Frost Mage Talents Guide

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Going to The War Within, some of our Class talents received changes, I will note down the most important ones:

• Ice nova and ring of frost on the same row
• Supernova and dragon’s breath on the same row (supernova will see more play most likely since we don't have to be in melee to stop mobs and it deals damage)
• Barrier Diffusion - whenever one of your barriers is removed, reduce its cooldown by 4 seconds(works very well with mass barrier)
• While we still have access to mass barriers cold snap greater invis and all our utility from dragonflight.

As far as the spec talent, frost didn't receive too many changes mostly some talents swapped around however there are 2 talent that are new that i want to speak about:

• Permafrost Lances - Frozen orb increases ice lance damage by 15% for 15 seconds (works amazing with spellslinger)
• Death’s Chill - While icy veins are active, damaging an enemy with frostbolt increases the damage we deal by 1% stack up to 15% (requires a bit of a ramp but works very well with Fractured Frost) so we can stack this talent up quite fast in any cleave situation.

I want to take a moment and discuss about glacial spike vs no glacial spike:

During Beta and the information I have in beta we are still going to play Glacial spike it's around a 9% dps increase for single target and that is just too good of a 1 point talent to spend to pass on and we don’t lose or barely lose any AoE for taking glacial spike.

With Spellslinger, Glacial Spike takes a very low priority in our rotation, which we’re going to discuss more in the next sections.

Hero Talents Changes in Patch 11.1

Frostfire

• Excess Fire now triggers when you cast Meteor or Comet Storm (was reach max stacks of Fire Mastery).
• Frostfire Burst damage increased by 70%.
• Excess Frost now triggers when you consume Excess Fire (was reach max stacks of Frost Mastery) and may stack up to twice. Excess Frost now casts Ice Nova at 200% effectiveness (was 125%).
• The talent locations of Excess Frost, Excess Fire, Isothermic Core, Imbued Warding, and Meltdown have changed.
• Frostfire Bolt will now appropriately consume Overflowing Energy when it critically strikes.

With these changes, frostfire frost is getting some rotational improvements that should somewhat smooth out the rotation of the spec.

Excess frost nova got a pretty big buff to 200% effectiveness which is always welcome to our AoE.

Essentially with the frostfire changes it will be less about tracking which buffs you have regarding excess frost/fire and it’s more reacting to the procs which is what frost is about fundamentally.

Spellslinger:

• Splintering Orbs now generates 5 Splinters for Frost Mages (was 6).
• Frost Splinter damage reduced by 10%.
• Splinterstorm damage reduced by 10%.
• Embedded Frost Splinter damage reduced by 10%.
• Consuming Fingers of Frost or Winter's Chill now generates a Splinter (was Winter's Chill).

Essentially it seems like blizzard is trying to shift the damage away from spellslinger, and towards more of a traditional frost gameplay; instead of the ice lance spam gameplay during spellslinger that can be sometimes repetitive and boring, they are trying to shift the damage into the splinter part of the spec.

Before, you were sometimes drowning with procs that some of them were unavoidable which was unhealthy for the spec and felt as a waste of procs that we cannot use due to the overwhelming amount of procs we were getting previously.

Rotationally, the spec should be played the same; it's mostly the damage that will come from different places.

About Frost Mage Hero Talents

As I mentioned above, frost gained access to 2 new hero talent trees Spellslinger and Frostfire.

In terms of tuning and from beta testing Frostfire is extremely undertune and barely played for the sake of the information i gathered from beta we’re gonna focus mostly on spellslinger which is by far the better choice.

• Splintering Sorcery: when we consume winter’s chill we create a frost splinter that fires at our target for some damage
• Splintering Orbs: Enemies damaged by our frozen orb creates a frost splinter up to 4 splinters while frozen orb is active, also it increases our frozen orb damage by additional 10%
• Controlled instincts: while a target is under the effect of blizzard 30% of the direct damage dealt by a frost splinter is also splashed into nearby enemies, damage reduced after 5 targets
• Augury Abounds: Casting icy veins creates 8 frost splinters immediately. During icy veins whenever we create a frost splinter we have a 100% chance to create another splinter.
• Volatile Magic: whenever an embedded frost splinter is removed it explodes dealing damage to all nearby enemies, also reduced damage after 5 targets.
• Reactive Barrier: Ice barrier can absorb up to 50% more damage based on our missing healthSpell Frost Teachings: direct damage from frost splinters has a small chance to reset the CD of frozen orb and increase all damage dealt by Frozen orb by 20% for 10 seconds (this passive is unbelievably powerful especially on AoE)
• Shifting Shards: Shifting power fires a barrage of 8 Frost splinters at random enemies within 40 yards while we channel shifting power (it cannot pull mobs we are not in combat with so don’t worry about that)
• Splinter Storm: whenever we have 8 or more active frost splinters, we automatically shot Splinter Storm at our target. Shattering all embedded frost splinters dealing the damage they are supposed to do instantly rather than the period time. Splinter’s storm also apply winter’s chill(this is something we have to keep an eye out as frost since we don’t want to overlap flurries while we gain or about to gain a winter’s chill from splinter storm)