Frost is awesomeFollow

Just a bit of commentary / observation, ignore if you're looking for something deeper.

So, I leveled mostly as fire, giving frost a little burst mid 60's but hit fire again for heroic viability (no raids for me - I find them stressful).

Now with the leveling bandwagon back in town, I decided to give frost a good run as a bona-fide leveling spec, and I must say, I'm loving it .... I have in the region of 800 spell damage, so it's not amazing by raider's standards, but I'm telling you - it's plenty good for questing.

What prompted me to write this, was something that happened last night ... I was doing the march of giants quest in HF ... which required the downing of a level 70 elite rock giant. So I kill a mob, and FoF procs on my kill shot, I then notice I had Brain freeze up as well.

Some quick thought about how best to utilise the situation, and I pulled out my water ele ... the giant was close by, so I nova'd him with the WE's nova. Then opened with Fire blast ... which crit, but didn't break the nova (FN glyph ftw), then the insta fireball, which also crit (don't you love shatter), and broke the nova.

Then an Icy veins frostbolt/icelance combo to make use of FoF, and almost instantly (ok, about 2-3 seconds in), I had him half health ... I felt godly ... so with me and the WE firing away at will (FoF proc'd again) ... I dropped my first same level elite before he could take any HP off me at all - he got to me, but FN and another shatter combo sorted him out ... DPS for the fight - 2k ... 30k in about 15 secs. I felt more powerful on my mage than I ever have before .. it was intoxicating ... I suddenly felt the whole world opening up to me ... and it was cool.

Just to highlight a difference in style here ... I tried arcane ... with it's promise mobility and insane damage... and I hated it ... I finished every fight at half health and mana. I'm sure I was doing something wrong, but I hated it. Others have raved about Arcane to the extent that they're sure that a nerf is incoming very soon - I don't see it, but hey - that's me.

So, to sum up - Frost, for me, is most definitely the best leveling spec ...

Edited, Nov 24th 2008 3:34pm by robertlofthouse

I found the same with fire - it was awesome ... all I needed was one crit out of 2 attacks and the mob died ...

For regular mobs 1 at a time, I would even say that fire is better ... but I've never been able to solo an elite like that as fire (done it once, and it was an exercise in panic and luck), with frost, if the RNG play ball, it's a breeze, if it doesn't, you're still pretty much ensured a kill.

Was wondering what the thoughts were on an FFB build that favoured frost over fire, specifically for solo / grinding / dailies.

Grats!




What type of build were you thinking? The advantage of the generic 0/51/20ish build is all the crit damage talents you can grab, boosting the crit bonus damage of a FFB to 315%.

I think thats the main thing that makes the spell so viable, is the build that pushes its crit damage so high.

Without those, I wouldn't really cast the spell. It's non crit damage is mediocre, about the same as frostbolts, with a longer casting time.

Edited, Nov 25th 2008 11:45am by mikelolol

Didn't really have a specific build in mind, just a concept really ... my main focus would have been keeping more of the control that frost gives, as well as the (almost) guarantee of a crit with shatter. But you make a good point with one of the main advantages being picking up the crit multipliers from both trees - you need to go deep fire to do that, so a "guaranteed" crit without all the crit multipliers does seem like a bit of a waste.



Yeah, those are the lines I was kinda thinking on ... although clearly FFB would benefit more out of deep fire that deep frost ... It appears that deep frost FFB is really just a frost build with ignite. And that presents a problem, thinking about it ... do you really want you first ignite tick to break your precious frostbite ...

Ah well, come 75, I guess I'll have to give it all a go ... see how it pans out.

I was hoping to find a frost heavy frostfire bolt build, simply because I love the way the spell looks :)

Still not sure if I'll be raiding as frost or fire, but I have plenty of quests left so my Water Elemental is safe for the moment.

In my guild the lead mage is going the traditional 53/18. I'm going with:

http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=oZfVc0RzIhVubhcZhIcckcuzc

That way he never has to waste time with a scorch's since I will always be putting up Winters Chill.

Thanks for that info. Maybe I'll use ffb for frost immune things, since it is prettier and slows things down. Guh @ water elementals.

Edited, Nov 28th 2008 2:23am by Trilliandent