1. Introduction

This guide will cover everything you need to know about playing Frost in PvE content. Frost is an extremely flexible spec providing good sustained damage on both single target, cleave, and AOE.

Mage continues to have a desirable progression spot due to a raid buff & immunity.

2. Spells & Abilities

3. Talents

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4. Rotation

4.1 Shatter

The core mechanic of the spec is Shatter. Spells against enemies who are Frozen benefit from Shatter, and have a greater chance of being struck a critical strike. Your critical strike chance against frozen enemies is:

(Critical Strike chance * 1.5) + 50%

The main way of gaining Shatter in PvE is through Winters Chill via Flurry and Fingers Of Frost, with most rotational decisions involving maximising the number and effectiveness of both these abilities. During this guide I will refer to you causing a spell to gain the Shatter effect as ‘shattering’ that spell.

4.2 Winter's Chill and Procs

The frost mage rotation revolves around maximising the impact of your two procs, Brain Freeze and Fingers Of Frost, while maximising the number of these procs through casting Frostbolt and FrozenOrb.

• Flurry applies Winters Chill to the target - causing your next 2 spells to deal damage as if the target were frozen. Each Flurry bolt refreshes the duration and stacks of Winters Chill.
• Brain Freeze refunds a charge of Flurry and increases the damage of your next Flurry by 50%. Should a Frostbolt give you a Brain Freeze when you already have one, there is a small grace window that allows you to spend the old Brain Freeze and still gain the new one.
• Fingers Of Frost causes your next IceLance to deal damage as if the target were frozen.

Because a target is either frozen or not frozen, there is minimal benefit to casting a Fingers Of Frost IceLance into a Winters Chill (only Wintertide). This situation should be avoided if possible. This means that should you find yourself with both Fingers Of Frost and Flurry charges, you want to get rid of your Fingers Of Frost procs before casting Frostbolt -> Flurry.

However sometimes you will find a Frostbolt gives you both procs, or a FrozenOrb gives you Fingers Of Frost while you already have Brain Freeze. In the event that you are casting a Frostbolt with both Fingers Of Frost and Brain Freeze, you should cast Flurry at the end and simply waste the Fingers Of Frost proc. This is because Brain Freeze & Flurry provide SIGNIFICANTLY more damage than Fingers Of Frost, and you don’t want to risk gaining another Brain Freeze and wasting one of them.

While the majority of our Winters Chill will be consumed using IceLance, we want to make sure our hard hitting spells such as Glacial Spike and Ray of Frost benefit from Winters Chill where possible.

4.3 Rotation Overview

4.4 Priority

1. Cast Icy Veins
2. Cast Flurry if
• Your previous spell was Frostbolt, and you have Brain Freeze
• Your previous spell was Frostbolt, and you have 3+ Icicles
• Your previous spell was Glacial Spike
• You are at at 4 Icicles
3. Cast Comet Storm if the target is affected by Winters Chill
4. Cast Ray of Frost with one stack of Winters Chill
5. Cast Glacial Spike if the target is affected by Winters Chill, or if you have a Flurry available
6. Cast FrozenOrb if Ray of Frost is on cooldown
7. Cast Shifting Power if Icy Veins, FrozenOrb, Comet Storm and Ray of Frost are on cooldown.
8. Cast Glacial Spike at 5 Icicles
9. Cast IceLance with Fingers Of Frost or the target is affected by Winters Chill
10. Cast Blizzard at 3+ targets
11. Cast Frostbolt

You should try and hold Flurry until you're at 3 Icicles where possible. This allows us to cast Frostbolt -> Flurry -> Glacial Spike -> IceLance shattering every spell. This will not always be possible as you still want to prevent overcapping spend Brain Freeze.

We cast Ray of Frost into Winters Chill after consuming 1 stack already, as Winters Chill will time out during Ray of Frost cast.

On 2 targets, if we have 2 Flurry casts available we can use them both on the same Glacial Spike.

1. Cast Flurry on target one
2. Cast IceLance on target one
3. Cast Glacial Spike on target two
4. Cast Flurry on target two

4.5 Opener

The opener can be broken into 2 deterministic sections.

1. Cast Mirror Image and Frostbolt prepull
2. Cast Flurry immediately after Frostbolt
3. Cast Icy Veins
4. Cast Comet Storm (benefits from Winters Chill)
5. Cast IceLance (benefits from Winters Chill)
6. Cast Ray of Frost (benefits from Winters Chill)

At this point, you will be between 3 and 5 Icicles depending on Splintering Cold procs. If you are not at 5 Icicles you should consume Fingers Of Frost procs until you reach 5 Icicles.

Once you are at 5 Icicles:

1. Cast Glacial Spike
2. Cast Flurry immediately after Glacial Spike
3. Cast FrozenOrb
4. Cast Shifting Power

5. AOE Rotation

5.1 AOE Overview

In general very little changes on AOE for Frost. This is because a large part of your AOE damage comes from spells that you already cast on single target. The main additions are shattering AOE spells and maintaining Blizzard.

5.2 AOE Priority

During AOE, you can shatter a spell following a freeze spell that is on the global cooldown such as Ice Nova, if you have 50% or more haste. Freeze can be used any time to shatter as it's off the GCD.

1. Cast Icy Veins
2. Cast Cone Of Cold if your previous spell was Comet Storm
3. Cast FrozenOrb
4. Cast Blizzard
5. Cast Comet Storm
6. Cast Cone Of Cold with 15 stacks of Snowstorm.
7. Cast Shifting Power
8. Cast Glacial Spike
9. Cast Flurry
10. Cast IceLance with Fingers Of Frost
11. Cast Ice Nova
12. Cast Arcane Explosion
13. Cast Frostbolt

6. Stats & Gearing

6.1 Stats

Frost stats weights are a little closer than some other specs, and due to the large Intellect stat budget on items, item level will usually be an upgrade. Stat weights vary depending on your current gear and talents. To produce an accurate stat priority or to accurately compare items you must sim yourself.

• Critical Strike increases the critical strike rate of our abilities and therefore the effectiveness of Shatter.
• Haste reduces the cast time of our spells, our global cooldown, and the cooldown and duration of Blizzard.
• Versatility provides a flat damage increase and damage taken reduction.
• Mastery - Icicles cause our Frostbolt and Flurry to store an icicle. We can store up to 5 icicles at once and they are consumed to deal damage when we cast IceLance or Glacial Spike. Gaining an icicle at 5 stacks automatically causes the oldest icicle to deal it's damage.

Generally prioritise stats like so:

1. Intellect
2. Mastery
3. Critical Strike
4. Haste
5. Versatility

Shatter increases our Critical Strike chance against frozen targets:

(Critical Strike chance * 1.5) + 50%

This means that at 33.34% Critical Strike will see a significant drop in value, as our spells now have 100% chance to critically strike when they are affected by Shatter. This is referred to as the ‘shatter cap’. The shatter cap is simply a point at which critical strike value plateaus. There is no magical DPS increase at 33.34% critical strike.

Despite providing multiplicative Critical Strike, Shatter on it's own does not increase the value of Critical Strike due to the additive Critical Strike that is also provided.

6.2 Trinkets

Because active trinkets share a cooldown, we generally want to pick up one active trinket and one passive trinket. For up to date trinket data please refer to the sims page of the site.

Recommended trinkets for Raiding:

• Balefire Branch
• Belor'relos

Recommended trinkets for Mythic+:

• Balefire Branch
• Belor'relos

6.3 Crafting & Embellishments

• Shadowflame-Tempered Armor Patch is currently the most powerful embellishment. I recommend 2 of these. The best slots to craft in are Cloak, Bracers, Belt, and Feet.
• Primal Molten Spellblade is the highest impact slot and can be crafted later if you do not have access to high item level pieces from Mythic+ or Raid. This is only recommended if you have excess crafts, as this season contains a lot of powerful weapons in both dungeons and the raid. Crafting a weapon will not be permanent.
• Afterwards just craft in your weakest slot. You can find this out using Raidbots droptimizer.

7. Consumables

• Phial: Phial of Elemental Chaos
• Potion: Elemental Potion of Ultimate Power


• Chest: Waking Stats
• Weapon: Sophic Devotion
• Legs: Fr Spellthread
• Ring: Devotion of Mastery


• Bracers: Devotion of Avoidance
• Cloak: Writ of Avoidance
• Waist: Shadowed Belt Clasp


• Gems: Sensei's Neltharite

8. Racials

8.1 Horde

• Tauren - Brawn makes Tauren the best Horde race for Frost. It does the same DPS as Dwarf but has a worse utility racial.
• Goblin - Rocket Jump is one of the few useful utility racials while Time is Money keeps the race somewhat competitive for DPS.

8.2 Alliance

• Dwarf - Might of the Mountain makes Dwarf the best race for Frost. It does the same DPS as Tauren but has better utility in Stoneform.
• Void Elf - Spatial Rift is one of the few useful utility racials while Entropic Embrace keeps the race somewhat competitive for DPS.

9. Macros

#showtooltip
/cast Icy Veins
/cast Blood Fury
/cast Berserking
/use 11
/use 12
/use 13
/use 14
/use 2

#showtooltip
/cancelaura Ice Block
/cast [nochanneling] Frostbolt
/targetenemy [noexists][dead]

#showtooltip
/cast [@cursor] Blizzard

#showtooltip
/cancelaura Ice Block
/cast Blink

#showtooltip Counterspell
/cast [@mouseover,harm][@focus,harm][harm] Counterspell

#showtooltip Spellsteal
/cast [@mouseover,harm][@focus,harm][harm] Spellsteal

#showtooltip Remove Curse
/cast [@mouseover]Remove Curse

10. Advanced

/cancelaura Alter Time

10.3 Glacial Spike and Winter's Chill