Wizeowel

Some important things have changed in the 3.0.8 patch which make some of the following post incorrect. The long and the short of it, is that you now will want to spec for Torment the Weak 18/0/53. Pages 4-7 of this thread provide some good discussion on the changes, and the issues that still need to be addressed.

As of 3.1 with the 4T8 bonus, you will still get the most benefit from ignoring BF procs and only spamming frostbolt. This is because fireball doesn't scale with any of your talents, so it's not a dps increase once you have full naxx or higher gear, and moreover the dpm benefit is negligible except on hard mode Vezax. Using ice lance on the ghost FoF charge with the new glyph could be a minor gain if you play it perfectly, but if you miss the ghost charge even once then it's immediately a dps loss. Towards the end of the 3.1 beta, Blizzard acknowledged that frost is not yet competitive with other classes/specs in World of Warcraft - English (NA) Forums -> [MAGE] We want an answer


This is a work in progress, please post issues you'd like to see discussed. I'm going to focus on raiding, but that doesn't mean only single target dps: survivability may be a concern to you, not to mention that raid instances also have trash or bosses' adds which aren't level 83. I'm going to shamelessly steal information from Roywyn's Talent Discussion thread and I'd also like to eventually include some on Lhivera's analysis from during the beta.

Contents
Talent choices
Glyphs
Use of cooldowns
Gear (stat weighting)
Consumables
Comparison with other specs
Bugs, features and other issues

Talent choices
0-0-53 Basic talents for Frost
Frost has a set of core talents which complement each other, but eventually you are left with many options for your subspec. The above link shows a guide for the talents you'll likely want to take. From these core talents, some are optional such as: 2/2 Arctic Reach is for mobility; 3/3 Elemental Precision might not be necessary depending on your gear; 1/1 Ice Barrier is for survival; 1/3 Frostbite makes Blizzard proc Fingers of Frost.

Frost has a basic rotation of Frostbolt spam with an instant no mana Fireball from the Brain Freeze talent. At low gear levels you might will also want to use Ice Lance on the second charge of Fingers of Frost, but at higher gear levels it will be more dps to just keep spamming Frostbolt. There is also the possibility to cast Ice Lance on the 'third' charge of FoF. That is, while the second FoF'd Frostbolt is still in the air use Ice Lance and if it lands at the same moment you will get a kind of 'ghost' shatter bonus. If the Ice Lance doesn't hit at exactly the right moment it will also lose both its triple damage and the ghost shatter. So if you can't get this to work consistantly, you are better off spamming Frostbolt. Not to mention that Lhivera showed during the LK beta, as soon as you have a certain level of gear then such shatter combos are actually a dps drop anyway.

On trash you will prefer Blizzard if possible since the two single talent points in Frostbite and Improved Blizzard will give a very high chance of crits. In fact in it's higher dps than FrB-FB on as few as 3 targets while spreading threat more evenly. Blizzard is also the quickest way to apply 5 stacks of Winter's Chill, also to bosses.

Which talents should you pick for the remaining 18-19 points? This is mostly down to playstyle.

• 1/1 Focus Magic is a dps increase of 40-70 for yourself and could be up to 150 dps bonus when applied to a full T7 geared Frostfire mage. Unless you have good reason not to spec this, you should probably put 11 points into arcane for this.
• x/5 Ignite would seem a good dps boost also, but since your Fireball procs come maximum 15% of the time, and even in current best gear it will have less than 50% crit chance raid buffed, you can see that this is only about 8-11 dps per talent point. Certainly not worth dropping Focus Magic for 5/5 Ignite, but obviously a build with FM and 3/5 Ignite would be the highest Frost dps spec. Warning: uses a debuff slot on the boss which can be a problem on 25-man raids.
• x/3 Spell Impact is incredibly poor for damage, per point it's worth maybe 3-5 dps.
• 5/5 Arcane Concentration or 3/3 Master of Elements very much depend if you have replenishment in raid. With a Shadow Priest, your own Water Elemental and especially a Retribution Paladin you'll find it very difficult to use any mana at all as Frost.
• 2/2 Magic Absorption is a great survival talent and at the moment I'd say you should prefer 2 points in this to Arcane Concentration in any 11/x/53+ spec.
• 2/2 Improved Fire Blast is difficult to measure in dps terms, but on high movement fights you'll likely not always be able to save BF for instant Fireballs and FoF procs for Ice Lance, therefore having a shorter cooldown on Fire Blast is generally going to be useful.
• 3/3 Ice Floes is a dubious bonus. Unlike Cold as Ice + Glyph of Water Elemental which synchs nicely on a 2 minute cooldown, Icy Veins gets a cooldown reduction of 36 seconds which doesn't really synch with anything especially given variable fight lengths. On the other hand, if you're finding many fights ending with IV just coming off cooldown then you might consider it.
• 2/2 Magic Attunement grants, on Amplify Magic friendly fights at least, an extra +127 healing for the raid. If the other mages in your guild are Frostfire specced, you may be the only one who can provide this.

Here is an example of a higher dps spec 11-8-52 as suggested by Cainam;
Here is an example of a more survival-mobility oriented spec 13-2-56.

Glyphs
Glyph of Frostbolt is your first choice. Its bonus is ~110 dps in Sunwell gear and ~145 dps in Naxx-25 gear. Yes you lose your snare so you maybe have some adjustments to make in your grinding and pvp behaviour.

Glyph of Molten Armor is your second choice, worth some 30-70 dps. When raid buffed you are unlikely to be wanting for mana, and even if you're forced to use Mage Armor for certain situations, there won't be any additional benefit in glyphing it.

Glyph of Water Elemental is your third choice. Not that it's worth so much dps, but because it's worth so much as replenishment for your raid. The glyphed and talented 2 minute cooldown also conveniently coincides with most trinket cooldowns.

Glyph of Fireball is another option instead of Water Elemental if you want to maximise your damage on Brain Freeze. However, the dps increase is not spectactular, possibly up to 15 dps over Water Elemental given top-end gear and 3 points in Ignite.

Use of cooldowns
Summon Water Elemental starts a global cooldown, and the pet itself can gain stats dynamically. This means that you'll want to summon it on the pull and (using a macro) make it attack your target immediately. The next thing to do is to get a stack of 5 Winter's Chill on the boss: I'm personally using Blizzard for this and cutting it short after 5 hits. Then follow with your Icy Veins/Consumable/Trinket macro. Mirror Images are best to stack with a clicky spellpower trinket since that is the only stat they scale with. If you have a second clicky trinket use it immediately after the first trinket is done.

Your WE lasts 1 minute, has a (talented, glyphed) cooldown of 2 mins, and since you summoned him on the pull you could use him again in combination with 2-minute trinkets. You can also coldsnap on 3 minutes for 75% uptime on a 4 minute fight. But is this the best method? Consider also that Mirror Image is on a 3 minute timer, so you might want to hold off the last trinket activations until the 3 minute mark instead of at 2 minutes. And what happens if the boss dies quicker than 3 minutes or lasts longer than 4 minutes? Remember that you've got it a lot easier than if you were specced fire with Molten Fury. You can afford to frontload your damage without significant impact to your dps. Also, the Mirror Image scaling isn't really worth holding off your trinkets for. So on shorter fights where you don't know if you have 4 minutes, it is maybe better to try to synch trinkets with the WE. If a fight turns out to be shorter even than 3 minutes, then next time remember to Cold Snap for 2 minutes of WE at the start, and hold the second Icy Veins for the trinkets.

If you know the exact fight length, you can try calculating the optimal activation sequence using Rawr.mage. What you'll notice is that the value it gives to the WE, the glyph and Cold as Ice talent will vary quite a bit depending on the fight length.

Of course, bosses with phases, portals and so on might need a different approach. Make sure before a boss pull that you understand what length timers each boss ability is on, then you can plan your cooldowns around these.

Gear and stat weighting
In the T6/Sunwell gear that I levelled to 80 with, using an 18-0-53 spec, Rawr showed the following stat values on a raid buffed 5 minute fight.
1 hit rating = 1.11 dps (until capped*)
1 spell power = 0.99 dps
1 haste rating = 0.64 dps
1 crit rating = 0.36 dps
1 intellect = 0.11 dps

When I equipped myself with the best Naxx-25 gear seen on the armory/wowhead, those values changed as follows.
1 hit rating = 1.47 dps (until capped*)
1 spell power = 1.11 dps
1 haste rating = 0.8 dps
1 crit rating = 0.51 dps
1 intellect = 0.16 dps

*) Presuming you take elemental precision and there are shadow priests in the raid, you'll need 11% hit to cap (289 rating), or 10% (263 rating) if you are a draenei or are partied with one.

For gear stats it's obvious for maximising dps that you should prioritise hit and spellpower over all other stats. For gems however the situation is more complex since the item budget favours spell damage. Overall, Runed Scarlet Rubies offer the highest dps bonus (~30% higher than Reckless Monarch Topaz) unless you have very low hit rating in full T7. In the latter case, Veiled Monarch Topaz are approximately the same or a little higher dps than Runed Scarlet Rubies. Be wary of course about gemming for hit since it's very easy in Naxx-25 to suddenly get an upgrade which nullifies all those gems. I would therefore suggest that the most flexible approach is just gemming for spellpower, socket bonuses notwithstanding.

Furthermore, the set bonus from 4T6 is still very good since it's an (additive) 5% dps boost for both Frostbolt and Fireball. Rawr estimates this bonus as around 170 dps. The best items to use are of course the 3 Sunwell T6 pieces, as they offer the least loss compared to T7 level gear. For the 4th piece, you can choose it depending on your hit rating and of course which items you pick up in Naxx. I'd suggest using the Rawr Optimiser to see which combination works out best for you. As far as I can see in Rawr, best-in-slot Naxx-25 gear is only ~100 dps improvement on using 4T6, so it looks advantageous to save your dkp for The Turning Tide rather than new boots

Consumables
Frost spec isn't different from any other dps caster at the moment. Here are the items you'll want to take to raids.
[Flask of the Frost Wyrm] (187 spellpower if you are a mixologist);
[Tender Shoveltusk Steak] or [Firecracker Salmon], or if you are more than 40 hit rating under cap then use [Snapper Extreme];
[Potion of Speed] can be worth 20-30dps if stacked with Heroism/Bloodlust and Icy Veins, but the utility of health and mana potions can't be overlooked either.

Comparison with other specs
Despite Ghostcrawler's statement during beta that frost "is close to fire", we're currently seeing theoretical dps of 15%-30% more from Frostfire specs compared to Frost. There isn't enough empirical data at the moment to support this fully, and we know that Blizzard's position is that many players will find it harder to perfectly execute SC-FFB-LB-Pyro than they will FrB-FB, but currently it seems that for dps-check raids you will very likely want to spec fire.

However, as frost you do have certain advantages over fire when looking at a raid evening on the whole. Firstly, your water elemental is a mana replenisher. Secondly, your fire mages don't have to Scorch, which can increase fire mage dps by 80-90 for a perfect player (and much more for the very many fire mages who would normally rebuff Scorch early). Thirdly, you will find that your dps output on well tanked large trash groups is high and very sustainable in a raid setting. Since your Water Elemental has 50% uptime, you are also shaving off a few seconds drinking time between pulls for your casters.

Bugs, features and other issues
You can see Roywyn's thread for all these issues, here are the ones which might currently apply to a frost mage.

Blizzard
Several effects are not triggered by Blizzard. This includes Ashtongue Talisman of Insight and Sundial of the Exalted trinkets. Improved Blizzard also does not proc Fingers of Frost unless specced for Frostbite as well.

Fingers of Frost
Fingers of Frost and Frostbite will always proc simultaneously if specced for both. This is intentional by design. The idead of the talent to make Frostbite useful in raids and some other situation where mobs/players do not stay frozen.

If the spell that is cast on the 2nd (or 3rd) FoF charge also procs FoF, this new proc immediately disappears and is lost.

You can cast an instant spell right after your 2nd spell under FoF to get a 3rd spell with the FoF buff off. It is not known whether this is intended behaviour as shatter combo or not.

Water Elemental
Does not have an aviodance talent to reduce damage taken from AoE.

Master of Elements
Blizzard rank 6 currently does not proc this talent. The other ranks seem to work fine.


Disclaimer: whenever I have mentioned 'dps' increases I'm presuming a properly raid buffed 5 minute boss fight with little or no AoE nor movement. Of course, real raiding isn't all Brutallus and Patchwerk, so your mileage may vary. Use a simulator such as Rawr.mage to get estimates for your particular situation. Or test on a target dummy - Rawr won't be able to tell you the best technique for maximising damage during the Heigen dance.

Please feel free to make comments, suggestions or corrections.

 

Azrayne

Wouldn't it make more sense to frostbolt on the first charge, then frostbolt + icelance on the second charge to get the bonus for all 3 spells?

 

Xmasman

Yes i would also use this "shatter" combo to maximize dmg with fingers of frost.
Anyway i think its more than one time mentioned here and in blizzard forum that there are problems with the shatter combo and get all 3 spells with fingers of frost bonus.
But as long as iam raiding in 3.0 and while iam leveling this combo seems always work very well. Perhaps iam always lucky that the 2nd frostbolt crits anyway but i don't think so.

 

Wizeowel

Yes I'll try to cover the FoF shatter combos. In principle it's a "bug" or a "feature", if you would read the talent description only then you can see that the talent should give the buff for 2 spells only. The reality is that the buff somehow stays on during the travel time of the 2nd frostbolt. The speculation is, as I understand it, that the reason it works has to do with the asynchronous way that spells and buffs are queued on the server. Therefore it would be interesting to gather some data with various amounts of lag to see what the cut-off point is for a Ice Lance to get the shatter bonus.

I also want to make some calculations for what level of gear you would need before it's better to keep with Frostbolt spam, and I'll try to reprogram Rawr to do this. I have seen that Simulationcraft already includes Ice Lance in the frost build, but I'm not as familiar with that program as with Rawr.

 

Xmasman

has anyone here in this forum the problem that the shatter combo Frostbolt + Frostbolt + Icelance don't work?
I have talked to friends on my server and at the moment i don't know a person where it don't works.

i would think its a damage loss than. perhaps if you have enough mages than the damage loss would be compensated.

 

Wizeowel

I've seen it (the Ice Lance shatter combo) fail many times while levelling/grinding, maybe due to some lag spikes on my server. I can also imagine that for example in Australia where players have 600ms that it also wouldn't work, but I have no evidence of this.

Whether or not using Blizzard to stack Winter's Chill is a dps loss doesn't only depend on the number of mages, but actually the number of all casters in the raid. So it's not very easy to give a general rule for this since that 10th % crit debuff coming ~5 seconds earlier will affect every raid differently. This is why I leave the statement open: Blizzard is the quickest way to apply 5 stacks, that's all. If you want to make the calculation for your own raid group that's fine with me

 

Roywyn

I never said it would be the best way, but now you made me curious enough to check the numbers.

Using the T7 gear level that's flowing around and no Torment:
Blizzarding is a ~40% DPS loss for 5 seconds, equivalent to a 2s DPS loss. Yes, that's single target, the base damage is stupidly high.

What you gain is that you stack up 0-10% crit in 5 seconds instead of 12.5 seconds.
That means 5s of 4% crit average and 7.5s of 10% crit instead of 12.5s of 4% crit average.
That's a differrence of 6% crit for 7.5s raidwide, that's equivalent to 22.5% raidwide crit for 2 seconds.


So, mashed into numbers - it's equivalent to you losing everything for 2s while the raid gains 22.5% spell crit for 2s.

A gain when you have around 6 offensive casters or more.
Your Shadow Priests can put up SW:P earlier too, so they count for ~4 casters each.
Likely not worth it outside 25-player raids.

The Blue Bar and you - the complete Fire Mage 2.4 mana compendium: http://elitistjerks.com/658230-post3191.html

DPS spec and class comparison in Naxxramas gear: http://code.google.com/p/simulationc...i/SampleOutput

And [Timbal's Focusing Crystal] doesn't proc on AM.
Neither does [The Egg of Mortal Essence] since 3.1.

 

Papajan

Using Frostbolt + Ice Lance on the second charge of FoF has been reliable for me. I use AutoHotKey on my Ice Lance button and that probably helps a little. Also, if I remember correctly, if Brain Freeze happens to be up, it makes better use of that 3rd shatter, but then it's a mess of talking about "if I was/wasn't going to proc BF on the next cast anyway" which gets into stuff like saving BF for an impending trinket or time when you'd have to move anyway.

 

holovic

What do you guys think of the 0/53/18 ffb spec. I'm specced that right now and it seems VERY reliant on having crit but still seems like it would be the mage dps spec of choice.

There are a few discrepancies that I have noticed so far with this spec that I would like to see some feedback on.

1. does Ice Shards (+100% frost critical dmg) and Burnout (+50% fire critical dmg and +5% mana cost to criticals) stack?
-If not then are we just forcing ourselves to pay 5% more mana for criticals or does the talent work on an "all or nothing" basis where if it doesn't take the +50% dmg then it ignores the 5% more mana?

2. does Firepower (+10% dmg done from fire spells) and Piercing Ice (+6% dmg to frost spell) stack?
-Of course for a mob that changes vulnerabilities (slimes beginning Death Knight wing of naxxramas) it would be useful, but on a mob such as patchwerk where its just a stand and nuke type fight will they stack or just take the firepower since it has a greater effect?


Also I checked Manly's spec (EJ mage, made the dps excel spreadsheet) had only 2/3 points in Ice Shards. Is there some mechanic we are missing here?

Holovic - <TG> - Horde US Arthas

 

MrJukes

Not sure why you're posting about a FFB spec in a "Raiding as frost" thread.

Anyway, my experience with the FoF shatter combo is that I have inconsistent results. I don't have the numbers to back it up but if you do fail on the combo even once throughout a fight it pretty much nullifies any benefit you gain from trying it. I am resigned to just frostbolt until my finger falls asleep.

I haven't investigated too thoroughly but does anybody have a mod recommendation to track the lifespan of your elemental? It always bugs me to not know exactly when he is going to despawn.

I'm also not sold on the specs you linked above.
Why pick up flame throwing but not arctic reach? Your fireball will outrange your frostbolt by 11 yards.
Is MoE really worth those garbage fire points? Frost is already very efficient with frost channeling.

I would offer up this spec. 3 extra points to put where you want. You could even take points out of world in flames if you needed those 3 for more of the snaring frost talents.

Or how about a spec with ignite and focus magic? Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft
I had to give up 2 points (10 seconds) of water elemental to get there but pick up clearcasting and 3% crit? Not sure how those stack up to losing 10 seconds of pet uptime.

 

◊ manly

I don't think 0/53/18 ought to be qualified as a frost spec...

Personal choice. I moved from 1pt from ice floes into frostbite, and then put 1pt into imp. blizzard. The dps loss is negligible for such a spec. The basic idea is that blizzard is a nice spell, and I do think its worth putting 1pt into it so that it can proc frostbite. As a consequence of that, I went for 3/3 frostbite which costed me almost nothing dps-wise to do.

Log on with different model:
1- Create a character of the desired model. Log on/off.
2- At character selection screen, select your actual character; mouseover the new, desired model character, and hold down left click; hit enter and release left click at the same time.
bug Arcane Potency only applies to the first Arcane Missile bolt.

 

holovic

Cool, thanks for the input. Also, do you know if piercing ice and firepower stack? or did you just grab it as filler to get to icy veins?

EDIT: And when you say personal preference about the 2/3 Ice Shards does that mean that it doesn't work past the 50% from Burnout or you just scrubbed the last 40% to get to the blizzard points you wanted?

Holovic - <TG> - Horde US Arthas

 

MrJukes

2/3 Ice Floes is preference. 3/3 Ice Shards is required. Piercing ice stacks with firepower for FFB.

 

Nemantopia

I don't have hard numbers to back this up, but I have PLENTY of experience doing it. You can, even with major lag, successfully pull off the Frostbolt/IceLance Shatter Combo flawlessly every time under two conditions:
1) Your lag is consistent instead of spiky. Actual number doesn't matter, but should not vary more than 50-100 ms with any consistency.
2) Train yourself to fire your Ice Lance before your cast bar reaches the end.

I've never had 'perfect latency', but I very rarely have SPIKEY or erratic latency. For weal or woe, it's varied from ~100ms [near perfect] to ~2500ms [the edge of what I'd judge as playable], but remains pretty steady at whatever value it 'chooses' for that log-in session. This is important, because it means the window for that 'third charge' is always the same within a given raid.

Which leads me to the second point in a round-about way: I used to use Quartz [haven't bothered to check if it's been fixed for WotLK yet]. Aside from amazing debuff/buff tracking, it changes the way your cast bar looks, giving you an extra 'red' zone at the end based on your latency. This tells you the ACTUAL end of your cast, or rather when you can start casting your next spell or fire an instant cast. So for all of TBC, my frost-raiding self played 'tag the red line' to minimize lag-lost DPS to be almost non-existent [thanks, Quartz!]. The side effect of this is that I've sort of 'learned' how a variety of lag levels feel for casting...with roughly 98% accuracy [that IS tested] I can judge where the magic red line from Quartz would be. This lets me fire my Ice Lance at the practical end of my Frostbolt cast, for all intents and purposes unfailingly.

Anyone who gets used to Quartz or a similar addon for their cast bar can see similar results using that add-on, and with enough practice overcome the need for it, mostly. The advantage of the actual add-on is also that when your latency DOES change, you'll know exactly how much and in which direction instead of shooting darts in the dark until you can reestablish your tempo. Or even if your time signature changes every few measures, to use a music analogy.

So, long-short: I don't know exactly how wide the window is for Shatter Combo, but barring constantly changing latency you can learn to always [or nearly so] get your combo off.

[edit]Recognizing there's a certain spellpower threshold where it's actually not worth it anymore, even if you're perfect at it.[/edit]
[edit2]Miner spelin' [/edit2]

 

Duravi

I could be wrong but I believe they are talking about triple shatter Nemantopia (2xFrostbolt + Lance on FoF). Even with almost no latency and good timing a big factor is range, there is only a certain window of distance from the mob it works for.

 

Wizeowel

Someone please make a fire thread because it's clear that people want to talk about it

Okay, what I'll do is link the core spec (0-0-52), and then list the options available for the other talent points and what benefit they give, whether dps or mobility or survivability. The point is about frost that in the subspecs focus magic and ignite are the talents which give dps, but since you can't have both it's pretty much a playstyle choice where you put the other points.

 

Nemantopia

I was referring to using the final and 'ghost' charge, assuming you had already spent the first charge on SOME spell, probably frostbolt [probably should have clarified that]. The problem with 'good timing and almost no latency' is not, in fact, the latency, but that the latency moves the window. So if you wait for the end of your cast bar, but have latency, you'll probably miss your window since it's moved to where Blizzard allows you to start casting your next spell to account for the latency.

I realize it's kind of hard to be clear, but all players should be familiar with a feature that allows players to start casting a spell before the bar on their screen reaches the end. So, time for a visual:

This is your cast bar: [--_--_--_--_--] Let's assume that's a 2.5 second cast bar [talented Frostbolt], and you have 500ms lag. A player who is playing like they DON'T have lag is actually pressing their frostbolt hotkey every 3s instead of every 2.5s, because they're waiting for the cast bar to fade/reappear when they hit the key...and losing some DPS in addition to missing any and every attempt to pull the Shatter Combo on the 2nd and ghost charge. This is the exact same cast bar, on Quartz: [--_--_--_--/--]. See that slash? That's Quartz marking with a red-line your latency. By treating that red-line as your cast bar's end, you are mimicking the situation where a lag-free player would be pulling the combo by accounting for your lag. And you're back on 2.5s tempo. As long as any VARIATIONS in your lag are small, the actual number doesn't matter until it reaches the unplayable point. Instead of playing 'tag the cast-bar end' for your combo, you're playing 'tag the red-line'. The example is using easy to understand intervals, but the point is with a Quartz style add-on [or learning what it feels like to establish tempo based on your lag], you CAN shatter combo without ideal circumstances. Because you've rectified the difference. So get that hot-key finger ready to really play.

 

Duravi

I undertsand the latency issues, my point was even if you do everything you suggested above there is only a fixed range from the mob that you can get the 3rd ghost crit with. The lance and 2nd frostbolt need to both arrive at the target within a small window of time to both get the shatter bonus (same deal as a warrior using spell reflect and reflecting multiple spells) if your too close or too far from the mob's hit box then one will arrive before/after the other and they both won't get shatter bonus.

 

cainam1

A couple thoughts and questions....

1.) From what I can see. looking atthe 18/0/53 build. Blizzard is not counted as a spell beffed by Torment the weak. Therefore, if the thought was that one could up trash DPS byblizzard with Torment, I don't think that will happen.

2.) If you have Ignite, what is the thinking aobut using FFB on the second charge of FoF. Since FoF is almost a near certain Crit, wouldn't that exta 40% damage outweigh the typically lower DPS of FFB? (Is 3/5 Ignite stll enough to make it worth while? See point 5 for why I am asking)

3.) Has anyone come upwith a Workable Deep Frost FFB Spec? I have not seen anything really close to the standard FFB spec, but I figures I'd ask if there is a spec that relies on FFB and the WE.

4.) I've seen lots of complaints aobut the loss of the slowing feature of Glyph of FB. It seems to me that one could use FFB as an opener (when soloing) to regain the slowing effect and then switch to FB for the damage. Soloing most mobs die in 9 sec anyway.

5.) I've been looking at another spec for Deep Frost, if it's been discussed somewhere else I appologize.

11/8/52 Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

My thinking is thus:

The benefits should be obvious. 3/5 Ignite for 24% extra damage from FFB and Fireball (brainfreeze) Crits. Then you have Focus magic for the 3% extra crit chance. Compared to the 18/0/53 build this seems like a much better use of the 8 points than going for TtW.

The 3 points in frost channeling are kind of optional... kind of. I've not had a big issue with either threat or mana in a deep frost build. (You already have 10% mana savings anyway through Arcane Concentration. It seems like a nice to have, but not necessary. You could move those three points to Ice floes but I don't see that as a major DPS increase.

I've seen talk of one point in Frostbite. I'm not exactly sure why. I'm sure a point could be freed up for it (frost channeling), but I don't know yet why I would.

I'd appreciate any feedback folks might have.

 

cainam1

Duplicate post deleted

 

cdutka

These are the two specs that I am currently working on for frost raiding, as cainam1 explained I too disagree with the OP's 18/0/53. Yes AoE is needed in certain situations, however even when I was raiding pre-3.0.x I found cone of cold better option to slow the parrisites down rather then spending the improved blizzard points.

I have also noticed that the 3rd FoF hit is very unreliable and in 200ms+ latency situations and sometimes even lower does not always proc, so I have moved away from unreliable DPS more the a constant expected DPS situation where I can control it a bit more.

Anyways my first spec is base on a Frostbolt, Ice Lance spec and the second is based on a Frostbolt, Frostbolt spec (used for 1.98 sec and faster frostbolt cast times). I am not sure if this spec is even going to get used due to changes in haste. Both are 21/0/50.

Slow Cast Spec: Click Here
Fast Cast Spec: Click Here

 

sqlibilly

Correct me if my brain is shut off, but ToTW tooltip is about Frostbolt, Fireball, FFB, Arcane barrage and arcane missiles. Nothing (sadly) about blizzard. Has it been tested and the tooltip is wrong?

 

Caydence

We don't really need Quartz anymore. You can just spam the button now for maximum dps. Therefore, I usually spam my Ice Lance button during my second FoF frostbolt to be sure I get it in.

I would think that the more latency you have, the farther away you need to be for Ice Lance to be in that window of opportunity. There's probably also a minimum range at which anyone needs to be for it to work.

 

Wizeowel

Sqlibilly and Cainam are of course correct, I'll amend the part about TotW affecting Blizzard.

I redid the talent section to make it more about pros and cons of each talent point rather than implying that there are two 'accepted' specs. Comments welcome. I've included Cainam's Focus+Ignite spec as an example of improved dps, and my own spec as an example of a more mobility-survival oriented spec.

Regarding your other questions Cainam. FFB without the fire talents is very poor dps - you may be right that 3/5 Ignite would be enough to tip the balance on the second charge of FoF but I'd like to see some calculations first. Also your question about the 1 point in Frostbite is answered under the 'Bugs, Features and Other Issues'.

 

Papajan

I didn't really think about it until it was a bit late, but Glyph of Frostbolt negates TTW, right? It doesn't negate FoF cause Frostbolt is "tagged" as a snare spell though, but TTW just checks the mob status. It's sad, cause frost with TTW was loads of fun, especially in heroics.