Advice for frost (yes I read the stickies)Follow

PM me her armory link and I'll see what I can come up with for you. I warn you that I may be brutally honest and you may need to rewrite it more kindly for her, though.

Sorry, but i need to get in on this. Long time reader, first time poster.
Pold and anobix, your both great. But i'm going to support frost in this arguement.

My spec for frost is 10/0/51.
http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/classes/mage/talents.html?2300050000000000000000000000000000000000000000535320310235010151551

Armory:
http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Ner%27zhul&n=Calencia

i have 145 spell haste last i counted.

*am still fire from za, and a pure raid frost spec could be better, but i like farming skettis in off time, so i get some solo talents. Improved CoC and another point in ice floes i dream about for raiding*
What i do as frost: *this is not aoe exclusive, in fact i prefer single target boss/mobs, better yet spank and tank.*
1000dps minimum
1200dps average
1800 bursted *with heriosm and raid buffed*

Raiding as frost:
WATER ELEMENTAL: Is amazing, get him out as often as you can, but most of all keep him alive. Do not summon him to his death. keeping him alive often times requires moving him, having him follow you to get out of something, or having him stay to be away from you and the raid.

ICY VEINS: Use this with trinkets whenever possible, but imo not worth waiting to have them line up. usualy i open with this, others say stack winters chill first then open with this. but i prefer to open because its that much faster i get to cast it again.

COLDSNAP: Many fights are under the coldsnaps cooldown, so often times i save this for the end burst to get another WE and icyviens, in a looong fight, can be best to pop it right after your first WE and IV so you get it again at the end of the fight for final burst.

ICE BLOCK: Few ways to use this in raid. In trash, save as your Uh oh, i wasn't watching threat button. For boss's has a few roles.
1: Defensivly, To rid of ugly debuffs. Tidewalker i use this for watery graves, and other boss's with ugly debuffs use this and save coldsnap so i can use it again.
2: Offensivly, in fights with no debuffs you can use to save time,healers mana, your own health. VS lurker's spouts, you can just IB before it hits you, then declick it. Otherwise use it to save yourself from damage, Mag's ceiling cave in, Hexlords shadow volleys and such.
ICE BARRIER: Has its place when you play specific roles, i usualy start fights with this on, then drink real quick, but during fights not worth the mana or GCD. In fights like ZA vs hexlord i spam this as often as possible to save healers that much trouble, if timed right on many you can get 2 casts in, saving yourself so much dmg. In fights like Fathom lord, im often on priest interupts, take lots of dmg, i spam this and frost ward as often as possible. Surviving and doing your jobs in those instances is more important than max dps.

Just like imp scorch is a must have debuff for fire mages, winterchill is important as well, and has a much shorter debuff timer i believe. Whenever you are required to be moving during the fight, feel free to splash Ice Lance at boss, does 300-700dmg and restacks the winterchill debuff. or if you gettin in position while fight is going, get those few hits in with icelance so its up by the time you get to your spot. i also splash fireblast often while in movement, mana heavy though.

I've definetly lost myself, phone call during this didn't help. Other than that a lot of it is basic raid skills. always have 3 mana emeralds before a boss fight. use them as soon as you can. I rarely have to evocate or use mana pots. Frost definetly has more burst then fire mages, so watch your threat in begining of fight. Many times im riding right under the tank. Sometimes i just do a few volley's of arcane missle's. other times i just use invis for a few seconds to get some distance again.
I'm a decent mage, and i was right in there with the better geared fire mages of my guild, not im equally geared and i out dps them. One fire mage sometimes rides my heels but i died in that fight, then got a bres :)

moral of the story, frost still has a place in raiding. And when you out dps the fire mages, its like stickin it to the man :)
i'll check back on this post, feel free to ask me any questions, i'd love to help, and i'll take any pot shots as well :) sorry for long post, i hope it helps some.

Thank you all for your assistance ^_^

Woah, never did i mean to imply that you both wouldn't help to the best of your abilities. I simply wanted to offer a supporting frost hand in a fire fire world. Many mages feel fire to be the end all/be all raid spec. I just wanted to offer his wife support that in fact, frost can do competive damage. And has a place in raid content.

"I wasn't going to put-down the abilities of frost raiding, it definitely has it's places, although the potential dps for a fire mage is a good deal higher than that of a frost mage"
-fair enough

And if your wife really needs a moral boost, just have your guild attempt alar, nothing like an immune fire boss to brighten a frostie's day.

I'm currently raiding as frost, my guild is mid-way through SSC and I'm still competitive on the damage meters (normally in the top 3 overall), I don't outgear my fellow dps and they are not slacking (well most of them aren't :P), This is according to webstats aswell, so not just my own little damage meter.

At some point I will respec fire, but that will be when my frost damage stops being competitive. At your level of end-game frost is perfectly viable as a raid spec.

CalenciaBlue gave some very good advice, that's very similar to what I do, but I tend to use cold-snap as soon as I can into the fight, so I get 2x WE and IV at the start and they should both be off cooldown for the end of the fight too.

Without seeing the spec/gear it's hard to give specific suggestions for improvement, but you've possibly already gotten those. SO I'll give some more general suggestions:

1. Make sure she's hit capped
2. Load up on consumables - so pots/flask, wizard oil and food (plus mana pots for if you need them).
3. Get an addon like Quartz or just 'get a feel' for her latency. You can start a spell cast before the bar has finished, quartz gives you a visual bar for when to press your spell button based on your latency (for me I just press it when it's at 75-80% along the cast bar). This lets you get more spells off and so do more damage.
4. Don't forget invisibility if threat is an issue (though I am guilty of this on occasion).

Edit: might also depend on where she is dps terms compared to the rest of the guild. Is it a huge gap, or is she simply bottom of a close spread of scores?

Another thing is it would probably be useful to put a raid up on WoWWebStats, then you can see if her problem lies in raw dps numbers or time spent dpsing and target the issue more closely.



Edited, Mar 25th 2008 7:48am by Tynuv