World of Warcraft: Forever Frost Mage - Rotation, Cooldowns, and Abilities

Frost Mage plays with a proc-based priority rotation. You will be paying attention to your stacks of Fingers of Frost, Missile Barrage, and the enemy's stacks of Winter's Chill while slinging your spells.

Outside of your main Frostbolt spell, Ice Lance and Cone of Cold have short cooldowns that also need to be monitored and managed, and you'll be maintaining uptime on the Ice Barrier damage buff. We'll also cover tools like Evocation and Polymorph.

These lists assume you are using the recommended builds in the Talents page, and are max level. If you're still leveling, refer to the Leveling page for leveling rotations.

Pre-Pull Spells for Frost Mages

1. Ensure Arcane Intellect is on yourself and the whole group.
2. Keep Ice Armor or Mage Armor up. Generally, if you need Mana more than you'll be taking hits, Mage Armor is better for your uptime, while Ice Armor provides more defensive benefits if you get hit by Physical damage.
3. Check if Dampen Magic or Amplify Magic are useful in the next fight.
4. When it's time to pull, cast Ice Barrier.
5. Precast Frostbolt as the fight starts.

This completes your pre-pull preparations, now its time for the in-combat priorities.

1. When the enemy has 5 stacks of Winter's Chill, batch-cast Cone of Cold with your next Frostbolt
2. At 1 stack of Fingers of Frost remaining, batch-cast Ice Lance with your next Frostbolt
3. When using a Frostbite build and the enemy is frozen, batch-cast Ice Lance on your next Frostbolt
4. Recast Ice Barrier when the Frigid Power buff has 3 seconds or less remaining.
5. Constantly cast Frostbolt

By batch-casting Cone of Cold, you will pop the Winter's Chill stacks as your Frostbolt flies, then the Frostbolt can start adding stacks again without overcapping, and with minimal downtime.

Ice Lance batched with a single stack of Fingers of Frost allows you to get 3 stacks of value out of the proc instead of 2.

This rotation assumes there are 3+ targets with no priority target.

1. Cast Cone of Cold on cooldown
2. Use Cold Snap to reset Cone of Cold
3. Cast Blizzard as filler

If there is a priority target within the group of enemies, for example a boss plus adds ,and the adds don't need to be burned quickly, then continue doing the single-target rotation. Your Cone of Cold will do AoE damage against the whole group regardless.

If you want to AoE grind on your own, you will want to play almost every pull the exact same, to minimize the risk to yourself while dealing the most damage possible.

1. Cast Ice Barrier and Mana Shield. The order you cast them in is the order they will break from taking damage. Mana Shield will use more Mana, but with Ice Barrier you will lose the DPS bonus once it breaks
2. Pull the pack of enemies either while on your mount, or with your wand, and stack them up
3. Cast Cone of Cold on all targets to start the cooldown
4. Use Frost Nova to root enemies in place
5. Run or Blink to gain distance
6. Cast Blizzard to DPS them from a distance
7. Cast Cone of Cold as they approach. You can Cold Snap to double-CoC for extra damage.
8. Kite and use Arcane Explosion while moving until Frost Nova is ready again, where you can gain distance and repeat the rotation.

One thing to note is that if you are using Permafrost, Cone of Cold will permanently slow up to 4 targets, meaning you can comfortably kite and burn 4 targets to your heart's (or your Mana's) content.

You have various offensive, defensive, and trinket cooldowns. Using your cooldowns effectively is important to optimizing the damage of your Frost Mage.

During the single-target rotation, using Cold Snap on cooldown is a negligible gain, as you only cast it when you have 5 stacks of Winter's Chill. Instead, it should be used around encounter design. For example when needing multiple uses of Ice Block, to quickly refresh Ice Barrier, or similar situations where you want to use Cold Snap as an emergency button.

If the encounter does not call for any use of Cold Snap, then you can use it if you miss your Cone of Cold. Reset the cooldown, pop the Winter's Chill stacks, and continue with the rotation.

Ice Block's immunity can be used to avoid mechanics that would normally cause you to lose DPS, such as fear effects. It can also be used to recover quickly from mistakes, prevent fall damage, when pulling aggro, etc. Sitting in a block of ice, frozen in place, is a lot better than dying.

DPS Trinkets or Racial abilities should be used during agreed upon burst windows with your group. For Frost Mage specifically, use it after you proc Fingers of Frost.

Frost Nova gains time for you, and your group, against freezable melee enemies. Use it in case of emergency when things go wrong, or coordinate it with your group to reduce damage.

Do not randomly throw it out without communication. If a melee enemy is frozen and the tank moves out of its melee range, they will immediately turn around and pummel your Rogue to the dirt. Unless that's your plan, avoid doing this.

Frost Nova can also be used while farming. Use it on a target, get a bit of space, then batch-cast a Frostbolt and Ice Lance for shatter bonuses.

Mages also come with a ton of baseline utility spells. Understanding how to best use the utility of your class will separate you from the rest.

Blink allows you to instantly break stuns and roots, cover distances quickly, avoid dangerous area-of-effects, and even negate fall damage if timed correctly.

Time spent running is time spent not casting, so if you are forced to move in a fight, you should keep Blink in mind.

Only Mage and Druid can dispel dangerous curse effects with Remove Lesser Curse. While damaging enemies is important, getting caught up in it while your group dies to a Curse only you can dispel is infinitely worse.

Counterspell is one of the few ranged interrupts in Forever. Pay attention to enemies outside of melee range that might need to be interrupted.

Polymorph is one of the few complete crowd-controls that can be kept with 100% uptime on a PvE target. It also has the benefit of being ranged, with a short cast-time, and no other special requirements. It can even be spammed to keep a casting enemy from ever finishing its cast while the rest of the group kills it.

Mage's primary resource is Mana. Its maximum is based on your Intellect, and the regeneration rate is based on your Spirit. For a detailed breakdown, check out our Stats page.

Even without the Arcane Meditation talent, Mage Armor will allow you to get a portion of your Mana regeneration that is active when not casting, even while spending Mana. Generally you will use this spell in group environments over Ice Armor for this reason.

Evocation effectively replenishes your mana to full over a channeled cast. Ensure that you're low enough (~5% Mana left) to get its full value, but also make sure you'll be able to channel it all the way to full mana without interruption.

Conjure Mana Ruby allows you to create a free consumable ahead of time that can be used to instantly restore mana. Use it when low on Mana, and remember that you can cast each type of gem as well for particularly long encounters - just make sure to use your best gem first.

Major Mana Potion restores your mana on a two-minute cooldown. Use it when you will get the full value out of the potion.

Depending on how long a fight is expected to last and how quickly you burn your Mana pool, you may need to use multiple consumables. If you use a short-cooldown item like Major Mana Potion, then keep yourself up with your longer / one time uses like Mana Gem and Evocation, you will be able to fit more than one usage of the shorter Major Mana Potion in the fight.

More WoW Forever Mage Guides

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