Mage Hero Talents — The War Within (Season 1)

This page is specifically about Hero Talents in The War Within. If you want to learn more about the best regular talents for Frost Mage, check out our Talents page:

Frostfire is sadly very behind Spellslinger. At current tuning, this tree has no place in raid.

Spellslinger is simply the default choice for raiding, regardless of the situation. This is a very binary decision until Blizzard does a tuning pass between them.

It should be noted that if you are prone to any form of repetitive strain injury in your rotational wrist, this Hero Talent will likely make this worse. During Icy Veins, upwards of 95% of your spell casts are Ice Lance, with stretches of casting nothing but Ice Lance and Frozen Orb for 40-60 seconds every 2 minutes.

Playing Spellslinger also almost necessitates the usage of Weak Auras to show when a Splinterstorm is about to go off so you can fire Ice Lance to hit the early applications of Winter's Chill.

Frostfire is slightly behind in Mythic+, but not so far as to be unusable, like raid. Unfortunately, it does rely on Death's Chill, which means that it has both ramping damage during your cooldowns and is even more sensitive to tank movement than usual due to Isothermic Core. It is also, unfortunately, rather bugged when it comes to Living Bomb, as it currently spreads to dead mobs in the stack pile, taking away from valid damage targets.

There is also a variant without Death's Chill, which is extremely close in performance on AoE, so there is a good alternative for those who hate the ramp-up playstyle of Death's Chill.

Defensively, it is a solid pick, with the only defensive talent being a flat boost to our Ice Barrier with no caveats. Likewise, from a utility standpoint, a cooldown reduction on Blast Wave and Dragon's Breath is a very welcome addition, even with the reduction in the importance of non-interrupt-based stops.

Spellslinger is, again, globally strong due to the imbalance in tuning between the Hero Talents from a performance point of view.

Defensively, Spellslinger has the potential to be stronger, but both options are tied to either Mirror Image or learning how to game your health to maximize the value of Reactive Barrier. The utility node is simply a sprint attached to Alter Time for its duration, which is a strong option, or a Displacement improvement, which is a class talent that we cannot really take due to position.

2.

Best Hero Talent Builds for Frost Mage

Frostfire Pure Single-Target Build Frostfire Mythic+ Build Spellslinger Universal Build

3.

Best Frostfire Pure Single-Target Build for Frost Mage

Frostfire has for the most part, one option in throughput. Thermal Conditioning is the better sustained throughput option. The other two choice nodes are defensive and utility, although Elemental Affinity is a minor DPS gain in Ice Floes cooldown reduction if you are talented for it.

3.

Best Frostfire Mythic+ Build for Frost Mage

Frostfire for Mythic+ simply takes Severe Temperatures to maximize Frostfire Empowerment damage. Additionally, Elemental Affinity is non-negotiable, as it lowers the cooldown of Cone of Cold erroneously, a drastic improvement to our AoE.

3.

Best Spellslinger Build for Frost Mage

Spellslinger has no real options in any set. Unerring Proficiency loses out in every situation to Volatile Magic.

Reactive Barrier and Phantasmal Image is a personal choice. Phantasmal is easier to get value out of as long as you are casting Mirror Image, where Reactive Barrier requires you actually watch your health and optimize Ice Barrier casting.

Slippery Slinging is taken because you do not have the points to take Displacement unless you sacrifice a lot of defensive utility.

Frostfire has no real interaction with your rotation. It simply plays as if it had no Hero Talents other than the occasional instant Frostfire Bolt replacing your usual filler Frostfire Bolt.

Despite the Excess Frost and Excess Fire buffs lighting up your Flurry and Ice Lance keys, you should not fire these without their associated procs available. Or, in Flurry's case, it is lit up while you have no charge available. If this annoys you, consider addons to turn off the glow effects outside of the usual proc circumstances.

There is no need to add any Fire element spells to the rotation, such as Fire Blast, as Frostfire Infusion has a hasted 30 RPPM proc rate. This means that it will, on average, proc every just under 2 seconds. You will cap out your buffs as long as you are casting any spells at all.

The important components of this spec are Frozen Orb is now a proc reset, via Spellfrost Teachings, and Splinterstorm applies Winter's Chill.

This has the odd effect that while Icy Veins is going, the optimal gameplay is very nearly spamming Ice Lance and Frozen Orb. No other spell of ours is fast enough to catch the early applications of Winter's Chill from Splinterstorm, and the entire thing wants you to optimize for Splinters generated per second while inside Icy Veins due to Augury Abounds.

This pushes almost everything else out of the rotation during cooldowns. Ray of Frost is only cast when Freezing Winds is not up, so around 1:20 into a fight, and Glacial Spike becomes a functional Frostbolt replacement on sheer strength alone, but not something you actively try and Shatter inside Icy Veins. The resultant "rotation" during Icy Veins is primarily Ice Lance spam, assisted by Weak Auras to check when the next Splinterstorm is coming so as to have your Ice Lance land just after Splinterstorm's first projectile does.