Frost Mage PvP Talents and Builds (Dragonflight / 10.0.7)
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.
Mass Polymorph. This talent has been highly speculated upon, and it has yet to see much value, Frost Mages often like to Crowd Control only one target with Polymorph, and there is also the ability to chain
Dragon's Breath into
Ring of Frost if needed.
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 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
Hailstones. Ice Lances now grant Icicles when cast on frozen targets, working great with
Glacial Spike, allowing for quick generation.
Glacial Spike. A very strong casted ability that can be used in tandem with
Ice Nova directly after it to deal a significantly large amount of damage to an enemy.
Mandatory PvP Talents
Precognition is a new PvP talent introduced in Dragonflight. This
allows
for outplay potential from the caster when the enemy misses interrupts on you.
This is especially strong for Frost Mage, as often you are only casting from one
school, giving you kick and crowd control immunities for 4 seconds.
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 much less but
increases your burst damage significantly.
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.
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.
Prismatic Cloak reduces magical damage you take by 50% for 2 seconds
after you
Blink or
Shimmer. This talent is great against
teams with magical spells that deal large amounts of damage.
Netherwind Armor should be taken versus teams that can often critical
strike, or
rely on critical strikes for a majority of their damage. This talent makes you 10% less likely
to receive a critical strike.
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.
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.
Changelog
- 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.
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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