I believe they do Aaediyen. Nibelung procs on spell cast and on spell damage. It's very confusing. Nibelung can proc, for instance, on the application of Living Bomb, and also on the explosion, but not on the DoT ticks. It can proc from a damaging spell cast that doesn't hit anything. I run Frostfire in PvP and I notice substantially more Val'kyrs than in PvE with Fireball, and I have 3/3 Frostbite. I've also seen Nibelung proc solely from snare applications, but possibly roots. That is, early on when I got Nibelung, I took a run through an instance and picked up as many mobs as possible, using Ice Armor so as to not kill them with Molten Armor. Nibelung was proccing as the mobs would hit me.

This either means that it procs from the Chill application of Ice Armor, or Frostbite procs, since nothing else is hitting the mobs. I do know that the reflective damage of Molten Armor can proc Val'kyrs, so it's possible that the reflective chill on Ice Armor is doing the same thing, despite doing no damage. If that's the case, then it's possible that Fingers of Frost acts as a spell cast as well, and because both of these are spell casts regardless of the state of the mob (IE, immunity to roots/snares), it's possible that against a boss, all three (frostbolt, frostbite, the snare, and fingers of frost) are all counting as spell casts that can proc Nibelung.

Furthermore, Frostfire Bolt's DoT application, which Fireball builds won't have on account of Fireball glyph removing it, may count as an additional spell cast as well. It's hard to tell though. The only possible way to test that would be to do hundreds of Fireball casts with and without the glyph, to see if the DoT is affecting the proc rate of Nibelung.

3.3.3 PTR Change (not in patch notes): Brain Freeze now procs on cast rather than impact.

Based on a few minutes of testing, this seems to help with the issue where you used a brain freeze proc just as you got fingers of frost, consuming the charge you would have otherwise used on deep freeze. I have nearly 300 ms latency to the PTR, so the test I did wasn't conclusive (live realms might still have the problem).

It does not solve the issue where you have to cancel a frostbolt to use deep freeze (like Lhivera does) or you have to use the ghost charge (like I do most of the time under normal circumstances).

If this solves the brain freeze/fingers of frost interaction, I'm actually pretty happy.

When running my frost spec (full frostbite, FoF and Brain Freeze), this has always been the way it has been acting.

It's quite possible that the proc behaves just like Fingers of Frost on live realms. I tested nearly identical specs on live and PTR. The combat logs on live realms do not record BF procs (PTR logs have them), so I went to maximum range and relied on my own senses to determine the proc timing.

It is possible that the ICD for BF has now been implemented and the proc timing change (assuming it exists) is a result of that.

Some other frost-related notes:

The zone-wide buffs in ICC do not affect pets, so unless this issue is fixed, frost will fall further behind in DPS.

The Val'kyr Shadowguards on Lich King can not be slowed for more than 50%. Maximizing Improved Blizzard is not effective for that encounter.

just a tidbit of testing results...

BF doesnt appear to have a ICD, i got 3 procs in a row on a test dummy then waited about 20 seconds before gettign another one, so it's patchy, but doesnt appear to have a set number. The 2 piece t10 set seems better than it is so far. +12% haste sounds great, but the 5 seconds it lasts starts when you fire off the Fireball. So after GCD you have 4 secs of haste increase. So, if you are lucky you get the benefit for about 1 and a half cast of Frostbolt spamming. Obviously if we do get Frostfire bolt instead of having to use the non-scaling Fireballs it will be much better, but at this point it's kind of a disappointment (as opposed to Arcane's benefits for the same tier bonus....their proc is pretty much insta-missles).

Also, I am really interested in some info about the permanent water elemental. Any do any number crunching about what effects it? Whether it's gear score or specific stats. I know that when i take off my gear the pet drops in damage big time(so something from my gear is helping him), yet trinkets dont seems to have an effect on him, and also Arcane focus is useless on him. Talents liek Icy Veins also do nothign for the pet. Anyone have any ideas on how to increase his damage output?

Thanks,

Ignem

The elemental scales with your spell power, but doesn't get 1:1 scaling. Wowwiki says it gets 33%...I seem to remember 40%, but then there's the 2.5/3.5 coefficient for waterbolt as well.

I suspect it gets 100% benefit from totem of wrath and demonic pact and then another dose indirectly from the mage. Without raid buffs, the elemental will do maybe 550 DPS and with full raid buffs (and heroism), it can reach 1k dps. Frost mages are a bit too reliant on spell power buffs and get too little benefit from crit buffs.

I'm pretty sure we had this information in the old "raiding with frost" topics that are lost now.

Anyone check and see if the FFB glyph is better than the molten armor one in 3.3.3? I raided with frost last night and FFB was my third highest ability after frostbolt and deep freeze.

Aaediyen: Quick test of that theory w/Simulationcraft:

Looks like a no.

One of the changes in 3.3.3 was something that Ghostcrawler mentioned they were trying to get done for 3.3: fingers of frost now shows the number of charges remaining.

Based on some raiding yesterday, the information is quite useful and allows me to optimize my use of FoF procs better. I copied my old power aura for FoF, changed the graphic scaling slightly and set the stack condition to =2.

Silly question: What if Spell Impact would affect Frostbolt and Frostfire Bolt too?

Would it be too much for frost and frostfire specs, or not? Buffing these spells by 6% fully talented should decrease gap between Arcane/FB and Frost. Gap is now 15% I think. I found it weird that Fireball and Arcane Blast are included there and other main nukes are not.

Edit: I forgot, that FFB do not go into arcane, so it would not be buff for FFB spec

Frostfire Specs can't possible spec into the arcane tree, so the only thing it would do is buff the Frost Spec. I am interested, are people using Frostfire Bolt instead of Fireball on Brain Freeze Procs now, or sticking with Fireball? The "small internal CD" added to keep FFB from re-triggering Brain Freeze seems odd, but I haven't tried a Frost spec in a while.

I tried Frost yesterday on the dummy and remembered that FFB scales with Frost buffs, so I began using that instead of the regular Fireball and saw a marked increase in sustained DPS, from 3.9k DPS (only self buffs, no t10 bonus at all) to sustained 4.5k DPS

I'm no math major, I'm not even an insane number cruncher, I have just played a mage for five years running. Using Frostfire Bolt was far and away better than using Fireball on Brain Freeze procs.

Oh and this was without using Deep Freeze, I just was simply spamming Frostbolt and using my Brain Freeze procs. Likely would see higher DPS with Deep Freeze being used. Your mileage may vary.


-Mishiko/Bloodhoof

With regards to the small internal CD on Brain Freeze now and it seemingly instant popping again off FFB. From what I can tell blizzard moved all the frost procs to on cast instead of on hit. So if you are like me you complete your frostbolt cast and then cast your instant FFB brain freeze which I think by finishing said cast you are getting around the ICD of it.

Now I have a question for y'all: If fingers of frost is up I understand that the first thing we want to do is stopcasting frostbolt and hit deep freeze. After that if you have FoF up and BF do you cast another frostbolt then use brain freeze or should you just use the instant cast FFB with FoF up instead of pushing it back?

Yes, that's a reason, why I edited my post. It would not be buff for FFB spec, but for Frost definitely.

About the guide on the first page i wanted to make an observation: I haven't done the math myself, but are we sure that reckless gems are offering the same dps of runed ones for frost? I was under the impression that was true before 3.3 but now that we have a permanent pet (which does not inherit haste) and deep freeze (which impact of dps depends mostly on spellpower) the value of spellpower relative to haste should have increased.
I might be wrong on this but I just wanted to ask if anybody actually checked that (and forgive me if my english is lacking it's not my native language).

There is a very small benifit from going runed vs reckless gems - probably for just the reason you mentioned. I generally consider RAWR to be the definitive source in making the determination. The difference is really quite small though - they're withing 10% of each other. I've had cases where RAWR will tell me to gem one vs the other, but there's less that 1 dps change between one gem and the other. If reckless (orange) will get you the socket bonus when a runed wouldn't (even if that bonus is pretty worthless by itself), go for the bonus.

*edit - OK, I think I have the 1st page up to date for 3.3.3. Please let me know if I missed anything.

There seems to have been a hotfix to Brain Freeze: it can no longer proc from Frostfire Bolt under any circumstances. I guess the intended ICD wasn't work (as many players discovered on the PTR) and lucky chain Brain Freeze procs were too much for PvP. This is a slight PvE nerf, but not a big deal.

I'm trying out Frost as a secondary spec mostly for fun (I miss my water elemental ) and have done a couple runs with it. I do have a couple playstyle questions/need for clarifications though:

1. FoF, Brain Freeze, and Deep Freeze: just wanted to clarify that the best use of FoF is to do one more Frostbolt and then DF to fully use charges. What happens when you also have Brain Freeze proc up? Do you use the first FoF charge on Frostfire Bolt, or keep it on Frostbolt?

2. The spec feels very twitchy with threat, and have surmised that since I'm not specced into threat reduction for fire talents, my Brain Freezed Frostfire Bolts are the "culprit" (I certainly get aggro when AOEing and drop a FfB on a random mob). I'm not about to drop BF due to that but does it make sense to not use the BF proc early in the fight until the tank gets a good threat lead, since from what I've read BF wasn't even a serious "rotation" contender prior to 2t10 (which I do have), or am I losing valuable dps due to not getting the haste buff? Note that I come from an arcane mainspec, so what I might deem as "alarming threat" might not actually be the case...

Thanks!

In re: 1, just don't use Brain Freeze -> Deep Freeze with your two FoF charges, since the haste from the Brain Freeze cast would be essentially wasted on an instant cast spell. Otherwise, clearing your second FoF charge with a Brain Freeze may be a DPS loss. Since Frostbolt has slightly higher base damage and benefits from Empowered Frostbolt, your crits with Frostbolt will on average be higher than your crits with FFB, so it makes sense to weight the use of your FoF procs as much towards Frostbolt / Deep Freeze as you can.

2: The actual culprit is much more likely to be the fact that as Frost you're only getting a 20% threat reduction. You're correct in assuming that the 2t10 bonus is too valuable to not use (200-300 DPS according to the first post in this thread.) Those of us who are used to Arcane's 40% threat reduction will have to learn to be a bit more careful about who we target in a trash mob. If you notice that FFB is pulling a lot of aggro when you use it, just limit yourself to using tank assist for your Brain Freezes. If you're having threat issues on a boss, remember to use Invis as close to the threat limit as possible, so that once your aggro is wiped you can go all out for the rest of the fight (to the degree that Frost can go "all out").

Frost only has 10% threat reduction from Frost Channeling. Unless there's another 10% in the tree that I can't find.

Well, we do get about 10% of our total damage from our Water Elemental - that can basically be counted as threat reduction. But you are correct that our only threat reducing talent is Frost Channeling for 10%.

No, you're correct - I put the wrong value in my reply.

The point about the Water Elemental is interesting though. On my meters it makes up about 11-12% of my total damage, which would imply that it makes up a similar amount of the threat I generate. This is a rather indirect method of threat reduction, which really isn't useful on trash packs since the pet can only attack one mob at a time while your Blizzard builds up threat on every target. In those cases you really are only getting 10% reduction, which will naturally lead to problems pulling aggro if you toss a FFB on a mob that your tank isn't focusing on. Not to mention the extra threat generated by being healed, gaining mana, etc.

I guess there's a small degree of safety in the mere fact that (if I recall correctly) Frost does ~15% less damage than Arcane as well. However, if we assume a 1:1 relation between DPS and TPS (which is unlikely, but helps to form a basic framework), with Arcane's 40% reduction and and a baseline of 10k DPS, that equates to 6k TPS. At the same gear level but with a reduction in DPS of 15% for a Frost spec, that brings us to 8.5k DPS, with a 10% threat modifier that generates 7.65k TPS. If your pet lives throughout the encounter and accounts for a base of 10% of your D/TPS, that's 6885 TPS that you're generating personally, higher than that of Arcane and with significantly less DPS to show for it.

Again, over the course of a boss fight this shouldn't be a problem, it just means we have to be extra careful on trash mobs.