Frost Mage PvP Talents and Builds (Season 4)
Choosing the right PvP and PvE talents is a prerequisite to proper performance in PvP. This guide goes through the various talent choices available to you as a Frost Mage and gives you the best combinations you can take.
This page is part of our Frost Mage PvP Guide.
Talent Choices for Frost Mages
While the above table provides a generally accurate overview of the viability of talents, some finer points are discussed in the sections that follow, and we recommend you read those for a deeper understanding.
Talents Summary
Mage Tree Talent Highlights
- Dragon's Breath. One of the strongest offensive Crowd Control abilities in the game, with all specializations of Mage being able to have access to this talent, you can easily chain Dragon's Breath to Polymorph.
- Slow. This talent is returning for Dragonflight, being very helpful with the mobility creep. With this talent, you can instantly apply Slow to all enemies.
- Blast Wave. A favorite from previous expansions, Blast Wave, returns in Dragonflight acting as it once did, giving an explosion effect around the caster and slowing enemies after. This is extremely strong to use when enemies are using heavy offensive cooldowns.
- Freezing Cold applies a 5-second snare when enemies are hit by Cone of Cold, allowing for more kiting potential.
- Greater Invisibility often breaks quite rapidly; however, it provides a 60% damage reduction for 3 seconds after Invisibility; use this before heavy incoming damage to negate the effect.
- Time Anomaly is another new talent, allowing for either Time Warp for 6 seconds, Icy Veins for 8 seconds or a Fingers of Frost proc. This talent is quite strong due to how much Mage benefits from Haste.
Frost Mage Tree Talent Highlights
- Perpetual Winter. Flurry now has two charges, allowing faster instant damage and more Shatters with Winter's Chill.
- Wintertide. Increasing Frostbolt damage and also increases damage dealt by Fingers of Frost procs.
- Ray of Frost. A castable ray that deals damage over time and applies a very significant slow to the enemy.
- Snap Freeze. Icy Veins now grants an instant charge of Brain Freeze and Fingers of Frost, allowing for faster damage.
- Thermal Void. Increases Icy Veins baseline duration, as well as increasing the duration based on how many Ice Lances against frozen targets are used.
- Freezing Winds, another returning legendary allowing for spammable Fingers of Frost Ice Lances in rapid succession
- Slick Ice, a ramping damage and haste modifier to Frostbolt that allows you to cast faster and deal more significant damage with each Frostbolt.
- Ray of Frost, a strong channeled spell that can be shattered with Ice Nova, or Flurry. With 10.1.5, This spell will deal a significant amount of burst damage and will want to be used optimally.
Specific 10.2. Mage Talent Highlights
- Ice Cold, a new talent replacing Ice Block, that acts as a sizeable damage reduction that is not on the Global Cooldown. With the cooldown still being 4 minutes, it is unlikely that this talent will be used often.
- Mass Invisibility, Originally an Arcane Mage-only talent, now available to all specializations of Mage, Mass invisibility can be used well in PvP scenarios to get restealths for your team, allow healers to drop combat to drink water, or use it to set up cc.
- Cryopathy, A new talent added that significantly buffs Ray of Frost. This talent, combined with the use of Icy Veins, allows for a very significant amount of burst damage with a Flurry into a Ray of Frost.
- Coldest Snap, a new talent that empowers Cone of Cold making it a longer cooldown, but allowing you to reset Frozen Orb and Comet Storm. This talent could potentially be very strong with Comet Storm talented, as you will be able to see significant value from resetting and bursting an enemy down.
- Winter's Blessing, a strong talent that grants significant amounts of Haste
- Glacial Spike, as of patch 10.2, the Frost Mage Tier set will now revolve around this ability, ensuring that it will be dealing significant damage when shattered.
Mandatory PvP Talents
With Patch 10.1, there have been a few new PvP talents added to the Mage talent trees. Master Shepherd and Ethereal Blink are two new talents for the Arcane Mage trees.
Concentrated Coolness increases Frozen Orb's damage and is now castable at a location with a 40-yard range but no longer moves. This talent will make your sustained damage lower but increases your burst damage significantly.
Master Shepherd is a new talent allowing Polymorph to no longer heal enemies, as well as grant Versatility and Speed bonuses. This talent will highly be opted for, making Polymorph not heal your enemies to full health , as well as giving you a sizeable versatility buff.
Frost Bomb is the last of the new PvP Talents added in Dragonflight for Frost Mages, which applies a bomb effect to a target, dealing damage to the current target and AoE damage surrounding it. This applies a very significant slow and seems quite strong for burst damage and kiting potential.
Situational PvP Talents
Ice Form replaces Icy Veins, making you immune to all stuns and knockbacks while also giving you 30% increased Frostbolt damage. This talent is great situationally against compositions that have a lot of stuns or if you are looking to find value from Deep Shatter Frostbolts with some additional damage modifiers. It also has a 1-minute cooldown in comparison to Icy Veins being a 3-minute cooldown. With the change to Ice Form coming off the Global cooldown: this talent has a lot of viability now.
Improved Mass Invisibility is a new talent as of 10.1.5 that allows you to utilize Mass Invisibility in combat and reduce the cooldown significantly. This talent is absolutely mandatory if you wish to take Mass Invisibility in any PvP Scenario, or else it will be borderline useless. This talent is a hard choice to take, as you often want the three talents listed above.
Ice Wall is a talent added in Shadowlands that allows you to place a wall of ice in a specific area for 15 seconds with 40% of your maximum health. This wall obstructs the line of sight and can be used to block enemies from running away or block a line of sight from a healer to a damage class. This could be good in Arena or Rated Battlegrounds. This ability has a lot of creativity, and you can use it in many different ways.
Ring of Fire is a new PvP Talent for all specializations of Mages. It can provide serious, sustained damage if enemies are stuck in it. Typically, pairing this ability with a stun to get maximum value is where this ability shines.
Snowdrift is another new PvP talent come Dragonflight, which is a castable blizzard effect around you for 6 seconds, which slows enemies heavily , and if enemies are caught within the effect for 3 seconds, they are stunned for 4 seconds. This talent has yet to have been tested thoroughly and is quite volatile if it will be often used or not. With the changes to this talent becoming instant cast, it will likely be strong.
Icy Feet, a new talent in 10.1. that enables you to become immune to snares upon your Frost Nova being dispelled or removed. This can be quite strong against multiple melee who want to target and attack you.
Changelog
- 22 Apr. 2024: Reviewed for Season 4.
- 18 Mar. 2024: Reviewed for Patch 10.2.6.
- 15 Jan. 2024: Reviewed for Patch 10.2.5.
- 06 Nov. 2023: Updated for Patch 10.2
- 04 Sep. 2023: Reviewed for Patch 10.1.7, updated specific talent choices
- 10 Jul. 2023: Updated for Patch 10.1.5
- 09 May 2023: Updated for Dragonflight Patch 10.1.
- 21 Mar. 2023: Updated for Patch 10.0.7.
- 30 Jan. 2023: Reviewed for Patch 10.0.5.
- 11 Dec. 2022: Updated for Dragonflight Season 1.
- 22 Nov. 2022: Updated for Dragonflight Pre-patch.
- 31 Jul. 2022: Updated for Shadowlands Season 4.
- 31 May 2022: Reviewed for Patch 9.2.5.
- 28 Feb. 2022: Page updated for Patch 9.2.
- 17 Nov. 2021: Page reviewed for Patch 9.1.5.
- 04 Jul. 2021: Updated for Patch 9.1 of Shadowlands.
- 19 Mar. 2021: Updated for Patch 9.0.5.
- 23 Dec. 2020: Updated for Shadowlands.
- 28 Oct. 2020: Updated PvP Talents.
- 14 Oct. 2020: Updated for Shadowlands pre-patch.
Other PvP Guides
Pherix is a Multi Rank 1 Mage who has achieved 3500 rating. He streams high end arena and coaching with viewers on Twitch and also creates guides and informational content on Youtube.
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