You can put your own spec into Rawr, as you said you've done before, so I really don't see what your problem is. Rawr also tells you what spell cycle to use for a given spec, so if Rawr is telling you to cast differently to what you want, I think the implication is that you are wrong. I mean, I'm no great theorycrafter by any means, but I'm not so sure that your logic holds up. You said that your FFB crits would give you a damage output to Frostbolt's crit. But Frostbolt casts are much shorter than FFB, so what's the point of using FFB at all?

He is suggesting a non-standard rotation; FrB-FrB [FFB on FoF], that's not going to be in the standard rotations. I don't think it's quite right to say "if you want to use a rotation that's not in Rawr, you are by definition wrong", seeing as the rotations there were themselves determined empirically at some point. I'm sure there's a way to fiddle with rotations in the program but this thread isn't quite the place to have a Rawr tutorial.

On the other hand, what I can say is that if your FFB crits (including ignite damage) are only hitting equally hard as your FrB crits, then you've probably pretty much got your answer without running a simulation. By giving up Torment the Weak you're taking a large damage hit, and as mentioned earlier the damage increase to BF-FBs isn't going to make up for it. You could theoretically take a build like this (18/10/43) that would get you ignite and TTW, but you lose Chilled to the Bone entirely (5%) and Enduring Winter (a few percent lost from WE damage, plus no replenish if that matters) and can only get 2 points into BF. Also, if you glyph for FFB then you lose some damage from reduced WE uptime.

Ultimately, you're probably looking at at least a few percent DPS loss from the standard 18/0/53 frost build. Which, depending on what you're doing is probably fine and hey, if it's more fun that's great... but it's not going to be Frost's salvation.

Part of what makes FFB builds scale so well with crit is the quadruple dip on crit bonuses from Ignite, Ice Shards, Burnout, and Hot Streak procs. There's no way to fit Burnout and Hot Streak into a deep frost build and so FFB just can't shine the way it does in its own build.

It'd be easy enough to build a simcraft file for his build and rotation, given a link to his build; his armory info is not currently available for some reason.

Rawr tells me that 30/0/41 is 10 dps higher than 18/0/53.

Yeah, but that's just because Arcane is so much more DPS than Frost is. I can get frost just over 8050dps with BiS gear with RAWR 2.2.12 Fire and Frostfire are over 9500dps. So if 0/53/18 is 9500 and 18/0/53 is 8000 - I can probably find a point somewhere around 0/36/35 where I get more DPS too. But that isn't exactly a "deep frost" build.

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.

Take a look in the Optimal thread in this forum, Sancus put up some XML files from Rawr for BiS sets. You can easily import them into Simcraft such as the following example:

rawr=T9Arcane.xml save=Mage_T9_57_03_11.simcraft

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.

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.

I have to wonder if with the sweeping changes planned for Cataclysm will Frost be left pretty much untouched until then? I think perhaps changes to something simple like the damage done by frostbolt might happen, but I don't see them doing any major talent overhauls right before a major talent overhaul. I think short of that, though, frost will still be left behind in PVE.

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.

I sit about about 2250 spell power and 700 haste (unbuffed). I generally consider spell power = haste, and crit is 1/2 of that. But I'm also at the point where I'm staring to push some soft caps on both crit and haste. When we have blood lust, Icy Veins and everything else popping, I can hit 1.0 sec frostbolts. Fun, but that does tell me that I'm getting close to whatever the soft cap actually is.

I'd suspect once you get to BiS T9.5, then you may be at the point of diminishing returns on haste.

Yes you're probably right. I took my Frost mage from under the bed just recently, and decided I wanted to really dedicate a lot of attention to it. 3.2 and the new badges system really helped of course :P
I still have a long way to go and a lot of things to decide.
So far I'm partially satisfied (pulling out some nice numbers being a Frost Mage always gives satisfaction) but not enough, really need to work a lot more on gear/itemization.

I need to decide a couple of things, like Glyphs, gonna try Frostbolt/Molten/IceLance tomorrow (Currently have Water Elemental in place of Molten), and gonna split the five tier 2 talents of the arcane tree into 2/2 Magic Absorption and 3/5 Arcane Concentration.
Also tired of not seeing Icehowl Cinch drop from 10men ToC, so I'm gonna get the Ulduar 226 waist crafted >_>

Bet it's gonna drop the day I get it and gem it :P



Quick question 1: is it worth anymore to use a flamestrike before you start spamming Blizzard, on trash? I see Frost mages just spam blizzard on trash nowadays.

Quick question 2: who here stopped bothering about the FoF ghost procs for Ice Lance, and why? What was your experience with that? (for me it seems I get a very big increase of damage in single target DPS when FoF actually bothers to proc, but maybe it's just a placebo effect)

I have never bothered with flamestrike - pure blizzard on trash. I suppose I've never really tested it though. My thought would be that the sooner you start blizzard the sooner you start chaining together the frostbite procs and that's better DPS than the burn effect from starting with a flamestrike.

I have never been a fan of the FoF ghost proc's. I do however spec into brainfreeze and do what I can for brainfreeze shatters. I only toss out ice lances when I'm moving for an extended periond of time (like the Heigan dance). For short movements like getting around Yogg's clouds I'll try to save my brain freeze, but I'm pretty much in position after 1 or 2 GCDs have passed. (If I don't have a brain freeze proc stored up I will of course Ice Lance insteand and hope for a proc - but that's pretty situational.) For me I think a lot of it is slowdown in my reaction speed compounded by lag that just doesn't make Ice Lance worthwhile. It seems like I have about a 1.6 second frostbolt, and I can pretty much put one on the target every 1.6 seconds. I don't feel like the 150-200ms latency I have really impacts my pure frostbolt spam. But everytime I switch to an instant (Brain Freeze, Ice Lance or even Fire Blast) it chains onto my last cast correctly, but then I end with a bigger delay in getting back to my frostbolt spam (i.e. 1 sec GCD + 200ms Latency + reaction speed).

IMO, there is only one solution to frost DPS with the current tree and 3.X mechanics, and it doesn't lie in the frost spells sadly enough.

The problem with frostbolt is making it more powerful would encourage a pure frostbolt spam. Stand still, blow frostbolt after frostbolt after frostbolt, and top those charts. This however isn't what Blizzard (or most players for that matter) want. It's boring, brainless, and just too easy. We need other spells.

The problem with ice lance is adjusting the damage (at least to the point to make frost competitive in raids) would give frost a stupidly good advantage in PvP. The glyph of ice lance is a decent step, but I think ice lance is fundamentally broken from a design standpoint to be any good for PvE without having a major impact on PvP, or having wonky mechanics affecting it. Sadly enough, it needs to be ignored for the purposes of PvE.

Now, this leaves us with no frost spells to boost or modify, so what should Blizzard do? Well, Blizzard, through brain freeze, has given frost mages access to another spell in their rotation. I think this is where the answer lies. Give the brain freeze talent this: "and any fireballs cast using this talent have their damage increased by X%/Y%/Z%." I don't know what numbers would go towards pushing frost in the right range of DPS. They may need to increase the damage of those fireballs by as much as 20%/40%/60% or even 33%/66%/100% to get frost DPS to where it should be. As well, perhaps the DOT length could be modified to produce better DPS.

The problem with this is, this would give frost PvP that major instacast nuke we were trying to avoid with ice lance, even if it is a completely RNG one (as opposed to being able to use frost nova and nuke with lance in PVP). To prevent this, I have put in the brain freeze fireballs "unable to crit" clause. This rather sucks, but if you had these monsterous instacast fireballs critting for stupid amounts in PvP, that would be too much, especially looking at ignite. The way I have proposed, you just spam frostbolt and wait until you have brain freeze up, but no fingers of frost, and let loose the fireball. Having instant castable solid, reliable damage seems like the fix frost needs, at least until 4.0 changes come sweeping through. As well, having the DOT from fireball on the target (if it would also be increased by this talent) could go quite a ways towards fixing frost DPS.

Another proposal could be to make the talent use Frostfire Bolt. Maybe something could be done talent wise with increasing the DOT length and/or damage. Then the focus could be on using procs of brain freeze only to keep the frostfire bolt dot up. Here's how the frostfire bolt version of the talent could read and function: Gives your frost spells a X%/Y%/Z% (or ppm) chance to cause your next Frostfire Bolt to be instant cast, but incapable of a crit. As well, the damage over time portion of your Frosfire Bolt is inceased by 2/4/6 seconds, and the damage is increased by X%/Y%/Z%." The DOT increase could be held in another talent for the simplicity of the tooltip if needed (Winter's Chill?). The talent should be made (since it is incapable of a crit) to not consume fingers of frost charges.

Overall this seems like a more intuitive and smoother change to how frost would function, giving us a nice DOT and using a half frost spell (as well as making use of the underused frostfire bolt in top DPS rotations). You would still (like the above example) spam frostbolt until a brain freeze proc, and wait until the DOT falls off and use it. This style could also lead to other interesting things, like having ice lance do slightly more damage to targets with the frosfire bolt DOT on them. This would make for a more normal style of DPS for frost mages, and give more incentive to a slight setting up situation in PVP, making focusing on one target and getting off all your spells more important (a lost frostfire bolt would mean loss of a good DOT and ice lance damage).

As well, frostfire bolt already has some scaling in the frost tree, so why not put it to good use? Since frostbolt scales better than frostfire bolt's initial damage (through the empowered frostbolt talent) and its incapability of critting, the chance of this spell becoming a meganuke is nil, and I have intentionally made this not work with ignite to prevent a massive set of DOTs being applied to a target with one instacast. As well, since the damage bonus only applies when it's cast with a brain freeze proc, frostfire bolt wouldn't become the main spam spell (as well as the whole DOT clipping component). I'm not quite sure if the DOT or the entire instacast frostfire bolt should get the damage bonus, but that would be more up to the people balancing the talent to find that sweet spot either way.

My apologies if any of this is incredibly far off. I'm not 100% familiar with endgame mechanics from all classes, and mages are one I'm rather new to, and this is only from reading expierence only, not actual level 80 raiding mage expierence.

I agree that brain freeze would one of the talents to boost for PvE. In particular, what needs to be improved is the critical strike damage from brain freeze fireballs.

This actually works really well for PvP balancing as well, because fireballs are extremely unlikely to crit in PvP. If you have a chance to shatter in PvP, you are more likely to use it on an ice lance and save the brain freeze proc for extra damage after the shatter. In PvE, frost mage fireballs will typically have a 50+% chance to crit, but on targets with resilience in PvP, the chance is a whole lot lower (maybe as low as 10%?).

So my suggestion has been to make brain freeze fireball crits have a scaling DOT component that scales based on your spirit.

I think with 2-3 talent changes, frost would be fine in both PvP and PvE.