Frost Mage PvP Guide — The War Within (11.1.7)

Frost Mages are typically one of the strongest caster specs in PvP. Mages not only excel at getting crowd control and relentlessly slowing enemies, but they also have great burst damage. With short burst cooldowns and strong crowd control, Frost Mages are capable of controlling entire teams. One Polymorph can turn an entire game around. With the recent talent changes to Mages, the specialization has much more control and utility than in previous expansions.

Strengths

• Great control
• Multiple defensive cooldowns
• Strong burst damage
• Relatively strong sustained damage

Weaknesses

• Forced to cast crowd control spells
• Predictable burst damage
• Low Durability when out of cooldowns

• Polymorph health regeneration reduced by 50%.
• Polymorph now breaks based on a small damage threshold instead of any damage.
• New PvP Talent: Overpowered Barrier – All barriers absorb 100% more damage and have an additional effect, but last 5 seconds.
  • Ice Barrier – If the barrier is fully absorbed, enemies within 10 yards suffer massive Frost damage and are slowed by 70% for 4 seconds.
  • Blazing Barrier – Reflects 100% of damage absorbed.
  • Prismatic Barrier – If the barrier is fully absorbed, gain Time Warp for 4 seconds.
• Ring of Fire (PvP Talent) has been redesigned – Now disorients enemies who enter for 3 seconds and burns for 3% of their maximum health over its duration (was 18%). Cooldown increased to 45 seconds (was 30 seconds). Overrides Ring of Frost.
• Alter Time is now affected by healing reduction effects, such as dampening.
• Freezing Winds has been redesigned – Now causes Frozen Orb to deal 15% more damage to units affected by your Blizzard.
• Blizzarddamage increased by 100%.
• Blizzard increased to a 12 yard radius (was 8 yards).
• Blizzard duration increased to 12 seconds (was 8 seconds).
• Ice Lances empowered by Fingers of Frost no longer consume Winter's Chill.