Frost Mage DPS Mythic+ Tips — Dragonflight 10.2.5

Last updated on Jan 15, 2024 at 15:00 by Kuni 113 comments
General Information

In this guide, you will find tips and advice to tackle Mythic+ dungeons with your Frost Mage in World of Warcraft — Dragonflight 10.2.5.

1.

Frost Mage in Mythic+

Frost Mage is highly valued in Mythic+. It is one of the better 2-target cleave specs and has amazing burst AoE damage. In terms of utility, it brings Arcane Intellect Icon Arcane Intellect for your casters and healers, Remove Curse Icon Remove Curse and Spellsteal Icon Spellsteal as dispels, a powerful knockback, an AoE disorient, mass crowd control both hard and soft, a party-wide 22% health barrier, and even the potential to let the group skip trash packs. It also has the best AoE slows in the game.

1.1.

Frost Mage Mythic+ Rotation

The single target rotations do not change in Mythic+ content, compared to raid content. For more information about the Frost Mage DPS rotation, refer back to the Rotation page, found here:

The main AoE rotation for Frost is fairly simple. Firstly, you have your Frozen Orb Icon Frozen Orb and Blizzard Icon Blizzard machine. Ice Caller Icon Ice Caller reduces the cooldown of Frozen Orb for each mob that Blizzard damages on each damage wave. Given that Frozen Orb is one of your most powerful spells for the entire run, this is extremely important. On the flip side, having enough targets to reset Frozen Orb reliably means that you should have very close to 100% uptime on Freezing Rain Icon Freezing Rain, which will improve your Blizzard damage and make it instant. This is the primary part of Frost's AoE.

The next part is related to Coldest Snap Icon Coldest Snap. Functionally you want to walk up to a pack, throw Frozen Orb Icon Frozen Orb, Blizzard Icon Blizzard, Comet Storm Icon Comet Storm, Cone of Cold Icon Cone of Cold, Frozen Orb, Comet Storm, Blizzard, and then Shifting Power Icon Shifting Power. The idea is that Cone of Cold resets Comet Storm and Frozen Orb both and applies Winter's Chill Icon Winter's Chill to the entire pack hit. The delay on Comet Storm means that both Comet Storm sets should land within Winter's Chill and gain the benefit of Shatter Icon Shatter.

Between these, you would ideally want to cast Glacial Spike Icon Glacial Spike between all of this and land Ice Nova Icon Ice Nova or Frost Nova Icon Frost Nova directly after casting it to let it benefit from Shatter Icon Shatter and Subzero Icon Subzero if talented into it.

1.2.

Frost Mage Utility

Frost Mage provides support for the party through excellent cleave damage, raid buffs, and other additional effects such as mob management and immunity cheesing of mechanics.

  • Ice Block Icon Ice Block can be used to soak mechanics that would otherwise inconvenience or kill other party members.
  • Remove Curse Icon Remove Curse allows you to remove curses, a fairly rare power limited to Druids and Restoration Shaman.
  • Spellsteal Icon Spellsteal grants you an offensive magic dispel, another fairly rare power.
  • Arcane Intellect Icon Arcane Intellect grants your party 5% Intellect, a sizable throughput benefit to your casters and healer.
  • Time Warp Icon Time Warp gives your group that extra DPS push.
  • With Frigid Winds Icon Frigid Winds, you have access to the best AoE slow in the game through Cone of Cold Icon Cone of Cold, and one of the top single target slows attached to your primary spell.
  • Polymorph Icon Polymorph, Frost Nova Icon Frost Nova, Ring of Frost Icon Ring of Frost, and Freeze Icon Freeze all give you varying types of crowd control.
  • Blast Wave Icon Blast Wave can knock mobs out of Sanguine or be used as an AoE pseudo-interrupt.
  • Dragon's Breath Icon Dragon's Breath can similarly be used as an AoE pseudo-interrupt.
  • Alter Time Icon Alter Time, as elsewhere in the game, has the potential to cheese multiple positional mechanics, or take pressure off your healers.
  • Mass Barrier Icon Mass Barrier applies your Ice Barrier Icon Ice Barrier to the entire group.
  • Mass Invisibility Icon Mass Invisibility lets you take the place of a Rogue and grant your group a trash skip.
2.

Mythic+ Talents for Frost Mages

As stated on the Talent page, almost none of the class tree is set in stone, and you can change talents around as you see fit and depending on what your group needs.

This talent build is a generalist build. If you do not need the trash skip talents, or Remove Curse Icon Remove Curse, or even Spellsteal Icon Spellsteal, feel free to move things around and grab other defensive points you may like.

In theory Ice Ward Icon Ice Ward is a slight DPS gain for more Shatter Icon Shatters, but you would lose either Greater Invisibility Icon Greater Invisibility, Dragon's Breath Icon Dragon's Breath, or Mass Barrier Icon Mass Barrier/Mass Invisibility Icon Mass Invisibility. If you feel safe in dropping the defensive, AoE stop, or group utility, you could pick it up. Freezing Cold Icon Freezing Cold is a slightly better pick, as it lets a chunk of your Coldest Snap Icon Coldest Snap burst benefit from Shatter Icon Shatter.

Snowstorm Icon Snowstorm is a great talent in theory but has practical issues in most groups. The buff is timed, despite not showing a timer. This makes it impossible to take a partial stack from before a boss to the trash pack after the boss. Adding in that most groups are conservative in how much they pull, the stacking is likely not maximized per tick, making it fall behind even further. These must be addressed before Snowstorm is a good pick unless you are in a group you know will maximize large pulls.

Energized Barriers Icon Energized Barriers, like in the raid, is incredibly useful in removing certain debuffs. It should be noted that this does not apply to teammates with Mass Barrier Icon Mass Barrier, but it will trigger on yourself again.

3.

Mythic+ Affix Utility

Energized Barriers Icon Energized Barriers can snap Entangling Icon Entangling without moving.

Incorporeal Icon Incorporeal can be Polymorph Icon Polymorphed, but not Mass Polymorph Icon Mass Polymorphed. Since Polymorph has no cooldown, you can re-target if a teammate overlaps on the same target.

Afflicted Icon Afflicted is countered by Remove Curse Icon Remove Curse.

4.

Mythic+ Tier List

For an opinion list of how Frost fares against other DPS specs in Mythic+, please see our Tier List page:

5.

Changelog

  • 16 Mar. 2024: Reviewed for Patch 10.2.6.
  • 15 Jan. 2024: Reviewed for Patch 10.2.5.
  • 06 Nov. 2023: Updated for Patch 10.2.
  • 04 Sep. 2023: Reviewed for Patch 10.1.7
  • 15 Jul. 2023: Subzero nerfed enough to not be worth taking in most M+ setups.
  • 10 Jul. 2023: Updated for Patch 10.1.5's rotational and talent changes.
  • 01 May 2023: Updated for Dragonflight Season 2, and added a section about affixes we can trivialize.
  • 20 Mar. 2023: Changed the default talent tree.
  • 24 Jan. 2023: Reviewed for Patch 10.0.5.
  • 22 Dec. 2022: Changed default build to Lonely Winter due to hotfix buffs.
  • 11 Dec. 2022: Added a note about Lonely Winter/Water Elemental decision.
  • 28 Nov. 2022: Updated for Dragonflight launch.
  • 24 Oct. 2022: Updated for Dragonflight pre-patch.
Show more
Show less