Frost Mage Spec – Frost Mage Build For 3.3
Posted on February 3rd, 2010 by Lawbringer under Alliance, Blood Elf, Build, Dranei, Faster Leveling, Gnome, Heroics, Horde, Human, Instances, Leveling, Mage, PVE, Patch, Raiding, Spec, Tips, Troll, World of Warcraft, WotLKChange Of Pace Build For Mages In Patch 3.3
When all you’ve got is a two button rotation, things can get a little dull. And at least with the build below you can go right from leveling directly to raiding for at least part of the time. You might still want to go arcane on Boss fights, but the frost spec has a little more utility on trash. It’s an idea anyway. I actually keep this frost spec on my mage for doing dailies and just random 1v1 killings. In the long run it’s not going to rival the top DPS builds, but it can keep you from going completely numb in the brain from face-rolling arcane. You can see our Arcane spec here: Arcane Mage Build.
Gearing Example
Frost Mage Gear Early Patch 3.3
Talent Build
Frost Mage Talents For Patch 3.3
Glyphs
Major
Minor
- Your choice – has no impact on DPS so suit yourself
Priorities
- Flask = Frost Wyrm
- Food = Fish Feast
- Water Elemental
- Arcane Brilliance
- Focus Magic
- Counterspell (Spell Interrupt)
- Icy Veins
- Mana Gem
- Speed Potion
- Deep Freeze
- Frostbolt (when Target is frozen)
- Fireball (when Brain Freeze is up)
- Cold Snap
- Mirror Image
- Frostbolt
- Evocation
- Ice Lance (when Target is frozen)
- Fire Blast (when moving)
- Ice Lance (when moving)
Damage Sources
When you are leveling you might drop a few points into Frosbite, Imp. Blizzard and permafrost, but its not really necessary. Once you get the perma pet you blow stuff up so fast that slowing them down is a little bit of overkill. It’s about 1,00 DPS less than arcane, but should have more utility for trash pulls, and more buttons to push on Bosses, although using this for progression kills is hardly recommended. But if you are looking for a change of pace from time to time as an off spec, this frost build is about as Dominating as it gets outside of Arcane.
The thing that I still can’t figure out about arcane vs. frost is that I have no idea how to do AOE as arcane? I’ve tried the blizzard/flamestrike combo (and even the bliz/bliz/bliz/bliz/forever method), but my AOE damage straight up sucks as arcane. When I do random heroics as almost pure frost, however, I do crazy damage with my AOE blizzard on trash and frostbolt/deep freeze on bosses.
Sure, against an individual boss, arcane blast spam + arcane missiles wins any day, but what about the tons of trash mobs that you are missing out on? What about the groups of 4 mobs that you could be nailing 12K dps on?
90% of the time, when you’re doing random heroics, you’re fighting groups of 3 or more mobs, and dropping a blizzard just wreaks havoc compared to frostbolt spam or arcane blast/arcane missile spam on an individual target.
If you’re not speced into the frost tree, however, blizzard doesn’t seem to do crap damage.
Can someone please tell me how the heck people are pulling off 6-10K dps on trash mobs (90% of what you encounter in random heroics)???
Why are all the specs and talent builds I see out there based around either frostbolt/deep freeze or arcane blast/arcane missiles, yet in actual experience, I do the most damage with blizzard spam?
dont spec completely in arcane. go down and get the +hit talents in frost, and get that high up talent that improves the crit of your frost spells/blizzard. read the talent tooltips, it shouldn’t be hard to figure out which ones improve blizzard/frost/flame spells.
Ive seen a lot of arcane mages with a cookie cutter 57/3/11 or 57/0/14. Try things out and see what works for you.
As arc simple rotation for Mobs of 2+ Flamestrike Rank 9 Flamestrike Rank 8 Blizz……pretty sure that hasn’t changed
As far as blizz/flamestrike aoe, you have to remember that your dps is an accumulation of all of the damage ON EACH INDIVIDUAL MOB, so if for each hit your flamestrike does 700 ish damage and your blizzard is doing 1600-2000 per hit PER MOB, then if you have 4 or 5 mobs in the group, you are doing 12-15k or more. If you have popped trinkets, arcane power, icy veins, and your black magic procs, your damage is insane without switching over to the frost tree and back. Imagine what dps you would do in Onyxia on whelps! Thats why on AOE intensive fights, you almost always see a boomkin or mage at the top of the list!
I agree with you. I’m a boomkin that tops every time. My spell damage is out of this world, even on bosses. At lvl 75 now and I’m doing 7k crits on bosses.
You’re right, blizzard in frost rocks for aoe dmg. I always roll frost for 5mans, clear trash fast, and frostbolt spam bosses. I know frostbolt spam isn’t great compared to AB+AM, but we’re not stressing on progressive content. Let’s face it, all we’re doing is farming badges. And the bosses die fast enough.
Back to your original question, for arcane aoe I simply PoM+FS, blizz, blizz, blizz. People don’t really stress about AoE dps. Not folks I roll with anyhow. If your guild does, dual-spec
If your running frost you don’t need Brainfreeze in you spec because you are not going to be casting fireball often enough and by the time it procs your target will already be dead.
I thought blizz did away with allowing you to cast a lower rank spell if you know the higher rank spell…or am I wrong.? If not, the flamestrike rank9, then rank8 would be just the same as casting 2 rank9 spells, which just resets the timer and wastes valuable casting time you could be channeling blizzard. Correct me if I am wrong here please.
my dps improved no end when i spe’cd arcane