Frost Mage DPS Gear and Best in Slot — Battle for Azeroth (BfA) 8.2

1. Patch 8.2 Outdoor Gearing for Raid

Nazjatar has a new currency called Prismatic Manapearl. This gear can be used to purchase potentially powerful Benthic gear. This gear starts at 385 and can be upgraded to 425 using these pearls, and may also roll sockets and tertiary stats when first opened up. Benthic gear has effects that are only active inside Nazjatar and The Eternal Palace. Several notable pieces include.

• Benthic Girdle — Shirakess Cinch provides increased damage to Aberrations (2 of the bosses in the new raid).
• Benthic Girdle — Vim's Scalecrusher Belt is a fantastic damage proc, and sims almost on par with the Mythic raid belt. Assuming the extra threat is of no consequence, this is a very strong option in preparing for raid.
• Benthic Bracers — Most have some form of damage proc, but the best of the bunch is Waveblade Farseer's Bindings.
• Benthic Treads — Akana's Reefstrider Soles is a flat 3% Critical Strike damage. Given how much Frost relies on Critical Strikes, this is ridiculously powerful.
• Benthic Gloves — Poen's Deepsea Gloves are the best of the proc effects on the glove token.

Akana's Reefstrider Soles should be your priority at first, just due to how often Frost Critically Strikes. If possible, try and get one with a socket to increase the value even further. Most of these proc effects with a socket will out-perform even Mythic raid gear in the same slot.

Again, these are only active inside The Eternal Palace and Nazjatar. You should find higher item level pieces elsewhere for the sake of Mythic+.

At revered with the Rustbolt Resistance, you can purchase the Red Punchcard Cyclotronic Blast, which fires off a laser that deals a large amount of damage. This seems to be better than most raid trinkets, at least before Mythic level, and should be obtained as soon as possible, especially if you are not planning on raiding Mythic.

2. Azerite Gear for Frost Mage

With the possibility of Titanforging items, an exact list of best items is impossible to make. That said, since Azerite gear cannot Titanforge, 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.

3. Evaluating Upgrades

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.

4. Trinket Notes for Frost Mage

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.

4.1. Single Target Trinket Simulations

4.2. AoE/Cleave with Prioritized Single Target

5. Changelog