Frost Mage PvP Guide (The War Within Pre-Patch)

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 most abilities
• Predictable burst damage
• Low Durability when out of cooldowns
• Only one school of casting

• New & Changed Mage Class Talents:
  • New Talent: Barrier Diffusion
  • New Talent: Inspired Intellect
  • Time Anomaly has been updated. Now grants Brain Freeze instead of Fingers of Frost for Frost Mages.
  • Supernova added to Mage class tree and now has a 45-second cooldown (was 25 seconds).
  • Mass Slow has been removed.
• New & Changed Frost Mage Talents:
  • New Talent: Death's Chill.
  • New Talent: Permafrost Lances.
  • Fractured Frost has been redesigned — while Icy Veins is active, your Frostbolts hit up to 2 additional targets. Now a 1-point talent.
  • Death's Chill has been updated. While Icy Veins is active, damaging an enemy with Frostbolt increases spell damage by 2%. Stacks up to 10 times.
• Ice Barriers absorb increased to 24% of maximum health (was 22%). Hailstones is now a 1-point talent.
• Ice Lance damage increased by 12%.