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

[Valounette]

The guide says Only frost bomb if ''You have 2 Fingers of Frost charges''

Surely this is incorrect?

Example:

Cast Frostbolt,
Frostbolt launches, Gain FoF, second frostbolt queued
2nd frostbolt launches, now you can react to the FoF proc by queueing either: Frost bomb or Frostbolt

The guide says only cast Frost bomb with 2 FoF procs, and since we only see if we get a second FoF from the second Frostbolt when it completesand the 3rd spell is already queued, we have to queue a 3rd Frost bolt.

And all 3 of those Frostbolts have a chance to proc FoF, hence only Frost Bombing when you see 2 FoF leads to munching.

Is it really worth the high chance to munch, to ensure that you use 2 FoF on the Frostbomb?

Has this been sim'd?

[TLTeo]

I ran a rough sim and it showed to be basically identical: http://altered-time.com/forum/viewtopic ... 009#p10647" target="_blank

What you are missing is that since Frost Bomb doesn't do damage on its own, casting it when you could be casting something else instead is less than optimal. You want its uptime to be as low as possible (meaning you casted as many other spells as possible), while still having it trigger off of every FoF proc you get. That's the reasoning behind casting it only with 2 FoF at least.

I have no idea why my own sim is showing the two to be equal honestly. It's one small result against a lot of thorough testing that was done back in the day. I also do not maintain or code the APL, so i have no idea what might be happening there.

[Rythlock]

Bomb on boss if he doesnt move. Attack crystal.

Ty sir!

[Breaktheice]

Sorry on delayed responses and delayed WA strings. Been a little busy lately. I'll get to everything soon. Thanks again for the comments & feedback!

[Breaktheice]

@Komma and @Frosted

I'd like to thank you both for pointing out the MI and TV issue I was overlooking. It is indeed very hard to pull off and in most cases the risk is quite high. I've therefore made that section an Optional read in a spoiler section. It's also helped me tidy up the guide!

[Breaktheice]

Updated the guide for 6.1 incoming next week

[Komma]

Hah, was probably going to ask about that at the end of the week. I do think that Mirror Images is actually better than talent comparison simulations suggest though. Incanter's Flow simulations still assume 100% casting uptime, which I don't think applies on many of the BRF encounters, even with Ice Floes.

[Bashlow]

Nice Job, thanks. Could you explain the section about comet storm bit more (priorisation with MI/IF/RoP) , as I think this is what Frost players will be very intrested about for 6.1 launch?

[Breaktheice]

^Your 90 talents in general will always take priority over your 100 talents. RoP is a no brainer, but MI being a fire-and-forget will also give it priority over Comet Storm (especially given its high DPET).

[Bashlow]

^Your 90 talents in general will always take priority over your 100 talents. RoP is a no brainer, but MI being a fire-and-forget will also gve it priority over Comet Storm (especially given its high DPET).

So sorry, of course this is a no brainer, thought about something completelly different, but its cristal clear now

[Breaktheice]

^The good thing about CmS and IF is that if you catch a CmS at a 5 stack of IF, then whenever it comes off cooldown you can theoretically catch it again at a 5 stack. It's because of IF's cycle duration (10 seconds) and CmS's cooldown (30 seconds) both being multiples of 10.

I wish CmS had more of an interaction with the rest of Frost's spells & talents. It unfortunately doesn't. That said its buff (long overdue btw!) will make it an interesting alternative to PC on some fights.

[Berlinia]

Wasn't IF cycle 12 seconds?

[Breaktheice]

^Nay

http://www.wowhead.com/spell=1463/incanters-flow" target="_blank

[Breaktheice]

The guide says Only frost bomb if ''You have 2 Fingers of Frost charges''

Surely this is incorrect?

Example:

Cast Frostbolt,
Frostbolt launches, Gain FoF, second frostbolt queued
2nd frostbolt launches, now you can react to the FoF proc by queueing either: Frost bomb or Frostbolt

The guide says only cast Frost bomb with 2 FoF procs, and since we only see if we get a second FoF from the second Frostbolt when it completesand the 3rd spell is already queued, we have to queue a 3rd Frost bolt.

And all 3 of those Frostbolts have a chance to proc FoF,

Sorry I hadn't noticed this post earlier.

The odds of 3 Frostbolts all giving you FoF in a row is 0.3375% (0.15 x 0.15 x 0.15). Meaning what you're assuming could happen, but the odds of it happening are less than half a percent (not less than 50%, less than half a percent).

Furthermore, you seem to be ignoring the fact that by default, your Frost Bomb up time on a boss is at least roughly 50% anyway! How is this you ask? It's because of Water Jet.

+ Water Jet has a 25 second cooldown.
+ You will Frost Bomb before you Water Jet.
+ Frost Bomb lasts 12 seconds.

^ From the above, ~12-13 seconds after your Frost Bomb terminates, you will be placing a new one on the boss anyway. This is excluding the Frost Bomb you would place on a boss before you Frozen Orb. And since you would never Water Jet while an Orb is out, you can throw in some extra Frost Bomb casts for the duration of Frozen Orb too.

In short, to answer your question:

The odds of 3 Frostbolts procing 3 x FoF back to back is extremely slim (<0.5%). Furthermore, there is a decent (~50%) chance your target will already have the Frost Bomb debuff on itself if this rare event ever occurs because of Frozen Orb and Water Jet forcing you to apply Frost Bomb as it is.

[Breaktheice]

Added in WAs for 6.1 - enjoy!

[Emillice]

So, I love being frost. However, BRF gear does not seem to suit us. (not much for multistrike) I want to be doing awesome dps, but it seems as though my gear is not going to help in that. I'm 667 and doing 19k-23k after burst. I need some help because I do not want to spec to arcane!!

[Breaktheice]

Gear is annoying but not the biggest worry. Unfortunately, Frost just doesn't work well in BRF.

The scaling with Multistrike is good, could be better given better itemization, but it's not terrible. The problem is the Mastery (Icicles) is only affected by 2 spells (Frostbolt and FFB), and given how a huge chunk of DPS comes from Ice Lance (even the 4 PC adds to this), Frost slips on the Mastery scaling front.

It's actually worse on full on AoE which you see a lot of in BRF because the spells you use there (Blizzed/FrBomb/FO/Ice Lance/CoC) actually don't benefit from your Mastery at all.

[Breaktheice]

Fixed some errors on the guide: most important one was calculating one extra FoF from FO with 4 PC.

[Drevneus]

Hello everyone! Please tell me why I have stably higher DPS without crystal on AOE packs? Just hang a bomb run Orb and spamming Ice Lance goes better than the same, but with the crystal... How so?

[Breaktheice]

^PC is a poor AoE choice because its damage is split evenly among all targets it hits. Furthermore, since there are many targets around the PC, but only 1 target holding a Bomb debuff.... if you cleave to the wrong target your DPS will die.

Ice Lance via Splitting Ice is really the only big hitting spell into PC because it can hit for 160%, everything else just hits for 110%.