Frost opener 7.1

[LLHandJ]

Hey guys been stalking the forums for a long while now and finally joined up. Frost info has been somewhat nonexistent compared to fire I'm looking for the optimal Frost opener for 7.1. I have seen a few that are contradicting each other and have went through the mage discord looking with no luck. I know there's a few different ones for using RoF and not so any help would be greatly appreciated.

[Brimn]

I'd be interested to see one as well. I'm fairly new to doing anything PvE as frost.

[Mercedis]

If you are talented into bone chilling you want to lead off with icy veins and then right into frost orb. it also slightly different if your talented into RoP or IF.

But basically leading off with frost orb usually does the trick. its all based on your talents..

As an example, i'm talented ito: Bone chilling, Incanters Flow, Frozen Touch, and Thermal Void.

So i start icy veins, frost bomb, FT, IL,IL, ebonbolt and then more or less rinse and repeat.

I did over 300k on Xavius (normal) today with that build and rotation. my ilvl is around 852.

Hope that helps!

Feel free to hit me up in the mage halls if u see me.

[Saróx]

The rotation i'd recommend you, which i've been able to do the biggest numbers with, is like mentioned above with the opening of Frozen orb. Alot of people pre cast during the countdown timer, but as a frost mage i find that very suboptimal, since you wanna get right into it, and a precast flurry or frost bolt, simply just waste 3~sec on prepot and delay icy veins further.

On pull i use orb roughly 1 sec before pull (stand far enough away so the orb can travel, without pulling premature) then pop pots and Icy veins, and 90% of the times, heroism/bloodlust. This is where you put either freeze or water jet onto cooldown, and assure getting atleast 2 stacks of FoF, from either jet or freeze. If you only get one proc for some reason, use Ebon right after, then burn your FoF, and begin the hunt for chain reaction, flurry procs and FoF.

A rule of thumb here is, if your under 2 FoF proc, you wanna fish for 3x chain reaction. This is done simply by spamming frost bolt, and the second you reach 3x chain reaction you wanna burn through all your FoF, which should be 2 or 3 if your last frost bolt triggers more than 1 FoF.

If you while fishing for 3x Chain reaction reach 2 or 3 FoF, you wanna weave FoF, in your rotation till you get down to 1 FoF, but never 0. If you get a flurry proc, you wanna burn all remaining FoF, then use 1 frost bolt, the flurry proc, and then 2 ice lances without FoF procs on. These ice lances are gonna benefit from shatter debuff, and the frost bolt and flurry is most likely gonna trigger atleast 2 chain reactions, which at this point should put you to an ensured 3 stack chain reaction. This is a massive dmg increase, and if you use frost bomb, which imo is mandatory on 80% of the fights in there, only counting out dragons, you will recieve an even bigger dmg from this. This is taking into count that you dont have the bracers that improve ice lance dmg, but if you have thoese bracers, your rotation is changing a bit, since you wanna keep the stack at max, as much as posible, which means you cant always fish for chain reaction, and you cant always delay flurry for a hard cast frost bolt first.

[ardomur]

Why not pre-cast Ebonbolt, which gives you 2 FoF, then fire off the Orb, and cast FBomb while it flys and hit off the first FoF? you could also wait with Icy Veins til after FBomb is applied and have 3 FoF at the start, dump them and start with a jet or freeze, get another set of FoF's and then do Saróx Priority List and wait for Chain Reaction procs with those 2 FoF's, else you could be standing there 5 sec casting Frostbolts with 2 or 3 FoF's waiting to get CR up while your Ebonbolt isn't on CD
This way you would get all "big" CD's on the way and faster up again to extend Icy Veins as long as possible

This is just what i was thinking^^ delaying Icy Veins for 3 sec at the beginning shouldn't lose you another one at the end of the fight and firing off Orb or casting FBomb isn't that productiv, at least thats what i was doing/thinking

[Biowned]

With Bone chilling:
Precast Ebonbolt > Frozen Orb > FBomb (If talented) > IV > Normal IL dump

With RoF:
Precast Ebonbolt > Frozen Orb > RoP > IV > Dump until RoP wears off > RoP > RoF

Both asuming you're running TV.

[Vexim]

With Bone chilling:
Precast Ebonbolt > Frozen Orb > FBomb (If talented) > IV > Normal IL dump

With RoF:
Precast Ebonbolt > Frozen Orb > RoP > IV > Dump until RoP wears off > RoP > RoF

Both asuming you're running TV.

Agreed, this is what i do.

[coolcow99]

I normally do this as my opener

Pre Pot > Pre-cast Ebonbolt > RoP > IV > ILx2 > Water Jet > ILx2 > Frozen Touch > ILx2 > Frozen Orb > IL

I personally feel with the frozen orb at the end it gives you time for your Water Jet and Frozen Touch to be off CD to keep casting ice lance. With hero at pull I can keep icy veins up easily for the full 3 minute cooldown.

After the opener I save a rune of power for either Ebonbolt or Water jet and frozen touch to be off CD, forget which comes first but I believe it is water jet and frozen touch.

[Saróx]

The reason why the above rotation is not what i ordinary open with, is because of the fact that bone chilling stacks up Super quick with frozen orb, meaning that the 6% i coulda gotten onto ebonchill is wasted, and with ebonchill hitting for up to 1,5m for me, on an ordinary fight 6% is alot. Further more ebonchill into frozen orb, Means the posibility of 3 wasted FoF, before bomb, iv and rop is running, and the option of burning FoF without bomb and rop, is an overall loss of dps.

If youve not specced RoP, but IF your still gonna lose out on the 20% dmg spike by using ebonchill later in your rotation instead of spiking it off with a mere 4% dmg increase. To add even more to that, using IV gives you an extra 20% frost dmg delt, which adds even more to the bonus dmg, leaving our ebonchill with a 4% dmg increase or a 0% dmg increase, our orb is floating and wasting FoF procs, and were still on the way to just apply Bomb.

In an optimal rotation we could have an ebonchill hitting for upward 2.5mill with all our cds running, we can pop orb without wasting any FOF's, we can even sqeeze in a couple of frost bolts to see if we cant get chain reaction running to further multiply our IL dmg. But yea i've tried with both openers and alot of other, but imo, having the buffers running and not wasting FoF procs, is what i find the most lucrative opener, but also the smoothest way to get into the downtime untill we await the return of our cds.

Alot of people argue that blizzard should be put into the opener aswell, if you have specced into AG and got the legendary that buff blizzard (forgot which one it is), it can be really powerfull to delay a spell to squeeze in a blizzard whenever its off cd. But i do still recommend the frost bomb build, mostly cus i find mashing a blizzard in every 5sec is disruptive. I've yet to try the new ground hover macros, so we dont have to manually place the blizzard, which might make the spell less disruptive.

[ardomur]

"On pull i use orb roughly 1 sec before pull (stand far enough away so the orb can travel, without pulling premature) then pop pots and Icy veins, and 90% of the times, heroism/bloodlust. This is where you put either freeze or water jet onto cooldown, and assure getting atleast 2 stacks of FoF, from either jet or freeze. If you only get one proc for some reason, use Ebon right after, then burn your FoF, and begin the hunt for chain reaction, flurry procs and FoF."

This is the exact same thing! You have Orb running, you have 3 Stacks of FoF and no FBomb and no Rune up. You just put the Casts in a different Order. So yeah we lose out on that sweet Ebonbolt damage, but its CD is still gonna be up faster and i rather cast more FoF IL than have a bigger Ebonbolt, that may or not may crit for 1,5m (for me 35% chance or something like that, without the Flurry buff its a pretty big IF)

"simply just waste 3~sec on prepot" is another thing i don't understand, what is the difference of having a pot and casting 3 sec before the pull, and being in fight, having a pot and casting 3 sec? Your pet is the only thing that deals damage while you Cast. You could say your Orb is dealing damage, but with a 20-60 sec Pot Duration its dealing damage either way with your pot, so you aren't losing any time at all, you just gain 3 sec out of fight.
Putting the things in Order:
-1 Sec Orb, 0 and 1,5 Water Jet, 3 FBomb, 4,5 Rune OR
-3 Ebonbolt, 0 Orb, 1,5 FBomb, 3 Rune
You end up with 3 FoF's both time, the only thing you gain is an Ebonbolt that may or may not crit for huge amounts, or you just stand there 3 sec casting a spell that hits as much as an IL

[Saróx]

Yea thats me doing some bad explaining im sorry for that, i open with orb and applying bomb right the second i prepot and activate IV. Which mean i never go with more than 1-2 FoF at a time so i dont risk over stacking them. And the reason you dont wanna prepot/precast is that the 2-3 sec you spend on pot before the fight begins can be gained so fast inside Hero/IV due to the haste you gain.

Your basically sitting on 30% from BL and 30% on IV, which makes you able to cast a frostbolt in no time, and if you dont have bone chilling running that prepot frostbolt is gonna be 6% weaker, and your not under the buff from IV either. Im not sure how else to make my point other than the precast is a waste in every way ive tried it, and ill greatly advice you to test this yourself, since your gonna be able to see a noticable difirence in your opening burst if performed propperly. i gain roughly 150k more dps not opening with ebonchill, not precasting and getting that orb off as my "precast" since it apply the 6% so fast, but yea try it out and make your own opinion, i cant say anything but the fact that it works for me, and should work well for you aswell if you get the motion in your fingers.

[Saróx]

ANother thing i seem to notice is how greatly you udnereestimate the value of IV/Lust together, you cant compare 3sec out of the fight with 3 sec in the fight since your casts are SO much faster, you can do one frostbolt out of combat while in combat you can do a ton more. And i dont run RoP, as i dont feel the build is doing spike dmg as it would with RoF. And my sims only show a very very small dmg. difirence from RoP and IF, so thats not something i need to squeeze into my opener either.

[rankonemagi]

you open with a hard-casted flurry for faster stacks on BC

[ardomur]

I'm sorry, thats seems to me a little bit like feelcrafting
6% more Damage on Ebonbolt is not gonna net you 150k dps more in the Opener. And yeah you get like +80% Haste or so, but you still get +2 more sec more cast time, before you even start the fight. With prolonged Power you have 1 min on your Pot, the whole BL/TW Portion of the fight is covered with that, for me it seems like a waste, to not pre-cast something

Its great that you don't play with Rune, but then don't put
"with ebonchill hitting for up to 1,5m for me" and
"If youve not specced RoP, but IF your still gonna lose out on the 20% dmg spike by using ebonchill later in your rotation" together.
That reads to me at least, that you DO play with Rune, else you'd be doing wording it the other way around OR your Ebonbolt is hitting twice as hard as mine. Btw optimizing for top IF stacks was with Arcane and the Nova in HFC a gain of something like 1%, so i wouldn't worry about it, yeah its hitting hard, but waiting for 3 sec to get your flow stacks up could hurt you more, than it helps
Your whole bigger opener difference is just the Ebonbolt before IV and the 6% BC buff, as i still Orb at pull, i just pre-cast an Ebonbolt before that

For ME (!!!) Ebonbolt is simming lower in DpET than IL, even Frostbolt is about 60% the Damage of Ebonbolt, and thats not covering the procs of Flurry and possible CR stacks. With the Talent Setup without RoF and RoP i always try to optimize my Frostbolt casts, not my Ebonbolt casts, so getting that one out of the way before the fight even starts is a huge + in my eyes.
Maybe someone else has actually done the math and can prove me wrong, else i'll be going with Biowned's Opener, which is identical to mine

EDIT: I think i can compare 3 sec out of fight with 3 sec in fight, because while you do nothing and wait for the numbers on your pull timer to hit 1 my Ebonbolt is almost done casting, in the fight it self i lose the Ebonbolt cast, but i gain 2 Frostbolts in the time it takes the Ebonbolt to finish, more Haste is not gonna change that

[Saróx]

I'm not sure if i'm bad at explaining or whats up, but the dmg on ebonbolt is not 6% but 6%, 20%, 20% or 50% depending on talents. Now im not sure if bone chilling is additive or multiplicative, and nor am i sure whether the 20% of icy veins is additive or multiplicative, but if they are multiplicative, the dmg is alot greater than just 76%, but still 76% with RoP is a huge increase, and so is 46% with IF, but my point is that if you try out my rotation, and since there is no clear opener laid down, your gonna see how well this work dmgwise or not, but atleast try it before trashing it.

Second off i dont use prolonged prower, i use deadly grace, as it's higher dmg, but less uptime.

Third off, dont take my words out of context and twist them in your direction, use them as they are said/written, and i've disclaimed in plenty of my posts, that English is not my mother tounge, so there will be some "bad wording", and if you dont understand them, then say that instead of twisting them.

Fourth off, simming is and has been proven not to be accurate on alot of things, so instead of blindly trusting sims, then perhaps do some testing yourself, like i stated earlier, it's my opinion and what i've come to see in raids and testing, i've done simming enough, and i'm not able to push the dps sim is, but i am capable of performing close to that, which tells me that what im doing is not all that bad, it might not be perfect, but it's not bad enough for you to trash it with sim talking instead of real testing, so if you wanna call it a bad opener then put it to a human test and prove it wrong the right way instead of just tossing out some sims, that for all we know may be as accurate as a me tossing a ball.

So test it and trash it if you cant pull it off, but dont toss silly sim numbers around when they aint proven accurate yet.

[ardomur]

But thats my problem, you don't give numbers. You say you deal more damage with something, which i don't see written anywhere.
I thought you played with Rune of Power, since you wrote about the big damage your Ebonbolt does. Then you write, you play with IF which makes me question your big burst numbers, since RoP would be pretty necessary for Burst. So your 1,5m to 2,5m Ebonbolt made me Question that even more, especially since my Fire bracers buffed Pyroblast with Rune and 5 Stack PI hits for like 2,2m crit
English is also my 2nd Language, so maybe we are talking past each other^^

Still, I think i'm being to hard on you, re-reading what you wrote "The rotation i'd recommend you, which i've been able to do the biggest numbers with" isn't as demanding (? bossy? don't know what word to use/translate^^) written as i had in memory. I cross read a lot of threads today...
At least with Biowned "With Bone chilling: Precast Ebonbolt > Frozen Orb > FBomb (If talented) > IV > Normal IL dump" Burst Rotation i knew what kind of talents he used and could get behind his mindset.
So sorry about bashing on you and please elaborate on what talents you would use for your recommended Burst (i think you run with BC/IF/ ?FT or SI? /FBomb/TV ?)

[Saróx]

The talents i run are BC, IF, FT predeterminated that FT lacked behind once you got more Haste, i dedicated my self to running SI, but realized i've never been more wrong about a talent, and not i only run SI if there is constant cleave, or long uptimes with adds. So mostly FT is the to go to talent, for my build since it lengthen the duration of IV cus i run thermal. Besides that i run Bomb on most fights but dragons and il gynoth, where i find AG being better perhaps if terear is the dragon up i run bomb, since its constant cleave.

On elrethe mythic last night i went into yet another expirmental mode, and tested your rotation to mine, finding them being really close and actually prefered yours, becuase opening with Orb on a boss that aint stationary is far from optimal. But on dragons and nythendra which is stationary targets, i still find opening with orb instead of ebon being Stronger. Perhaps not 150k stronger as i mentioned in a past thread, but strong enough for me to get 7seconds more on IV, and 50-75kish more burst dps, when ligning up ebon, FOF's and flurry procs with the 20% from IF, 20% from IV and 6% from BC. It's not as massive as i mentioned earlier, but imo still enough to aim for, but it does require little bit of luck getting 3x Chain reaction, minimum 2 FoF, and a flurry proc up and ready to fit into the 4 second gap with 20% IF increase, but with propper weak auras, or Tell me when it's easy to track and manage, but it's not something you will be able to do 100% of the time due to the rng. of Chain reaction.

But on fights like elrethe, ursoc and cenarius where the boss is not stationary the first 10seconds of the fight, i will not recomend my rotation, as it most likely will result in a completly wasted Orb.

[mooky]

Most recent sim build from today states that on patchwork fight priority is:

Pre Pot>Frostbolt>RoP>IV>FT>FO>FB>IL Dump>Ebonbolt>Frostbolt>Frostbolt>IL Dump>RoP>Water Jet> Frostboltx3>FB>IL Dump

This is maintaining all your necessary buffs Chain Reaction x3, Bone Chilling x12 over a 20~ second opener

[Saróx]

Unless you calculate with 100% crit, that opener is no way near garanteeing 3x chain reaction, but else than that i guess its pretty much covering all bases.

[Savant]

Sarox it sounds like you know what you're talking about. I have a question for you though. You mentioned using a flurry proc to get 2 buffed IL:

"If you get a flurry proc, you wanna burn all remaining FoF, then use 1 frost bolt, the flurry proc, and then 2 ice lances without FoF procs on. These ice lances are gonna benefit from shatter debuff, and the frost bolt and flurry is most likely gonna trigger atleast 2 chain reactions, which at this point should put you to an ensured 3 stack chain reaction"

I can't actually understand what you're saying here; completely. I have noticed that (only from a range) a flurry proc can be used to guarentee a FB crit. However you're telling me to then use 2 IL without FoF and I'll still get shatter? The tooltip for brain freeze is confusing and says: Winter's chill causes a target to take damage as if it were frozen. However I can't see a debuff and it doesn't seem to work either; just for the frostbolt.

Can you clarify what you're trying to say?

Thanks a lot