Frost Mage Torghast Guide and Best Anima Powers — Shadowlands 9.0.2
On this page, we tell you all you need to know to prepare your Frost Mage before entering Torghast and then how to pick up the right Anima Powers once you are inside!
Torghast as a Frost Mage
On this page we will guide you on how to perform the best in Torghast, Tower of the Damned as a Frost Mage. If you are looking for generic Torghast information, check out the page below.
Frost Mage Talents for Torghast
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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Torghast is the only place where Frost Mage talents can differ from the
norm, primarily due to Freeze being an incredibly useful extra
utility.
Level 15 Talent Row for Frost Mage in Torghast
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Lonely Winter is the usual pick, and likely the pick if you are
either comfortable with the tower, or if you are joining with a group.
However, there is an argument to be made for
Bone Chilling to keep the
Water Elemental's
Freeze utility. Early parts of later layers can be
fairly difficult without Anima powers, and the extra root can be the
difference between life and death.
Level 25 Talent Row for Frost Mage in Torghast
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As with most talent lines, this does not differ from any other situation.
Both Shimmer and
Ice Floes are valid options, and will
largely come down to which you feel more comfortable with. It should be noted
that Shimmer being off the global cooldown will mean that certain Anima powers
relating to
Blink can be spammed without issue, and make you
incredibly difficult to hit.
Level 30 Talent Row for Frost Mage in Torghast
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This talent line will depend greatly on how fast you intend to clear, and
if you're solo or grouped. Rune of Power is amazing burst damage, but
restricts your mobility a lot.
Incanter's Flow is entirely passive, and
has no mobility restrictions on it, so may end up being the better choice when
you have the confidence to run through the corridors quickly.
Focus Magic is an amazing talent if your group can keep it procced, as
it grants you the mobility of Incanter's Flow with a significantly higher DPS
throughput.
Level 35 Talent Row for Frost Mage in Torghast
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Chain Reaction is great for extra
Ice Lance damage in other
content, and remains so here.
Frozen Touch can also be potentially
useful, as the extra procs could prove to be more useful than sustained damage
in later layers.
Level 40 Talent Row for Frost Mage in Torghast
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Frigid Winds allows you to kite things even better than you already
do.
Ice Ward, combined with
Grisly Icicle or
Grisly Icicle allows for an extra 10 seconds of keeping mobs still.
If you have access to either the legendary, or are betting on seeing the Anima
power, pick Ice Ward.
Level 45 Talent Row for Frost Mage in Torghast
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Splitting Ice is the only suggested option here. While burst AoE
would be very nice, the cooldown nature of the other two talents means that
the steady cleave from Splitting Ice is usually the winner in clearing out
packs of mobs.
Level 50 Talent Row for Frost Mage in Torghast
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While realistically any talent could work in Torghast, anything not
Thermal Void is looking at multiple downsides.
Ray of Frost is
hindered by being single target, a relatively long cooldown, and overall poor
damage.
Glacial Spike can be useful in taking a large chunk out of the
health of certain mobs, you lose the passive
Mastery: Icicles launches
from casting
Ice Lance, which acts as a nice way to take out the last
bit of health that you would otherwise have to
Frostbolt down.
Best Frost Mage Anima Powers
Rating Anima powers is an incredibly difficult thing to do. There are a lot of seemingly bad powers that will suddenly become fantastic when combined with certain other powers. Others will feel fairly useless when grouped up. Yet still more others will be dependent on how you are playing through the tower. Higher layers may necessitate more defensive utility to survive, although that will also be dependent on how well you can kite and abuse line of sight. In addition, since you cannot anticipate what you are going to get in any given run, giving a stack rank tier list seems a bit odd. Instead, this section will call attention to some potentially very powerful combinations, and the situations in which they thrive.
Grisly Icicle is probably one of the most powerful Anima powers.
This can entirely cut enemy movement to 0, and if no ranged mobs are in
combat, damage taken to 0 as well. This will also grant you 10 seconds of
Shatter on everything caught by your
Frost Nova. This is very
powerful in all solo and group runs, as nothing your teammates do will break
Frost Nova either. It cannot be overstated how strong this is for Frost
Mages.
Related to the above, Tundrid Phial reduces the cooldown of
Frost Nova, and it stacks as you find more of them. It is a fairly
common power too, and when combined with
Grisly Icicle it means that
you can take literally no damage from melee mobs for the entire run.
Highly-Polished Handmirror combined with
Clouded Diamond and
either
Art of the Blinkmage or multiple
Spaceweaver's Threads
mean that you can
Blink or
Shimmer around the entire level,
while throwing
Mirror Images that do formidable damage. This can be
enhanced even further by
Sapphire Prism, where your manually cast
Mirror Image will summon more copies, who are also empowered in the same
way.
Seeker's Scroll is a great passive damage increase if you can get it
early.
Triune Ward is one of the most ridiculously powerful defensive
powers in the tower. This will functionally take your
Ice Barrier's
usual 22% max health barrier, and turn it into a 62% max health barrier that
also reduces magical damage taken by 15%. This can be further empowered with
Resolute Medallion, where even one stack of it takes you to 105.4%
maximum health when combined with Triune Ward. These two are very likely
mandatory if you see them on higher layers, as the amount of damage reduction
afforded by them is simply unmatched.
Frostbite Wand halving the health of a mob means that if you can
kill it in those 4 seconds, you've saved yourself a ridiculous amount of time.
This is generally paired with large scale AoE damage, such as
Chaos Invitation.
Likewise, Frostchipper will permanently reduce a mob's health by
5% if it procs. Since it procs from frost damage, this is a fairly nice power
for Frost Mage.
Lens of Elchaver is fantastic on Frost Mage as most of your damage
will critically strike due to
Shatter.
If you have managed to find a bunch of Bloating Fodder,
Dimensional Blade can be fairly effective if you grab giant sections
of the floor and simply
Blink through, usually killing enough Mawrats
to set off a chain reaction and destroy the entire pack. This is not a
recommended combo due to the damage being low until you obtain a lot of
Bloating Fodder powers, but it is definitely a funny combo.
For a complete list of Anima Powers, please refer to the following pages.
Frost Mage Play Tips for Torghast, Tower of the Damned
In a group, you simply play as you would in any other content, adjusting as
you gain Anima powers that could impact your playstyle. Obviously, spamming
Shimmer without cooldown while it spawns a ton of drastically
empowered
Mirror Images is not exactly standard gameplay, so use your
best judgment for how to play in a party with Anima powers that are out of the
norm.
Solo, this is more of a test of your ability to keep things slowed and
rooted, until you have enough Anima powers to become functionally immortal.
Cone of Cold's powerful AoE slow gets a nice amount of usage in
Torghast.
Frost Nova also likewise gets an abnormal amount of use
here. Learning how to kite melee mobs while focusing down the ranged/caster
mobs in the rear is something you will need to work on. Utilizing line of
sight is also another underutilized skill.
Consider, mobs have run through your Blizzard and
Frozen Orb and are dangerously close to you. They mostly have about
half health left, so you are going to need time and room. You could
Frost Nova, move away, and drop Blizzard on them again to keep them
slowed. You could also
Cone of Cold for the powerful slow, functionally
holding them in place for 5 seconds, and
Ice Floes a Blizzard where
they will be in a couple seconds. You could also
Blink through them,
especially if Frozen Orb's still active behind them.
Mirror Image
could also be dropped, buying you a bit of time as enemies go for the Images
instead of you. Or, you could
Invisibility out of combat, maybe this
was a bad pull or you are low health and wish to reset combat.
Most trash packs will be fairly easy with the amount of slows at your disposal, just be aware of your ways out of a bad scenario.
Changelog
- 16 Dec. 2020: Seeker's Scroll and Runecloth Wrappings nerfed, Resolute Medallion buffed.
- 12 Dec. 2020: Frostchipper nerfed to 5%.
- 24 Nov. 2020: Page added.
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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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