I re-specced to fire once I hit 70 but I miss my frost mage so much! I'm a new 70, so my gear isn't great. I suck in PVP and I've never felt that comfortable with losing all that crowd control.
Thing is how viable are frost mages for instances and raids? I've noticed lots of mages go arcane or fire at 70 for raiding. Am I likley to get groaned at for not being fire during Kara runs etc. Any frost mages that rule in instances/raids. Any experineces/stories to share?
Thanks.
- Forums
- World of Warcraft
- Class Discussion
- Going Back To Frost
Going Back To FrostFollow
You can raid as frost (I'd go 40/0/21 in the beginning and later go deep frost, when you have some good spell damage). You will *not* put out the same DPS as a fire mage with equal gear. Also, if you aren't a tailor, you should be. The crafted epics are better than T4. That will get you a long way into SSC/TK before upgrading to the T5 stuff. It depends on your guild really, if you'll get groaned at. Some guilds require you to play the spec with the most damage potential (10/48/3), some don't. I'd pick a guild that suits your playstyle and your raid availability (e.g. don't get into a hard-core raiding guild unless you really wanna raid a lot).
Scholar
27 posts
People say frost damage is bad. This might be in raids, I cant talk about that. Although I have to say I saw videos from 'top raiding guilds' with water elementals in the crowd.
Instance wise frost mage is amazing. I am always #1 dps, even against eppiced out players. My gear consists from tailored Frozen Shadoweave & girdle of ruination (I dont have spellstrike yet), pvp neck & bracers, bringer of death and some instance blues. By no means special.
To boost your damage there are a few important things with frost:
- manage your cooldowns: if you are in an instance and getting near the boss dont blow your longer cooldowns. Make sure pet, coldsnap and trinket are ready for the boss. You have more effect from your cooldowns if you can use them to dps non-stop.
- Use pet with trinket: Your pet benefits from +damage. If you pop your trinket with the pet out both you and your pet benefit from its effect.
- Keep that pet alive: my pet can do about 40% of the dps I do, but you have to keep the little fella alive as it has the survivability of a warlock's imp without phase shift. A good trick to have your pet stay out of voids, AoEs etc is to spawn your pet and then run a bit away from it. If you see a void below the pet or a player being targetted with an AoE then /pet follow (put it on hotkey) to get frosty to safety.
- Shatter!: get handy making as many shatter combos (frostbolt + icelance on a frozen target) as you can. Casting a frostbolt and use the elemental freeze when its almost finished casting almost guarantees a double crit. Depending on the situation you can icelance all other frozen targets (if there is a group on the tank) fight after.
- WATCH YOUR THREAT!: this is the most important of all. Get a threatmeter, I can recommend Omen. With flashy shatter combos or big crit strings (I treat frost as a crit spec) you threat can spike a lot. You only have 10% threat reduction so keep an eye on the threatmeter and use invisibility if you have to. Never put your dps above team functionality by pulling aggro all the time or being an idiot.
Edited, Nov 27th 2007 2:26pm by Desperadoo
Instance wise frost mage is amazing. I am always #1 dps, even against eppiced out players. My gear consists from tailored Frozen Shadoweave & girdle of ruination (I dont have spellstrike yet), pvp neck & bracers, bringer of death and some instance blues. By no means special.
To boost your damage there are a few important things with frost:
- manage your cooldowns: if you are in an instance and getting near the boss dont blow your longer cooldowns. Make sure pet, coldsnap and trinket are ready for the boss. You have more effect from your cooldowns if you can use them to dps non-stop.
- Use pet with trinket: Your pet benefits from +damage. If you pop your trinket with the pet out both you and your pet benefit from its effect.
- Keep that pet alive: my pet can do about 40% of the dps I do, but you have to keep the little fella alive as it has the survivability of a warlock's imp without phase shift. A good trick to have your pet stay out of voids, AoEs etc is to spawn your pet and then run a bit away from it. If you see a void below the pet or a player being targetted with an AoE then /pet follow (put it on hotkey) to get frosty to safety.
- Shatter!: get handy making as many shatter combos (frostbolt + icelance on a frozen target) as you can. Casting a frostbolt and use the elemental freeze when its almost finished casting almost guarantees a double crit. Depending on the situation you can icelance all other frozen targets (if there is a group on the tank) fight after.
- WATCH YOUR THREAT!: this is the most important of all. Get a threatmeter, I can recommend Omen. With flashy shatter combos or big crit strings (I treat frost as a crit spec) you threat can spike a lot. You only have 10% threat reduction so keep an eye on the threatmeter and use invisibility if you have to. Never put your dps above team functionality by pulling aggro all the time or being an idiot.
Edited, Nov 27th 2007 2:26pm by Desperadoo
Desperadoo wrote:
People say frost damage is bad. This might be in raids, I cant talk about that. Although I have to say I saw videos from 'top raiding guilds' with water elementals in the crowd.
Instance wise frost mage is amazing. I am always #1 dps, even against eppiced out players. My gear consists from tailored Frozen Shadoweave & girdle of ruination (I dont have spellstrike yet), pvp neck & bracers, bringer of death and some instance blues. By no means special.
To boost your damage there are a few important things with frost:
- manage your cooldowns: if you are in an instance and getting near the boss dont blow your longer cooldowns. Make sure pet, coldsnap and trinket are ready for the boss. You have more effect from your cooldowns if you can use them to dps non-stop.
- Use pet with trinket: Your pet benefits from +damage. If you pop your trinket with the pet out both you and your pet benefit from its effect.
- Keep that pet alive: my pet can do about 40% of the dps I do, but you have to keep the little fella alive as it has the survivability of a warlock's imp without phase shift. A good trick to have your pet stay out of voids, AoEs etc is to spawn your pet and then run a bit away from it. If you see a void below the pet or a player being targetted with an AoE then /pet follow (put it on hotkey) to get frosty to safety.
- Shatter!: get handy making as many shatter combos (frostbolt + icelance on a frozen target) as you can. Casting a frostbolt and use the elemental freeze when its almost finished casting almost guarantees a double crit. Depending on the situation you can icelance all other frozen targets (if there is a group on the tank) fight after.
- WATCH YOUR THREAT!: this is the most important of all. Get a threatmeter, I can recommend Omen. With flashy shatter combos or big crit strings (I treat frost as a crit spec) you threat can spike a lot. You only have 10% threat reduction so keep an eye on the threatmeter and use invisibility if you have to. Never put your dps above team functionality by pulling aggro all the time or being an idiot.
Edited, Nov 27th 2007 2:26pm by Desperadoo
Instance wise frost mage is amazing. I am always #1 dps, even against eppiced out players. My gear consists from tailored Frozen Shadoweave & girdle of ruination (I dont have spellstrike yet), pvp neck & bracers, bringer of death and some instance blues. By no means special.
To boost your damage there are a few important things with frost:
- manage your cooldowns: if you are in an instance and getting near the boss dont blow your longer cooldowns. Make sure pet, coldsnap and trinket are ready for the boss. You have more effect from your cooldowns if you can use them to dps non-stop.
- Use pet with trinket: Your pet benefits from +damage. If you pop your trinket with the pet out both you and your pet benefit from its effect.
- Keep that pet alive: my pet can do about 40% of the dps I do, but you have to keep the little fella alive as it has the survivability of a warlock's imp without phase shift. A good trick to have your pet stay out of voids, AoEs etc is to spawn your pet and then run a bit away from it. If you see a void below the pet or a player being targetted with an AoE then /pet follow (put it on hotkey) to get frosty to safety.
- Shatter!: get handy making as many shatter combos (frostbolt + icelance on a frozen target) as you can. Casting a frostbolt and use the elemental freeze when its almost finished casting almost guarantees a double crit. Depending on the situation you can icelance all other frozen targets (if there is a group on the tank) fight after.
- WATCH YOUR THREAT!: this is the most important of all. Get a threatmeter, I can recommend Omen. With flashy shatter combos or big crit strings (I treat frost as a crit spec) you threat can spike a lot. You only have 10% threat reduction so keep an eye on the threatmeter and use invisibility if you have to. Never put your dps above team functionality by pulling aggro all the time or being an idiot.
Edited, Nov 27th 2007 2:26pm by Desperadoo
On trash frost is good, but you can't shatter most bosses. So you might have the upper edge clearing trash and keeping it controlled, but overall damage will be way lower. Also, I never had trouble with threat until I switched to fire. Your pet has separate threat from you. When I switched to fire, i saw my threat increase by about 50%. Popping invis has become the norm for me.
Quote:
Instance wise frost mage is amazing. I am always #1 dps, even against eppiced out players. My gear consists from tailored Frozen Shadoweave & girdle of ruination (I dont have spellstrike yet), pvp neck & bracers, bringer of death and some instance blues. By no means special.
To boost your damage there are a few important things with frost:
- manage your cooldowns: if you are in an instance and getting near the boss dont blow your longer cooldowns. Make sure pet, coldsnap and trinket are ready for the boss. You have more effect from your cooldowns if you can use them to dps non-stop.
- Use pet with trinket: Your pet benefits from +damage. If you pop your trinket with the pet out both you and your pet benefit from its effect.
- Keep that pet alive: my pet can do about 40% of the dps I do, but you have to keep the little fella alive as it has the survivability of a warlock's imp without phase shift. A good trick to have your pet stay out of voids, AoEs etc is to spawn your pet and then run a bit away from it. If you see a void below the pet or a player being targetted with an AoE then /pet follow (put it on hotkey) to get frosty to safety.
- Shatter!: get handy making as many shatter combos (frostbolt + icelance on a frozen target) as you can. Casting a frostbolt and use the elemental freeze when its almost finished casting almost guarantees a double crit. Depending on the situation you can icelance all other frozen targets (if there is a group on the tank) fight after.
- WATCH YOUR THREAT!: this is the most important of all. Get a threatmeter, I can recommend Omen. With flashy shatter combos or big crit strings (I treat frost as a crit spec) you threat can spike a lot. You only have 10% threat reduction so keep an eye on the threatmeter and use invisibility if you have to. Never put your dps above team functionality by pulling aggro all the time or being an idiot.
To boost your damage there are a few important things with frost:
- manage your cooldowns: if you are in an instance and getting near the boss dont blow your longer cooldowns. Make sure pet, coldsnap and trinket are ready for the boss. You have more effect from your cooldowns if you can use them to dps non-stop.
- Use pet with trinket: Your pet benefits from +damage. If you pop your trinket with the pet out both you and your pet benefit from its effect.
- Keep that pet alive: my pet can do about 40% of the dps I do, but you have to keep the little fella alive as it has the survivability of a warlock's imp without phase shift. A good trick to have your pet stay out of voids, AoEs etc is to spawn your pet and then run a bit away from it. If you see a void below the pet or a player being targetted with an AoE then /pet follow (put it on hotkey) to get frosty to safety.
- Shatter!: get handy making as many shatter combos (frostbolt + icelance on a frozen target) as you can. Casting a frostbolt and use the elemental freeze when its almost finished casting almost guarantees a double crit. Depending on the situation you can icelance all other frozen targets (if there is a group on the tank) fight after.
- WATCH YOUR THREAT!: this is the most important of all. Get a threatmeter, I can recommend Omen. With flashy shatter combos or big crit strings (I treat frost as a crit spec) you threat can spike a lot. You only have 10% threat reduction so keep an eye on the threatmeter and use invisibility if you have to. Never put your dps above team functionality by pulling aggro all the time or being an idiot.
Awesome. Thanks! xD
Damage meters on trash is useless. It's the bosses you spec for, otherwise everyone would have all +damage gems in their slots and +hit would be irrelevant. There's another mage in my guild that doesn't quite get +hit vs. +damage. I have +1K fire damage, and he has +1.1K fire damage. But I'm nearly +hit capped and he's at around 6%. Guess who does more damage on bosses?
Also, mages aren't necessarily top damage in all fights. In a fight where the mage never has to move (e.g. Maiden in Kara), mages rule. I love that fight, because as a fire mage, you never have to use invisibility because you get that repentance debuff that stuns you. In fights like Gruul's lair where you may be running around quite a bit, locks should out-dps you because their dots keep ticking while they run around. In melee friendly fights, rogues should out-dps you. It is all very specific to the fight and to the group.
Oh, and frozen shadoweave (I have a set) is better than the T4 equivalent, so I'd say you do have some good gear there.
I think the comparison of frost mages to fire mages is one of comparing yourself to the gear you are in vs. the gear you would be in with fire and comparing your own damage. It doesn't matter if you out dps everyone else in the raid. If you had the spellfire gear and were a fire mage, you'd do even more dps. It is the comparison of you vs. you that is relevant, not you vs. some other person who may/may not know how to play and may/may not be as geared as you are.
I'm hope this is taken in the spirit I'm writing, out of helpfulness and not in an attacking manner.
Also, mages aren't necessarily top damage in all fights. In a fight where the mage never has to move (e.g. Maiden in Kara), mages rule. I love that fight, because as a fire mage, you never have to use invisibility because you get that repentance debuff that stuns you. In fights like Gruul's lair where you may be running around quite a bit, locks should out-dps you because their dots keep ticking while they run around. In melee friendly fights, rogues should out-dps you. It is all very specific to the fight and to the group.
Oh, and frozen shadoweave (I have a set) is better than the T4 equivalent, so I'd say you do have some good gear there.
I think the comparison of frost mages to fire mages is one of comparing yourself to the gear you are in vs. the gear you would be in with fire and comparing your own damage. It doesn't matter if you out dps everyone else in the raid. If you had the spellfire gear and were a fire mage, you'd do even more dps. It is the comparison of you vs. you that is relevant, not you vs. some other person who may/may not know how to play and may/may not be as geared as you are.
I'm hope this is taken in the spirit I'm writing, out of helpfulness and not in an attacking manner.
Ktangent,
read your thread and I did not see anything as being attacking in there. Very good points made in a well explained manner.
Rate up!
read your thread and I did not see anything as being attacking in there. Very good points made in a well explained manner.
Rate up!
Everyone I do heroics with prefers frost mages. I'm one of the few pve frost mages on my server and always get invited back so must be doing something right:p. Theres too much trash in them to spec solely for bosses. Also given that most groups want to run it within the hour frost saves a lot of drinking down time - there is only much spriests and totems can do in relation to keeping everyone mana'ed up. I've done heroics with fire mages and I know the main complaint was all the downtime they had - IMO its not productive unless the fire mage is good and / or has a huge mana pool.
For heroics tho - you can be in good/ bad groups and it doesn't matter much as if its guild run you're getting geared and if its a pug they just want a mage for free food/ portal/ a CC and some dps.
For raids - need to be a tailor if your frost. Shadoweave and spellstrike is needed. I was going to get the girdle of ruination but opted for the badges of justice belt as it had more Spell hit/ crit and I'd otherwise have no longer been hit capped. Frost mages in raids with good gear can do fine dps (oddly enough in my guild I'm frost and often the top dps. It doesn't matter tho; you play as a team, each fight is different and if there weren't tanks/ healers you'd be dead before you could dps :p) with a water elemental.
I stayed frost since lv 70 as i personally hate fire and have never been denied a place on a raid or asked to respec. IMO I'd rather do slightly less damage and not run out of mana half way through a fight. Saves me the respec for pvp and having to buy mana potions
N
For heroics tho - you can be in good/ bad groups and it doesn't matter much as if its guild run you're getting geared and if its a pug they just want a mage for free food/ portal/ a CC and some dps.
For raids - need to be a tailor if your frost. Shadoweave and spellstrike is needed. I was going to get the girdle of ruination but opted for the badges of justice belt as it had more Spell hit/ crit and I'd otherwise have no longer been hit capped. Frost mages in raids with good gear can do fine dps (oddly enough in my guild I'm frost and often the top dps. It doesn't matter tho; you play as a team, each fight is different and if there weren't tanks/ healers you'd be dead before you could dps :p) with a water elemental.
I stayed frost since lv 70 as i personally hate fire and have never been denied a place on a raid or asked to respec. IMO I'd rather do slightly less damage and not run out of mana half way through a fight. Saves me the respec for pvp and having to buy mana potions
N
Fire does pwn frost in raids.. probably always will. But that's not to say you have to be fire to raid.. specially in early raids like kara and gruuls. If your in a easy going guild they won't care that much. But if your in a full raid guild then they will probably want you to do the best you can. The 10/48/3 build is pretty popular early on but going somthing like 40/21/0 (like I a'm) is also really good.
And don't come say things like "fire sucks cuz of agro" or " fire uses too much mana" cuz if that's true for you then your playstyle and spell rotation needs some tweaking.
If you want to PvP alot as well as do early raids then by all means go frost or a arcane/frost build. No one should gripe as long as you know what your doing. You don't need to be #1 on the damage meter all the time. But if your guild is trying to always move up in the raiding ranks and your there to help them you should think about changing. You don't want people to have to carry you when you could be doing more for the guild.
And don't come say things like "fire sucks cuz of agro" or " fire uses too much mana" cuz if that's true for you then your playstyle and spell rotation needs some tweaking.
If you want to PvP alot as well as do early raids then by all means go frost or a arcane/frost build. No one should gripe as long as you know what your doing. You don't need to be #1 on the damage meter all the time. But if your guild is trying to always move up in the raiding ranks and your there to help them you should think about changing. You don't want people to have to carry you when you could be doing more for the guild.
DarkHybridX wrote:
Fire does pwn frost in raids.. probably always will.
Frost is gonna give up a fair bit of mana efficiency in exchange for more damage during the next patch. It still won't be as damaging as fire, but it's getting close.
DarkHybridX wrote:
The 10/48/3 build is pretty popular early on but going somthing like 40/21/0 (like I a'm) is also really good.
That's the reverse order of how I'd suggest doing it. 40/21/0 is better early on, but 10/48/3 scales better with damage.
Scholar
17 posts
If your most comfortable at playing frost then by all means do that. You will be more productive playing a toon your most comfortable with. Being #1 on dps should never be anyones goal. I play a fire mage and have to hold back alot. Few tanks can hold aggro for me. On flat out dps of a boss nothing touches a fire mage......... but there have been more times then I could count where the dps earned me a trip to the morgue. No doubt PvP frost rules. I however do have moments when I totally destroy someone due to the excessive dps. In AV raids I am in top three every game. Really play what you enjoy most thats what its all about.
As others have said, it depends on who you are raiding with and where you want to go. In my guild (4/6 SSC 2/4 TK -- hopefully going to increase each of those by at least one this week) you are pretty much required to spec the best damage that you can, I was asked to respec to frost for the Al'ar fight, but for other fights I spec back to fire because I do more damage that way. If we were doing Kara/Gruuls/Mag it wouldn't matter, those fights are a cakewalk, but in fights that last quite a bit longer and where every ounce of DPS counts towards beating an enrage or getting past phases then you damn well better spec the best damage that you can or else you are letting the rest of the raid down.
That is my perspective though coming from a progression guild, take it as you will.
That is my perspective though coming from a progression guild, take it as you will.
11 posts
As a side note on taking tailoring as a must have as a frost mage... the frozen shadowweave stuff is nice... I think even as pve the pvp gladiator gear is better than that though.. especially 3rd season stuff.. I tend to PVP alot so will never go frost... but i also don't have tailoring...
But I think engineering has some nice features in it that combine well.. specifically frost grenades... I believe frost can take down trash mob groups amazingly fast and I often solo parts of some instances just because of the power of shatter/freeze effects like elemental, frost grenades, nova. Add an invulnerability belt and something like gnomish flame turrets... your just rambo on a stick man. Nothing ever lays a hand on you they just stand there frozen while you "ice" em down. I will admit its a bit tricker now that they have screwed up umm.. frostbite i think it is thats not working right.. sometimes mobs are not freezing correctly. Being able to just walk into an instance as frost and solo grind it for Rep or the drops is not something fire can compete with... they might be able to blast 1 or 2 mobs... maybe 3 if they kite well and nova alot and get lucky with impact hits, but kiting a 5-6 mob pull back through the instance solo just isn't gonna happen for them.
But I think engineering has some nice features in it that combine well.. specifically frost grenades... I believe frost can take down trash mob groups amazingly fast and I often solo parts of some instances just because of the power of shatter/freeze effects like elemental, frost grenades, nova. Add an invulnerability belt and something like gnomish flame turrets... your just rambo on a stick man. Nothing ever lays a hand on you they just stand there frozen while you "ice" em down. I will admit its a bit tricker now that they have screwed up umm.. frostbite i think it is thats not working right.. sometimes mobs are not freezing correctly. Being able to just walk into an instance as frost and solo grind it for Rep or the drops is not something fire can compete with... they might be able to blast 1 or 2 mobs... maybe 3 if they kite well and nova alot and get lucky with impact hits, but kiting a 5-6 mob pull back through the instance solo just isn't gonna happen for them.
Quote:
I tend to PVP alot so will never go frost
That's interesting, especially considering that most all the 'top arena mages' are 17/0/44....
Quote:
Quote:
Quote:
I tend to PVP alot so will never go frost
I tend to PVP alot so will never go frost
That's interesting, especially considering that most all the 'top arena mages' are 17/0/44....
Was kinda wondering the same thing. Gotta be a typo, right?
I don't understand people who complain about fire dpm efficiency. With an arc/fire hybrid build, I can spam Scroch like a holy pally spams Flash of Light. The cows come home and go back out before I run out of mana. Never had a fireball build (nor sufficent gear), so I can't speak to that mana efficiency. That said, with Master of Elements and all the crit talents in the fire tree, it can't be THAT bad.
Quote:
I don't understand people who complain about fire dpm efficiency.
There was a post a while back about the efficiency of frost vs fire and I think it ended up mathematically that fire was more efficient (but even if it wasn't it is still at least close in efficiency, which debunks a current rumor/mode of thought).
mana issues depends on how you actually go about doing things.
clearcast gives 10% mana efficientcy. this would give a mana gain if you crit the clearcast spell.
use of mage armor where it matters. I hate to drink while doing trash unless its one of those big pulls which requires lots of CC (SSC, TK...) so I have mage armor up all the time.
I enchant my boots with vitality and my chest with mana regen prime. I would even use mana oil on my wpn. You can use wizard oil though the difference is minimal but the dps gain can out weigh the slight mp5 given.
I eat my mana gem once I exhaust 2k mana. Pot at the next 2k and then back to gem again. If I luck out and go really low, evocate back up. If the mana return is bugging you swap your wpn to a high int wpn (you can enchant major int as well dun forget), and wand with int on it before evocating.
Try to keep your crit rate above 25% without molten armor. The mana return is godly...
clearcast gives 10% mana efficientcy. this would give a mana gain if you crit the clearcast spell.
use of mage armor where it matters. I hate to drink while doing trash unless its one of those big pulls which requires lots of CC (SSC, TK...) so I have mage armor up all the time.
I enchant my boots with vitality and my chest with mana regen prime. I would even use mana oil on my wpn. You can use wizard oil though the difference is minimal but the dps gain can out weigh the slight mp5 given.
I eat my mana gem once I exhaust 2k mana. Pot at the next 2k and then back to gem again. If I luck out and go really low, evocate back up. If the mana return is bugging you swap your wpn to a high int wpn (you can enchant major int as well dun forget), and wand with int on it before evocating.
Try to keep your crit rate above 25% without molten armor. The mana return is godly...
1 post
Instancewise - frost is king. The bosses in instances, even heroics, aren't that hard and its really more about not dying than it is about dealing max damage, so obviously that's a frost mage's niche. With the elemental, frost deals almost the same damage as fire and frozen shadowweave is significantly better than spellfire, in my opinion.
Raidwise- Kara is still like an instance, not so much about damage, but about everyone surviving. Frost is still good, my guild was very happy with me being frost, especially with ice block (to get out out of things like garrote or holy fire and sacrifice) and ice barrier (like being able to heal yourself for 1000). Water elemental is still a nice boost, although the inability to shatter and freeze stuff really hurts a bit. A bunch of frost mages for winter's chill is nice, but so is a bunch of fire mages for scorch.
Past that, once you make frozen shadoweave obsolete, its probably better to go fire.
Raidwise- Kara is still like an instance, not so much about damage, but about everyone surviving. Frost is still good, my guild was very happy with me being frost, especially with ice block (to get out out of things like garrote or holy fire and sacrifice) and ice barrier (like being able to heal yourself for 1000). Water elemental is still a nice boost, although the inability to shatter and freeze stuff really hurts a bit. A bunch of frost mages for winter's chill is nice, but so is a bunch of fire mages for scorch.
Past that, once you make frozen shadoweave obsolete, its probably better to go fire.
ktangent wrote:
Quote:
I don't understand people who complain about fire dpm efficiency.
There was a post a while back about the efficiency of frost vs fire and I think it ended up mathematically that fire was more efficient (but even if it wasn't it is still at least close in efficiency, which debunks a current rumor/mode of thought).
For the heck of it, I threw my current gear into a theorycraft calculator and it says this about Fire vs Frost.
10/48/3
Fireball x8 / Scorch x1 w/MF avg'd
9.16 DPM
10/0/49 +2
Frostbolt + Waterbolt
10.78 DPM
Frost is the winner in DPM by 1.61 DPM(which is a lot). However, let's see what happens when we factor in Icy Veins for the next patch.
10/0/49 +2
Frostbolt w/Waterbolt + IV Avg'd
9.40 DPM
Which means that frost will be slightly ahead while fire is still gonna be ahead a bit on DPS. Then again, this doesn't count in the usage of any frost survival abilities, such as Ice Barrier, which I know I used to use often as a frost mage.
MageQuandary wrote:
Instancewise - frost is king. The bosses in instances, even heroics, aren't that hard and its really more about not dying than it is about dealing max damage, so obviously that's a frost mage's niche. With the elemental, frost deals almost the same damage as fire and frozen shadowweave is significantly better than spellfire, in my opinion.
Raidwise- Kara is still like an instance, not so much about damage, but about everyone surviving. Frost is still good, my guild was very happy with me being frost, especially with ice block (to get out out of things like garrote or holy fire and sacrifice) and ice barrier (like being able to heal yourself for 1000). Water elemental is still a nice boost, although the inability to shatter and freeze stuff really hurts a bit. A bunch of frost mages for winter's chill is nice, but so is a bunch of fire mages for scorch.
Past that, once you make frozen shadoweave obsolete, its probably better to go fire.
Raidwise- Kara is still like an instance, not so much about damage, but about everyone surviving. Frost is still good, my guild was very happy with me being frost, especially with ice block (to get out out of things like garrote or holy fire and sacrifice) and ice barrier (like being able to heal yourself for 1000). Water elemental is still a nice boost, although the inability to shatter and freeze stuff really hurts a bit. A bunch of frost mages for winter's chill is nice, but so is a bunch of fire mages for scorch.
Past that, once you make frozen shadoweave obsolete, its probably better to go fire.
Almost all fights are about not dying, but it just takes a competant player (no matter the spec) to know how to avoid it.
Secondly, how is FSW better than spellfire? the set bonus is terrible (WOO 24 hp after a cast...) the spellfire set bonus gives an increase to spelldmg for a % of your int (quite helpful). The only negative is the lack of stam, but the damage more than makes up for it.
Quote:
Secondly, how is FSW better than spellfire? the set bonus is terrible (WOO 24 hp after a cast...) the spellfire set bonus gives an increase to spelldmg for a % of your int (quite helpful). The only negative is the lack of stam, but the damage more than makes up for it.
QFT. FSW is in no way better than spellfire.
*edit*
As far as mana efficiency goes, as of the next patch with trainable ice block (now we all can block out of holy fire/garrote, etc) and uber mana gems, I think mana is fixed.
Edited, Dec 12th 2007 7:29am by ktangent
Recent Visitors: 73
All times are in CST
Anonymous Guests (73)
- Forums
- World of Warcraft
- Class Discussion
- Going Back To Frost
© 2024 Fanbyte LLC