[7.2] Frost Talents, Trinkets, Racials, Stats, Legendary

[Xzaar]

What are the ilevel of the trinkets used in the sims?

I have a 870 Arcanocrystal and I'm wondeing if my heroic non-WF heroic erratic metronome is better. I'm going to sim it to find out but would still like to know the answer .

[Emmeh]

Regarding arcanocrystal. You can replace that if if u get a 920 metronome or whispers for most fights. Currently is the one trinket that out preform most others.

[Mage]

45% of my dmg consists of ice lances

By the way, anyone betting on a big nerf to http://ptr.wowhead.com/spell=238056/obsidian-lance?
40% IL increase seems like insanity compared to what other classes get.

And the big nerf is in
Frankly, one has to wonder how the design process works at Blizzard. It seems like a clueless intern comes up with "lets randomly buff IL by 40%" and then 2 builds later a senior designer comes in and shits all over it. Baffling.

[Norrinir]

If you look at spell data from the previous build, you can see they intended to change it from "increases Ice Lance Frozen multiplier" to "Ice Lance deals more damage to Frozen targets" while also reducing the effect. They however forgot to change the number in the correct place and you get this.

[Ellerianfan]

After some weeks off Im getting back into playing again and see all the top mages using LW all the time. However, I have simmed a bunch of them as well as myself with sever different gear combinations/possibilities and BC sims higher in every case i do. Whats going on?

[Drozzy]

Legendaries, gear, and the practice of double ice lancing all affect the strength of BC vs LW. Up until I very recently got whispers+metronome, bonechilling was simming 40k dps higher for me than LW. With those now, LW is simming a few thousand dps ahead of BC. LW is more RNG reliant, but has a higher maximum dps possible with good rng/high IV uptime. double ice lancing (which the basic sims don't do), provides a VERY substantial increase in dps. A dps increase that is larger when you run LW than it is if you run BC. BC is still very very capable of being the better talent on average for some/many players. But not only is LW inclined to seem better in logs (because logs show the best, not the average), it also has been growing in strength as high level players get higher and higher uptimes of IV, without needing pet. (With pet, I can run into scenarios on some fights where my IV comes back up before my previous icy veins falls off. On Skorpyron, I can sometimes reach this point without even using a water ele.)

If you look at logs and check IV uptimes, you'll see that some of the best logs are running LW, and still have 85%+ uptime of IV.
ex: https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/x2 ... &source=17" target="_blank Where the top parsing frost mage has 88% uptime, while running LW.

[Ellerianfan]

Wow that makes a lot of sense. Thank you!!

[Hellflames]

I used frost with LW yesterday in hc nh for the first time, here's my IV uptime per boss
Anomaly: 30.13% LW Splitting ice
Trilliax 26.4 % LW Splitting ice (forgot to respec)
Aluriel 29,9 % LW Splitting ice
Augur 32.94% LW frozen touch

Only have leg bracers

[Eyliria]

I have a question about 7.2
Has anyone figured out what the optimal trait path is?

My understanding is that we are free to spend the points into the new traits, or maxing out the new 4/4 traits.
Has anyone figured out what the optimal trait acquisition order is?

Obviously everyone will take the trait that gives 10%dmg/10%stam... but what about after that?

Are we supposed to go get the 4/4 traits, or beeline down to Glacial Eruption?

[Makz]

I have a question about 7.2
Has anyone figured out what the optimal trait path is?

My understanding is that we are free to spend the points into the new traits, or maxing out the new 4/4 traits.
Has anyone figured out what the optimal trait acquisition order is?

Obviously everyone will take the trait that gives 10%dmg/10%stam... but what about after that?

Are we supposed to go get the 4/4 traits, or beeline down to Glacial Eruption?

At level 54 artifact you should have enough points to either get all 4th ranks except 1 or get 1/50 CoL. If you go all the way to 1/50 for CoL, you "lose":

Blizzard +5% crit
Ice lance +4% crit dmg +2% dmg reduction
Ice barrier +20% absorb
Icy veins -0.5s per crit
Frostbolt +3% dmg
Brain Freeze +2% proc +5% dmg
Frozen Orb +15% crit dmg

while you gain:

10% dmg/stamina
Icelance +12% dmg
Blizzard instant cast with Frozen orb
Glacial erruption
2000 int proc 10s 1.37 ppm

I would like to see a comparison of CoL vs

new trait 10% dmg/stam
Icelance +12% dmg

old traits
let it go +4% crit dmg
frozen veins -0.5s per crit
and either
clarity of thought +2% proc or ice age +5% brain freeze dmg

I am guessing the 2k int proc will easily beat them, just wondering what the gap is.

[Emmeh]

We also have to take into consideration if Glacial Erruption will benefit from the BF -> EB combo for 100% crit. In which case it could bring down some nasty damage.

[Alphy]

From what I understand, Glacial Eruption will benefit from Shatter, so it should get 100% crit in the BF -> EB combo.

[incaendius]

Is there a pair legendary comparison? I see many combo at logs. Is shard/bracer, shard/gloves or gloves/bracer the bis?

[Eyliria]

I have a question about 7.2
Has anyone figured out what the optimal trait path is?

My understanding is that we are free to spend the points into the new traits, or maxing out the new 4/4 traits.
Has anyone figured out what the optimal trait acquisition order is?

Obviously everyone will take the trait that gives 10%dmg/10%stam... but what about after that?

Are we supposed to go get the 4/4 traits, or beeline down to Glacial Eruption?

At level 54 artifact you should have enough points to either get all 4th ranks except 1 or get 1/50 CoL. If you go all the way to 1/50 for CoL, you "lose":

Blizzard +5% crit
Ice lance +4% crit dmg +2% dmg reduction
Ice barrier +20% absorb
Icy veins -0.5s per crit
Frostbolt +3% dmg
Brain Freeze +2% proc +5% dmg
Frozen Orb +15% crit dmg

while you gain:

10% dmg/stamina
Icelance +12% dmg
Blizzard instant cast with Frozen orb
Glacial erruption
2000 int proc 10s 1.37 ppm

I would like to see a comparison of CoL vs

new trait 10% dmg/stam
Icelance +12% dmg

old traits
let it go +4% crit dmg
frozen veins -0.5s per crit
and either
clarity of thought +2% proc or ice age +5% brain freeze dmg

I am guessing the 2k int proc will easily beat them, just wondering what the gap is.

I thought that if you had all 54 points you would be at 39 traits with the new weapon (so 4 extra traits after 35, and 75% of the way towards the 5th one)

The first point is obviously +10%dmg/+10% stamina, which leaves us with only 3 points to assign -- then it's whether we want to go 'back' for things like extra brain freeze chance, -0.5sec CD on IV when you crit the frostbolt... vs getting 3/4 on the new ice lance crit dmg% mod and trying to rush towards Glacial Eruption (which was specifically said to be shatterable by a blue post, so that's a +50% dmg boost to Ebonbolt, IIRC)

[king_noa]

I have a question about 7.2
Has anyone figured out what the optimal trait path is?

My understanding is that we are free to spend the points into the new traits, or maxing out the new 4/4 traits.
Has anyone figured out what the optimal trait acquisition order is?

Obviously everyone will take the trait that gives 10%dmg/10%stam... but what about after that?

Are we supposed to go get the 4/4 traits, or beeline down to Glacial Eruption?

At level 54 artifact you should have enough points to either get all 4th ranks except 1 or get 1/50 CoL. If you go all the way to 1/50 for CoL, you "lose":

Blizzard +5% crit
Ice lance +4% crit dmg +2% dmg reduction
Ice barrier +20% absorb
Icy veins -0.5s per crit
Frostbolt +3% dmg
Brain Freeze +2% proc +5% dmg
Frozen Orb +15% crit dmg

while you gain:

10% dmg/stamina
Icelance +12% dmg
Blizzard instant cast with Frozen orb
Glacial erruption
2000 int proc 10s 1.37 ppm

I would like to see a comparison of CoL vs

new trait 10% dmg/stam
Icelance +12% dmg

old traits
let it go +4% crit dmg
frozen veins -0.5s per crit
and either
clarity of thought +2% proc or ice age +5% brain freeze dmg

I am guessing the 2k int proc will easily beat them, just wondering what the gap is.

You only get 39 Points after you have unlocked the new Traits.
That results in 1/1 10% dmg and 3/4 Obsidian Lance

[Makz]

-snip-
You only get 39 Points after you have unlocked the new Traits.
That results in 1/1 10% dmg and 3/4 Obsidian Lance

Am I misreading this calculation on reddit or something?
https://www.reddit.com/r/wow/comments/5 ... 15_to_get/" target="_blank

Of special note if you fully max out your weapon at Rank 54, you are 75th of the way to your 5th 7.2. trait, or around ~5 million AP off.

- from reddit post

So with the reimbursted AP you can get all 4 traits and 75% done of CoL?

edit: I guess the guy means ranks not actual traits.

[Imaskar]

I think he means you could have 4 new traits, but 3/4 on the old ones.

[king_noa]

-snip-
You only get 39 Points after you have unlocked the new Traits.
That results in 1/1 10% dmg and 3/4 Obsidian Lance

Am I misreading this calculation on reddit or something?
https://www.reddit.com/r/wow/comments/5 ... 15_to_get/" target="_blank

Of special note if you fully max out your weapon at Rank 54, you are 75th of the way to your 5th 7.2. trait, or around ~5 million AP off.

- from reddit post

So with the reimbursted AP you can get all 4 traits and 75% done of CoL?

edit: I guess the guy means ranks not actual traits.

It means, you can go 1/1 in the 10% buff and 3/4 in obsidian Lance, so you have 4 points and about 16 mio AP of The needed ~22 mio for 4/4 obsidian Lance.

[Eyliria]

Precisely.

Knowing this, has anyone done any math on the new 4/4 Ice Lance dmg mod, and Glacial Eruption versus the older (now 4/4) traits?

Sure, some of those 4/4 traits from the 'old' tree have no dps benefit... but things like extra brain freeze, extra frost bolt damage, etc... could be a toss up.

[Mage]

Seeing as the racial chart in the OP is quite outdated, I went ahead and resimmed racials based on my own gear.
I'm 908 with very balanced stats, using Shard+Wrists. Fight length is 450 secs +/- 10%, player skill "good".
My results are a bit different than OP: