Frost Mage DPS Mythic+ Tips — Battle for Azeroth (BfA) 8.1

1. Frost Mage in Mythic+

Frost Mage is highly valued in Mythic+. It's one of the better 2 target cleave specs, and has formidable AoE damage. In terms of utility it brings Arcane Intellect for your casters and healers, Remove Curse as minor utility, and the best AoE slows in the game.

1.1. Frost Mage Mythic+ Rotation

Both the single target and multi-target rotations do not change in Mythic+ content. For more information about the Frost Mage DPS rotations, refer back to the Rotation, Cooldowns, and Abilities page.

That said, most of the AoE damage Frost can put out is concentrated into a Shattered Comet Storm. Comet Storm will deal damage 1 second after it has been cast, and roots will break approximately 1 second after they are applied. Thus, if you cast Freeze either just as the first comet is impacting, or just after, you should gain Shatter benefits on 4-5 comets.

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 can be used to soak mechanics that would otherwise inconvenience or kill other party members.
• Remove Curse allows you to remove curses, a fairly rare power limited to Druids and Restoration Shaman.
• Arcane Intellect grants your party 10% Intellect, a sizable throughput benefit to your casters and healer.
• Time Warp gives your group that extra DPS push.
• With Frigid Winds you have access to the best AoE slow in the game through Cone of Cold, and one of the top single target slows attached to your primary spell.
• Polymorph, Frost Nova, Ring of Frost, and Freeze all give you varying types of crowd control.

2. Mythic+ Talents for Frost Mages

Most talents are viable in Mythic+. Depending on your specific group make up, you may choose to focus heavier on single target rather than AoE, or perhaps more on short term burst over longer duration stability. For the most part, anything you would pick for raiding will carry over easily enough.

Rune of Power is actually rather interesting in Mythic+ given almost all of our AoE burst is within 10 seconds. It is definitely fun in lower keystones, but Incanter's Flow will be better in most higher keys due to length of encounters, and the need to move out of mechanics that will actually kill you.

The vast majority of the time you will be changing between Splitting Ice and Comet Storm. The rest of your build will carry over from raiding. Comet Storm offers superior single target and AoE burst, where Splitting Ice is preferred in dungeons with lower mob density, such as King's Rest. The choice will depend on key level, how large your tank intends to pull, your teammates, and what dungeon it is.

A good general use is Comet Storm unless you are in King's Rest, in which case you go Splitting Ice. This should cover most pick-up-group scenarios, and just about all keys ten and below.

3. Mythic+ Affixes

The way Mythic+ affixes are tiered in Battle for Azeroth has changed quite a bit since their launch in Legion.

There are now three weekly affixes and one seasonal affix. The first affix available instantly at level two, the second affix starts at level four, the third affix enabled at level seven, and finally the seasonal affix at level ten.

3.1. Tier One Affixes

• Fortified increases the Health pool of all non-boss enemies by 20% and damage dealt by 30%.
• Tyrannical increases the Health pool of boss enemies by 40% and their damage dealt by 15%.

Fortified and Tyrannical are the two affixes every player will see. These affixes shift the focus of dungeons from boss to trash depending on the week. During Tyrannical weeks players may want to take more single target and sustained damage oriented talents, but that will be both dungeon and key level dependent.

3.2. Tier Two Affixes

• Raging increases the damage dealt by enemies below 30% by 100% until they die. Your slows and freezes will come in handy if your tank dies when a pack is nearly dead due to the extra damage output. Kite, your life depends on it.
• Teeming adds additional trash mobs to certain packs throughout each dungeon.
• Bolstering buffs remaining enemies Health pools and damage dealt by 20% when an enemy dies nearby. To counter this affix, DPS all mobs down evenly and focus your casts into high Health mobs if there are any. Bolstering's range is 30 yards and you can hold a mob out of range through either Polymorph, or any of your roots, to prevent that mob from gaining stacks while others die.
• Sanguine places a pool of blood on the ground when a mob is slain. This pool will heal remaining enemies who stay inside the zone and also damage players. Take care to not utilize heavy slows during these weeks, and possibly spec out of Frigid Winds entirely so mobs get out of the pools quicker.
• Bursting forces enemy mobs to detonate when slain, afflicting the group with a stacking debuff that causes players to suffer 10% of their max Health in damage every four seconds. Ice Block will drop stacks applied to you if you are in danger of dying due to an uncontrolled amount of mobs dying.

3.3. Tier Three Affixes

• Volcanic spawns volcanic plumes underneath and around players when in combat with any enemy. When damaged by Volcanic, players suffer 50% of their maximum Health pool in damage. The more enemies you are in combat with, the more Volcanoes that will spawn. Ice Floes is fantastic at countering this, since you only need to sidestep slightly in most cases.
• Grievous afflicts players with a stacking DoT when they fall below 90%. Ice Block will not drop the stacks, but it will make you immune to the damage, giving your healer a chance to recover.
• Quaking will periodically attempt to interrupt casters by creating a damaging zone around each player. About 3 seconds after the zone forms, it will deal 20% maximum Health in damage to each player caught in the zone as well as interrupting any hard casts being finished during the shockwave. Try and Ice Barrier before it goes off to counter the damage taken, as Ice Barrier holds 22% of your total health.
• Explosive will occasionally spawn Explosive Orbs that need to be targeted and burned down within a short period of time or they will deal significant damage to the party. Explosive Orbs are not able to be cleaved, nor do they take damage from AoE, and the amount of orbs that spawn scales with the amount of enemies in combat. The damage can be prevented by being out of line of sight to the orb that explodes, however. It should be noted, that while you cannot cleave onto the Explosive Orb from another mob, you can cleave off of them using Splitting Ice.
• Necrotic debuffs the target of enemy melee swings with stacking healing reduction and minor DoT. This is Frost's favoured affix. Slow everything, and let the tank run away to drop stacks. 85% AoE slow on Cone of Cold with Frigid Winds is the best in the game, utilize it.
• Skittish reduces the amount of threat generated by tanks throughout the dungeon. Invisibility will drop your threat once you fully fade out, but is of questionable use given the long duration to fully fade.

3.4. Seasonal Affix

Reaping is the seasonal affix for Season 2 of Battle for Azeroth. Reaping causes Souls to rise from the dead and attack the party at intervals of 20% completion on the Enemy Forces count. There are three different enemy types to be aware of:

• Risen Soul: Will apply Reap Soul to their current target, dealing 2% maximum health in damage every 3 seconds, per stack. This can be dispelled.
• Tormented Soul: Will cast Grave Bolt, which deals 25% maximum health in damage to the cast target. This cast can be interrupted.
• Lost Soul: Will cast Shadow Smash at their current target, a frontal cone ability that can be sidestepped. If you are hit by this, your maximum health will be reduced by 20% for 1 minute. Additionally, when Lost Souls die they will cast Expel Soul, spawning swirls on the ground that must be dodged. If you are hit by this, your damage and healing done will be reduced by 10% for 30 seconds.

Keeping an eye on completion percent, you should try and go into each Reaping spawn with both Frozen Orb and Comet Storm available. They should be dealt with as any large AoE pack should: grouped up, casting Frozen Orb into Comet Storm into Freeze and Cone of Cold, and maintaining Blizzard on them after your initial burst is over.

Note that the Souls enter combat immediately upon spawning, although they can reset if in-combat stealth techniques, such as Shadowmeld or Invisibility, are used. Any Souls remaining from the previous wave will re-enter combat during the next wave. Like other trash mobs in dungeons, Souls will drop combat once the dungeon completes (all bosses are killed and Enemy Forces is at 100%), so you may want to kill the last boss before finishing off your trash count to avoid the final Reaping wave.

4. Mythic+ Azerite Traits

Almost all the Frost Mage traits are linked to single target spells. While some are fine to use in general, there are a couple of outliers:

• Packed Ice and Flash Freeze are both quite strong in general. Given that dungeon trash mobs will give you plenty of Frozen Orb resets, Packed Ice gains significantly in comparison to most scenarios.
• Whiteout is not a bad trait if you're running Splitting Ice, for the extra Ice Lance damage. The Frozen Orb cooldown reduction is minor compared to Blizzard tick cooldown reduction.
• Tunnel of Ice should be avoided if possible for Mythic+. It is single target, attached to a hard cast, and the buff resets on hitting a new target ensuring you'll never get much benefit from it in this situation.

5. Changelog