Glacial Spike - Updated

[Potaetoe]

Yeah, the new ebonbolt and flurry changes will be added to the apl once simc has been caught up.

[Imaskar]

When doing FB-FL-IL to benefit IL from Winter's Chill, it often happens that FB procs FoF and it is essintially munched. Is it okay? Can we do something about it?

[Moyx]

When doing FB-FL-IL to benefit IL from Winter's Chill, it often happens that FB procs FoF and it is essintially munched. Is it okay? Can we do something about it?

No, its a random proc. I have a similar problem when i'm going to cast Ebonbolt after FB, i cant prespam EB cast because of chance of brainfreeze proc, i have to wait like half of second and see if it proc or not.

[Imaskar]

Well, BF procs are now delayed if you already have one.

[thecool85]

During Icy Veins, is it more productive to cast frozen orb and cast a bunch of FoF ice lances, or is it better to use the time to cast frost bolts and glacials? Also, does it vary based on the number of mobs present?

[Xinder]

During Icy Veins, is it more productive to cast frozen orb and cast a bunch of FoF ice lances, or is it better to use the time to cast frost bolts and glacials? Also, does it vary based on the number of mobs present?

I'm pretty sure you should be casting GS under IV because you only get 20s of it and you'll be under the Chilled to the Core effect too. So you'll need to be utilizing GS and then use any FoF procs you get, but don't go building a bunch and be unable to GS. That's how I viewed it anyway and I could of course be wrong.

[Potaetoe]

During Icy Veins, is it more productive to cast frozen orb and cast a bunch of FoF ice lances, or is it better to use the time to cast frost bolts and glacials? Also, does it vary based on the number of mobs present?

Yes when you get into AoE territory (4+ targets) you use a rotation more like TV AoE.

[Daakal]

So I recently converted to the church of Glacial Spike and I feel like a real mage again. Playing is so much more entertaining and I feel like I am really putting up numbers. But I cant for the life of me a) figure out how to sim and b) what the hell I should be doing with my gear.

Last I was trying to tweak it I was going for as close to 33% crit then as much mastery as possible. I have like 20 pieces of gear in my bags for mix and matching but no idea what I should be doing with it.

Here are logs for tonight, we're filthy casuals but I want to be....a lumberjack with glacial spike as my axe. I cant seem to get it to crit more than 1/3 the time, which lines up with my overall crit chance so somehow I suck at this GS shatter technique people keep talking about.

http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/i4pw84nks922gyu3/" target="_blank
http://us.battle.net/wow/en/character/k ... ire/simple" target="_blank

Any feedback is appreciated. Thanks!

[Imaskar]

We wanted crit shatter, but it is apparently not possible without shimmering towards the boss. It puts you into a lot of troubles, so it is advised not to do it.

[Arandomperson]

I have tried tons of times and I dont believe there is a way to get your glacial spikes to shatter, if there is it's probably too unreliable and I wouldnt worry about it. To sim yourself take the api in the main post and then replace your gear. the secondary stats vary alot as you get more ilvl and traits. I for one am on 902 ilvl with setbonus and 54 traits and for me crit=vers=mastery with haste slightly behind for singletarget, and for 2 targets mastery is about 15% stronger than crit and vers and 30% stronger than haste. as the number of targets goes up mastery rapidly loses value while crit pulls abit ahead and haste vers are about equal. Because the only fight where you get consistent 2 targets is botanist and the others are intermitent and die quickly I believe you should value crit and versa the most but ultimately you should go by ilvl. The only time where I wouldnt take the higher ilvl item is when it had haste mainstat and my other piece was only 5 ilvls lower and had crit mainstat. I dont think there is any stat distribution that would make a 10 ilvl difference not be worth it, except for trinkets obviously.

[t3hbar0n]

So I recently converted to the church of Glacial Spike and I feel like a real mage again. Playing is so much more entertaining and I feel like I am really putting up numbers. But I cant for the life of me a) figure out how to sim and b) what the hell I should be doing with my gear.

Last I was trying to tweak it I was going for as close to 33% crit then as much mastery as possible. I have like 20 pieces of gear in my bags for mix and matching but no idea what I should be doing with it.

Here are logs for tonight, we're filthy casuals but I want to be....a lumberjack with glacial spike as my axe. I cant seem to get it to crit more than 1/3 the time, which lines up with my overall crit chance so somehow I suck at this GS shatter technique people keep talking about.

http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/i4pw84nks922gyu3/" target="_blank
http://us.battle.net/wow/en/character/k ... ire/simple" target="_blank

Any feedback is appreciated. Thanks!

The ability to shatter glacial spike was a theory that was thought possible when the new changes were announced... after much testing both on my own, and by others here on the forums, it appears that at this time it is not really possible to shatter glacial spike. For me, the first flurry does hit before glacial spike, but the winters chill debuff appears to not benefit glacial spike as a spell to prevent it from benefiting from shatter, which TBH would be really OP. I could see this having been done intentionally by blizzard.

[Knowledge]

So I recently converted to the church of Glacial Spike and I feel like a real mage again. Playing is so much more entertaining and I feel like I am really putting up numbers. But I cant for the life of me a) figure out how to sim and b) what the hell I should be doing with my gear.

Last I was trying to tweak it I was going for as close to 33% crit then as much mastery as possible. I have like 20 pieces of gear in my bags for mix and matching but no idea what I should be doing with it.

Here are logs for tonight, we're filthy casuals but I want to be....a lumberjack with glacial spike as my axe. I cant seem to get it to crit more than 1/3 the time, which lines up with my overall crit chance so somehow I suck at this GS shatter technique people keep talking about.

http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/i4pw84nks922gyu3/" target="_blank
http://us.battle.net/wow/en/character/k ... ire/simple" target="_blank

Any feedback is appreciated. Thanks!

The ability to shatter glacial spike was a theory that was thought possible when the new changes were announced... after much testing both on my own, and by others here on the forums, it appears that at this time it is not really possible to shatter glacial spike. For me, the first flurry does hit before glacial spike, but the winters chill debuff appears to not benefit glacial spike as a spell to prevent it from benefiting from shatter, which TBH would be really OP. I could see this having been done intentionally by blizzard.

Blink/flurry shatters still working for me

[Uaeko]

SO for the APL changes. We just have to drop in ebonbolt into the shatter combo now or ....

SimC newb here.

And with the wanting to have Ebonbolt in a EB>FL>IL>FB>FL>IL combo do we pre-cast EB still?

I would assume so to start the combo as tank is pulling?

HAPPY FRIDAY

[Montegomery]

The ability to shatter glacial spike was a theory that was thought possible when the new changes were announced... after much testing both on my own, and by others here on the forums, it appears that at this time it is not really possible to shatter glacial spike. For me, the first flurry does hit before glacial spike, but the winters chill debuff appears to not benefit glacial spike as a spell to prevent it from benefiting from shatter, which TBH would be really OP. I could see this having been done intentionally by blizzard.

I combatlogged myself attempting this and found that the timestamp for the first Flurry hit (and also Winter's Chill) was identical to the timestamp for the Glacial Spike hit. My assumption is Blizzard carefully set things up this way to avoid giving Glacial Spike easy shatters.

The Shimmer trick still works because it allows Flurry to land before Glacial Spike, but it seems clear that Blizzard doesn't want Giacial Spike shatters to be a common thing.

[Laere]

Ran this build for Normal and Heroic NH tonight with great success.

Here are logs for normal:

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/R4 ... amage-done" target="_blank

Heroic logs didn't save for some reason sadly, but I was doing very good and even top on some fights as GS. I played GS because of wanting to do a lot better boss damage and it definitely delivered while doing great ST DPS and 2 target cleave (which frost excels at).

I currently have 44 traits, 905 ilvl weapon, and 897 ilvl. I am using Prydaz and Shard as my legendaries, which are actually a very good combo for GS.

I am considering just going full time GS for the time and still going for fire loot spec, for fire legendaries. The only other frost legendary I would really want are Mag's bracers, but I don't want to roll the dice for them, when I already have 2 pretty good legendaries for the spec as is.

I would say if you're struggling with fire to give GS a try. Like the guide says it scales very well with paragon points and ilvl. I am not that geared compared to people like Razz or Xyronic, nor do I have max traits and I am beating fire mages with helm/belt in my guild.

Also I do stream my raids as GS and will be streaming again tonight at 9:45pm EST / 6:45pm PST at http://www.twitch.tv/laerez" target="_blank

Good luck!

[Comfykinz]

I once had a dream of TV. Yet I was plagued with utility legendarys. As a small boy I was taught to never let go of my dreams. In my adult years my dreams still did not come true. I picked up he bottle of GS I had next to me. Now I am addicted and have given up my dreams.

[Kappagayo]

I have had huge success with glacial spike so far. I run arctic gale on almost every fight tho because the reset on frozen orb with 4pc is too good on some fights. I am getting 95 parses and above in my bracket on almost every fight on Normal and a couple on heroic.

Here are my logs if you guys want to take a look at how i play
https://www.warcraftlogs.com/rankings/c ... bracket=-1" target="_blank

[thecool85]

During Icy Veins, is it more productive to cast frozen orb and cast a bunch of FoF ice lances, or is it better to use the time to cast frost bolts and glacials? Also, does it vary based on the number of mobs present?

Yes when you get into AoE territory (4+ targets) you use a rotation more like TV AoE.

Thank you for the response! May I ask what your rotation looks like when IV and TW are up? Is it just FBs and GSs or do you try to avoid capping on ice lances and brain freeze procs as well? This is the part of the picture I'm missing. I've tested both with varying results and I'm wondering if anyone's done the math on the optimal APM during our big cooldowns.

[Potaetoe]

During Icy Veins, is it more productive to cast frozen orb and cast a bunch of FoF ice lances, or is it better to use the time to cast frost bolts and glacials? Also, does it vary based on the number of mobs present?

Yes when you get into AoE territory (4+ targets) you use a rotation more like TV AoE.

Thank you for the response! May I ask what your rotation looks like when IV and TW are up? Is it just FBs and GSs or do you try to avoid capping on ice lances and brain freeze procs as well? This is the part of the picture I'm missing. I've tested both with varying results and I'm wondering if anyone's done the math on the optimal APM during our big cooldowns.

My rotation is TV, I don't play GS. I assist razlopp and others with the apl and simc for it.

-Is it just FBs and GSs?

For what? Single Target or AoE? Single Target Razlopp's already pretty clearly covered.

For AoE, I already made clear you use an AoE rotation very similar to TV. Frostbolt and GS take a back seat at 4+ enemies. You use Blizzard and Ice Lance and Frozen Orb and Flurry to get as much as you can out of the weak aoe Frost has.

-Has anyone done the math on the perfect actions per minute?

Well let's take this a bit backwards.... Actions per minute is a silly way to look at things. First of all, in an AoE situation things are almost never alive for flat periods of time. We can tell you what does produce numbers, but it's your skilled timing of said abilities to make it work.

Secondly, we use SimC to model the gains. If you think there is something it's modeling incorrectly feel free to point them out so we can see if we can fix them.

If you're asking for mathamtical models, I believe one of the global mods has worked on a solution back in 7.1.0, but it's rather difficult to appropriately model.

And again, you're not making it clear whether yuou're talking about ST or AoE or how many targets.

The APL provided in the OP details both AoE and ST (the SimC APL, not Razlopp's specific APL). I'm not going to read it line for line for you.

[Pkm]

Why does ice lance have higher priority than brain freeze? Also, do you ebonbolt > flurry even during IV?