Breaktheice's WoD Frost Mage Guide (updated for 6.2)

[Rinoa]

Yes, you want to use Glyph of Icy Veins regardless of your gear.

[Azteka]

Anyone have the weakaure mage procs from this guide? cause the pastebin link is broken ty ill apreciate so much

[Tacosauce]

First off all, I love this guide, and I love you for posting it. Secondly, I have a question about T7 talent choices.

According to this guide, and also whenever I SimC myself, PC is my best single-target talent as frost. But, whenever I go to Warcraftlogs and see whatever other high-ranking frost mages are doing in heroic HFC, they are ALWAYS running TV. I've tried restricting it to parses around my ilevel to see if it was a gearing issue, but they still do it. I also noticed that a lot of the fights were super short, so I thought it might be because TV offers better burst. I cut the fight length in SimC down closer to 2 minutes (most of the high end parses on single target fights like H Reaver or H Zakuun are 2-3 min) but it still shows PC pulling ahead by a good 3-4k dps for my character. Now, I'm pretty okay using TV every fight, as my tanks are SUPER squirrelly and I never know if the boss will run across the room for no reason when I drop my PC. But I'm still wondering if any of you way-smarter-than-me mages know why, despite what SimC might say, that TV seems so much more popular? I can't imagine it's just because it's more passive than PC.

Sorry in advance if this has been answered somewhere in here before! I slogged through all the replies to make sure it hadn't, but it's possible I missed it >_>

[Curnivore]

It's because they have the Archimonde trinket. The rotation becomes simplistic like that. I know, weird, considering Arcane does the opposite, and it's even good in AOE for frost as well.

[Tacosauce]

I have the Archimonde trinket as well, but SimC is still showing PC as way better. I know SimC is just supposed to be a guide, not necessarily a perfectly accurate representation, but it's still weird that there is such a huge discrepancy between the two in simulation that is so off that it's actually backwards in game. I was just wondering if there was a more interesting reason than "TV is just better apparently lol" or if people knew why the difference was there, especially in purely single target encounters like H Reaver and Zakuun where you really do just kinda stand there and dps most of the time.

[Frosted]

It has nothing to do with the archi trinket, more to do with most fights people run frost on being >1 target, and TV being better for those kinds of fights.

[Rinoa]

Another thing that might influence things is that players that are not very well versed in the spec look up what the top guys are playing, and see UM/TV most of the time. That could make them think it's the 'best' combination, and just play that without knowing better.

[Curnivore]

SimC is still showing PC as way better.

Here it was worse last time I checked.

[Frosted]

I've never see TV>PC for 1target frost, regardless of the gear set up.

[Curnivore]

Maybe you haven't seen all setups. I'll check it later.

[Tacosauce]

SimC is still showing PC as way better.

Here it was worse last time I checked.

Regardless of whether or not sims at max gear level show this to be true, I was referring to my character's sims.

Another thing that might influence things is that players that are not very well versed in the spec look up what the top guys are playing, and see UM/TV most of the time. That could make them think it's the 'best' combination, and just play that without knowing better.

That could be the case, but one of the things that led me to investigate and ask about this is the fact that even the highest parses on these heroic single-target encounters use this setup. I initially thought it was because the fight is super short (those top parses are, like, less than 2 minutes), so you have IV up pretty much the whole fight and won't get another use out of PC, but I've been seeing that setup on fights lasting 3-5 minutes as well. I guess you could also argue that the players who really know what they are doing/care about single target dps will go arcane on those fights, so maybe the frost mages are just like "bro whatever" and do what's easiest. I just thought it was strange that there was such a disconnect between what most sims show for single target frost dps and what the top logs were showing for those pure single-target fights. It's whatever, man, I can always fiddle with my own talents and see what I like/what works best. I was just wondering if anyone happened to know for sure what was up. I appreciate the responses! ^_^

[Curnivore]

I suspect the main reason most frost mages take TV instead of PC is consistency. It's much easier to be optimal on it compared to the downtime you may get in the real world otherwise. That could mean something similar for Arcane, though there the risk would be much higher since the burn phase is a much higher contribution.

[Dizzeeyooo]

Another thing that might influence things is that players that are not very well versed in the spec look up what the top guys are playing, and see UM/TV most of the time. That could make them think it's the 'best' combination, and just play that without knowing better.

@Tacosauce you would be surprised how often this is the case

while we are on this topic, what are people's thoughts on HFC fights where PC provides value over TV as frost? Iron Reaver / Killrogg / Gorefiend / Fel Lord are the most obvious ones, but what about Socrethar / Tyrant (where you have to be slightly more careful with crystal placement to not waste damage)

[Tacosauce]

while we are on this topic, what are people's thoughts on HFC fights where PC provides value over TV as frost? Iron Reaver / Killrogg / Gorefiend / Fel Lord are the most obvious ones, but what about Socrethar / Tyrant (where you have to be slightly more careful with crystal placement to not waste damage)

My understanding of TV as the go-to cleave talent has always been not that it's inherently cleave-y on its own, but that the other two both split their damage evenly, and thus would generally do the same amount of damage to 2+ targets as to one. There are probably a few minor exceptions to that, for example UM proc'd off of the crystal will do slightly more damage to surrounding adds since it's percentage based, but for the most part having your crystal/comet storm hit multiple targets isn't any better than having it hit one. TV, on the other hand, benefits both the ice lance and the split from the glyph, so it ends up being the best choice in a cleave situation.

That being said, both Tyrant and Socrethar have adds that need to be concentrated down. So while PC might do a lot of single target damage, you can't really control where its damage is going. I know my raid is pretty scrub-tastic (myself included), so making sure we're killing the right add-bros at the right time is important to us not wiping like a buncha morons. But, if you're in a raid that already has a lot of cleave, going a full single target build while most everyone else is building for cleave, you might help burn down the boss more quickly, which would be an overall gain for the raid.

I'd also be curious on Sorcrethar to know how damage-splitting abilities like PC handle the boss being damage immune. If you put the crystal down when the Dominator is out, and the boss is immune, does the split damage from PC just not count an immune boss as a target, and put all its damage on any adds in the vicinity, or does it split the damage to the boss, and he then immunes it? I would assume the former, but holy cats if it's the latter.

[Dizzeeyooo]

I'd also be curious on Sorcrethar to know how damage-splitting abilities like PC handle the boss being damage immune. If you put the crystal down when the Dominator is out, and the boss is immune, does the split damage from PC just not count an immune boss as a target, and put all its damage on any adds in the vicinity, or does it split the damage to the boss, and he then immunes it? I would assume the former, but holy cats if it's the latter.

pretty sure all damage splitting abilities count immune targets as additional targets - the legendary ring does, for instance?

[Chev]

I'd also be curious on Sorcrethar to know how damage-splitting abilities like PC handle the boss being damage immune. If you put the crystal down when the Dominator is out, and the boss is immune, does the split damage from PC just not count an immune boss as a target, and put all its damage on any adds in the vicinity, or does it split the damage to the boss, and he then immunes it? I would assume the former, but holy cats if it's the latter.

It is the latter. Because of this you have to be careful with your PC placement so that it only hits the non-immune target or just wait until the immunity has dropped and then use PC.

[MagusMaximus]

I guess I'm somewhat confused about stat priority with the Tome & T18-4PC.

When I'm simming myself I get the following stat priority: Int>Multi>Crit>Mastery>Haste.

But from reading I feel like I should be doing Int>Multi>Haste>Mastery/Crit?

[Laodi]

I guess I'm somewhat confused about stat priority with the Tome & T18-4PC.

When I'm simming myself I get the following stat priority: Int>Multi>Crit>Mastery>Haste.

But from reading I feel like I should be doing Int>Multi>Haste>Mastery/Crit?

You dont read carefully enough. The statweights shift all the time with your gear. They are very very close. The rule MS->Haste is a general hint.
The most common error is the assumption that the stats after the first stat (which is the one u want to enchant) are in any case relevant. They are not (or only in a very small matter) changeable. In fact: The only thing you can really do about them are the craftable pieces. On every normal slot it is simple a fact of higher itemlvl->better piece.

[Curnivore]

Also don't obsess over secondaries too much since sims show there're only small variations of total damage for relatively large shifts between second best and best.

[mysticalz]

I sim MS> Haste , but i've put Warsong on my weapon, with MS enchants.I just feel like it's more fluent and I get more out of it.