Frost Mage DPS Guide — The War Within Pre-Patch

Frost has always excelled at limiting enemy movement while dealing reliable and predictable damage. Frost has always been a very potent choice for levelling and world content, given you can endlessly kite enemies with a multitude of snares and roots combined with damage on the move. Frost is great at quickly bursting down priority adds, either by holding onto Mastery: Icicles for Glacial Spike or by holding procs for a quick burst. Like all Mage specializations, Frost has high mobility and is fantastic at doing encounter-specific jobs and baiting mechanics. Between Ice Floes, Shimmer, and a variety of instant cast spells, high-movement encounters have minimal impact on Frost's overall output.

Strengths

• Strong bursty damage profile in both single target and AoE situations
• Great mobility and kiting ability
• Good at killing fragile targets quickly
• Incredible defensive utility for large single hits
• Absurd M+ utility

Weaknesses

• Weak to rot damage
• Cleave has to be talented for, although along the path to an important talent
• No way to deal with spread target damage

If Frost Mage is something that interests you but you do not yet have one, you should check out the leveling guide for tips and information on spells gained on a per-level basis:

As you level, you will gain procs and cooldowns you will have to keep track of. Our Macros and Addon section has some suggestions that do not completely change the game UI but will allow you to keep track of things easier. In addition, there are macros listed that will aid in certain things, such as casting Blizzard at your mouse cursor location without having to click.

Frost is all about generating and using procs. The gameplay is incredibly simple to get a basic understanding of.

Everything you do revolves around Fingers of Frost and Brain Freeze. If you are not currently spending the procs, you need to be generating them. Frostbolt generates both as your filler spell.

If you are brand new to the spec and do not wish to delve into the details right away, the Beginner page is a helpful starting guide that should be fairly easy to understand and execute:

If you are looking for a more in-depth explanation or simply wish to dive into the spec right away; the Talent and Rotation pages are where you should go:

Due to how Frost works, there is no hard rule for determining which piece of gear is better. The best option is to simulate your character and the accompanying gear options. That said, there are some helpful, generalized simulations on the Gear page:

End-game looks somewhat different than leveling and casual content. Our Raiding, Mythic+, and PvP guides can aid you further once you are ready for end-game content:

If you find yourself behind your similarly-geared peers but unsure as to why, there may be some information to glean from our pages on mistakes, tips, or how to simulate your character to optimize your character: