Frost Mage DPS Gear and Best in Slot — Battle for Azeroth (BfA) 8.3

With the possibility of Corrupted items, an exact list of best items is impossible to make. That said, since Azerite gear cannot be Corrupted, below are charts of relative strengths for the three Azerite slots. The key Azerite Trait to look for on your gear is Flash Freeze in most scenarios. Azerite gear can drop from loads of content, like World Quests, Dungeons, Warfronts, PvP, reputations, etc, so you should try to do all possible content. Below we have listed some good items to look for based on how to obtain them and the Azerite Traits they have on them. The listed items are from all locations, including raids, dungeons, and world quests.

Patch 8.3 added the Gouged Eye of N'Zoth as a reward from Corrupted Mementos, after you have finished the We Have the Technology achievement. Once finished, you should get a Gouged Eye about once every two weeks, assuming you are doing all of your Horrific Visions with 5 masks active. Your best candidate would be a very powerful Corrupted item.

More information about Corrupted Mementos can be found at our Horrific Visions Hub.

The easiest way, and also the method we suggest, to compare multiple items is to use Raidbots Top Gear. Here you can input an export from the Simcraft AddOn , select the items to compare, and it will find out which of the items are best.

Due to the prevalence of high item level trinkets and Titanforged rewarded from Dungeons, World Quests, etc, there are a variety of suitable options when it comes to trinkets. It is always best to use Raidbots Top Gear to determine what your optimal trinkets are.

Replacing Warforging and Titanforging, is a system that instead applies a more unique buff or effect in exchange for various negative effects that proc occasionally. For information, check out our Corrupted Items Guide.

Frost Mage is in a bit of a unique situation in which it can handle or ignore almost all of the negative Corruption effects up until 80 Corruption. Blink will let you escape Eye of Corruption while below 80 Corruption. In addition the Thing from Beyond from Grand Delusions is susceptible to crowd control. This means you can Freeze it without losing DPS uptime to run from it.

Running high Corruption is very risky, but it can pay off if you happen to have powerful effects available to you, and you are quick enough to Freeze the add consistently.

The best way to determine which of your corrupted items to use, is by using Raidbots Top Gear. You should set a maximum Corruption value that you are comfortable with, and simply simulate to discover the highest DPS set you have.

Below, we will have some guidance to help you pick effects, but ultimately it comes down to the amount of Corruption the item has versus the DPS it gives you (DPS per Corruption), and how much Corruption you are willing to have on your gear.

Infinite Stars is the best single-target Corruption effect, best per point of Corruption, and best overall per item. The issue is that it applies to a random target within range. So, if you stack the debuff on an add that is about to die, you gained very little value on the boss. On raw single-target fights however, this is the king of effects.

Gushing Wound has a fairly high DPS per Corruption rating, and only has 1 tier. This means it is relatively easy to get an optimal item if it rolls Gushing Wound. This is an incredibly useful effect early on, when Corruption resistance is low. However, when Corruption resistance is higher later in the tier, it can be dropped for pieces with better overall DPS, but lower DPS per Corruption.

Echoing Void is a fairly good effect for DPS per Corruption, but it only applies to enemies within 15 yards of you, forcing you to be significantly closer than is comfortable in most scenarios. There is also the concern that it could pull extra mobs in Mythic+.

Corruption effects targeting secondary stats are going to vary in strength depending on the player's gear, although the procced Mastery effect is rather powerful for No Ice Lance.

The cooldown reduction effects, on the other hand, are very weak given Frost's cooldowns. Glimpse of Clarity being especially useless on single target, since the only value it could possibly obtain is if it procced for Frozen Orb or Icy Veins. Since the buff only lasts 15 seconds, it is fairly unlikely to be of much value in most scenarios. It does gain slightly with AoE, through reducing Blizzard's cooldown significantly for a single cast, but there are much better effects for DPS.

It should be noted that Frost is in a particularly good position to deal with the negatives of Corruption, and may allow you to stack it higher than you should be able to on other specs. Blink can get you away from threats, as can your various roots. Use them to your advantage.

There are 2 types of simulations that can be done for the Corrupted effects. DPS per Corruption, and overall DPS gain. In theory, DPS per Corruption is more important early on, due to there being an upper limit on how much Corruption you can effectively wield without getting yourself killed by your own effects. Later, or as you become comfortable dealing with Corruption's negatives, you should pay more attention to the overall DPS sims. Below we have listed both types of simulations: