Frost Mage Torghast Guide and Best Anima Powers — Shadowlands 9.0.2

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.

Level	Choices
15	? Bone Chilling	✓ Lonely Winter	✗ Ice Nova
25	✗ Glacial Insulation	✓ Shimmer	✓ Ice Floes
30	? Incanter's Flow	? Focus Magic	✓ Rune of Power
35	? Frozen Touch	✓ Chain Reaction	✗ Ebonbolt
40	✓ Frigid Winds	✓ Ice Ward	✗ Ring of Frost
45	✗ Freezing Rain	✓ Splitting Ice	✗ Comet Storm
50	✓ Thermal Void	✗ Ray of Frost	✗ Glacial Spike

Torghast is the only place where Frost Mage talents can differ from the norm, primarily due to Freeze being an incredibly useful extra utility.

? Bone Chilling

✔ Lonely Winter

✘ Ice Nova

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.

✘ Glacial Insulation

✔ Shimmer

✔ Ice Floes

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.

? Incanter's Flow

? Focus Magic

✔ Rune of Power

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.

? Frozen Touch

✔ Chain Reaction

✘ Ebonbolt

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.

✔ Frigid Winds

✔ Ice Ward

✘ Ring of Frost

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.

✘ Freezing Rain

✔ Splitting Ice

✘ Comet Storm

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.

✔ Thermal Void

✘ Ray of Frost

✘ Glacial Spike

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.

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.

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.