Mists of Pandaria Classic Frost Mage Rotation and Cooldowns

Before diving deeper into a rotation, make sure you always have Frost Armor up. There are weakauras to help you remind you, if any of your self-buffs is missing.

The Frost Mage Single Target rotation is more of a priority list:

1. Apply and refresh Living Bomb. Whenever you have huge cooldowns going or big buffs up, refresh Living Bomb and refresh it right before your cooldowns/buffs expire.
2. Use Frozen Orb on cooldown, unless there is an upcoming AoE phase.
3. Cast Freeze (Water Elemental) on any rootable target. It will give you 1 stack of Fingers of Frost per target hit up to a maximum of 2 stacks, so try to hit 2 enemies with Freeze. Bosses are immune to Freeze.
4. Cast Frostfire Bolt when Brain Freeze procs.
5. Whenever you have Fingers of Frost charges, use Ice Lance.
6. Frostbolt is your filler spell.

You do not need to cast Ice Lance when you have 5 Icicles (see Mastery: Icicles), you will automatically fire the 5th Icicle and make space for a new one.

The AoE rotation is for 2 or more targets. Generally you want to differ between two situations: Are your targets spread out or stacked together?

If you fight 2-3 targets, follow steps 1 and 3. If you fight 4 or more targets, follow steps 2 and 3.

1. If there are 2-3 targets: Keep Living Bomb up on the 2-3 targets.
2. If there are 4+ targets: Keep up Nether Tempest on your targets.
3. Perform your single target rotation (see above).

If your foes are stacked, you differ between fighting 2-4 of them, and 5 or more.

1. If there are 2-4 targets: When facing between 2 and 4 enemies grouped closely together, maintain your single-target rotation. At the same time, use Cone of Cold (with Glyph of Cone of Cold) whenever it is available, and apply Nether Tempest to as many targets as possible. The Glyph of Splitting Ice will also cause Ice Lance to hit a second nearby target for 50 percent of its damage.
2. If there are 5+ targets: Cast Frost Bomb on cooldown and use a combination of Frozen Orb and glyphed Cone of Cold. When waiting for Frost Bomb to come off cooldown, use Blizzard as a filler spell.

Whenever mobs are about to be stacked or spawning in a specific location, you can also pre-cast Flamestrike at the location in question. To further boost your AoE damage, you may also Shatter combo (50% higher crit chance on frozen targets) Frost Bomb and Flamestrike. For that to work, time the impact of Frost Bomb with the Impact of Flamestrike and try to Freeze (Water Elemental, can be used while casting) the mobs just before both abilities are blowing up. Your AoE will be immense and blow a hole into the space-time continuum.

Icy Veins is your primary cooldown and should be used as often as possible. For maximum impact, pair it with on-use trinkets, tailoring cloak enchant, engineering gloves enchant, and potions.

Alter Time returns you to your original location and restores your health, mana, buffs, and debuffs either when activated a second time or automatically after six seconds. It is recommended to use Alter Time alongside Icy Veins to effectively extend its duration to 26 seconds. There is no need to activate Alter Time immediately after Icy Veins. Ideally, wait for trinket effects to trigger before using it, or activate it when Icy Veins has six seconds remaining if no procs occur. For added benefit, though not required, try to have two charges of Fingers of Frost and a Brain Freeze activation ready before using Alter Time. Alternatively, Alter Time can also be used defensively, such as avoiding incoming heavy damage or dangerous debuffs by resetting your position and state.

Mirror Image provides a minor damage increase and should be used whenever it is available.