Frost Mage DPS Spec, Builds, and Talents — Dragonflight 10.2
On this page, you will find out the best talents for each tier for your Frost Mage in World of Warcraft — Dragonflight 10.2. We also have default talent lists for various types of content, such as raiding or Mythic+. If you play with Warmode on, we have your PvP talents covered as well.
If you were looking for WotLK Classic content, please refer to our WotLK Classic Frost Mage talents.
Talent Builds for Frost Mage
Best Talents for Frost Mage
Best Single-Target Talents for Frost Mage
This build is optimal for pure single and two-target situations.
Be sure to make use of the 'Copy Export String' button to import the best build directly into your game!
Best AoE Talents for Frost Mage
This is our recommended build for AoE scenarios in raids.
The only important difference from the single target tree is
Ice Caller and
Freezing Rain over
Frozen Touch and
Slick Ice. This variant should be taken on any fight you encounter
significant cleave.
There is another variant that shows up for short add phases every 45-60
seconds, and that is only moving Slick Ice to
Coldest Snap.
This gives you an extremely powerful burst of AoE damage without sacrificing
much in the way of single-target damage at the expense of being functionally
unable to AoE for sustained durations.
Be sure to make use of the 'Copy Export String' button to import the best build directly into your game!
Best Mythic+ Talents for Frost Mage
This is the recommended tree for Mythic+. There are some variants that can show up depending on how much you value boss damage or trash damage.
Frostbite for
Ray of Frost can work out if you value boss damage and damage to targets that cannot be frozen.
Wintertide for
Snowstorm if you value the AoE burst damage more than the slight gain to single/two target damage.
Talent Explanations for Frost Mages
This tab will go over some of the more important talents and certain talents that are notable to avoid at all costs. For a full list of descriptions, please see the Spell List page:
Rows 1-4
Right out of the gate, Overflowing Energy,
Incanter's Flow, and
Shifting Power
are mandatory. They are simply DPS increases, something most of the tree is
not.
You need 8 talents from this point. Given that Mirror Image and
Alter Time are both great defensives; you will be going
down both sides of the tree. If you take the center path down each side and
simply take
Spellsteal and
Remove Curse, you will have opened
up the second section of the talent tree.
Alternatively, you can path around both Spellsteal and
Remove Curse if you wish. The second section has so many optional
talents that if there are no curses or magic debuffs to steal, or dispels are
handled by others in your groups, you have the spare points to pick
up one of the two-pointer talents on each side of the tree to get to
Mirror Image and
Alter Time. There are enough points
around to pick every talent in this section and very few in the next, and
still have the mandatory build components by the end of the tree. This is an
incredibly flexible tree; adjust it as you feel.
Rows 5-7
This section has a lot of leeway in what you can do and what you could
potentially take. Of this section, you want Tome of Antonidas and
Tome of Rhonin. These are the only true throughput talents in the
section. To get them, the easiest and most common path is through
Shimmer/
Ice Floes, as it links to both. You need to pick a
utility point here.
Quick Witted is always nice whenever interrupts are
needed and more commonly useful than the other choices.
The rest of the points can honestly be assigned as you see fit.
Incantation of Swiftness turns
Invisibility into an 80% sprint
button.
Master of Time gives a shorter cooldown to
Alter Time.
This is going to be heavily personal preference, so take whatever you think
feels right. Defensives are never a bad thing either, so
Arcane Warding
or
Tempest Barrier are fantastic options.
If you intend to get Ice Cold later in the tree, which you
likely should consider grabbing
Cryo-Freeze to turn it into a heal as
well as a heavy damage reduction.
Energized Barriers can remove many effects that slow you down and
is a strangely powerful talent because of it. Depending on the effect, it may
just remove the slow component, or it may remove the debuff entirely, with
seemingly no logic between which it will do. Potentially a mandatory talent in
that it seems worth trying on every mechanic that can slow you.
Special note for Volatile Detonation.
Blast Wave's default
behavior will move a target to 8 yards away from you. For instance, if
you were to hit them from 6 yards away, it moves them 2 yards further. Volatile
Detonation changes that, and will blast any targets hit, at any range, 20 yards
away from their initial location, assuming a flat ground. This is a significant
knockback; beware.
Reduplication/
Reabsorption should likely be avoided. They
only trigger when you take direct damage and an image fades out, and not when
they die. Given that, almost all mechanics are coded as non-direct
damage and do not trigger this specific mechanic; this is a very niche node.
Likewise, both
Rigid Ice and
Improved Frost Nova are fairly
useless, as most group PVE either has mobs immune to their root effects or you
are using them for their ability to
Shatter, neither of which warrant
taking them.
Rows 8-10
The optimal play is getting all three capstones. Getting to them is up to
you. The standard play is to take both the left and right sides for utility,
and then Time Manipulation to give you access to the center capstone
talent.
Time Manipulation has the special distinction of being a
potential AoE DPS increase through lowering the cooldown of
Ice Nova
and
Frost Nova for
Shatter purposes.
Accumulative Shielding is particularly bad. If you have cast
Ice Barrier, and it did not get consumed; why did you waste the GCD?
This, at best, will drop Ice Barrier from a 25-second cooldown to 20.
Frost Talents
Rows 1-4
Mandatory talents everywhere! Take everything except for Frostbite.
These are your primary spells and procs and the only access points through to
the rest of the three tree branches, which all have things you want.
The exception to this is Everlasting Frost, being neither a proc,
primary spell, or unique branch access. It is simply a deceptively strong
talent. The extra 2 seconds is a 20% damage increase to
Frozen Orb by
itself, and adding 30% to the entire thing on top of it. The extra 4 ticks also
are
4 extra chances to proc
Fingers of Frost. This is an important talent,
and you should not skip it.
Winter's Blessing is straight up a huge bonus to Haste. This 8% gain
is multiplicative against other effects, so
Time Warp with this talent
provides 40.4% Haste rather than 38%. This is true of all Haste benefits.
Rows 5-7
You want Icy Veins, so this leads you down one of two sides. Left is
a single target; right is AoE.
Snowstorm is a bit on the weak side, and
Lonely Winter is ridiculously strong, so most players should path left
regardless of content.
Beyond that, Perpetual Winter is a surprising DPS increase by
allowing you a second charge of
Flurry and reducing the proc munching
involved significantly.
Bone Chilling is simply a 5% DPS gain for one
point, an easy pick. For this guide, we are aiming at
Hailstones, so grabbing both
Flash Freeze and
Splintering Cold will drastically increase Mastery's value.
Ice Caller is a mandatory talent in multi-target and is your go-to
build for any fight that has an extra add.
Comet Storm, especially when paired with
Glacial Assault
that is linked to it is an extremely strong ability for all target counts.
Given the easy position on the tree, it is an easy pick for all builds.
Rows 8-10
Glacial Assault and
Hailstones are mandatory.
Ray of Frost is a heavy single-target burst talent when used with
Cryopathy. This should be taken on any single target fight or any
real talent build that does not care about sustained AoE damage. Most raid
fights will take Ray of Frost.
Splintering Ray is an extremely strange
talent that only will see use if there are adds that need to die that spawn
every minute, but it also does not prioritize boss damage. In those cases, a more
general AoE build like the Mythic+ set would be suggested instead.
Glacial Spike is extremely strong in all content and should be taken
in all known scenarios.
Thermal Void is mandatory, heavily increasing the duration of
Icy Veins, usually up to twice as long as baseline.
Freezing Winds is a great mobility boost and generally a good
talent in all content. Extra procs are always welcome, especially when tied to
such a hard-hitting spell.
This leaves one float point for this section. Slick Ice and
Chain Reaction are both worth about the same on single target, although
Chain Reaction pulls slightly ahead for cleave.
Freezing Rain is what
you should talent into for heavy AoE.
Coldest Snap is in a strange position of being an extremely good AoE
burst talent but of questionable use in a raid scenario just due to lack of
points. Anything that favors
intermittent AoE should place the float point here, especially if added phases
line up with the cooldown. However, this will lock you out of taking
Freezing Rain, which limits the usage case to something like
Sarkareth's adds.
Mythic+
More information about M+'s talent tree can be found on the M+ page.
Frost Mage PvP Talents
If you opt into War Mode, you are given the ability to use the Honour Talents out in the world. Defensive talents will depend on how comfortable you are with your base kit and if you expect to get attacked by other players. Given that PvP is outside the scope of this guide, only the offensive talents will be listed here. The PvP guide itself can be found here:
Concentrated Coolness is pretty great with no downsides.
Ice Form is a fairly short cooldown, useful if you find yourself never actually hitting
Icy Veins while out in the world due to wanting to "save" it for any reason. It has some good synergy with
Deep Shatter, but requires you to have multiple freeze cooldowns lined up.
Ring of Fire is not a great pick for PVE. Against NPCs, it is capped at 24% of your max health in damage. For the cast time and the awkward aiming, this is not a great pick.
Frost Bomb is a great choice. A nice delayed burst AoE hit, which can be
Shattered.
Snowdrift works as a decent short-term stun, but the damage is underwhelming and requires targets to be extremely close to you. There are better options.
Ice Wall is going to get a special mention. Having the ability to
force line of sight, or wall an enemy player either in with you or away from
you, is a pretty powerful utility. This feels like one of those things you
should
have with you just in case you are in War Mode. It is deceptively strong for
the area denial utility.
There are some interesting Honour Talents, but since they are restricted to the open-world and unusable in instances, they generally are not simulated. Thus, the above are simply the thoughts and feelings of the author.
Changelog
- 06 Nov. 2023: Reviewed for Patch 10.2.
- 04 Sep. 2023: Updated for Patch 10.1.7
- 10 Jul. 2023: Updated for Patch 10.1.5's significant overhauls.
- 01 May 2023: Updated Honour Talents and removed a handful of bugged interaction notes.
- 20 Mar. 2023: Updated default talent trees.
- 24 Jan. 2023: Reviewed for Patch 10.0.5.
- 11 Dec. 2022: Reviewed for Dragonflight Season 1.
- 28 Nov. 2022: Updated for Dragonflight launch.
- 24 Oct. 2022: Updated for Dragonflight pre-patch.
More Mage Guides
Guides from Other Classes
This guide has been written by Kuni, one of the best Frost Mages in the world, who raids in Mortal Desire.
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