Though, with a 30/0/41 build you're not going to be using an arcane rotation, you'd be using a frost rotation. Near as I can tell (not knowing the exact spec), you'd have to lose Chilled to the Bone, Enduring Winter and Brain Freeze, and in return you would get PoM, 4 points in Arcane Mind, Arcane Potency and Arcane Instability. Arcane Instability (3% damage and 3% crit) is probably not quite a fair trade for Chilled to the Bone (5% damage), but it makes up for most of the loss. Brain Freeze is a questionable talent anyway. There's the loss of both DPS from WE uptime as well as loss of replenish from Enduring Winter, though both Arcane Mind and Arcane Potency will give some damage boost. It looks like in terms of play style a 30/0/41 build would be basically the same as 18/0/53 except you'd have to manage your PoMs.

However, if the sim has you with a 10 DPS increase, and for that you're trading Enduring Winter's replenish basically for an option to PoM, I'd say it's not worth it. I know the frost mage's replenish is scoffed at but hey, it gives options for raid composition and that's not a terrible thing. Just... not a terrifically useful thing in most raids.

I'm the frost mage for my guilds freya25+3. Whenever the 3 adds come out and I focus snap with frostbolt, I don't see the debuff nor the blue tint indicating the slow is applied (no, I don't have the glyph on). All the strats I see say the point of Frost mages is for the double and larger novas on lashers and the slow on snap. Is that not possible anymore?

Quote from GC today (see http://blue.mmo-champion.com/28/1911...estions.html):

He's certainly not shy about recognizing that frost is busted in PvE. Awareness is good, riiiight?

Well, the interesting bit in there which I really wish he'd elaborate on is the "We know how Frost should work in PvE" part. He's been sharing more Philosophy of Spec X information on the forums lately; it'd be good to know where they intend to take Frost as well.

Thanks, I did grab those (though it looks like he's updated them, so I'll need to grab 'em again). Unfortunately, he only did Fire and Arcane (and why not, since they're the specs people will be using). The others are on their way, time permitting.

Hello guys, I share some of your frustrations to the extent that frost is no longer interesting in raiding except as an utility “extra”. Maybe buffing up the glyph of frostbolt to 10 % would make frost more suitable for raiding, though it still wont be great and at the same time wont overpower it in pvp ( as I haven’t yet seen a mage with that glyph in their frost pvp spec and doubt I will ever will). Of course it wont be like frostfire or fire but nobody is expecting it to be. Winter chill may be the most powerful utility aspect of frost since will free up a fire mage from taking glyph of scortch in favor of living bomb.

I think the whole scorch/imp shadowbolt/winter's chill situation needs a bit of an overhaul.

In the very least, they should all be the same debuff, so that warlocks and mages of all specs don't step on each other's toes and can stack up the debuff together.

Second, the 15 second duration of winter's chill is a serious limitation on many modern fights. Jormungars in Beasts of Northrend will submerge for long enough for WC to drop off. 20 seconds would help a lot, 30 seconds would be generous. Of course, being able to share the debuffing task with fire mages & warlocks would mean that they could do a 30 second refresh just before the submerge.

If the fight has adds or other "side targets", 15 seconds is very restrictive for keeping up the debuff on the main target.

Because of the incompatibility with the other buffs, limited duration and significantly slower buildup, winter's chill really isn't an alternative to scorch, except when the frost mage can stay on the same target for extended periods. WC is an excellent AOE debuff though.

There's a lot of pressure on the PvP side of things right now for more damage.

The expansion is probably still more than six months away, so I think just ignoring balancing issues until then would be unwise.

There's absolutely no guarantee that there's going to be a frost PvE spec even post 4.0. Blizzard seemed quite confident that frost was balanced for PvE for initial WOTLK release (they pretty much ignored Beta realm feedback) and that was before TTW was changed so that it became useful for PvE.

I feel there's some hope for a small adjustment in 3.2.2, just like frost was slightly buffed in 3.2. From a Blizzard point of view, the motivation for it needs to be a combination of PvP (first) and PvE (second) balancing issues.

I think it is safe to assume that frost will not be made a raid viable spec in 3.3. GC clearly understands that frost is not competitive now but also has clearly stated that fire/arcane for pve and frost for pvp is the best he can do right now. His hands are tied with the current talent trees and mechanics available to him in 3.X version of WoW.

In terms of Cataclysm it is almost pointless to speculate at this time. We don't yet know how many talents will be changed. If more than 50% of each tree is deleted and (at least most) are replaced with new talents, then no amount of theorycrafting can say whether frost will be raid viable in 4.X.

Furthermore, we don't know if making frost raid viable is truly on the list of goals for the expansion. Without an official change to the "all specs should be raid viable" line one can hope. I think our best indication will be when we start hearing specifics about the masteries. Looking at the rogue examples, all trees got the same first mastery (increased melee damage), but then each tree got different masteries that matched the flavor of the tree.

If the frost flavor masteries are things like "increase crit stike bonus damage" or "decease cast time on frostbolt" then there is reason to hope. If instead it is something like "increase chill time" then we can assume frost will continue to have a pvp only focus.

Are you guys sure there is a 1:1 ratio between Spell Power and Haste in 3.2?
Does that ratio stay like that always, or do the values change when you reach a certain amount of SP or Haste?

Yeah, I was already getting the idea that Haste starts being equal (or even better) than SP only when you've already reached a certain minimum threshold of SP. I'm still not there, and that's probably why my returns from haste weren't as good as I Was hoping for.

I'm currently at around ~1900 SP and ~600 Haste (unbuffed). I should probably care more about SP before giving all that importance to Haste.