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.
Strengths:
Strong Mobility, especially during micro movement.
Good cleave with Splitting Ice.
Strong defensive kit.
Time Warp, Arcane Intellect, & the class tree provide a wide range of dungeon utility.
Drawbacks:
No spread AOE or cleave.
Competes with the other mage specs for similar strengths.
Main raid utility is Arcane Intellect which does not make stacking the class appealing.
Extremely low passive tankiness. Defensive kit is all proactive which requires spec comfort or encounter knowledge.
Talent Import String: BAEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAQCUSzBkEJpIgkQEJRSAAAIlEJhEJJhkkkkkEAAAAAAAAAICA
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.
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.
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.
Frost mage filler follows this cycle:
Always try to cast Frostbolt before Flurry, as due to the travel time on Flurry it will hit first allowing the Frostbolt to benefit from Winters Chill.
After Flurry, you should consume Winters Chill stacks using your hardest hitting abilities. This is usually IceLance, but can be Glacial Spike or Ray of Frost if they are available. AOE spells such as Comet Storm and FrozenOrb benefit from Winters Chill but do not consume stacks.
We should be trying to cast Glacial Spike into Winters Chill where possible by timing our Flurry casts. It doesn't matter if Flurry is cast before or after Glacial Spike or if Glacial Spike consumes the first or second Winters Chill. It's important to understand this conceptually rather than learning set scenarios. However here are a few examples to show possible ways that you can shatter Glacial Spike:
It's important to be aware what spells and combos give you what number of Icicles, so you can cast as many Glacial Spike into Winters Chill as possible without wasting Icicles. Remember to sneak in Comet Storm where possible.
IceLance travels faster than Glacial Spike. If you have Fingers Of Frost and cast Glacial Spike as the second spell into Winters Chill, do not IceLance immediately as it will 'steal' the Winters Chill charge.
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.
2 Target CleaveOn 2 targets, if we have 2 Flurry casts available we can use them both on the same Glacial Spike.
The opener can be broken into 2 deterministic sections.
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:
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.
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.
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.
Generally prioritise stats like so:
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.
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:
Recommended trinkets for Mythic+:
Macro all cooldowns, racials, and items into one key.
#showtooltip /cast Icy Veins /cast Blood Fury /cast Berserking /use 11 /use 12 /use 13 /use 14 /use 2
The macro below can be used to automatically cancel Ice Block if you try to cast a spell while blocked; and automatically targets something if you try to cast a spell with no target. [nochanneling] will also allow you to spam the key without cancelling Shifting Power:
#showtooltip /cancelaura Ice Block /cast [nochanneling] Frostbolt /targetenemy [noexists][dead]
Automatically cast ground targeted abilities wherever your mouse cursor is, saving you a click. Example with Blizzard, works for all other ground targeted spells:
#showtooltip /cast [@cursor] Blizzard
Can be used to cancel Ice Block and immediately Blink. Useful when Ice Blocked in a void zone as you'll Blink out and take no damage. Also works with Shimmer:
#showtooltip /cancelaura Ice Block /cast Blink
Counterspell. Prioritizes Mouseover > Focus > Target:
#showtooltip Counterspell /cast [@mouseover,harm][@focus,harm][harm] Counterspell
Spellsteal. Prioritizes Mouseover > Focus > Target:
#showtooltip Spellsteal /cast [@mouseover,harm][@focus,harm][harm] Spellsteal
Mouseover Remove Curse:
#showtooltip Remove Curse /cast [@mouseover]Remove Curse
Ice Floes makes our next cast castable while moving. This effect stacks. This means we can press Ice Floes twice without casting a spell, and have our next 2 spells be castable while moving.
Ice Floes can also be cast while casting, in case you decide you need to move while in the middle of a cast. However, this effect has a small grace window. If Ice Floes is activated within the last 0.5 seconds of a cast, it will NOT consume a stack of the buff.
This means that we can abuse Ice Floes to gain multiple consecutive casts while casting without consuming any stacks of the buff, as long as we refresh the buff in the last 0.5 seconds of the cast.
For example:
This means you can cast 3 spells while moving with 2 charges, or 5 spells while moving with 3 charges.
Alter Time snapshots our current location and health. The spell can then be reactivated within 10 seconds to return us to said location and health. However if the buff expires we will be returned regardless, which sometimes we may not want to do.
If we cancel the Alter Time buff, it will not automatically be activated at the end of the duration, allowing us to stay where we are.
/cancelaura Alter Time
We should be trying to cast Glacial Spike into Winters Chill where possible by timing our Flurry casts. It doesn't matter if Flurry is cast before or after Glacial Spike or if Glacial Spike consumes the first or second Winters Chill. It's important to understand this conceptually rather than learning set scenarios. However here are a few examples to show possible ways that you can shatter Glacial Spike:
It's important to be aware what spells and combos give you what number of Icicles, so you can cast as many Glacial Spike into Winters Chill as possible without wasting Icicles. Remember to sneak in Comet Storm where possible.
IceLance travels faster than Glacial Spike. If you have Fingers Of Frost and cast Glacial Spike as the second spell into Winters Chill, do not IceLance immediately as it will 'steal' the Winters Chill charge.
Should I use Ice Lance at 5 icicles even without a proc?
No, in fact whenever you are playing without Glacial Spike talented, Icicles should not factor into a single one of your decisions. At 5 Icicles gaining a new Icicle will simply launch the oldest one. Meaning that they should be functionally ignored.
How do I sim Mythic+?
There is no single sim that will represent a Mythic+ dungeon. Looking at the results of multiple Patchwerk sims with different numbers of targets and various settings can help you understand what is good in different situations. Fight styles other than Patchwerk and short duration sims can be misleading and are not recommended.
What stat percentages should I aim for?
Nothing, you don't aim for specific percentages of stats. There are very few stat breakpoints in the game that are of utmost importance, and any that are will be reflected in sims. You equip the gear that gives you the most DPS with almost no thought on what stat percentages that leaves you at.
Should I use pawn?
No, it's an outdated addon, based on an outdated way of thinking about the game. It relies too heavily on stat weights being an accurate method of comparing gear, which they aren't. Just use top gear and never think about stat weights ever.
How do I sim <Mage Thing>?
What should I set my Spell Queue Window to?
If you don't know why you're changing it leave it at the default (400).
Should I use Arcane Momentum?
Generally I would advise against it as it's more error prone and currently has multiple different bugs.
My sim says this thing gives X stat, but in game I get Y?
Raidbots takes it's tooltips from Wowhead. They may not necessarily lineup with the values being used by the sim. Always check the HTML report.