Frost Mage WoD Questions

[Sikkz]

Hi!

I hope everyone is enjoying the expansion so far; I'm looking forward to another tier playing frost. I have a couple general questions about the current frost rotation that I wanted to get some opinions on:

1.) During pre-patch, Frost Bomb wasn't great. UM was a clear winner on most SoO bosses, with Ice Nova even having some situational implications. However, with the introduction of the level 100 talents, how does this affect the choice between UM/Frost bomb/Ice nova?

2.) Prismatic crystal is one of our new abilities at level 100. During the beta, the general consensus was that it's definitely worth applying frost bomb to the crystal. However, the IV guide for frost mages is suggesting to apply frost bomb to the boss before PC is cast. It was my understanding that the rotation should be Frozen Orb-->PC-->Apply frost bomb to PC-->Spam ice lance on PC. After looking at the IV guide, it seems like my understanding is incorrect. Can someone explain to me whether Frost bomb should go on the crystal or the boss, and why?

3.) Frozen orb and PC definitely have strong implications together. Being able to use both at the same time is important, because it guarantees some FoF charges to use on the crystal. However, they have different cool downs, so this creates issues. Is it worth delaying frozen orb 30 seconds so that we can use it with PC? I personally have been delaying it if the fight will last at least another 45 seconds, but I don't know if this is optimal. I just hate to use PC without frozen orb, because hard casting frost bolts on the crystal feels clunky and wasteful.

4.) Do we have any data collected to set up our stat priority/weights for frost? Everywhere I look I see something different. It's agreed that multistrike is obviously best, but after that there seems to be some confusion about which secondary stats are best. Everyone seems to have a different opinion on which secondary stats to aim for after MS, and I haven't seen any math to back anything up.

Lastly, this isn't much of a question, but more of a comment. On a boss fight, I'm pretty content with frost's current overall DPS; topping boss DPS meters still feels totally achievable. However, from my current experience, I'm seeing that I do an incredible amount of burst when I have all my cool downs (at the start of a fight), but outside of this initial burst, I feel like I'm doing almost no damage. A good example of this is on trash before a boss. Without any cool downs, my damage is almost laughably low. Is anyone else experiencing this?

These are my main issues I'm currently having, and would love to hear the opinions of others regarding them. If you have any of the math or numbers related to these issues, please include them! Thanks in advance!

Sikkz

[Garrod]

1. For dungeon crawling you're going to want to use either Ice Nova or Frost Bomb. Both are fairly close to each other so it's really personal preference(I've been using Ive Nova because it's less clunky than Frost Bomb, dat double nova burst doe)

2. Frost Bomb gets applied to the boss before PC gets put down so that the cleaving Ice Lances from the Splitting Ice glyph hit the boss and trigger the Frost Bomb explosion onto the crystal.

3. I believe it is better to delay on longer fights, but I haven't bothered trying it yet as heroic bosses are dying to quick to benefit from it.

[Sikkz]

1. For dungeon crawling you're going to want to use either Ice Nova or Frost Bomb. Both are fairly close to each other so it's really personal preference(I've been using Ive Nova because it's less clunky than Frost Bomb, dat double nova burst doe)

2. Frost Bomb gets applied to the boss before PC gets put down so that the cleaving Ice Lances from the Splitting Ice glyph hit the boss and trigger the Frost Bomb explosion onto the crystal.

3. I believe it is better to delay on longer fights, but I haven't bothered trying it yet as heroic bosses are dying to quick to benefit from it.

I had no idea that the ice lance from splitting ice triggered frost bomb, I thought it was only the ice lance on the main target that triggered it. That's really good to know.

So are you saying that frost bomb should be applied to BOTH the boss and to the crystal? Or only the boss? If you are spamming your ice lances on the crystal, I don't see why you wouldn't want to apply frost bomb to it also? I just had no idea frost bomb double dipped like that from the splitting ice glyph.

[Mumrit]

4.) Do we have any data collected to set up our stat priority/weights for frost? Everywhere I look I see something different. It's agreed that multistrike is obviously best, but after that there seems to be some confusion about which secondary stats are best. Everyone seems to have a different opinion on which secondary stats to aim for after MS, and I haven't seen any math to back anything up.

They did a good job of keeping mastery, haste, and crit to pretty equal levels. Mastery and haste generally win out though in my (personal) opinion. Nathyiel is the go to guy for this information, and last I saw him post about it he stated:
MS > haste=mastery=crit > Vers

Personally I feel that it's MS > Haste=Mastery > Crit > Vers

The other thing that sort of complicates this is that these values are heavily influenced by your talent choices. For example, for our 90 talents two benefit from mastery while a third doesn't. Versatility even jumps up above everything but multistrike depending on your gear level and talent choices.

I feel like I'm doing almost no damage. A good example of this is on trash before a boss. Without any cool downs, my damage is almost laughably low. Is anyone else experiencing this?

I think this is partly because of the way icicles is handled. Since the damage is back loaded you only see it applied when casting icelance or that rare time where you're surpassing 5 stacks. Visually, frostbolt hits are weak compared to the big crits from icelance and FFB. It makes it seem like you're going through large periods without much damage. We should feel like we're dealing more damage while we have cool downs up obviously, but I agree that it's night and day in feeling when it probably shouldn't be.

[Komma]

Personally I feel that it's MS > Haste=Mastery > Crit > Vers

Due to Shatter's 1.5x multiplier, Ice Lance and Frost Bomb not scaling with Mastery, Ice Nova not scaling scaling with Haste or Mastery, I believe what we've been seeing is more like Crit >= Haste ~= Mastery. Obviously, this depends on your talent choices. For example, Mirror Images love Haste.

[Dutchmagoz]

Personally I feel that it's MS > Haste=Mastery > Crit > Vers

Due to Shatter's 1.5x multiplier, Ice Lance and Frost Bomb not scaling with Mastery, Ice Nova not scaling scaling with Haste or Mastery, I believe what we've been seeing is more like Crit >= Haste ~= Mastery. Obviously, this depends on your talent choices. For example, Mirror Images love Haste.

I feel like crit is showing low for a lot of people because their multistrike/haste are low, thus they're still getting quite few ice lances/ffb procs. The more multistrike / haste you get, the better crit becomes.

[wihajster]

Vykina from Method in his guide says that Frost Bomb should be applied on PC. So do you think its wrong? Better to cast it on boss then on PC?

here is link: http://www.methodwow.com/board/showthre ... rplaystyle" target="_blank

[Stressball]

I'd like to see some math supporting one method over the other. I think the idea is that by casting Frost Bomb on the boss rather than on PC you are able to save a global to use actually dealing damage to the crystal. Since the bomb lasts 12 seconds it's still up for the entire crystal duration.

However, the bomb deals more damage to it's primary target, so each bomb explosion is less damage, and it's a risk to use this way since if the boss moves just a little it could prevent IL from cleaving off the crystal. I also seem to remember reading a tweet or post from Frosted saying splitting ice wasn't work on tall mobs, which is probably going to mean most raid bosses. Not sure if that has been fixed or not.

[Berlinia]

How I approach the situation is: If there are adds alive, apply Frostbomb to Crystal. If not, apply to boss. My main reason is that when adds spawn, you can not guarantee your Ice Lance is going to hit the Fbomb. Also with Frozen Orb, you can guarantee an infinite amount of FoF procs.

[Komma]

I'd like to see some math supporting one method over the other. I think the idea is that by casting Frost Bomb on the boss rather than on PC you are able to save a global to use actually dealing damage to the crystal. Since the bomb lasts 12 seconds it's still up for the entire crystal duration.

However, the bomb deals more damage to it's primary target, so each bomb explosion is less damage, and it's a risk to use this way since if the boss moves just a little it could prevent IL from cleaving off the crystal. I also seem to remember reading a tweet or post from Frosted saying splitting ice wasn't work on tall mobs, which is probably going to mean most raid bosses. Not sure if that has been fixed or not.

The math is fairly straight forward. The key reason behind why "Frost Bomb on boss is a theoretical gain" is that Frost only gains 10% damage when attacking Prismatic Crystal.

FB on PC: 120% * 1.1 + 75% = 207%
FB on Boss: 120% + 75% * 1.1 = 202.5%

The 4.5% spellpower difference is tiny, and 1 GCD on PC is worth much more than that. A single extra Ice Lance would cleave for a magnitude more than that. Therefore, if all your Ice Lances are guaranteed to cleave from PC onto the boss, you should Frost Bomb the boss instead.

But that's a very big "if".

[nathyiel]

All sim I do showed that frostbomb outside of PC was a dps gain on a very spzcific situation : single target and with the 4p T17.

The damage loss from not pushing the bomb on the crystal is compensated by the gain of a gcd to cast on it. And it's a gain, only if it's a FoF-IL.

With more than one target, there is no way to guaranted that IL cleave will hit the target that have the bomb every time.

So the rule of thumb is : put frost bomb on the crystal and enjoy the damage.

[Tergeron]

To provide further reasoning to justify putting frost bomb on the crystal, i think tbe behavior of splitting ice determines what we should do. Due to the short range of splitting ice and its tendency to sometimes not cleave to the boss off crystal, placing bomb on the crystal ensures the bomb (and the gcd used to place it) will proc. In any fight where the boss may shift position slightly may result in unreliable behavior with splitting ice, which I'll wager is a larger dps loss when putting bomb on the boss versus the crystal.

This post is probably disjointed because im posting from my phone.

[Imnick]

Yeah really the principle here is that Frost Bomb on the boss is a theoretical DPS gain under ideal conditions, but those conditions are complicated and largely outside of your control, and it is not a large DPS gain, so if you even have a slight doubt about whether the conditions will remain perfect then you probably should cast Frost Bomb on the crystal rather than the boss.

[Daiceman]

Something I feel may be overlooked in this case is casting FO-PC-FB (on crystal) is travel time isn't counted. So if you're far from the boss your PC should be going down as they FO reaches the boss/PC.

Otherwise casting FB on their boss would mean losing a GCD during PC casting a FO or losing FB at their end of PCs duration.

[Israfael]

For some reason SimC gives me 2k more dps with ice nova (which i has been playing just because it's easier to use in dungs) than with Frost Bomb. Does it support it properly?

https://yadi.sk/i/yzxGzuFVcqZmt
https://yadi.sk/i/UfI6zpgrcqZp9

[nathyiel]

For some reason SimC gives me 2k more dps with ice nova (which i has been playing just because it's easier to use in dungs) than with Frost Bomb. Does it support it properly?

https://yadi.sk/i/yzxGzuFVcqZmt
https://yadi.sk/i/UfI6zpgrcqZp9

It depend on a lot of factor and most of the simulation used BiS gear with 4pT14.

[Berlinia]

And one has to consider that often there are adds as well, so the guarantee for IL cleave on the boss is minimzed as well.

[Dutchmagoz]

Ice nova beats fbomb in most cases. It depends on your own stats what's better, but in most cases, IN > FBomb.

And vykina saying fbomb on PC is plain wrong on single target. On AoE it's true, because you can't guarantee that splitting ice will hit the crystal, but not on single target where it's guaranteed to hit both targets.

[Darkwraith01]

Question regarding Blizzard: I paid more closely attention to Blizzard dmg, which I have been using more thx to the WoD perk, and from what I have been seeing, it's a huge DPS loss, even when I use it with 6 - 7 targets. WHat is going on? Does it need a buff, or should it be used only on 10+ targets at once??

[nathyiel]

Blizzard is used to recover Frozen Orb very quickly. AoE damage come from Orb + Ice Lance spam (+Cone of Cold with glyph)