i didn't overlook it but if it isn't there should it be added?

[Furty 51]

1 minute ago, Guest Rhino said:

I checked the guide, but i couldnt see any mention of Ebonbolt being used, or the fact that it now gives Brain Freeze, rather than 2 chargest of FoF. I hope i didn't overlook it but if it isn't there should it be added?

It's in the rotation section :) 

[Valks 2,373]

7 hours ago, Guest Rhino said:

I checked the guide, but i couldnt see any mention of Ebonbolt being used, or the fact that it now gives Brain Freeze, rather than 2 chargest of FoF. I hope i didn't overlook it but if it isn't there should it be added?

You'll need to enable "Cooldowns" in the rotation section to see it.

[Guest Serion]

So all these guys in the comments who are agreeing with the viability section of this guide must not look into many sims or play the specs well in general.. frost is sims higher in both single and triple target fights at ilvl 865, 880, and 895. Not really sure why people are bashing frost, and the comment: "more serious mythic raiders should consider fire or arcane" is rather ridiculous. Sort of makes me question who you guys bring in to review these guides.

[Furty 51]

1 minute ago, Guest Serion said:

So all these guys in the comments who are agreeing with the viability section of this guide must not look into many sims or play the specs well in general.. frost is sims higher in both single and triple target fights at ilvl 865, 880, and 895. Not really sure why people are bashing frost, and the comment: "more serious mythic raiders should consider fire or arcane" is rather ridiculous. Sort of makes me question who you guys bring in to review these guides.

Who cares what sims higher if it doesn't perform in practice?

[Valks 2,373]

1 hour ago, Guest Serion said:

So all these guys in the comments who are agreeing with the viability section of this guide must not look into many sims or play the specs well in general.. frost is sims higher in both single and triple target fights at ilvl 865, 880, and 895. Not really sure why people are bashing frost, and the comment: "more serious mythic raiders should consider fire or arcane" is rather ridiculous. Sort of makes me question who you guys bring in to review these guides.

We've had this exact same comment multiple times on both Frost and Arcane in the past. I understand that you might see Frost higher on the results that the SimC devs posted, but currently, logs show Fire and Arcane performing better in most raid fight scenarios post-.1.5.

Sims are fantastic for finding out what performs best for a class, but if you simply take sim results at face value, you're going to find yourself wrong more often than right.

Here's the 75th for all EN bosses:

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/statistics/10/#class=Mage

[Guest FirebreezeTH]

I see that stat weights have been changed, indicating Crit higher than Int and Haste, can you please elaborate on that?

[Zadina 923]

If I am not mistaken, you need to getup to 33% Crit for the Shatter cap and then you can move on to stacking Haste.

[Valks 2,373]

8 hours ago, Guest FirebreezeTH said:

I see that stat weights have been changed, indicating Crit higher than Int and Haste, can you please elaborate on that?

From the guide:

Quote

2.3. Critical Strike Cap

Because of  Shatter, it is possible to have more than a 100% chance to critically strike with  Ice Lance (when Fingers of Frost is up). To obtain your critical strike chance against frozen targets, Shatter multiplies your critical strike chance by 1.5 and adds 50%. At 20% critical strike chance, for example, your chance to critically hit frozen targets is 80% (20% x 1.5 + 50%)

Also:

Quote

Critical Strike increases your chance to critically hit. Remember that your chance to critical hit with  Ice Lance(always cast  with  Fingers of Frost or Winter's Chill up) is increased by  Shatter, a Frost-specific passive ability. It also has many interactions with your Artifact weapon that make it worth stacking, even past shattercap.

Hope this helps.

[Kydele 0]

It is said that cri is currently better than haste, so why we are using haste enchants, gems and foods?

[Bradnr 0]

Congrats on your amazing guides.  Icy-veins is commonly referred to by tons of in-game players I talk to.  Thank you for what you do to make the game more enjoyable for us.  Before 7.1.5 I slightly altered your recommended talents and rotations for what worked best for me, and I was one of the top dps in my guild as a frost mage.  After 7.1.5 my dps was so low I actually got kicked out of a raid group.  I have been trying new talents, rotations etc but my question is....

If I want to increase my dps in raids and mythics, would it be better to switch to fire?  I am currently at ilvl865 and my artifact has about 2 more points until is is complete.  Standing in one spot, not using icy veins, I average 260k dps over 2min on a test dummy.  Will I get a better dps increase by switching to fire and start loading up that artifact or should I keep loading artifact points in my current spec?  If I am getting 100k artifact points per day, in your best guess, how long will it take to get my fire spec equal to or greater than my current frost spec.  Thank you for your time.

[Furty 51]

16 hours ago, Kydele said:

It is said that cri is currently better than haste, so why we are using haste enchants, gems and foods?

Most players will easily hit the shatter cap with current gear levels meaning you will likely be using Haste everything unless you're severely gear starved. I updated it for the sake of the devil's advocate and added a disclaimer, just to avoid any further confusion. 

8 hours ago, Bradnr said:

Congrats on your amazing guides.  Icy-veins is commonly referred to by tons of in-game players I talk to.  Thank you for what you do to make the game more enjoyable for us.  Before 7.1.5 I slightly altered your recommended talents and rotations for what worked best for me, and I was one of the top dps in my guild as a frost mage.  After 7.1.5 my dps was so low I actually got kicked out of a raid group.  I have been trying new talents, rotations etc but my question is....

If I want to increase my dps in raids and mythics, would it be better to switch to fire?  I am currently at ilvl865 and my artifact has about 2 more points until is is complete.  Standing in one spot, not using icy veins, I average 260k dps over 2min on a test dummy.  Will I get a better dps increase by switching to fire and start loading up that artifact or should I keep loading artifact points in my current spec?  If I am getting 100k artifact points per day, in your best guess, how long will it take to get my fire spec equal to or greater than my current frost spec.  Thank you for your time.

Thanks! Yes, you will likely get better results with Fire (if you can play it at a similar level) , but not by any significant margin. If you have 25 AK, it won't take long for your Fire artifact to catch up. Do you have any legendary items for Frost? Currently I find the Mage specs to be heavily legendary reliant; if you already have key legendary items for Frost, you likely won't be able to match that damage as Fire without legendary items.

[Valks 2,373]

13 hours ago, Bradnr said:

Thank you for your time.

Glad to hear that you're enjoying the guides and that you got the answer you needed :)

[Guest Firebreeze]

15 hours ago, Bradnr said:

Congrats on your amazing guides.  Icy-veins is commonly referred to by tons of in-game players I talk to.  Thank you for what you do to make the game more enjoyable for us.  Before 7.1.5 I slightly altered your recommended talents and rotations for what worked best for me, and I was one of the top dps in my guild as a frost mage.  After 7.1.5 my dps was so low I actually got kicked out of a raid group.  I have been trying new talents, rotations etc but my question is....

If I want to increase my dps in raids and mythics, would it be better to switch to fire?  I am currently at ilvl865 and my artifact has about 2 more points until is is complete.  Standing in one spot, not using icy veins, I average 260k dps over 2min on a test dummy.  Will I get a better dps increase by switching to fire and start loading up that artifact or should I keep loading artifact points in my current spec?  If I am getting 100k artifact points per day, in your best guess, how long will it take to get my fire spec equal to or greater than my current frost spec.  Thank you for your time.

I have been thinking on switching to Fire for months. Tried to a play only Fire a few times, but I just can't do half the dps I do with Frost. Fire does not work OK on my playstyle, while I do great on Frost.

Despite some guides, I was using Glacial Spike and Ice Nova combos to get crazy single target dmg. Nothing else would work for me. After 7.1.5, I changed my rotation and stopped using Glacial Spike and I mostly use Ice Lance on Frost Bomb with Fingers of Frost. AoE dmg is crazy and single target is excellent after using Thermal Void. 

I excel at most groups, sometimes I compare with good Fire mages at total dps output because of better sustained damage. 

So, try to find the rotations you need and work better for you. I was training on doll for a total of 100M damage and checked how much time I needed to get there. Also try to train on 3 dummies on Orgrimmar for AoE. 

Hope it helps :) 

[Kydele 0]

On 21/01/2017 at 2:59 AM, Furty said:

Most players will easily hit the shatter cap with current gear levels meaning you will likely be using Haste everything unless you're severely gear starved. I updated it for the sake of the devil's advocate and added a disclaimer, just to avoid any further confusion. 

Thanks! Yes, you will likely get better results with Fire (if you can play it at a similar level) , but not by any significant margin. If you have 25 AK, it won't take long for your Fire artifact to catch up. Do you have any legendary items for Frost? Currently I find the Mage specs to be heavily legendary reliant; if you already have key legendary items for Frost, you likely won't be able to match that damage as Fire without legendary items.

Thank you very much for reply me. You do have a lot of help of me.

[sindorei 0]

On 2016/7/24 at 5:48 AM, fr4x said:

First off - thx for the guide, just thought I'd drop off some suggestions on improving readability of the rotational part. What I noticed is that - at least in the case of a frost mage - priorities are formed in patterns. I'm just summarizing my "patterns" which might be suboptimal because I just started playing this spec, but its more about the concept of patterns, rather than what the patterns actually are.

The Ray burst:

1.  Ray of Frost

Glacial Spike burst (requires 5 icicles):

1. Glacial Spike
2. Ice Lance until frozen debuff is removed (I can squeeze three in)

Shatter Combo (requires Brain Freeze proc):

1. Ice Lance to dump Fingers of Frost
2. Frostbolt
3. Immediate Flurry
4. Immediate Ice Lance

The Frozen Touch burst:

1. Frozen Touch
2. Ice Lance x2

Waterjet burst:

1. Frostbolt + (while casting frostbolt) Waterjet
2. Frostbolt
3. Ice Lance x2

Fishing for procs:

• Frozen Orb (if off CD)
• Frozen bolt until Fingers of Frost proc
• Ice Lance

I noticed I only ever break the "fishing for procs" pattern. In all other cases I finish what I started, because it is likely that I would otherwise have wasted time AND lost damage (most damage is typically done at the end of the pattern).

These bursts can then be prioritized. My guesstimate:

1. Ray burst
2. Glacial Spike burst
3. Shatter combo
4. Frozen Touch burst
5. Waterjet burst
6. Fishing for procs

We then add the buffs to the mix: Icy Veins and/or Rune of Power can be applied to buff any of the patterns, where we can distinguish between "Worth postponing until buff is available", "Always buff if available" , "Only buff with RoP when nearing cap", "Never buff". This combination of buff strategy and patterns determines how you will plan your actions.

BTW: I tried to test the theory of CptDraco, but currently it doesn't work yet. When it is implemented and you are going to add this trick to the guide, it is worth noting that at relatively close range, the flurry doesn't manage to catch up with the frostbolt (thus making it miss the shatter proc).

That's lot of useful information, I like to use waterjet to biubiubiu

[GreenTea 0]

Is there a specific place or way to get the best two relics that are listed on the relic page?

[Guest Eiserwin]

so simcraft says , that versatility is the best stat after int, what is about that?

[Valks 2,373]

On 1/21/2017 at 9:58 AM, Guest Firebreeze said:

Hope it helps :) 

Frost is definitely in the best place it has been in a while. In previous raids, the entire top parse list was just Fire - there's now a huge showing from all 3 specs. If there was ever a time to play Frost, this is definitely it!

[Valks 2,373]

On 1/22/2017 at 6:36 AM, Kydele said:

Thank you very much for reply me. You do have a lot of help of me.

Glad to see that you got the answer you needed :)

[Valks 2,373]

On 1/23/2017 at 0:14 AM, sindorei said:

That's lot of useful information, I like to use waterjet to biubiubiu

Be careful with much of this info - it's from July of 2016, which means it's pre-patch info.

[Valks 2,373]

On 1/26/2017 at 10:06 PM, GreenTea said:

Is there a specific place or way to get the best two relics that are listed on the relic page?

You can always check where different relic traits drop in the dungeon journal. You can also sometimes get them (albeit at a lower item level) in WQs.

[Valks 2,373]

17 hours ago, Guest Eiserwin said:

so simcraft says , that versatility is the best stat after int, what is about that?

Did you just sim your character and check what priority it gave you?