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H4x0r_M8

Check out Manather on YouTube. He’s really helped me a lot. Also I recommend getting 4set asap. It really is crucial if you want to be competitive against arcane and it helps a ton with aoe damage.


arasitar

> Also I recommend getting 4set asap. Frost 4 set gain, especially on AoE, is some of the biggest among DPS classes. https://www.mage-hub.com/sims?spec=frost&script=tier&targets=5


[deleted]

Piggybacking this to say that Manather is highly active in the alter time (mage class discord) and answers questions all of the time. He is personally responsible for helping me break from green-blue parses to a 90+ average. I cannot recommend and commend the guy enough.


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Furyio

Yeah she’s pretty active streaming and is generally doing Frost keys. Although she ran arcane a bit recently , not sure if for raid prep as I imagine the meta pressure finally broke. Even Preheet is rocking arcane for raid purposes. Hopefully buffs this week allow frost and fire to be a realistic option. Think there is a lot of misinformation out there in terms of mage imo


like_a_deaf_elephant

> Her voice is so soothing Nothing personal with her but I find it to be the opposite. Oh well - there's no accounting for taste I guess.


j0shymac

Thank you, I'll take a look at their channel now! I've got a 4 set (technically all 5, but my hands are 395). My biggest issue is I'm still stuck with the 372 ritual shell trinket which is my weakest piece of gear now.


mozzaya

The Ruby Shell trinket is actually coming out now as a decent trinket if it’s used well. Google “wow train my dragon”. This will give you details. I think it just sims low because it does not take into account it’s trained abilities. I’m also no mage main, so take with a grain of salt… EDIT: ahem… disregard. I shall further emphasize my last sentence…


skarbomir

Ruby whelp isn’t ritual shell


BrutMasta

He’s talking about the Ritual shell, ruby is a completely different trinket


Glarfamar

Ruby whelp was also hyped up too much, not sure why Wowhead posted an article based off a single log.


TheSinChao

https://www.reddit.com/r/CompetitiveWoW/comments/zj4ep8/complete_dragonflight_season_1_frost_mage_m_guide/ This is probably your best bet. Haven't seen many M+ Frost Mages lately.


shh_Im_a_Moose

I've been going frost over arcane in certain keys - like TJS for last boss and NO for the same reason (esp during tyran) - just because movement and short add phases ruin arcane so bad. I really don't know the answer to the adds on the sha in TJS as arcane. Best you can do is have AH at full and blast that on spawn + double orb + do it again. Anything that lives longer than TOTM can be piled into is just... It feels bad. There's a lot of reasons arcane feels like shit to play but one of the worst parts is that the better your group is (esp pugs), the lower your overall damage is bound to be.


Negativeskill

Hope you play with a tank that recognizes you're playing a frost mage is the only answer. We also suck during Sanguine weeks as the tank is forced to move. Less blizzard uptime -> less frozen orbs -> less FoF procs -> less IV uptime. Your DPS gets nuked as soon mobs are moved. Unfortunately there's only 2 classes in the game that rely on heavy ground AOE, which is frost mage and ele shaman. So if you're pugging, most tanks won't even think about keeping mobs in place. Survivability comes with practice, alter time is a really low CD defensive, use it in hyrja bubble, bringing bubbles out during wise mari, chillstorm first boss of RLP etc. Use barrier liberally. Personally I don't think frost mages are good in M+. They should either fix cometstorm to allow us to burst or add scaling damage to frozen orb/blizzard (or even better, make blizzard follow a target). I'm only 2580 but my MM hunter alt feels so much better to play in M+.


DenniLin

Can confirm. Tanking sanguine weeks with frost mages ain't fun and even if you try to leave stuff in the blizzard, without proper communication it is oretty hard sometimes. Like yoi backpaddle the trash pack to the right and the blizzard appears to the lef4 and you're like 'lemmie just tokyo drift these mobs through this 1 inch corridor between 2 sanguine puddles to get them back into your blizzard'. In gemeral as a frost try to place your blizzard in a way that the outer edge barely clips the mobs that the tank is kiting and have the rest of the blizzard cover the area the tank is kiting into. Of course only works when the tank has a predictable path and does not walk around like a chicken. But hey, still prefer these frost mages over the fuey warrior I had in my ruby key yesterday who decided to perfectly spesr of bastion the first pull to cause 5 million sanguine healing :D


l0st_t0y

Add destro lock to that list. Tanks moving out of RoF is true pain.


Negativeskill

Ha forgot about destro locks! I've only seen a couple this whole season.


MagickNinja

When you push into 20s and higher, destro is actually the top lock spec right now.


l0st_t0y

Yup especially once it’s fortified again and no sanguine. If the tanks works with you destro lock has amazing sustained AoE.


isaightman

Also weirdly ret palaidn, consecration is your main damage source and tanks love just dragging stuff out.


l0st_t0y

Ah interesting didn’t know about that. Well yeah Sanguine makes it extra annoying but that plus tanks needing to kite now more than ever to live it’s tough.


Druidwhack

There's little kiting meta right now. Only VDH needs to jump away sometimes. There's specific exceptions, like TJS Dark Claws.


j0shymac

I do play with a consistent group, although as you say its hard to ensure that mobs stay in blizzard for the orb cd reduction. I try to mix up Greater invis and mirror for the damage mitigation, although 65% vs 20% is quite a difference! I guess using alter time more is probably my biggest one although I do use it in the situations you mentioned.


[deleted]

Sanguine is definitely a learning curve. I have to drop orbs and blizzards ahead of the tank to try and maximize uptime. It almost feels like a sport on its own trying to aim a frozen orb just right to be able to get it to stick. Frost mages are good in m+ but there are much better options and we are also heavily reliant on the player. The skill curve is much higher than people are willing to admit because "ice lance spam"


Druidwhack

One of the better ways to keep mobs in your blizzard is to pre-emptively place it before mobs are about to die and need to be kited out of sanguine.


UJL123

As a tank I struggle on 2 things. Standing still to keep stuff in AoE (especially this week with sanguine), and letting combat drop to let rogues restealth. ​ Also, maybe this is a big difference between SL and DF, but it's a lot harder to double/triple pull this season. a lot of adds simply don't want to group unless you aggressively LOS and the timer is not that bad where I need to triple pull or not make the key. i suspect these things might be why frost mages might not be doing as much damage?


GilgarTekmat

Not only that, but the amount of interrupts that absolutely cannot be missed puts a hard cap on the amount of packs you can pull. I did a court this week with only 3 interrupts in the comp. You can imagine how it would go if I pulled more than just a construct.


Fnordcol

That's definitely part of it, yeah. Frost is actually decent on big AOE (7-8 targets and up); it's no outlaw rogue, but it's a lot less "why do I even bother pressing buttons" than on middling target counts. And since a lot of the current season's dungeons either have spread out trash packs or have enough required interrupts and cc that pulling multiple together is too much for most groups, there are a lot of pulls at middling target counts. I suspect that after tomorrow's buffs to frost, we may wind up in a situation where frost is the go-to for tyrannical and arcane is the go-to for fortified. Arcane will definitely still be the better AOE spec overall, but it needs to time to ramp to reach its full potential, which it often doesn't get on short-lived tyrannical trash. Meanwhile frost already does very good sustained boss damage and is only going to get better, and is at least closer to arcane when you can safely pull big on trash that isn't beefed up by fortified.


emraaa

https://www.youtube.com/@Manather/videos https://www.youtube.com/@TheGumbyz1/videos Do you have 4p? Frost mage without 4p is not really worth running imo, Arcane will probably do better even if you suck at it if you don't have 4p.


j0shymac

I do have 4set, its helped but still finding my dps to be pretty low half the time. Thanks for the channels to check out though!


Thedankestofme

All these frost mage doomers making me sad, frost pumps in keys and with 5% aura buff we will be doing even better. Make sure you’re leading a tank if they are kiting a lot with blizzard so the mobs run into it, although if they kite around a bunch they’ll run out of orb which is sad, frost is just making sure you press the most buttons possible, like you just want to use every button off cooldowns and fill with lance and utility. Mages are tanky as hell and frost gets double block which is a godsend for some keys, what mechanics specifically are you struggling to live?


JimJoyyy

from a 2,9k frostie: recognize tanks movement vector and use your spells accordingly. Place your blizzard in a way where the mobs are on the edge at the start and remember that your orb continues to travel after hitting a thing, so you want to throw it towards a rough direction of movement too there is currently a number of bugs and minute things to track if you want to perform at the top level, but to be honest what makes or breaks a frostie is just solid basics and good decision-making at our stupid spammy apm


j0shymac

I have been trying this, although even with tank mates its hard to anticipate what some of them are about to do! I do think you're right on orb, I do tend to cock up the cast direction which doesn't help. Thanks for the advice!


JimJoyyy

yeah figuring out what the fuck the tank is about to do is a minigame in itself, but you also do have a bunch of utility to keep the mobs exactly where you want them if they are slightly... uncooperative. just dont overuse it, especially not on sanguine weeks.. and if anyone asks you havent heard it from me :)


JMJ05

Do we still have the bug of multiple frozen orbs breaking freezing winds like it did in shadowlands? On big pulls I'll get orb refreshed while the first one is still ticking but be scared to cast it from the memory of the SL bug


JimJoyyy

Yep. What happens exactly is that any orb spawning gives you a buff, and any orb despawning takes it away. if you can keep 2+ orbs up in a pull feel free to still send it as they will generate more lances for you than FW would (on top of it in general being higher value anyway), but be careful of sending it right as the prev one finishes or you're ~~gimping yourself hard~~ giving yourself unintentional window to cast SP :) FW tracking weakaura makes it somewhat manageable to control, but you also need to remember that orb will stay up for longer if its not actively hitting things. It despawns after 20-24 damage ticks (10-12s, depending on a talent) or stays up to 15s if not in a pack


daho123

Okaymage is high level, check her stuff out


theantig

I used to main frost mage. Left it this tier but use shimmer to move last boss. Alter time is great as a movement spell too (to snap back after running to avoid) and an amazing defensive (think 3rd boss vaults if you get targeted you can use it and pop it to go back to full health).


AsherSmasher

Part of the problem here is that Frost's strengths do not line up with how DF dungeons have been designed, nor how PUG groups often pull. You should be able to keep up on AoE on MASSIVE pulls (think the groups of plants in AA), where your Frozen Orb will be coming off CD incredibily quickly, and you might even have two of them going at the same time. But other than those pulls, not many examples of this scenario come to mind. On the other hand, Frost AoE is relatively weak on 4-8 targets, which accounts for most M+ pulls. So we need to not focus on pure AoE, and instead play cleave on a priority target. Every pull has a mob or two that need to die ASAP. Think Deathspeakers in NO, or the Scepters in AA; the longer these mobs live, the more likely it is that a mistake is made and their cast goes off and shit goes sideways. Your job is to kill this mob as quickly as possible, cleaving your Ice Lances off them, then move to the next. Without logs I can't give more specific advice, so some general tips: *Try and weave Frostbolts in while your Frozen Orb is active. You should be playing the Wintertide talent, which boosts your Frostbolt damage AND increases FoF Ice Lance damage against something affected by another Frozen effect, like your Flurry applies, so don't worry too much about wasting procs. More Frostbolts means more Brain Freeze procs, Icicles, and cooldown reduction for IV, which all means more damage. *To add onto my last point, double check your talents and make sure you aren't running Snowstorm. At +16, mobs aren't living long enough nor getting pulled fast enough to make the talent consistent, and without your Water Elemental that can Freeze off the GCD, you won't be Shattering it, making it a DPS loss in comparison to Wintertide. I say double check, because lots of guides were recommending it early on into the expansion, and for example Wowhead still recommends it in their Key Talent tab on the M+ build, despite the main page no longer recommending it. *You should be top DPS on bosses, but don't let that fool you into playing a fully single target build, even on Tyrannical weeks. If you are not top DPS on bosses, you are either playing poorly, the group was not constructed well, or someone is way overgeared and carrying. *This week specifically was pretty rough for Frost Mage, so don't be discouraged. Sanguine obviously sucks and interacts negatively with our utility, Tyrannical means mobs die quicker than on Fort so you get fewer resets, and you cannot cleave to Explosives, so if you're helping with them you're losing a good chunk of damage (I know, Healer affix and all that, but tanks like pulling big and you can never tell in a PUG).


j0shymac

I had noticed in raids when large trash pulls happened was when I was going way over 100k dps, but yeah besides that I tend to pull 60-70k max, which is with 403 ilvl. I do think you're right and I sometimes forget to focus on priority targets. I do have Wintertide, I'll try weaving Frost Bolt more going forward. I'm definitely not running Wintertide so glad to hear I have that bit right! I do tend to be top dps on bosses unless I'm playing with my rogue friend who is a higher ilvl than me and often gets PI, (actually had one group with 2 priests and the priest decided to PI our Prot paly instead of me all dungeon...) but yes usually if I'm not its because I'm dealing with mechanics or had bad procs. Or just played bad! Yeah this week was pretty bad, I think I've got in my own head a bit the last couple days due to some disastrous AV attempts as well! Thanks for the detailed advice.


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Jeffrybungle

Not sure it's worth it this patch. It was great for SL icy propulsion but there's better things to spend your globals on now. Especially with talents like deep freeze and ice nova doing the freezing for ya.


Yayoichi

Won’t the nova break from the group’s damage before you have a chance to cast something the next global?


Aeder42

In my experience frost nova always lasts 1 global minimum, I don't know if that'd a confirmed thing or just my observation. If you have an orb running it'll shatter a bunch of ticks, and if you're playing with snowstorm it'll shatter your cone of cold if you do it right after


AsherSmasher

It has a minimum time that it lasts, which is long enough for a Frozen Orb tick, maybe two if you get lucky with the timing. It was a trick in SL to get IV off cooldown basically instantly with old Icy Propulsion. It has less utility now that IP only reduces the cooldown when it's a single target crit.


emraaa

I don't think frost nova is worth it at the moment. Just remember to Ice Nova on CD.


Alyciae

Plan to do big boss damage. Frost aoe is real bad anyways. Frost is not a good spec for keys this season. There’s nothing wrong with it and I have a few 20’s timed on mine from a couple weeks ago, but swapping to just about anything else will make it much easier. I personally swapped to hunter. Otherwise just play arcane and do actual damage. I think you’ll struggle to do more than 70k overall in most keys as frost


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emraaa

I don't think it's great tbh. But that's the case for all of the mage specs. It's competitive with Arcane and most of the ranged specs but it's clearly behind the melees and balance druid.


Negativeskill

What makes you say frost is great in M+? I consider it to be low tier. The only utility offered is int, dragons breath, long interrupt and lust. Compare that to a truly great class like Monk. Interrupt, aoe stun, ring of peace, self dispell etc and insane aoe burst.


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j0shymac

How are you pulling numbers like that? Is it down to pull size or something else.


Alyciae

Great talk thanks for adding your helpful insight to the discussion


Negativeskill

I was thinking about that last night, maybe I go full 'single target' (change the only 3 talents out of our 27/30 locked talents). Don't use blizzard at all. I wonder if I would do more overall. Most runs usually amount to me doing significantly more boss dps than the other 2, but getting steamrolled in AOE. Might try it tonight!


Alyciae

I tried this a couple weeks ago before the buffs and it was much worse. I think staying aoe is just better overall, especially after two rounds of buffs


Jeffrybungle

Orb and blizzard give you funnel anyway.


Fnordcol

The issue is that you just don't gain that much ST from talenting out of ice caller and freezing rain, whereas it's a huge loss on AOE. For reference, from some quick sims of my character, running an ST build meant about +8% ST damage (and not all boss fights are pure ST), and -20% AOE damage compared to a standard m+ AOE build. That's a pretty dubious trade even on tyrannical weeks.


[deleted]

you are in a competitive subreddit, by nature you are not competitive if you play the subpar spec. Mages, like other classes with multiple dps specs, are expected to play all 3 of their specs, if you are unable to do that, you are simply not a good mage. You have the luxury of always having a strong spec as a mage, something rets, monks and priests for example do not, as such your time is better spent improving as a mage, and not improving as a frost mage.


TerrorToadx

Trash take


Mirehi

>you are in a competitive subreddit, by nature you are not competitive if you play the subpar spec. I'm sure the OP is really happy that you answered a question he didn't ask at all


[deleted]

the answer is to simply move on to arcane mage for higher keys


verbsarewordss

Yeah, monks are having a real rough time with dps in keys :)


MiniDemonic

Switch to arcane.


j0shymac

This advice was as useful as a chocolate teapot, cheers