7.1.0 Glacial Spike T19M Profile and Spec Explanation

[Wiccan]

I felt the same while tryng this build. If ur gs doesnt crit, dps drops drastically.

[Nanogiant]

I have had huge success in Emerald Nightmare with this build! I get compliments and surprised players whispering me quite a bit. Look for those cleaves and boy you're hot on the dps chart. I recently got Chain Reaction as well, which makes certain situations better. Even though ST is very good as well.

Usually in the top fighting with players 5-9 ilvls above me. I'm sitting at 28/20/67 crit/haste/mastery atm. Going down to 17% haste makes it hard to pull off 4 frost bolts and 1 glacial in a RoP. This is not a problem with 20% though. I'd say 20% haste is a soft cap for this build, because I always make sure I got 1 icicle before pop RoP so I can get off 4 fb+glacial in a RoP outside of CDs. To get in 5 frost bolts I feel like I need too much haste and then crit/mastery gets sacrificed too much due to my ilvl (864).

I think it's super fun and finally feel I can compete on dps as a frost Mage without feeling overpowered.

[Mage]

Show us logs of your great success please.
I went and tried this yesterday in HC EN, best rank was 98% on dragons (overall, not ilvl), and it was 100k DPS below my best fire parse on them.

[Nanogiant]

Show us logs of your great success please.
I went and tried this yesterday in HC EN, best rank was 98% on dragons (overall, not ilvl), and it was 100k DPS below my best fire parse on them.

I only compared to myself being Arcane before switching. I've never been fire in 110. I'll try to log next week when I'm not locked.

[brookes]

logs from EN to compare:
https://www.warcraftlogs.com/rankings/c ... 371253/10/
I consider mastery as a "safe stat" in this build. When you run alot of mastery you are less depend on GS crits. Next time i want to try switch ROP for IF, especially on ST fights to get consistent spam of spells and permanent small buff instead. Otherwise save 1 charge of ROP for cleave 2 targets with GS is very OP.

Lonely winter/vs elemental:

I picked lonely winter for cleave fights for bigger Glacials, but for ST I think elemental should be better because of consistend good damage because of huge mastery.
What Is amazing? Cleave. I dominated every 2 close targets cleave. Nothing is more amazing then splitter ice 4,5 mil Glacial spike to add+boss.
Best cleave were: Dragons, Cenarius (2 dragons or sister) Xavius+Horror.


conclusions:
1) When My first GS in burst phase crits for 5mil, Im saying : Hm dat is my Combustion.
2) When my GS crits for 2.5 mil without ROP, Im saying dats my casted pyro from my neverlucky never dropped pyro wrists....

something for myth+:
-You can fuk up crit chance of GS with frost nova
-amazing 2 targets cleave
-Decent dps every trash pull and your icycles are not wasted such as ignite. Saved 5 icycles from first to second mob pack is amazing open.
-ending up almost every trash pull with 400-600k dps (without icy veins)
conclusion: as fire mage i feel so weak on mob pulls with cd on combustion. But GS frost feels more consistent

[Rikx]

How did you sim these relics? I am not sure how to do it with simc. I want to sim some of mine in my bags. Thanks.

The profile I used is at the bottom of the post.

[Nanogiant]

something for myth+:
-You can fuk up crit chance of GS with frost nova
-amazing 2 targets cleave
-Decent dps every trash pull and your icycles are not wasted such as ignite. Saved 5 icycles from first to second mob pack is amazing open.
-ending up almost every trash pull with 400-600k dps (without icy veins)
conclusion: as fire mage i feel so weak on mob pulls with cd on combustion. But GS frost feels more consistent

Thank you so much for this! I really want to know how you guys play this build in Mythics. Do you go with AG, FBomb or UM? Also the Frost Nova is great and makes me wonder if it's worth taking the 2 charge talent or is Ice Floes too critical to have with all the movement and ground stuff going on?

[Imaskar]

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/dL ... amage-done" target="_blank
Well, here, despite amazing 60% crit on GS, my damage is so low. Idk, maybe I'm doing something wrong?
Actually, I macroed the rotation on auto-clicking button on mouse, so I basically held the button and waited for a boss to die. Just used Flurry procs when available. But I dont think some unnecessary FB casts (like you don't need 5th cast if you had double-icicle proc) cut so much from the dps.
Results on other bosses are even worse.
Maybe I need a lot more mastery? I wonder, if it is profitable to swap crit-mast pieces to mast-haste.

[Zychotic]

Has anyone got a guide for how to play this on live?

[fungames22]

So I have an 860 frozen orb dmg relic
2 840 frost bolts
1 870 icy veins

how do I sim these to find out the best one for this GS build?

[brookes]

something for myth+:
-You can fuk up crit chance of GS with frost nova
-amazing 2 targets cleave
-Decent dps every trash pull and your icycles are not wasted such as ignite. Saved 5 icycles from first to second mob pack is amazing open.
-ending up almost every trash pull with 400-600k dps (without icy veins)
conclusion: as fire mage i feel so weak on mob pulls with cd on combustion. But GS frost feels more consistent

Thank you so much for this! I really want to know how you guys play this build in Mythics. Do you go with AG, FBomb or UM? Also the Frost Nova is great and makes me wonder if it's worth taking the 2 charge talent or is Ice Floes too critical to have with all the movement and ground stuff going on?

-AG is not for me until i get blizzard legendary
-Fbomb didnt tested. but you should keep telling to yourself it will never be living bomb
-UM is fit for me because my basic frostbolt hit is 107 k, no cating delays with frost bomb, and keeping many glacials. also better boss dps from all 3.
Should work in myth +7 without super big pulls. (not MOS 2 when tank pull all mobs to first boss ofc;)
Ice floes/2 novas
You can master with 2 novas many times but you should be prepared for many interupted casts when you "must move" such as NL last 2 bosses, whole EOA, MOS, also Vulcanic affix. My recoment is to play Ice floes, until you really dont want to troll mytic +0 with 880 grear boosting guildmate alts;)
Iamaskar:
Mastery is key here when you run 6000 mastery and less u are getting 600k GS hits and about 2mil crits-its low. You want to run 8000-10 000 mastery for 1.8 mil GS hits and 4-5 mil crits and pray for RNG crits. but for this stats you dont want to have low crit (-20 percent) low intelect or low haste (very slow casts =dps lost too). I think this build will shine at 895+ bis stats and relics.

[Mage]

logs from EN to compare:
https://www.warcraftlogs.com/rankings/c ... 371253/10/

I have 80-100k DPS higher parses on every single boss as a 10ilvl lower fire mage...

[Potaetoe]

logs from EN to compare:
https://www.warcraftlogs.com/rankings/c ... 371253/10/

I have 80-100k DPS higher parses on every single boss as a 10ilvl lower fire mage...

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/rankings/c ... 750692/10/" target="_blank

Preheat has been running GS on his Alt. Here are his parses for heroic. Again not perfect gear.

But let's be honest here, if you're entire purpose in this thread is to shit on the spec, then you're not contributing to the conversation. I have not, and will not currently say GS is a superior spec, and I'm this thread's author. I have already placed a disclaimer that this spec will probably be nerfed for being drop dead simple. I am more the aware of the pitfalls of this spec and have made people aware. So if there isn't constructive criticism of the spec, can you please keep it down to a minimum.

[Mage]

Not sure what you're talking about. Am I not allowed to criticize this spec? Didn't notice any disclaimer about that.

I have higher numbers than Preheat on all bosses except Elerethe and Xav where I played fire. Still those numbers are a lot lower than fire, which is SOMEWHAT expected with double fire legendaries, but then again there are no legendaries making GS build shoot up 100k DPS.
Only boss where I felt "this is going good" was Ursoc mythic where I was sitting well above 400k DPS for 90% of the fight thanks to good RNG on add cleave. But then we wiped at 8%.

So yeah, I can see this build compete with fire on some bosses with extremely good RNG, but I don't find it playable for progress. Excuse me for voicing my opinion.

[Rikx]

Not sure what you're talking about. Am I not allowed to criticize this spec? Didn't notice any disclaimer about that. (...) Excuse me for voicing my opinion.

It's not because you're voicing your opinion or because you're criticizing the spec, but if the only thing you say is "I do more damage as another spec with lower ilvl"... then yeah, there's nothing constructive you, me, or anyone else can make from that criticism.

[Nanogiant]

I would be VERY dissapointed if they nerfed this spec just because they don't like the play style of it. I love being able to tailor different play styles through different talents. It makes the class much more interesting like in vanilla where you could empower different spells for different purposes. I don't have to change every gear slot I have just because I choose a different route. I have super fun and that is what I think Blizzard want their players to have.

[Mage]

It's not because you're voicing your opinion or because you're criticizing the spec, but if the only thing you say is "I do more damage as another spec with lower ilvl"... then yeah, there's nothing constructive you, me, or anyone else can make from that criticism.

Help me understand - what should I add to a post about my raiding experience with this spec to make it "constructive"?

[Rikx]

Help me understand - what should I add to a post about my raiding experience with this spec to make it "constructive"?

At least giving some data points would be useful. While I wouldn't be surprised that you're pulling more overall damage as fire in EN, I'm doubtful that it's 80k-100k on every single fight. What fights exactly do you do than 80k-100k? What fights are lower or higher? What's the percentage of boss damage versus add damage? Not every fight is the same in EN, after all, and having that set of data would make an easier start to compare with if Fire gets nerfed again or Frost gets buffed again.

Maybe we'll discover that there's one (and maybe only one!) fight that this spec shines on. Who knows?

[Potaetoe]

Not sure what you're talking about. Am I not allowed to criticize this spec? Didn't notice any disclaimer about that.

I have higher numbers than Preheat on all bosses except Elerethe and Xav where I played fire. Still those numbers are a lot lower than fire, which is SOMEWHAT expected with double fire legendaries, but then again there are no legendaries making GS build shoot up 100k DPS.
Only boss where I felt "this is going good" was Ursoc mythic where I was sitting well above 400k DPS for 90% of the fight thanks to good RNG on add cleave. But then we wiped at 8%.

So yeah, I can see this build compete with fire on some bosses with extremely good RNG, but I don't find it playable for progress. Excuse me for voicing my opinion.

You voiced that opinion pretty clearly in your initial post. I'm stating that in your future posts there is no reason to hammer that point in. It's very clear and very obvious this spec is rng bound. No one has denied this.

The issue is this thread, nor this discussion, is in anyway comparing it to fire. It's obviously not similar to fire, doesn't play like fire, and isn't supposed to output like fire.

My point is, you can continue to talk about your fire logs and how comfortable you are with Fire, but that does not in anyway contribute to the GS Spec, the GS build, or how it's played. It's obvious the build has potential by sims alone. It's obvious that potential is bound by RNG.

[Mage]

I don't think it was "obvious" how the build plays without trying it, and since it required an artifact respec from a traditional TV build (assuming pople don't have 30+ in offspec) I thought it was beneficial to point out the deficiencies.
Anywyay, I am done with this build, and with this thread.