Frost Mage DPS Spec, Builds, and Talents — Shadowlands 9.2
On this page, you will find out the best talents for each tier for your Frost Mage in World of Warcraft — Shadowlands 9.2. 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 TBC Classic content, please refer to our TBC Classic Frost Mage talents.
Talent Choices for Frost Mage
Level | Choices | ||
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15 |
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25 |
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30 |
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35 |
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40 |
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45 |
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50 |
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Talents can be freely changed when out of combat and in a rested XP area
(such as an inn or a capital city). Moreover, Tome of the Still Mind and
Codex of the Still Mind can be used to temporarily allow players to change
talents anywhere, as long as they are out of combat.
Talent Builds for Frost Mage
Frost does not have optional talents in the DPS rows outside of the Level
30 tier. Every scenario runs the same talents due to how strong
Ice Lance ends up being.
If you have another Frost Mage in your group, it is optimal to trade
Focus Magic between each other. Other than that, these talent
choices are the only viable options due to imbalances in tuning.
Second Focus Magic Mage in Group:
- Level 15:
Lonely Winter
- Level 25:
Shimmer or
Ice Floes
- Level 30:
Focus Magic
- Level 35:
Chain Reaction
- Level 40: Any
- Level 45:
Splitting Ice
- Level 50:
Thermal Void
Every Other Scenario:
- Level 15:
Lonely Winter
- Level 25:
Shimmer or
Ice Floes
- Level 30:
Rune of Power
- Level 35:
Chain Reaction
- Level 40: Any
- Level 45:
Splitting Ice
- Level 50:
Thermal Void
Tier 1 (Level 15) Talents for Frost Mage
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Bone Chilling causes all chill effects to stack a buff on you, increasing all spell damage dealt by 0.5% per stack for 8 seconds, stacking up to 10 times. Functionally it is a flat 5% boost to all spells.
Lonely Winter removes your ability to cast
Summon Water Elemental, but your basic single target spells (
Frostbolt,
Ice Lance, and
Flurry) are empowered to deal 25% increased damage.
Ice Nova is a short AoE burst cooldown, dealing reduced damage to secondary targets. Also freezes everything hit for 2 seconds.
As will be a recurring theme on this page, Lonely Winter is the
best option because it buffs
Ice Lance the most.
Ice Nova
does not contribute to the generation of procs, and
Bone Chilling
does not keep up with the power gain from all the stacked Ice Lance
percentage increases.
Tier 2 (Level 25) Talents for Frost Mage
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Glacial Insulation causes
Ice Barrier to increase armour by 200%.
Ice Block also applies
Ice Barrier to you when it fades.
Shimmer replaces your
Blink ability. It functions exactly the same as
Blink, except it is off the Global Cooldown, is a 25-second cooldown instead of 15, does not interrupt spellcasting, and it does not break stuns. This spell has 2 charges.
Ice Floes has 3 charges and each charge allows a spell to be cast while moving.
Glacial Insulation in theory fits on this row by allowing you
to take more damage before moving, but this does not pan out in practice. If
there were ever a mechanic that dealt physical damage, was unavoidable, and
extra armour value would be the difference between life and death, then this
talent might see usage. Being that almost all unavoidable damage is magical
in nature, this is an incredibly unlikely event and thus it is a dead
talent.
The choice here is between Shimmer and
Ice Floes.
Both functionally provide one spell's worth of movement every 20ish seconds; the
difference being do you need to move 20 yards, or do you need to move a
couple of steps? The choice is ultimately up to the player's comfort with
each talent.
Shimmer simply lets you
Blink without interrupting
a cast, or incurring a Global Cooldown. This is incredibly powerful, but you
trade a longer cooldown and the ability to break stuns and roots for this
power. It is also worth noting that Shimmer has 2 charges, as
opposed to Blink's single charge, but trades a significantly longer cooldown
for this.
Ice Floes is a great tool to manage movement in steps that are
smaller than 20 yards.
Tier 3 (Level 30) Talents for Frost Mage
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Incanter's Flow increases your damage between 4% and 20%, cycling every 10 seconds.
Focus Magic increases the target's spell Critical Strike by 5%, and whenever they Critically Strike, you gain 5% Critical Strike and Intellect for 10 seconds.
Rune of Power places a small zone on the ground, which increases the damage you do by 40% for 12 seconds. This ability has a 45-second cooldown. In addition, it will place a Rune of Power at your feet when you activate
Icy Veins.
Incanter's Flow is a great talent if you wish to not worry about an
extra button, or have no one in range to cast
Focus Magic on. This can
be, gear depending, almost as good as
Rune of Power, or a significant
loss. This talent should be simmed for yourself to check.
Focus Magic is a great option if you can trade it with
another Frost Mage, granting both of you 10% Critical Strike and 5%
Intellect. Otherwise, this is the lowest personal DPS option of the bunch.
However, no research has been done into what the overall raid DPS gain would
be on non-Mages. It is entirely possible that this may be the optimal play,
but there is no quick way to check.
Rune of Power is the go-to talent if you do not have a partner to
trade
Focus Magic with. Keep in mind that its radius is significantly
larger than the rune graphic on the ground. It should simply be used on
cooldown, as the raw uptime of the 40% buff will beat syncing it to
anything.
Tier 4 (Level 35) Talents for Frost Mage
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Frozen Touch increases the proc chance of
Fingers of Frost and
Brain Freeze from
Frostbolt.
Chain Reaction increases your
Ice Lance damage every time you cast an Ice Lance that is considered frozen, such as with
Fingers of Frost or against something under the effects of
Winter's Chill.
Ebonbolt is a heavily damaging spell that generates a
Brain Freeze on cast.
Frozen Touch is a multiplicative increase to the proc rates on
Frostbolt, not additive. That is to say,
Fingers of Frost becomes 18% from 15%, not 35%.
Brain Freeze similarly goes to 36% from 30%, rather than 50%.
Chain Reaction is the best option on the line, due to the bonus
stacking multiplicatively with both
Lonely Winter and
Splitting Ice's
Ice Lance damage bonuses. Given that
Winter's Chill now allows for 2 Ice Lances at the end, the stacks are
easy to maintain or re-stack if they've fallen off.
Ebonbolt works either as a self-contained
Shatter
combo talent. It cleaves when talented for
Splitting Ice.
Tier 5 (Level 40) Talents for Frost Mage
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Frigid Winds causes all your chilling effects to reduce the target's movement speed by an additional 10%.
Ice Ward gives
Frost Nova 2 charges.
Ring of Frost places a ring that can freeze up to 10 targets for 10 seconds at the targeted location, broken by damage. When the freeze ends, the targets will be slowed by 65% for 4 seconds.
None of these talents have use for raiding in most situations. There are
rare times where a well timed and placed Ring of Frost can be used
as a pseudo-interrupt, much like a stun can be. Beyond that,
Frigid Winds can be of use on Necrotic Mythic+ weeks, allowing
your tanks to get away to drop stacks easier. With Frigid Winds, Frost
commands the most powerful AoE slow in the game through
Cone of Cold. Keep in mind some encounters or Mythic+ affixes will
not want you to slow as much, such as Sanguine.
Ice Ward is particularly powerful in Mythic+, as it allows for
Frozen Orb to get extra frozen ticks, proccing
Icy Propulsion on
each target.
Tier 6 (Level 45) Talents for Frost Mage
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Freezing Rain makes any
Blizzard casts in the 12 seconds following a
Frozen Orb cast instant, while increasing the damage of those instant Blizzards by 60%.
Splitting Ice causes
Ice Lance,
Glacial Spike,
Ebonbolt, and
Mastery: Icicles to cleave a target within 8 yards of the center of the primary target's hitbox for 80% of the primary damage, or 65% for Ice Lance. This copied spell has its own Critical Strike rolls.
Comet Storm drops 7 comets around the cast target after 1 second. Each has a 6 yard radius splash, dealing full damage to all enemies in range.
Freezing Rain is best utilized in heavy, consistent AoE
situations. This is the go-to for 4+ targets.
Splitting Ice is incredibly strong in all situations, due to it
being yet another source of a multiplicative
Ice Lance bonus. Keep in
mind that
Flurry will only hit 1 target, so if the mobs are able to
be rooted,
Freeze can be utilized to grant
Shatter to both
primary and cleave targets outside of procs. This should be picked for 2-3
sustained targets.
Comet Storm makes a resurgence as the best single target talent
thanks to
Frost Mage 4-Piece, and a change to allow it to benefit but not
consume
Winter's Chill. The goal will to be to get every cast inside a
Winter's Chill window.
Tier 7 (Level 50) Talents for Frost Mage
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Thermal Void extends your
Icy Veins by 10 seconds and an additional 1 second every time you cast a frozen
Ice Lance while it is active.
Ray of Frost is a 5 second channeled ability that ramps up in damage and slowing power by 10% every tick. Generates 2
Fingers of Frost over the course of the channel.
Glacial Spike is an active ability that requires and consumes all 5 of your
Mastery: Icicles to cast. It deals large amount of damage, plus all the damage from your stored Icicles. However,
Ice Lance no longer launches Icicles.
Glacial Spike also freezes the target in place for 4 seconds. Will cleave if talented into
Splitting Ice.
Thermal Void is the option of choice due to the raw amount of
Ice Lances that Frost is casting.
Ray of Frost is simply a button you press on cooldown with the
sole condition of do not hit it while
Frozen Orb is ticking, so
the
Fingers of Frost it generates do not go to waste.
Glacial Spike is under-tuned, and performs worse than not having a
talent on this line. Avoid if possible.
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 PvP is outside the scope of this guide, only the offensive talents will be listed here. The PvP guide itself can be found here:
Chilled to the Bone does not proc upon breaking
Frost Nova and
Freeze with damage, only upon expiration or dispel. Avoid unless you have a habit of letting freezes expire without hitting them, and even then, that is leaving
Shatter openings empty.
Frostbite is a good general purpose contender. It allows you to
Shatter more often.
Deep Shatter is also a good general purpose contender, especially paired with
Frostbite, simply through occasionally stronger
Frostbolts.
Concentrated Coolness is amazing and could be argued the only mandatory Honour Talent. Increasing
Frozen Orb by 10% and allowing precise placement, this will destroy entire packs of mobs.
Burst of Cold can be situationally useful if you are playing close to mobs or prefer to pull large amounts of mobs. It turns
Cone of Cold into a pretty deadly AoE burst.
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. Has some good synergy with
Deep Shatter, but requires you to have multiple freeze cooldowns lined up. This will also drop
Rune of Power if talented into it, making the lowered cooldown very useful.
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
- 22 Jan. 2022: Updated for Patch 9.2.
- 01 Nov. 2021: Reviewed and approved for Patch 9.1.5.
- 28 Jun. 2021: Updated for Patch 9.1.
- 09 Mar. 2021: Reviewed for Patch 9.0.5.
- 16 Jan. 2021: Changed Incanter's Flow to ?.
- 23 Nov. 2020: Updated for Shadowlands launch with minor tooltip changes for 9.0.2 changes.
- 10 Nov. 2020: Changed percentage values for November 10th's hotfix.
- 12 Oct. 2020: Page updated for the Shadowlands pre-patch.
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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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