Frostradamus!

I was going to do a boss post for Loken today, seeing that the group that I run heroics with have recently gotten down a solid strategy, and are comfortable with positioning and timing of movement. However, this is the new year after all, and in the same vein that others on the internether have done, I would like to have some fun and express my own thoughts and predictions regarding this year, specifically frost mage-oriented.

Now 2008 has been considered to be a very up and down for mages in general, but the Frost school has seen nothing but good things. The introduction of our proc-based talents have helped our dps, while at the same time, make our rotations a lot more interesting than frostbolt spam. Improvements to our Water Elemental, including both the talent and glyphs, have increased both dps as well as group utility, thanks to its mana regenertion skill. Oh and Blizzard started critting. How awesome.

On the downside, I can only put my finger on Deep Freeze as a center of discussion. The removal of its damage component has irked both PvP and PvE mages alike, but in the end, it seemed that the controversy has subsided to say the least. If anything, Frost kept about its business critting people's pants off, and enjoying the heck out of it.

But where do we go in 2009? What does the new year have in store? Here is my list for predictions. Some are wishes of fortune, while others are ill omens.

1. Frost will be more of an asset in raids than before.

This will be done by either (or both) of two things:
- increase in overall Frost DPS
- more useful raid utility compared to other mage specs

The first buff is a rather straightforward approach to buffing frost raiding by simply raising the damage done by frostbolt. Conveniently, frostbolt is not the primary nuke in the PvP spec due to its cast time, and as such, will be the easiest way to increase frost dps.

The second buff suggestion doesn't focus on the mage's damage output, but rather the other assets he brings to the table compared to other specs. The most significant unique contribution that a frost mage brings is the water elemental's mana regeneration. With one mage alone, it doesn't feel like too much, but with two, you can really see the difference on your mana bar when you're blasting away at a boss like Patchwerk.

Simply put, I predict that if they are going to buff water elementals, the easiest way to do so is to provide the straight up replenishment bonus that Shadow Priests, Ret Pallies, and Survival Hunters provide. This is a more reasonable choice for the frost buff compared to a straightforward dps increase, since frost is more known as the best DPM spec (damage per mana) compared to the DPS power of Frostfire and Fire.

2. AoE will become less viable, but Frost won't be affected as much as other classes.

My thoughts on this stem from a recent pug that I ran. It was Culling of Stratholme heroic, and the party consisted of a prot pally, a hunter, and a boomkin. While the healer's class isn't important in this case, you can see where I'm getting at here. The entire instance was just AoE. It was fast, it was furious, it was boring. Frankly, other than for solo use and farming, I've become sick and tired of Blizzard.

I'm sure such sentiments are shared by many DPS classes, but it also comes from the fact that I simply don't look at my DPS meter anymore, all because it boils down to how soon I start AoE'ing, and how much faster I can regenerate mana compared to my counterparts.

Blizzard will probably fix this for sure in the next content patch. The newer raid and 5-man dungeons will consist of dreadful pulls akin to Magister's Terrace and Shattered Halls, but will be in less quantity, to keep in line with the Lich King dungeon design philosophy.

On top of that, AoE damage from other classes will be reduced, following the Hunter volley nerf. This may include Seed of Corruption, Hurricane, and very likely Divine Storm, but Blizzard will still be able to crit, and will continue to make AoE grinding manageable, albeit more challenging than it was when Wrath was released.

3. Water Elemental immunity in select boss fights will be replaced by AoE damage reduction on all boss fights.

I just noticed that Squirtle doesn't take any raid damage from Loken's debuff. Is it just me, or does he not die to Lightning Nova either? And I don't mean survival, I mean full immunity from heavy AoE on some boss fights. I ran Arachnid quarter with my guild yesterday, and he didn't take any damage at all from rain of fire on the second boss. Is this a glitch?

I would like to think so, and that Blizzard has probably noticed by now. Expect such situational perks to be fixed soon, but in exchange, they will give elementals the AoE protection that they deserve, bringing them in line with other pets.

4. Frost will once again be rulers of PvP.

Thanks to the upcoming buffs to the arcane tree in the next patch, the WoW devs will keep a close eye on the damage of Arcane Barrage. Due to the crying of those who aren't swift enough to get the new resilience gear, they will be one-twoshotted left and right. Arcane Barrage will be brought back in line in terms of damage output.

Similar to the awkward PvE gear scaling towards the end of BC, more and more people will catch up with resilience, and while Arcane PvP won't be neutered to epic proportions, it will no longer be the powerhouse that it once was. Frost will emerge from the shadows once again as the safer school to burst with.

5. None of the above will come true.

Some of it is just wishful thinking, but seeing that Frost at the moment is not getting as much attention as Frostfire and Arcane in PvE and PvP respectively, it is quite difficult to think that Squirtle-wielders will not get any form of attention at all while the other trees are uner review. Only time will tell.

AoE Grinding in the New WoW: Leveling Talents 1-18

Yeah yeah, quest rewards provide better XP than anything else while levelling. So what? I've seriously walked through Jame's alliance levelling guide I don't know how many times from 20-30, and I just hate having to go from one spot to another to another and turn quests in chunks at a time.

I like my slow painful grind. I like staying in one place and killing a billion things at once. I like having passers-by stop in their tracks as you perform your elaborate dance. I like making oodles of money from cloths, skins, and greens.

With the change in 3.0.2, we have ourselves a few things that completely change the AoE grinding process. For the better, of course. Three things come to mind:

- The removal of the natural 1% miss rate. As long as you group up with mobs at your level or lower, you will never whiff a Frost Nova on a random mob in that group. You will never ever go "OH SH-" and scramble for the Cold Snap button.

- Reconfiguration of the talent tree. Some good AoE talents come a lot sooner than usual, and some require less points to max out. With this adjustment, you can have a really good baseline talent set-up to grind with as early as level 25. At higher levels, introduction of talents that further increase your snare will result in even more control over your mobs. I'll explain what those talents are later.

- The ability to crit with Blizzard. Holy crap, this is what will make me AoE my way to level 80, with dungeons and instances on the side. Now that Blizzard can crit, you will NEED to put talent points into spells that increase your crit chance and damage.

A combination of the three points above, it is now much easier and smoother to go through the motions of the Blizzard sequence, and your damage capabilities can shoot REAL high.

AoE Levelling Build: 10-27

It was an omen, I suppose, that when the patch hit, the only functional realm that I could access was Wimzig's. He surely has been neglected somewhat with his levelling, but I suppose that in between making acquaintances with Bre's guild, levelling up with Leyola, and my raiding schedule with Bashertin, there wasn't much time.

That's besides the point though. I am now presented with an opportunity to do what I've always wanted to do with Wimzig; AoE grind. I already have a plan set up with his talents as he goes through the motions once again. Here's what I plan on doing.

Lvl:
10-12: 3/3 Ice Floes. Shortened cooldown on your Frost Nova is more important for AoE grinding in the long run than Improved Frostbolt. At these levels, your cast time is pretty short anyways, so it's not such a big deal.

13-14: 2/5 Improved Frostbolt. If you don't like the cast time on your frostbolt, you can switch this with Ice floes, but only take 2 points here, since you're going straight to the second tier at level 15.

15-17: 3/3 Permafrost. At this point, all you should care about is single-mob kiting. This really helps in that regard.

18-20: 3/3 Ice Shards. The crit is pretty good, but you won't see it too much for now. This is just in preparation for when you start grinding it out.

21-23: 3/3 Improved Blizzard. Technically, you could start grinding at this point, but I seriously doubt you have the sufficient Intellect and Stamina to do so, unless you've been buying out "of the Eagle" gear at the AH.

24: 1/3 Piercing Ice. We need one more point to get into shatter, and then BAM! it's paradise city from here on out.

25-27: 3/3 Shatter. Once this talent is maxed, you are essentially good to go with your blizzing with this resulting spec. From here on out, grab all talents that help increase your abilities to AoE grind, including:

- Arctic Reach
- Frost Channeling
- Cold Snap
- Winter's Chill (even more crits!)
- Cold as Ice
- ICE BARRIER (very important!)
- Shattered Barrier (optional. I myself will have to see how this goes, to see how easy it is to control when your barrier pops. Most likely, this will involve waiting a bit for the cooldown before starting the pull.)
- Water Elemental/Improved Water Elemental (Free ranged freezing effect ftw!)
- Chilled to the Bone

In a future edition of this series, I'll flesh this out in more detail, depending on how the grinding goes.

Conclusion

Maybe if I get off my butt and start levelling Wimzig again (in between NaNoWriMo, Leyola, and raiding with Bashertin), I can provide even more information with first-hand experience at the lower levels. My plans for this series of posts regarding AoE in the new WoW will hopefully include:

- 3.0.x grinding pre-Wrath at 70
- levelling build from 28-80
- choice grinding spots, as well as commentary regarding those spots

3.0.2 Frost First Impressions - Raid

Frost spell rotations are a bit more "tricky" this time around.

It's not to say that Frost is a difficult raiding spec; while cooldown management is of utmost importance, the actual spell-casting part of Frost raiding is more demanding than before.

Brain Freeze

Brain Freeze, when procced, will give you a buff that makes your next fireball an instant cast. This buff only lasts for a limited amount of time, so you need to keep an eye on your buff timer to make sure you can throw a Fireball in your rotation.

The fireball will take up a global cooldown as normal, but because of the instant cast, you can cast it on the move. In fights that require mobility, you may want to reconsider when you want to throw your fireball. Time spent moving without casting any sort of spell will be a hamper to your DPS. This ability is a godsend for mage mobility, so use it wisely.

Fingers of Frost

When FoF procs, your next two spells will treat the target as if it were frozen. All of a sudden, Shatter becomes useful to all facets (PvP, group PvE, solo PvE) of a Frost mage's gameplay.

In PvP, Shatter was used for Shatter combos, in which an Ice Lance was cast right at the end of a Frostbolt cast, causing both spells to hit the target at approximately the same time. Due to latency, both spells would be affected by shatter, despite the intended mechanic of having the frozen effect break upon the first instance of damage.

For PvE raiding, this is the same case, since the target is considered frozen for both spells. But simply due to the fact that FoF will apply to TWO spells cast, you will want to cast two frostbolts and then Ice Lance. For reasons stated in the previous paragraph, you can have all 3 spells crit before the buff wears off. This is the ideal rotation during FoF for maximum DPS.

Due to the nature of your spell rotation, by the time you get the buff, you're already in the middle of casting another Frostbolt. At the end of that cast, it will count as the first spell of the buff. So if you notice your buff too late, you may mistake your second affected spell as your first, and waste a GCD on Ice Lance, thinking it would be affected by FoF.

Likewise, if you have both the Fingers of Frost and Brain Freeze buff at the same time, it is possible to get your Fireball to crit if it is cast within the first two spells of the FoF proc, but it will use up a spell. However, since Ice Lance does more damage anyways, it is unwise to do so. Thus, if you have both buffs up, you want to make sure that you get the Fbolt-Fbolt-ILance off first before casting your fireball.

Mobility

With FoF and BF as the new additions to a Frost mage's arsenal, it is possible to have a spell that you can cast instantly while on the move, and still keep your DPS reasonably up while on the run. However, since both abilities are proc-based, passive abilities, it requires you to remain on your toes and to pay attention to your buff status.

That isn't to say that you HAVE to wait for the proc to occur before you move. Your main priority is to move if you have to, otherwise you will belly up and die. The point I'm trying to make is that if you do have to move, or anticipate a time when you have to move, awareness of these two procs will help you keep your DPS up.

For example, in Nightbane, if Scorched Earth is up, you need to move out of it, regardless of whether or not you have a proc. However, as you move, if you notice that you have a proc up, you can cast an Ice Lance or Fireball depending on what your proc is, and do some damage while on the run.

Likewise, in Netherspite, if you are required to step into the blue beam after someone else, you can start anticipating your proc several seconds ahead of the moment when you are required to actually step in. If you manage to get that proc, it won't hurt to step in a tad early so you don't waste time moving.

Water Elemental

Fully talented, Water Elemental lasts a VERY LONG time. Because of the talent point restrictions at 70, it is difficult to put points into both Improved WE and Arcane Meditation. But even in the absence of Arcane Meditation, having a Squirtle around for essentially 50% of the time to help regenerate my mana is something of absolute beauty. This, combined with Acane Meds at 80, as well as emphasis in Spirit, as well as having both Student of the Mind and Focus Magic available in tiers leading up to the talent, Frost mages seem to look really good when it comes to both their DPM and DPS.

Ghost Hit

I'm not exactly sure if the removal of ghost hit was taken into effect this patch, or if it will go away during Lich King. Any feedback on this would definitely be appreciated.

Conclusions

I noticed that my Spell Power has gone down due to the nerf to items that used to increase specific school damage. Right now I'm using 3/3 Frozen Shadoweave as well as the Frost Damage off-hand, so my Frost Damage went down about 40-50 points due to the nerfs. However, with the new talents in place, the increase in overall DPS seems to make up for it and then some.

All in all, raiding as Frost feels "more of the same," but due to increased synergy with Shatter, the word "more" in that phrase ends up being emphasized quite substantially. Quite exciting indeed.

OH, SNAP!

No, Larísa and Gnomer. I have did not cast invisibility and walk away from the battle over the current state of mage specs. As we all know, the pre-invisible phase is quite tricky to time if you truly want to get yourself out of a wipe situation. Even if I tried, the AoE damage from Larísa's Arcane Explosions would have certainly elminated that possibility.

Surely, at this point, however, Larisa's run out of mana due to Arcane Blast spam, and Gnomer is squeezing every last drop of his increased DPS for the past 19 or 20% of the duration of this event. What about me? Have I used all my cooldowns and arguments to warrant any consideration for Frost as the raiding spec of choice?

Simply put, yes. I have said what I needed to say to garner some semblance of support for my frosty friends.

All I have to do now is cast Cold Snap and do it all over again.

Ideally, to use Cold Snap at the very last leg of a dps race is surely an unwise tactic in making the most of your cooldowns and maximizing your DPS, but for the purposes of making a typed online argument about the merits of spec in a raiding environment, repeating arguments is not as effective as repeating damaging spell effects.

On Cold Snap Itself

Cold Snap is the 21-point talent on the Frost talent tree. It is a spell in itself, that costs ZERO mana. It finishes the cooldown on all of your Frost Spells.

Water Elemental expired (all you frosties out there made sure he used up all his mana and didn't die, right?) during a raid fight? Cold Snap, and summon him again.

The Shaman in your group cast Heroism? prolong your Icy Veins with Cold Snap, and proceed with your utterly stupid 1.6-second Frostbolts for up to 40 seconds.

Did Moroes/Maiden/Illhoof just Garrote/Holy Fire/Demon Chain you for the second time? Cold Snap your Ice Block, and block your way out of another duration of considerable damage, saving your healers some critical mana.

AoE grinding on a bunch of mobs, and your Frost Nova got randomly (Damn that 1%!) resisted by one of them? Cold Snap, and root everyone again, thus saving your AoE pull.

Taking a little too much DoT damage from the boss fight? Cold Snap your Ice Barrier, and put up another bubble immediately after the first one fades, and save your priests even more mana worth of healing!

Just to top everything off, Cold snap does NOT use a global cooldown. Simply beautiful. And to think that at one point, this was merely an 11-point talent. And when it got moved, its talent spot was replaced with the remarkable Icy Veins.

The downside? A pretty long cooldown, at 8 minutes untalented. With 2 points in Ice Floes, however, you will be seeing your Cold Snap ready in just 6 minutes and 24 seconds.

On Cooldown Management

With all these neat tools that Frost Mages are given, proper management of their cooldowns is the make-or-break factor that determines the amount of damage that particular mage can put out.

When it comes to Cold Snap, the dilemma comes where the mage has to decide WHEN to use it during a boss fight. Simply put, to maximize a Frost mage's DPS, one needs to cold snap as early and as opportune as possible, but at the same time, use the spell to remove as many cooldowns as possible, to maximize the effect.

On trash, use Cold Snap liberally. Snap back your Squirtle and your Icy Veins. On AoE pulls, Snap back your Frost Nova and Ice Barrier if you generate the most threat in the group. Use it at every opportunity, and your control over others, as well as the capability for dealing damage, will effectively double.

On Boss fights, the mage needs to really study the fight to determine when to use cooldowns and when to Snap back those cooldowns. Keeping in mind the duration of a particular fight, it is ideal to use up your Cold Snap as SOON as possible, since there may be an opportunity to use it again towards the end of the Fight. Consdering that the cooldown for other spells are shorter than Cold Snap itself, you can potentially summon your Water Elemental up to 4 times in a fight. Simply absurd.

Conclusions

While the Water Elemental is the penultimate damage dealing spell in a Frost Mage's arsenal, it's Cold Snap that serves as the heart of a cryomancer's reportoire. With the arrival of the upcoming patch, Frosties will be getting another cooldown in Deep Freeze, just another in a long line of potential cooldown spells that Frost Mages will be getting. With every new spell added to the school of icy wrath, proper judgment in the use of Cold Snap becomes increasingly paramount, meaning that this spell is certainly here to stay.

BONUS! Pimp My Frost Mage for 3.0

Frost is a wonderful tree with multiple tools and talents that can be picked-and-chosen by players based on their playstyle needs. But with only 61 points to spend on a tree designed for 70-point use, one cannot simply have it all, perhaps until 80. So rather than go the Euripides route and go through all the talents and evaluate them on a PvP/PvE/etc basis, I'll just list suggest talents for the different playstyles.

PvP: You want control and survivability. You want to maximize the use of stuns, roots, and snares, while at the same time have a security blanket with defensive cooldowns and passive abilities. Top it off with some freaky-ass burst damage via Shatter Combos. Just be aware that you cannot spec both Improved Counterspell and Deep Freeze due to the talent cap. Both have their benefits, so it all depends on preference.

Useful talents include Frostbite, Ice Shards, Permafrost, Shatter, Improved Cone of Cold, Ice Barrier, Shattered Barrier, Arctic Winds, Summon Water Elemental, Chilled to the Bone, and Deep Freeze.

Solo: You want control and survivability as well, but make better use of Frostbolts and your AoE spells. While the casting cost of your different spell ranks have been unified, it does not negate the effectiveness of your 1.5s rank 1 Frostbolts when kiting much higher level mobs. You also care about reducing downtime, since Frost is a very mana-efficient school compared to the other two specs.

Useful talents include Improved/Empowered Frostbolt, Ice Shards, Shatter, Permafrost, Arctic Winds, Summon Water Elemental, and Chilled to the Bone.

AoE Grinding: Your spell sequence consists of Ice Barrier, Frost Nova, then a repeated sequence of Blink, Blizzard, Blizzard, Cone of Cold and Frost Nova until the large group of mobs dies. Your talents prioritize on minimizing the resist on your Frost Nova (via Hit Capping), reduced cooldowns of your Frost Nova and Ice Barrier, and increased snare effects on your Blizzard and Cone of Cold Spells.

Useful talents include Ice Floes, Elemental Precision, Permafrost, Improved Blizzard, Arctic Reach, Frost Channeling, Cold Snap, Improved Cone of Cold, Shattered Barrier and Chilled to the Bone.

Group: You will take up the DPS role in your group. Depending on the nature of the instance, you may or may not be responsible for some encounters that require Solo skills (such as handling adds or AoE pulls). Assuming single target DPS, your main talent priority is placed on maximizing your DPS via cooldowns and procs, while minimizing your threat on the target.

Useful talents include Improved/Empowered Frostbolt, Ice Shards, Shatter, Elemental Precision, Icy Veins, Cold Snap, Frost Channeling, Arcitc Reach, Summon/Improved Water Elemental, Winter's Chill, Fingers of Frost, Chilled to the Bone and Brain Freeze.

Here's a spec that I will be using in the upcoming patch. It is essentially a 0/0/61 build with Shattered Barrier. This talent simply does not get enough credit. It makes you a god of AoE grinding, as well as AoE trash pulls in raids, such as the beginning of ZA, or the dining room pulls in Kara.

Well, that's it for my Monday post. It's supposed to be my day off work to prepare for 3.0, but I'm still at a relative's house, and relatively hungover. Whatever. I'll be getting into the nitty gritty of the new patch tomorrow night, so I look forward to posting my impressions, particularly with regards to AoE grinding. Because well, Shattered Barrier is THAT awesome.

I'm just waiting for the patch to come, so I can fire off a salvo to begin the second battle between mages.

Frost Mage Tears Make Delicous Popsicles

A wise Frost mage once told me, "When life hands you lemons, summon lemonade elementals."

Ok, well, I thought of that saying, and right now, I'm in the mood to change my blog description to that very saying. This is a Frost mage blog first and foremost, with stuff on Frost death knights soon to come when the expansion hits. So while we wait for those good ol' DK's to arrive at my doorstep, I only have things to say about the Frost mage class.

I love my class. I love everything about them. I love the spec even more. The sheer control over your enemies. The cold heartedness of your temperment when staring down against another enemy in player versus player combat. The companionship of your own summoned elemental. Just don't target the wrong monster in kara when sending him out to attack, like I did a few weeks ago.

I love the state of the frost mage as it is now, and how it look to be when the expansion hits.

But when I see another mage dislike things about his or her class, it kills me inside. My heart simply goes out to them, because as soon as their feelings are made public, the whole world screams "QQ MORE, WHINY ASS MAGE!"

I feel bad for Christian Belt. He's a fantastic writer, and the contributions that he has made to WI are surely important. His passion for the game and for mages is surreal, and I only hope to emulate it. But because of his status as a mainstream-equivalent mage blogger, he's prone to criticism, and this post is no different.

To summarize a recent post he made regarding the state of the 51-point talent, Deep Freeze, he states that the talent is simply useless and broken, and the dev team at Blizzard need to do something to bring it back to respectability. Well, it was something like that. Let me highlight a few points that he has made, and discuss from a cryophile's viewpoint and make opinions on the subject.

"Let me preface this by saying that if you are one of the many who label anything written by a Mage that isn't full of sunshine and candy canes as complaining, crying, or QQ, you may want to just stop reading right now. Thanks for coming, post your "UR TEARZ R DELICIOUS" nonsense in the comments section, and then go back to tea-bagging your kills on Halo or whatever. This column is not for you."

This is a valid preface and warning to those who like to make stereotypes of QQ'ing mages everywhere. The thing that irks me is that the way it was written only encourages said trolls to continue reading and further justify said stereotype. Remember that bully in elementary school that always made fun of your braces? He only did it because you were self-conscious of your braces. He knew you'd cry about it, so he'd keep doing it for kicks. Christian, never do this again, or else you're just asking for it.

"In PvE, though, Deep Freeze is no longer even worth spending points on. It affords no tangible DPS increase, isn't usable on bosses at all due to stun-immunities, and even if it was, wouldn't be worth the mana cost and global cooldown simply to apply an extra five seconds of frozen status."

Simply correct. As of the current beta build, Deep Freeze does not have any damage component, thus rendering it useless. But, Deep Freeze was never even worth using in spell rotations. The author was under the assumption that the Fingers of Frost proc applied to spells cast within a certain time limit, hence utilizing Deep Freeze's instant cast over the inferior Ice Lance. But now that FoF creates charges that are spent when casting the next two spells, fitting in frostbolts for the two charges means that Deep Freeze wouldn't be used anyways!

Does the absence of DF in rotations mean that Frost mages or no longer PvE viable? Not exactly. From day one, this looked to me like a PvP talent to the bone, and it only makes sense that the PvP class gets another PvP tool. I'm not an expert on PvP, but an instant cast spell that causes a stun seems pretty neat, even if it does have the requirement of having the target frozen first.

Talent-wise, this only means I get to spend this point on something more worthwhile, maybe in another tree. Investing all the way to Focus Magic becomes much easier to do, but the buzz in the mage beta community seem to suggest that FM isn't as great as it looks. Either way, it's miles better than DF, and the clearcasting talent that you get along the way is a reliable way to save mana in the new cost-heavy environment.

"At the heart of the issue is Blizzard's design philosophy for 51 point talents. Looking at the 51 point talents for other classes, they share a common theme. For healing specs, they increase healing by substantial amounts. For DPS and tanking specs, they almost universally increase damage output."

In simplicity, isn't that actually a no-brainer? Spells are meant to provide damage/helaing or have some sort of utility. But again, Christian is under the assumption that there is a precise correlation between talent tier and raid/pvp performance enhancement. But looking at talent trees as a whole across the different classes, a lot of specs have their most important 1-point talents in the 31 and 41 point tiers, the ones that really define their role in a PvE or PvP setting. (note: When I mention PvE, I also mean both 5-man as well as raid instances)

At 31 points, there's Moonkin Form, Trueshot Aura, Shadowform, Soul Link (PvP), Leader of the Pack and a few others. At 41 points, there's Circle of Healing, Avenger's Shield, Vampiric Touch, Shadowstep (PvP), Tree of Life, Mortal Strike (PvP), and most relevant of all, Water Elemental.

I am of the opinion that Water Elemental is the most important source of a Frost Mage's damage in PvE, and is a significant presence in PvP as well. Proper Squirtle management is what seperates the pros from the scrubs in both sides, and with the Improved Water Elemental talent, this line of thought is even more convincing.

With the existence of such talents, I am also convinced that Blizzard's design philosophy regarding talent trees have not changed since vanilla. For each release of the game (normal, BC, and LK), Blizzard's revision of the talent tree emphasizes a definitive talent for a particular school, and in subsequent installments of the game, that particular talent is fleshed out even more, further defining the class around that talent. Case in point, for BC, Blizzard added Improved Leader of the Pack for the Feral tree, while Improved Moonkin Form in Lich King adds a increased haste effect to its critical strike effect.

"The essential question when judging a 51 point talent should be: is it worth spending the 51 points necessary to get here? You tell me, Frost Mages. Is it? Though I am not a Frost Mage, I know what my answer would be."

As stated above, it's definitely not worth taking in a PvE spec. But I don't look at it as a "waste of a talent point," since I'll spend that point in another area anyways. It's not like Frost Mages were given 70 points compared to everyone else's 71, which is the impression that I got from reading the article.

Knowing that Mr. Belt is an arcane mage, the same could be said about Slow in Burning Crusade. It was a no-brainer that the talent wasn't worth taking in PvE, but Arcane Mages coped with using other spells in their rotation, and they competed with the other mages, thanks to their amazing 2-piece Tier 6 bonus.

"There is a comparable spell out there called Hammer of Justice. Like Deep Freeze, it is an instant-cast short-duration stun. Deep Freeze has a longer range, but Hammer of Justice can be used on any target, regardless of status. Deep Freeze's cooldown can be talented down to 24 seconds, Hammer of Justice can be talented to 30 seconds. Hammer of Justice stuns for 6 seconds, Deep Freeze stuns for 5. Deep Freeze applies frozen status to the target (assuming the target was already frozen), but Hammer of Justice does not. Deep Freeze is a 51 point Mage talent, available at level 60. Even at its highest rank, Hammer of Justice costs 3% of base mana, while Deep Freeze costs 9%.

Hammer of Justice is a Paladin spell, trainable at level 8.

To me, that says all that needs to be said about Deep Freeze's comparative value. Is it worth 51 points and 60 levels of experience to get? All things being equal, it appears to be worth 8 levels, no talent points, and about 90 copper."

Christian is not mentioning the design philosophy that Blizzard implements with each class. Regarding spells, gear, and talents, they try to quantitize balance between classes using a points system. There exists an value selected by blizzard to represent the strength of a talent or spell. Ultimately, each class should be balanced with regards to the total value of these supposed balance points.

And it holds true with the design of Hammer of Justice. A paladin spell that provides such awesome control is balanced to the many spells in a Frost Mage's arsenal simply by virtue of the fact that HoJ is only one spell, and Frost Mages have plenty of spells that contribute to control.

"Comparitive value" cannot be made based on a spell-by-spell comparison, since the context of the class in which those spells are used needs to be evaluated as well.

"First--and probably easiest--solution? Put the damage back. Fixed."

It's the easiest value to fix for sure, but only time will tell if Blizzard will implement it. After all, numbers are the easiest things to adjust for class balancing purposes. If this spell gets "fixed" at all, a damage component is the most likely means for that to happen.

"Make the spell allow the caster to turn into a cheetah, run behind a pillar, apply an instant cast HoT effect, then sit down to drink.

Ok, so I was kidding about the last one. Sort of."

It's lines like these that keep me coming back to Christian's column. You sir, despite my criticisms, are full of win.

But I don't know. Up until this point, his points have been all arguable, yet valid. Had this been any other class, you could even say it was an effective piece capable of starting debates regarding the state of this class in beta.

But afterwards, for a length that almost exceeds the content discussed above, he went on to plead to a hypothetical blizzard employee to fix the spell. Not any employee, mind you. An employee who was supposedly the exception, and was well aware of the supposed gripes of the mage community.

Certainly, if the trolls have not been lured out, they certainly have now. All of a sudden I was reminded of preschool, with the bullies playing keep away with the loner kid's lunchables. Damn, as much as I miss lunchables right now, I don't think that rant was warranted.

As much as he did warn that there was going to be some form of expressing complaints regarding this spell (necessary, valid), he perpetuated the stereotype of the QQ'ing mage (not necessary, unwarranted).

So as a result, we are left with a post that, with all of its potential of sparking debate about a valid issue, it spurned a debate of the nature of the post itself. Instead of discussing the merits of a 51 point talent that may or may not even be intended, or hell, even has already been fixed for the upcoming beta build, it has grown this unattractive aura that would turn away developers (who probably do turn to columns like these, as well as blogs on the web, just secretly).

We as mages can only learn from this. We must do what we can to not perpetuate the stereotype of the QQ'ing mage, but at the same time not be affected by this stereotyping, as Christian unfortunately shows in this post. It's a delicate balance that must be kept, but for what it's worth, we need to be grateful for what Blizzard has given us. Forget the 51 point talent. It's the 41-point talent that really counts, and I can't really thank Blizzard enough.

Raiding as a Frost Mage: What Lies Ahead

If I were to simplify the main goals of a Frost Mage in a raid boss situation, I would narrow it down to the three points below:

1. Spam Frostbolts
2. Use cooldown spells whenever they're up
3. Keep your pet alive

Compared to the slightly more complicated rotation of Fire's Scorch Debuff->Fireball->re-Scorch-debuff and Arcane's absurdly complicated Arcane Blast variants (Arcane Blastx3, Missiles, Fireball, or Frostbolt timed perfectly such that the next Arcane Blast casts faster, but for less mana, transitioning in and out of AB spam for mana-intense fights), it is safe to say that Frostbolt spam is indeed fairly straightforward.

But to generalize Frost raiding as simply spamming a single spell is ludicrous. Proper management of cooldowns, especially with Water Elemental, can easily determine the mage's spot on the raid DPS charts.

I'm not here to provide strategy, since Euripides has an excellent general outline for raiding Frost mages.

What I'm here to talk about, however, is the state of Frost heading into 3.0, and by extension, the release of the upcoming expansion. There are a lot of new tools being added to the cryomancer's arsenal in the form of baseline spells and talents. So let's take a look at each of the upcoming individually.

Mirror Image

As I stated before, it would be an absolute riot if the clones created by Mirror Image could summon their own Water Elementals. I'm not just talking about the DPS increase as a result, but the possibility of having each Water Elemental stacking mana regen for the raid if specced into Improved Water Elemental. That would be disgusting, but hey, I can dream, right?

Either way, this is a welcome addition to the collection of cooldowns in our reportoire. The difference between this spell and Summon Water Elemental is the control the mage has over his or her summons. The clones cannot be controlled, and as such, proper timing of cooldown usage will contribute to the spell's contribution to your DPS.

Initially, you will cast this at the same time as your Water Elemental, but due to cooldown-reducing talents, Squirtle will be coming out a lot more.

Fingers of Frost

Fingers of Frost is a passive talent that currently procs off of your spell rotation, and gives your current target a "frozen" property, regardless to immunity to traps and snares.

This talent will now require talent point investment into Shatter in order to maximize the damage gains from the proc.

Shattered Barrier

Mages who spec deeply in the Frost Tree are typically specialized for AoE pulls and "add duty" during boss fights due to their investment into talents that increase their ability to kite and control multiple enemies. This talent essentially gives them a free Frost Nova for AoE kiting multiple spawns during an encounter (i.e., Nightbane's skeletons).

As a result, Shattered Barrier will not increase DPS, but will increase the survivability of mages responsible for the roles mentioned above. As we all know, a dead mage does zero DPS.

Brain Freeze

Here's another proc-based talent that will certainly be incorporated into your rotation. Free, instant cast fireballs are nothing to sneeze at. This talent will increase damage per mana, and is good to use on the run.

While it is unwise to simply wait for the effect to proc before you move out of a boss's devastating AoE spell, the duration of the proc is long enough to decide whether or not you need to reposition yourself in anticipation of an oncoming attack, or if you need to move your Water Elemental closer to mana-hungry raid members.

With Fire Blast also available as an instant-cast, it is possible to use up 2 GCD on instant casts, giving you approximately 3 seconds in total to move without severely hampering your DPS. While not exactly an earth-shaking improvement in a mage's raid mobility, it's certainly better than nothing.

Improved Water Elemental

This talent alone, in my opinon, will singlehandedly change the way frost mages are viewed and used in the upcoming expansion.

With proper talents and cooldown management, it is possible to have your pet up for more than half of the duration of a boss fight. Combine that with the fact that the Water Elemental will be affected by the mage's Hit Rating, and we end up with a very significant source of DPS.

Although we won't be replacing Shadow Priests anytime soon, the beneficial mana regeneration effects provided by this talent cannot be ignored. With the changes to mana regeneration and potion mechanics tweaked in the upcoming patch/expansion, every single point of mana spent is crucial. The increased utility of the water Elemental spell, combined with its buffed duration essentially turns your pet into a caster's wet dream, literally.

Now, more than ever, it is of utmost importance to properly manage your Water Elemental with regards to survivability, timing and positioning. Frost mages need to really learn boss fights in order to determine the optimal times and locations to release their pets.

In a way, Squirtle has changed from a flash-in-the-pan increase in Frost DPS into the 11th/26th raid member. The only difference is that this raid member is multiboxed, and lags out periodically during boss fights.

BONUS: Spirit is the new Stamina

If you haven't noticed, I've been a tad concerned lately regarding issues with mana regenration and conservation. Terms such as DPM, Five Second Rule, and cooldown management (with regards to chain-potting and chain-gemming) have made one or more appearances in the last while.

And even though I don't have access to the beta, it has been reported and acknowledged by development that mages are indeed having mana problems in recent builds. Whether or not this is due to regeneration mechanics, spell costs, or simply untweaked numbers, the fact of the matter is that the patch is coming soon, and because of issues related to Hunter and Shaman talents, the Development team is not unaccostomed to simply releasing content and emergency patching if necessary.

With itemization emphasizing spirit, passive mana regeneration could become more lucrative to mages as a raiding class, especially if high DPS specs continue to have problems with running out of mana as the content progresses.

That being said, mages are left with Mage Armor as their baseline mana regeneration ability, which directly benefits from this trend in Spirit itemization. While at 70, 18/0/43 is a very viable spec simply due to its raw DPM, it is often eschewed in favor of 10/0/51 or even 0/0/61, depending on the mage's mana management abilities. But in the upcoming expansion, I predict that 18/0/53 may get some more attention once the dust settles and more data can be collected from first-hand raid experiences on the live realms.

Conclusion

It is a very exciting time to be a Frost mage with the shadow of an unexplored expansion blanketing our frozen hearts. In the past few weeks, we have been given previews of what is to come, and while the theorycrafters are furiously pounding away at the calculators, it is a thrill to see how Frost DPS is stacking up against the other trees and classes with each beta build.

For as long as anyone can remember, Frost was regarded as a single-spell spam spec, sometimes summoning Squirtle (alliteration for the massive win). But crymancers can rejoice in Wrath, for now they have to really push their pet, while predicting procs in the process (not as alliterative, but nonetheless still win).

While our DPS remains middle-of-the-road, it is something that we are accustomed to seeing. But with a potential emphasis placed on mana management on a raidwide level looming over the heads of frantic GMs everywhere, our utility may be an x-factor that could determine our success in high tiered content.

Because in the end, it is only appropriate that the ones most tolerable to the vast, icy cold of Northrend are those who can harness the icy cold itself.

Hi, I'm Krizzlybear, and I'm a Manaholic.

EDIT: As in, mana-a-holic. Damn you, Chu. *sigh* lol

audience: Hi Kriz!

As a mage, I'm normally used to chugging water in between battles with monsters from the twisted nether. As a result, I have become dependant on water for my mana-replenishment needs, to the extent that I've even conjured water for myself even when not in battle. I've snuck a bottle here and there, and realized my addiction.

But I have realized the error of my ways, and it's been about 8 days since I last had a skin of water, and so far it's been a success.

*audience ooohs, ahhs*

But, my friends, I must confess. I've died way too many times for my own good. Not taking Ice Barrier and other talents that improve the snares of my spells have taken a hit on my survivability!

In Kara, I died 8 times leading up to Curator alone, not including raid wipes. Some of those were from AoE pulls leading up to Moroes and Curator. Almost half of them were form failed attempts to kite Moroes adds and Strawhead. After Curator, there were plenty of early deaths in Netherspite simply due to not being able to keep Ice Barrier up.

*audience mourns the numerous weekend deaths of krizzlybear*

Fear not, my fellow Drinkers! I have found the error of my ways again! And found a way to improve my survivability but remain non-dependant on those cursed conjured consumables! Behold! THE IMPROVED NO-MORE-DRINKING BUILD!

*audience oooh's, aahhh's*

Did you see how it's different from the previous build? Let's take a look.

1 point from Winter's Chill moved to Frost Barrier: 4/5 Winter's Chill is good enough to keep stacks on the Winter's Chill Debuff, so the free point IMMEDIATELY goes to Frost Barrier. Similar to how a Frost mage depends on Water Elemental for offensive purposes, the same mage, to the same degree, relies on Frost Barrier for defensive purposes.

I don't know how I overlooked this in the first place. I guess I was too busy spamming Frostbolts and not going out of mana. With Frost Barrier available, the mage with Arcane Meditation can now afford to keep it up on every cooldown, saving precious mana spent by healers, as well as reducing knockback from attacks from adds.

2 points from Improved Frost Nova to Permafrost: Sounds a little counterproductive, but hear me out. From a kiting perspective, the increased snare gained from permafrost increases the time it takes for a mob to get to you. Spamming rank 1 frostbolts while strafing and blinking and Jump Blasting will completely make up for the 4 seconds added to the Frost Nova cooldown. In most cases, you only have to use Frost Nova only once anyways, before the kited monster gets killed, so this is a worthy trade.

Also, since I'm not even trying to get into Shatter, IFN no longer needs to be taken by default.

I really wish that I could add at least one point in Improved Blizzard for the snare effect, which stacks with Permafrost. Maybe I'll take out another point in Winter's Chill, and really pray to the RNG gods that my stacks stick. But oh well, that's a bullet that I'm willing to bite in exchange for Ice Barrier and Permafrost.

*audience applause*

And that, my friends, is my personal tweak to 18/0/43, modified to stay alive longer, so I can continue to drink less and pew pew more.

I've Given Up Drinking Forever

If you were wondering where I had gone to yesterday, since no post was put up, I'm letting you all know that I had a huge hangover. A few lovely rounds of my favorite lagers was quite enough to get me into high spirits with a few close relatives.

Speaking of which, Spirit is a wonderful stat, ain't it? Euripedes over at Critical QQ has gone quite a ways of doing the theorycraft that argues that Spirit is indeed a wonderful stat to have, even though you might not want to stack it as much as you do with Spell Damage, Spell Hit or Intellect. But it's there, and it really helps you regen the mana during long boss fights, particularly with Mage Armor on.

But what's that? Did my ears deceive me? Was Euripedes only discussing Arcane mages as the only viable subclass of our magic-wielding kin that would even consider grabbing some spirit? HA! I'll show him...

As soon as I got home after sobering up from all that drinking, I really needed a reprieve from all things related to liquid refreshments. Heck, I think I went a little too far, even taking that philosophy straight into the game. Thus, the first thing I did when I logged on was give 35 gold to the class trainer in Ironforge. It was time I gave up drinking for a while.

Larisa, this respec is dedicated to you[1]. Arcane Meditation FTW.

18/0/43: The Red-Headed Stepchild of the Raiding Frost Family

This spec is a variation of the 0/0/49+12 Frost raiding skeleton that dips into all the necessary talents; Elemental Precision, Water Elemental, Winter's Chill, and all the Frost damage-increasing talents. The remaining 12 points usually defines what flavor of raiding Frost mage you will have in your group. In general, the Deep Frost build will put all 20 points into Frost, picking up Shatter and all the talents that increases their overall control. Some will spend 10 points into grabbing Arcane Concentration, like Tuna supposedly does.

But by going even deeper in the Arcane tree, and maxing out Arcane Meditation, we end up with a spirit-based regeneration buff that stacks with Mage Armor, resulting in upwards of 60% mana regeneration, in-combat. A feat that would make any Priest jealous, pugnacious or otherwise.

Let me emphasize this by quoting Euripedes again, regarding *cough* arcane mages *cough*:

"Lemme put it this way. An arcane mage (with Mage Armor up, of course), in T6-ish gear, raid buffed, can actually gain mana by chain casting Frostbolts."

Guess what. Frost mages can do it too. And they can actually do serious dps by chain casting Frostbolts, all the while, their spirit regen becomes serious business with Mage Armor up. With that in mind, we end up with what theorycrafters consider to be the most mana-efficient build for any mage raiding spec, all the way up to Sunwell. Here's a picture of the graphical comparisons regarding self-buffed mage dpm (damage per mana) made by Tachyon, of the subcreation Intelligent Mage Discussion forums:



To further show how DPM is such an important feat for a dps class, especially during long fights, let's go into a bit of spiritcrafting here. Let's assume a boss encounter that lasts for 10 minutes, and compare the mana efficiency of Deep Frost, Clearcast Frost, and Meditation Frost.

- A T4-equivalent mage with Mage Armor up, raid buffed up to 700 Intellect and 400 Spirit, will be getting an MP5 rating of 397, according to Resto4Life's mana regen calculator.
- For a fight lasting 10 minutes, assuming 100% of that time spent in the 5SR, will return 47,640 mana.
- Compare that to a mage with Arcane Meditation talents, and the MP5 jumps up to a whopping 545, or 65,400 mana regenerated over 10 minutes.
- Note that with Frost Channeling, a Rank-13 Frostbolt costs 272 mana. Over 10 minutes, 240 Frostbolts will be chain-cast, consmimg 65,280 mana.
- With clearcasting, 24 of those frostbolts will cost 0 mana, lowering the total mana spent to 58,752.

Notice something there? The mana spent by Deep-Frost greatly outnumbers the mana regained, 65.2k to 47.6k. Thus, he will be going out of mana quite early into the fight. The Clearcast-Frost mage will spend less mana throughout the fight, but will still run out of mana sometime in the fight, since 58.7k is still higher than 47.6k. But the winner of the endurance test is going to be Meditation Frost, with an insane differential of 58.7k spent and 65.4k gained.

As a result, the first two mages are going to be oom'ing first, resulting in the need to Evocate or, Light forbid, wand down the boss while waiting for pot/gem cooldown to finish. That's 0 dps during that time, almost as good as dead. However, the Meditation mage, with a mana differential of 6.7k for 10 minutes, can cast an extra 24 Frostbolts until he goes OOM, and that doesn't even count clearcasts and mana regained during those extra casts!

Now wait a minute, some of you may be simply skeptical that there aren't a bunch of boss fights that last for 10 minutes, particularly with regards to heroic instances. Well, guess what? I just pugged a heroic Black Morass with a Shadow Preist and a Resto Shaman. With mana gems and evocate, I only had to drink twice. TWICE. And that was just for the heck of it, too! Both times were after each of the first two bosses, and I could have probably regained mana passively outside of the 5SR, right up to full, before the next portal opened.

A mage that never has to drink. If that's not going against the stereotype, I don't know what is. Perhaps I'll go off to meditate on this.

---
[1] I'm still having problems trying to find the alt+# combination to get that funky i, so bear with me while I continue using trial and error.

Frosty Foes: The All-Purpose Karazhan Guide

(Frosty Foes is a series of posts outlining various Boss Fights in heroic 5-man dungeons as well as 10-man raiding dungeons. Here, I will try to outline a number of strategies to employ when fighting the boss as a Frost-specced mage.)

What originally started as a matrix comparing the different Opera Event strategies actually expanded to become all of Karazhan. So I decided to go the distance in the form of a neat little .bmp

Step 1: Click Picture.
Step 2: Right Click, Save as.
Step 3: ???
Step 4: Profit!



Just a few things about the above picture that I will clearly edit later.
- I only mentioned that Water Elemental is capable of tanking the other Elementals because it is immune to waterbolts, but the adds are also immune to waterbolts, meaning that your pet will not attack them, and thus will not tank them. I will change this.
- I've had invisibility "work" on BBW when I got turned into RRH. The timing is so important, because you're VERY likely to get hit while waiting for the effect to tick down. Even then, when the invisibility effect occurs, you can still get hit. When it happened to me, the "leaving combat" message turned up the same time I lost the RRH debuff, so I can't really say at the moment which it is. I encourage you mages to try it out anyways.

A Match Made for Mana-Manic Mages (and other alliterations)

All hope is not lost, my fellow frosties!

My brief (and I must let you know, it was totally brief!) foray into one of the cookie cutter raiding fire specs (10/48/3) was definitely an eye-opener! But fear not, I have once again returned to my normal Squirtle-wielding ways!

My children, the flame experiment was merely an attempt to scout the opposition in this war between the specs. While the zaptastic Zupa and I have meddled our ways to encourage more support for the cryomancers, it was the euphoric Euripedes and the lovely Larisa who have pleaded their case for wizards everywhere to follow the ways of the arcanist.

Meanwhile, the noble Gnomeageddon remains steadfast in his solo attempt to defend his combustive playstyle. And trusty ol’ Tuna? He remains undecided, despite many hints that suggest his true allegiance.

So where does that leave me? I remain a supporter of everything Ice, but in times of war, success is brought in from alliances that are forged. As of now, it is clear that the true enemies of Frost are the arcanists; that for sure is quite certain. But after my weekend of experiments (which include a run at heroic Shattered Halls, regular Mechanar, and regular Magister’s Terrace), I for one welcome our fire-wielding not-quite-overlords.

Like Peanut Butter and Jelly

While I may have commented before that Arcane is a wonderful tree for picking up supplementary talents that increase the DPS of your main tree, I want to point out that Fire is to Ice like how Peanut Butter is to Jelly. When considering the duality of the universe, there is no polar opposite to frost than fire. Blizzard acknowledges this, and even declared their intentions to push the bonds between our blazing bretheren in the upcoming expansion. While the pundits over at EJ are beginning to tout arcane as the deep spec of choice when staring down Arthas with nine of your friends (hopefully all mages…and a few healers and tanks), Fire may look to be the redheaded stepchild with regards to raid DPS, while Frost essentially retains its status as “just there.”

But the genera idea is that Frostfire Bolt is supposed to be the saving grace for the elementalist mages, depending on how they build their talent tree. While I am certainly not in the mood to overly invest myself on information that is merely speculation right now, I can be sure that Frostfire bolt is here to stay, and will have much potential to tap into the unappreciated synergy between the two trees.

So when Rash of the Itch King comes, one of the effective ways that frost mages can better rival their arcane antitheses is to borrow from their fiery friends.

Consider the description for FFB: (530 Mana, 40 yd range) Launches a bolt of frostfire at the enemy, causing 722 to 838 Frostfire damage, slowing movement speed by 40% and causing an additional 90 Frostfire damage over 9 sec. If the target is more vulnerable to Frost damage, this spell will cause Frost instead of Fire damage.

Breaking the spell down, we know that the FFB itself is modal, meaning that when casting, the game will check whether the spell will do more damage as a fire spell or a frost spell. This is determined by two things: the resistances of the target, and the +damage of each of your schools. If you spec deep frost or are wearing Frozen Shadoweave gear, the spell will most likely be frost-typed. But if you’re deep frost, that would mean that your primary rotation would be exclusively frostbolts. But if you’re pretty deep into the frost tree, eschewing Frostbolt talents in favour of pure damage-increasing talents, then you will most likely choose Frostfire Bolt as your primary nuke.

With that said, by dropping the maximum number of points from Empowered and Improved Frostbolt, combined with the increased talent point total, we can dip into the fire tree for some improved DPS on our frost spells. For me, it would probably look something like this:

Fire Tree (21 points)
Improved Fire Blast – Are you all remembering to cast a Fire Blast while you move to another location? I sure hope so.

Incineration – Increases the critical chance on your Cone of Cold now, so it’s worth picking up.

Ignite – While it won’t necessarily affect FFB due to being frost-typed, it’s still useful for the occasional Fire Blast crit or even Fireball crit.

World in Flames – Blizzard (the company), I will love you forever if you make Blizzard (the spell) critable.

Improved Scorch – HELLO! Vulnerability now affects frost spells as well! So let’s start adding 5x scorch to our FFB rotations, shall we?

Master of Elements – When I temporarily specced into fire, I was sceptical about the mana efficiency of the rotation, but with this talent maxed out, it’s actually not that bad. Imagine this combined with Ice shards? Double the damage, 70% of the cost. Pure pwnage.

Frost Tree (48+2 points)

There’s so many talents here, I’m just going to mention the noteworthy additions and omissions.
2/5 Improved Frostbolt – We won’t be casting frostbolts, but we need 2 points to get into the next tier. Either way, a 1.3 second rank 1 frostbolt is good for kiting mobs.

Improved Frost Nova, Arctic Reach, Improved Blizzard – We can start AoE grinding mobs again! Joy!

Improved Cone of Cold – Synergy with Incineration and Ice Shards lead to massive damage.
0 points in Fingers of Frost – Oh well. Winter’s Grasp was never meant to be, I suppose. Don’t put points into this if you’re not invested into Shatter. Even then, it’s not really that worth it in a raid environment.

Summon Water Elemental, Improved Water Elemental – Welcome back, Squirtle. How I’ve missed you so.

Chilled to the Bone – DPS, yum. Snare, yum. This is the talent you want to strive for if you want to spec Deep Frost FFB, and thankfully, we get to keep it.

You have 2 extra points leftover in the Frost Talent tree, but there are a few limitations based on tier level requisites. These leftovers are to make sure you can get your Water Elemental, so put them on utility talents. Here are a few options:

1/3 Brain Freeze – Free Fireballs are always nice. But you’re only allowed to spend 1 point because of tier-specific talent point requisites. The other point can be spent on the other options.
2/2 Ice Floes – More CoC’s, more Ice Barriers, more utility.

2/2 Shattered Barrier – Ice Barrier should be renamed Ice Barriawesome. Makes your blizzard grinding even more effective, as it gives you a free frost nova. I’m not sure if this uses up the Frost Nova cooldown, though. If it doesn’t, you get a chance to Frost Nova again if any mobs resist the first one, all without having to pop a cold snap.

2/3 Permafrost – Improve your kiting abilities even further.

Your Rotation

Scorch x5, Summon Water Elemental, Icy Veins, Frostfire Bolt spam, Scorch x1 to restore the debuff. Cold Snap when Water Elemental/Icy Veins ends, and then repeat as necessary. Depending on your raid composition, you might need a Shadow Priest to keep up your Squrtle mana, or you might not need to scorch so much if you have another Fire Mage. Either way, you’ll be getting the benefit of both scorch and winter’s chill, while getting the improved crit bonuses of Master of Elements and Ice Shards as well as the mana efficiency of Master of Elements, Brian Freeze and Frost Channeling.

Some Things to Consider/Theorycraft

Cost efficiency of Master of Elements vs. Brain Freeze – 30% reduction of critical hit spell costs, or 15% chance to get a free Fireball? I'm sure that at least 1 point into each talent will give you some sort of return, but what combination will maximize your damage per mana?

2/3 vs. 3/3 Improved Water Elemental – Due to the “nerf” to improved WE’s health and mana, you may have moments at the end of a fully talented Water Elemental where it’s just sitting there doing nothing. 2/3 may maximize the use of your Squirtle, while putting an extra point into Brain Freeze.

A Moot Point

As this post goes live, the talent tree will have been shifted again, but that’s the risks we take for speculating on upcoming talents. I know that Shatter no longer requires a talent pre-requisite, and may be moved to lower tiers, so I might shift some points to include Shatter and Fingers of Frost if possible. It’s a decent combo if you can afford it. Definitely expect me to update my WotLK talent plan as the new versions of the beta builds are implemented.

Conclusion

If there’s one thing that I learned about my time as a Fire Mage, it’s that juggling scorch is indeed a very challenging aspect of your flamethrowing rotation. By implementing that into Deep Frost, I may find myself with a wonderful marriage between exciting rotations that keeps me on my toes with the use of my Water Elemental.

Indeed, I still love me some mudkips.

It's Like Frost, except on Freakin' Steroids

Actually, forget about what Larisa said about me spouting the Hybrid builds in her battle of the mages. Frost is the way to go, no doubt about it.

As soon as I came home from work, I went on wowhead right away. Having the talent calculator in hand, I tried my best to min/max some sort of rotation. Believe me, it was very difficult trying to stray away from frostbolt as being the cornerstone of the rotation.

No. Wasn't going to happen.

Okay, fine. It was mostly because of the fact that most of the +damage on my gear was specificallly frost damage, so it didn't really make any sense to try and spec anything else. I blah'ed to myself. I couldn't let go of my little ice cube launching former self. I wanted a frostbolt spec, meaning that There wasn't really any alternative to Frost. But that didn't necessarily mean that I couldn't spec into other classes, right?

So I looked back at the calculator. Fire? In fire and frost, while indeed hybrid-viable, seems to imply dominance in fire spells with frost as the augmenting talent tree to increase the overall DPS with talents like Icy Veins, Elemental Precision, Cold Snap, and such. No way. I don't like that one bit. If I could make a bumper sticker for my car, it'd read "Frostbolts" or bust.

Then came along Arcane. Wow. There are some amazing things to be had with arcane, and I'll be one to admit it as a frost mage. First, just like frost, arcane has the ability to have a good number of points invested into the second or third tiers without being the primary school of magic with regards to spell rotation. At the same time, the tree has a good, if not very respectable, spec that allows it to use arcane spells as the focus of the rotation. And it is of this little gnome's opinion that, while Frost may seem to be the more effective main school when specced deeply into its own tree, Arcane is simply superior with regards to being a support tree despite being deeply specced into its own tree.

But despite that, I'm sticking to my frost, thank you very much.

40/0/21 - Steroids-Frost Spec

Ok, it's a frostbolt-centric spec that relies on deep talents in the Arcane tree to boost your crit, damage, and so on and so forth. But the most underappreciated aspect of this spec is simply the insane mana efficiency. Arcane Meditation combined with Frost Channeling and Mage Armor results in such an amazing amount of mana regen in a long boss fight. Trying out the spec on Dr. Boom using only Frostbolts, I lasted so much longer. I felt like a frigging marathon man, and that's quite a feat, considering that Frost itself is a very mana-friendly spec against single targets.

And the damage. Wow. The damage difference per frostbolt is actually quite larger. Combine that with harder crits, and I'm actually very enticed to somewhat stay in this spec a little bit longer. Again, comparing frostbolt by frostbolt, I can simply say that this spec is just amazing with damage.

And as a disclaimer, I'm not using Arcane Blast. 3/3 Frozen Shadoweave only affords me sub-500 general spell damage. The damage per mana is brutally low, and warrants no actual use. Maybe in higher tier gear, one should consider chaning up the rotation, but with my gear, FB spam is ideal. The crit damage from Ice Shards is a welcome fit for the rotation anyways.

Things I Miss

And then there's the rub. I miss my Water Elemental. Saying goodbye to squirtle was the hardest thing I have done in a long while. Not since before I dinged 50 for the first time did I live without the 41-point talent, and somehow I just felt empty inside, much like the warlock who sacrifices his demon for the first time. I also miss the "free damage" button that I have on my castbar. Simply put, with him gone, I lose a lot of DPS that deep frost mages are known for.

There's another noticeable absence from my 0/0/61 mainstay that I probably miss the most. Critical hits. I simply don't crit as often when I use 40/0/21. Sure I crit harder, but for me I don't get those moments where you're landing crit after crit after crit with the deep spec. And of course, that's all thanks to Winter's Chill. I would like to reinforce my statement form my earlier post stating that frost mages that don't have Winter's Chill in their reportoire simply don't haven the same delicious crit that the deep fire mages do with their scorches and combustions. Having said how that arc-frost guy in that Kara PuG the other day thanked me to no end for putting up winter's chill for him, I can surely say that I now understand why.

Overall Impressions

I really enjoyed the larger numbers provided by the frostbolt hits, as well as the occasional frostbolt crit, but in the name of Elune I still swear by my deep frost. I am way too attached to my elemental, and I love stacking winter's chill for all that lovely crit. Surely, taking out some talents in the deep spec, and putting them into arcane for clearcasting will probably increase my damage output considerably (ie, removing cone of cold, ice floes, permafrost, and random points here and there), but the point I want to hammer home is that the deep spec has so many talents that are synergous with itself, that a simple tactic like spamming frostbolts will get you some pretty good results dps-wise, and get the absolute adoration from other frost mages who skimp on those talents for other damage-dealing possibilities.

Compared to Pyromancers, who have to deal with juggling scorch debuffs with their use of fireball, Deep Frost has it somewhat simpler. Spam frostbolt. Use your cooldowns. Let Water elemental do its thing on its own if there's no complex movement required in the fight. Make the arcane-boosted frost mages look good.

Next time on FitNB: I take a deep, hard look on the mage's ranged weapon, and why it's not good to post when your widgets go out of control.