Frost Mage 8.2 PVE Raiding Guide. All rotations included.

[Seer_mage]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fOVixyqNZ7k

In this guide the mage mentions that its best to only use Glacial Spike if you have a flurry to shatter it with. Is this a safer way to go about it if you aren't confident in tracking your icicles. Or should you play closer attention to the greater than 3 Icicles wait for Flurry and less than 3 icicles go ahead use Glacial Spike order of operation.

[Sartiv]

Hello!! An question... If you have Glacial at 5 icicles, and Ebon is on cd for example 20 secs , and no procs... Is good to spamming frostbolt hoping to proc brain freeze, even 3-4 frostbolts on streak? Is this dps loss, is it?

[burningflame75]

You should never cast a Glacial Spike at a single target that you won't be able to shatter, whether it's shattered with a brain freeze proc or through frost nova/pet freeze.

So, if you are on a dungeon/raid boss (where you cant freeze targets), and you have 5 icicles and no EB, then yes, you should be casting frostbolt until you get that proc, or EB comes off cd. This could mean upwards of 10 frostbolt in a row, all the while waiting on that one proc to fire off Glacial Spike. Doesn't feel great, but even in this type of situation it is a dps loss to fire off the Glacial Spike on its own.

This reasoning goes out the window when there are 2 targets. If your GS will hit 2 targets, then you should be casting it ASAP, with or without brain freeze/shatter.

[Sartiv]

You should never cast a Glacial Spike at a single target that you won't be able to shatter, whether it's shattered with a brain freeze proc or through frost nova/pet freeze.

So, if you are on a dungeon/raid boss (where you cant freeze targets), and you have 5 icicles and no EB, then yes, you should be casting frostbolt until you get that proc, or EB comes off cd. This could mean upwards of 10 frostbolt in a row, all the while waiting on that one proc to fire off Glacial Spike. Doesn't feel great, but even in this type of situation it is a dps loss to fire off the Glacial Spike on its own.

Thank very much for your response and your time! Thus we should use the talent TV instead of Glacial if we have single target?

This reasoning goes out the window when there are 2 targets. If your GS will hit 2 targets, then you should be casting it ASAP, with or without brain freeze/shatter.

Interesting.. Like the first boss at Uldir, Taloc.

[burningflame75]

Thus we should use the talent TV instead of Glacial if we have single target?

No. Even on one target, GS is top dps by a non-trivial margin. The point I was making here, is that if the GS will split to a second target, then you should fire it off ASAP, with or without a way to shatter it.

TV pulls ahead when there are a high number of target (unsure of the exact number), the idea here (I think) being: more targets for frozen orb/more uptime on frozen orb bc blizzard is hitting more targets => more ice lance procs, leading to longer IV. This is why it's being looked at mainly for dungeon content. However, personally, I feel like GS is better in dungeons as well, for several reasons.

For one, I feel like I am able to shatter my GS on at least 1 target the vast majority of the time, without needing to wait for procs. Between freeze from pet, frost nova (as long as you can be in melee, with 2 if you talent), and brain freeze procs, its a rare occurrence when I reach 5 icicles and dont have a way to shatter. Additionally, GS affects every pull, whereas TV only affects pulls where you use IV - this may be more of a personal preference thing, but I prefer talents that effect my rotation in a more constant way, and I find them easier to get full value from. You may be holding IV at various times in the dungeon, perhaps so that it's up for a boss, which leads to losing value from TV.

Interesting.. Like the first boss at Uldir, Taloc.

Yes! This fight, and others w/cc'able adds, will be fights where GS truly shines! very excited for this

[Matanzas]

Quick noob frost mage to shatter your GS with the pet freeze you cast the freeze first then the GS because the brain freeze one you do after you proc Brain freeze ? I am noob mage but trying hard to get better. Thanks ahead for answering my confusion.

[burningflame75]

If you pet freeze after launching your GS, unless you are quite far from the target, it's pretty likely your GS will hit first, unless you are very quick. Luckily, pet freeze is off of (your) GCD, so you can cast it during GS if you want. This is what I, and I think most frost mages do: you wait until the cast is almost finished, then freeze, then GS flies off.

One nice tidbit is that freeze has a window at the beginning of it's duration where it cannot be broken by damage. Not positive of the exact window but I'm fairly sure it's either 0.25 sec or 0.5 sec (I'm pretty sure Julia knows). If this were not the case, it would be much harder to shatter with pet freeze.

Additionally, if you are in melee range and want to shatter with frost nova, as long as you queue up frost nova at the end of your GS cast, such that there is 0ms of downtime between finishing GS cast and getting off frost nova, the frost nova WILL hit first and shatter your target, regardless of how close you are.

[Innarish]

What is everyones crit looking like right now? I'm ar 341 and 23% crit.

Are people using Torrent of Elements on there weapon or Deadly Navigation to keep crit up also?

[nickseng]

If you pet freeze after launching your GS, unless you are quite far from the target, it's pretty likely your GS will hit first, unless you are very quick. Luckily, pet freeze is off of (your) GCD, so you can cast it during GS if you want. This is what I, and I think most frost mages do: you wait until the cast is almost finished, then freeze, then GS flies off.

One nice tidbit is that freeze has a window at the beginning of it's duration where it cannot be broken by damage. Not positive of the exact window but I'm fairly sure it's either 0.25 sec or 0.5 sec (I'm pretty sure Julia knows). If this were not the case, it would be much harder to shatter with pet freeze.

Additionally, if you are in melee range and want to shatter with frost nova, as long as you queue up frost nova at the end of your GS cast, such that there is 0ms of downtime between finishing GS cast and getting off frost nova, the frost nova WILL hit first and shatter your target, regardless of how close you are.

That might be fine when you solo, but in a group, your Freeze is almost gonna certainly get broken before your GS hits if you cast it during your GS cast. What you wanna do is cast it just before it hits (and yes, the protection is 0.5 seconds).

Also, you generally only wanna shatter your GS with BF. Use Freeze to shatter your Comet Storm instead.

[Purplefrost]

Can we still shimmer lance? I thought we need more haste than what is available to us currently to shimmer lance.

[pinkmagediaries]

What is everyones crit looking like right now? I'm ar 341 and 23% crit.

Are people using Torrent of Elements on there weapon or Deadly Navigation to keep crit up also?

I would like to know what the consensus on this is too... I am using the haste enchant and not sure if that's my best option, both crit and haste are simming almost the same for me with haste edging out ahead .

[lopstar]

What is everyones crit looking like right now? I'm ar 341 and 23% crit.

Are people using Torrent of Elements on there weapon or Deadly Navigation to keep crit up also?

I would like to know what the consensus on this is too... I am using the haste enchant and not sure if that's my best option, both crit and haste are simming almost the same for me with haste edging out ahead .

Consider your multi-target sim then.
Crit should be way ahead on more targets. So if haste and crit is even on single target, but crit is ahead on more targets. Crit should be your choice.

Worth simming.

[Dturkmen]

So these might be stupid questions but I'm curious about them. For single target DPS how can Bone Chilling push out more numbers than Lonely Winter? I know it's 5% damage to Frozen orb, glacial spike, and comet storm but Frostbolt, ice Lance and flurry are your main attacks and thats 25% damage. I'm also curious about the numbers between Thermal void and glacial spike.

[nickseng]

So these might be stupid questions but I'm curious about them. For single target DPS how can Bone Chilling push out more numbers than Lonely Winter? I know it's 5% damage to Frozen orb, glacial spike, and comet storm but Frostbolt, ice Lance and flurry are your main attacks and thats 25% damage. I'm also curious about the numbers between Thermal void and glacial spike.

If you look at your damage breakdown after a fight, you'd see that Frostbolt/Flurry/Icelance accounts for less than 40% of your damage. multiplying that for 25% still doesn't make it do more than 5% more of 60+% of your damage. And that's not counting the free dps your elemental is doing.

And that's for ST. On trash packs, you can even Shatter your CMS for every bigger damage boost.

[Dturkmen]

Trash packs are definitely a no brainer, that's just insane damage with the freeze and comet storm. But I don't get how frostbolt, icelance and flurry is less than 40% of our damage for ST dps.

[MagusMaximus]

So I'm not sure why, but currently when I sim ST as LW/EB/CS/TV I sim for more DPS than any other talent combination. Why would this be? Is this just the sim being wonky but in real practice GS comes out ahead?

Currently sitting at 20% crit and 12% haste at 333ilvl.

[nickseng]

Trash packs are definitely a no brainer, that's just insane damage with the freeze and comet storm. But I don't get how frostbolt, icelance and flurry is less than 40% of our damage for ST dps.

Check your recount/skada/details/logs the next time you do a ST fight. *shrug*

ETA: For example, this is the damage breakdown when I do a quick sim on my character

[nickseng]

So I'm not sure why, but currently when I sim ST as LW/EB/CS/TV I sim for more DPS than any other talent combination. Why would this be? Is this just the sim being wonky but in real practice GS comes out ahead?

Currently sitting at 20% crit and 12% haste at 333ilvl.

Can you provide a link to that sim?

[LaplaceNoMa]

Hello and thanks for that guide. I haven't played frost in legion at all, last time I played it was with Archimonde's trinket back in HFC - that was a slightly different frost.

So far I'm getting ~92-98 parses on normal and heroic bosses, but there are two points I feel I can improve a lot, so I wanted to ask the gurus here.

Situation 1:
- 4 icicles
- No FoF
- No BF
- Ebonbolt on CD
- Frostbolt cast in process

In this situation, I see different courses of action when the frostbolt cast finishes:
- Queue another Frostbolt and cast it, if you got BF from the previous one, queue GS next and shatter it with Flurry
- Queue another Frostbolt, but cancel the cast if you got BF from the previous one, and proceed to cast GS and Flurry
- Don't queue anything and trust your reaction time, losing about a hundred milliseconds while waiting to see whether Flurry proc'd and deciding what to do after that

All of those seem suboptimal in one way or another, but I'm not sure what to do.

Situation 2:
Everything the same, except Ebonbolt is off CD. In this situation, the question is: do I queue Ebonbolt after the Frostbolt that would put me on 5 icicles, or not? If I do queue it, but BF procs from the Frostbolt, do I cancel the cast and proceed to GS+Flurry? Or do I continue casting Ebonbolt, shattering it with the BF proc, and using the new BF proc with GS? Again, I feel like both choices are suboptimal, since the first choice is losing a lot of uptime, and the second one is losing Ebonbolt for a GS that would have a BF proc to go with it even without it, too.


And finally, a more general question: if Ebonbolt is not available and there's no BF proc at 5 icicles, do I keep frostbolting until I get a proc, no matter how many casts it takes? I've checked the cast timelines for #1-3 parses on several bosses, generally speaking most of them seem to be incredibly lucky and get a Flurry for each GS lined up perfectly, without those uncomfortable situations where you are forced to either keep spamming frostbolts or use GS without Flurry.

[redline_odessa]

To partially prevent situation 1 and 2, try to hold one FOF proc, so you could cast it on reaching 5 icicles. About situation 2, not sure where, but I've read that it's dps increase if you will react and stop EB cast faster than 300 ms.