A little frost mage pvp guide with Glacial Spike

Classes Mage
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After playing arcane, frost and fire this expansion I decided to go with frost because its suits me best. So Iv made this little guide on how to play it in PvP (BGs/RBGs). For all those guides on web are wrong due to one mistunderstanding/underestimating it.

First of all stats. Keep it in balance, because if you go full crit, you will have very slow casts, you dont want that. So my recommendation is to keep haste somewhere at 8-10%. I play Night Elf which gives 1% crit during the day 1% haste in the night.

Then most important stat is critial strike. Because we are trying to balance it out and get as much from it as possible, try to get 15-16% of crit. With shatter its x1.5 + 50% vs frozen targets.

Mastery ideal is 11% where we get +20% buff dmg on frozen orb. Any more is not worth due to diminishing return and overall mastery aint that great for a frost mage. We also get Icecles. This plays huge deal in frost mage performance in PvP.

Because frost is not as dumb as fire. it is considered by many people frost aint no good. But thats no true if handled well.

15 lvl talents I recommend Lonely Winter for bigger spell hits. Rather important for finishing enemy off after Glacial Spike. (For those who dont like to have a pet around)
25 lvl talents I recomend Ice Floes. 3 charges casting while moving on low cd. Better than shimmer and we keep our blink.
30 lvl talent Incanter’s Flow all the way.
35 lvl talent Frozen Touch, nothing better here really.
40 lvl talents Ring of Frost or Frigid Winds, but I recomend ring with venthyr Door of Shadows. You can jump into enemies, blind them and then a cast ring beneth them.
45 lvl talents Comet Storm - huge part with Glacial spike combo.
50 lvl talent Glacial Spike - now from what I saw and been reading it is considered that Ray of Frost is the way to go, its not.

In order to gain full frost potencial out and have some SERIOUS dmg, Glacial Spike is crucial.

With these talents the idea is the to get 5x Icicles so that Glacial spike can be cast and some procs Brain Freeze/Fingers of Frost. Once 5x Icecles are stored with Fingers of Frost/Brain Freeze, get Ice Floe up, pop your burst trinket (Icy Veins if you use it, but I recommend do not) (Ice Floes up for Glacial spike being casted while moving to make it difficult for your enemy. Also helps with with knock backs. Glacial Spike is a long cast so you dont want it to get interrupted by some knock back, thats what Ice Floes is for. It also protects your spell cast from being interrupted by Alter Time.) and right after you get your spike off, the target is rooted for 4 seconds, best time to pop your Comet Storm which every hit should be crit because of target being frozen from spike.
Right before Coment Storm hits the target, global cooldown should be off and you can hit the target with your instants at the same time with Comet Storm. This should take lot of hp from the enemy, somewhere around 40-60% hp gone. When this happens, you just finish the target with your stored Brain Freeze/Fingers of Frost procs. Or you can keep up the presure with Frozen Orb + instants.
2nd scenario with Comet Storm on cooldown after you spike your target is Frostbolt + Flury/Fingers of Frost proc. Not as sudden as Spike+Coment Storm+instants, but works aswell.
3rd sceneario is get to Spike ready + Flurry rdy. Cast Flurry in order to get Winter’s Chill debuff on a target, pop Ice Floes (to protect your cast from knock backs + being able to cast while moving) start casting Spike into Coment Storm + Fingers or Frost if you got it/Frozen Orb/.

As frostmage you can keep doing this over and over.

Honor talents
Frostbite - This will help to get some “random” damage out. Better to use Ice Lance on it. Before you would get your Frostbolt off, root will be gone. Frostbite is also very useful vs melees, will help you to survive longer. Can with with Deep Shatter and Ice Form.
Ice Form - You also need this. Keep in mind that Ice Form is not just a burst cooldown but a tool cooldown as well. Makes you immune to stuns and knock backs for 15 sec. This play huge part vs melees especialy rogues while defending a base. As frost with Ice Form you will find beating rogues easy, they wont stun you. Same goes for warriors. If you ever defend a base, you will need Ice Form.
Concentrated Coolness - gives you control over Frozen orb, necessary.
Deep Shatter - Instead of Frostbite (losing roots) I recommend using it with Ice Form up or if you’r free of interrupts in a situation, otherwise ur risking interrupt and therefore dmg delay.

If you try this out, you will find Frost aint so bad at all. Its just this broken meta.

1 Like
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Am I getting this right, that you recommend using GS entirely as a freeze generator and not as a burst ability?
You hoard BF procs, you don’t use elem nova or Ice Nova for it, Frostbite duration is not enough to cast GS. In other words – you don’t shatter the GS itself?

What’s the point of this guide then?
GS is quite crappy as a standalone root – it breaks on damage and lasts only 4 sec with 3s cast and a lengthy buildup.

If one makes a guide about GS – normally people expect that GS is a main bursting ability. And it can’t be that unless you play Kyrian.

But if you do, though – that’s when things get interesting:
imgur . com / uREGkrA.png

And then you’re saying that Icicles play a huge deal in PvP, while at the same time suggest keeping mastery as low as 11% – that’s a little contradictory, don’t you think?

In fact mastery boosts icicles MASSIVELY – 11% means one icicles deals around 20% of spellpower. 25% mastery means one icicle deals around 50% of spellpower. And there’s no diminishing, it grows linearly up to at least 1200 mastery (that’s what I personally tested with trinkets and stuff).
50% spellpower doesn’t sound like a lot, but when they are stored in a GS you can double-dip on all possible multiplicative buffs, such as RoP and (more importatntly) 4th stack of Radiant Spark.
Ofc, I’ not saying everyone should boost mastery – other than for Kyrian GS (which is pretty niche build) it’s pretty much useless. But with Kyrian it works wonders.

And last, but not the least:

How come 13k frostbolts (without Radiant Spark) is “not a burst cooldown”? Ah… right, that’s probably because you didn’t include Deepshatter in your PvP talents.

So… yeahh… Man, this “guide” is REALLY weird.

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Last time I read about it, it’s not that RoF is so tremendously good, it’s just that GS makes you even more cast-dependant (Frost already suffers in that way) and Icy Veins can be dispelled (thus extended IV is often useless).

And if you don’t go for a one-shot build, you may as well use Nova instead of Lonely Winter? Gives you two more freezes, quite useful.

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I think you both misunderstood the whole concept of this. This is a guide to Frost mage in PvP - BGs/RBGs. Some may or may not find it useful or likeable.

A guide and thats it. If you dont like it, fine, you dont have to. But frankly this topic is not about what you think. No one really cares about your opinion nor does it matter really. Its a guide, thats where it ends.

Go try it out then make a statement or keep your ideas to yourself. No one forces you to like it.

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We are on a forum, you do realise how weird that sounds here right?

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Yeah, well, THAT part was actually pretty clear, thank you.

It’s not like I said “This guide sucks, period” and that was it, right?
I said “This guide sucks and this is why…” – it’s called a CONSTRUCTIVE CRITICISM, lol.

I think that my points were quite valid and I’d really love to hear an explanation from this guide’s author (yourself).

Because, as with any serious guide (or ANY point of view, really) you should provide a verifiable argumentation. Otherwise it’s all just a trust-based load of crap and I have some serious trust issues.

At the very least answer these two questions:

  1. Why don’t you shatter Glacial Spike in a Glacial-Spike build. That doesn’t make sense.
  2. Why you don’t use Deepshatter (although you have Ice Form and Lonely Winter). That’s just a waste of talents.
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This is a horrible guide and I honestly hope nobody follows this pseudo-advice. The guy above me summed it up well.

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Because I shatter what comes after the Glacial Spike. Maybe the guide does not make it clear enough. Ill try to fix that.
Ice Form is not a burst cooldown but a tool cooldown, wrote it there. Makes you immune against stuns and knockback on 1 min cooldown. Very useful for WPvP and BGs/RBGs - especialy while defending or carrying flag. Without it, frost is weak.

If it was done by Venruki or some else r1, You and others would prays it beyond haven. Its just a guide m8 like any other. It may suit some people and some not.

1 Like
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You hoard Brain Freeze proc in order to use it after Glacial Spike and Comet Storm. Why not just Brain Freeze–>Flurry–>GS–>Comet Storm? What’s the point of keeping BF? Glacial crit does more damage than 2 Ice Lance crits.

And if your main bursting ability is Comet Storm – why do you even need a Glacial? Normal people simply shatter CS with pet nova and Ice Nova. It’s all instant and doesn’t require a build-up.

Again, how come 13k frostbolt crits “is not a burst cooldown”? It’s a HUGE burst cooldown, lol. Sure, stun immunity is a decent bonus, but Ice Form is a burst cooldown in a first place. Especially when now it off-GCD and can be triggered mid-shatter combo with ROP (which you don’t use for some reason).

But it only works that way with Deep Shatter. And Deep Shatter is a mandatory talent for frost mages no matter if you have Ice Form or not… If anything, I’d rather drop concentrated coolness in your build and took Deep Shatter.

Nah, I don’t follow Venruki or other R1 (and if they’d ever come up with crap like this I would still react the same way I did).
Just like yourself, I make my own builds. Except I try them to be non-contradictive and logical. Yours is not logical and generally doesn’t make any sense. And it probably only works for you because you didn’t know any better one.

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From my experience, you just do more damage running thermal void and radiant spark, while pushing out a really high volume of frostbolts.

Glacial is nice for those 35k+ crits, and sniping healers off in RBG, but the problem is, as soon as they have some kind of mitigation, the purpose of the one shot is gone. All it takes is a melee to hit a priest and put focused will on them to ruin it. I only use it in RBG if it’s something like EOTS, and the enemy team isn’t running 2x priests or a shaman.

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as much as his guide may be “bad” by your standards, please give the proper respect to the time the author put writing it and sharing it.

“Its not like i said ‘This guide sucks, period’” But you did. The sarcastic tone in your speech is very clear.
All in all, its a forum and you’re welcome to write whatever you want, but honestly why be a dick about it? just seems pointless.
I for one think the guide isn’t the best, but nonetheless im thankful to the author for the effort he/she put in coming up with something his own way and for sharing his findings with the rest of the community.
Give the author actual constructive criticism, not sarcastic comments.

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But I did, didn’t I? Sorry if it sounded sarcastic, it was not intended to be that way.

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I have made some adjustments after playing with different talents, including pet. My apologies. Yesterday I found out about Winter’s Chill 2x debuff. For some reason I was still stuck with Frostfire bolt. Which makes difference so I edited the guide a little bit.
Deep Shatter is the way to go. I was playing arcane since WoD and simply didnt know about Winter’s Chill. With that Depp Shatter aka 2x Frostbolt after Flurry make more sense.

On topic. The very purpose of this guide is to provide an information.

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I am no PvPer. Quitted PvP a looong time ago but i have a question.

Wouldn’t the following build be the best choice in PvP?

Talents:

Row 1 - Lonely Winter
Row 2 - Ice Flows or Shimmer (personaly i would pick Shimmer because i’m used to it)
Row 3 - Incanter’s Flow (for more flexibility) or RoP (depending on your team’s setup)
Row 4 - Chain reaction
Row 5 - RoF
Row 6 - Freezing Rain
Row 7 - Thermal Void

Covenant: Emeni Necrolord

Potency conduits: Ice Bite + Icy Propulsion.

Legendary : Freezing Winds.

In theory the above build gives you very short and very strong burst windows with 100% instant cast.

As i said i’m not a PvPer so i am probably wrong, but wouldnt that give the edge in arena since you can use “small” bursts with frozen orb every 45 seconds to burn your opponents defensives and then pop everything (IV, Frozen orb, Deathborne + Trinkets) and score a kill?

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Problem was you stated it as fact not opinion op.

If I was going with glacial spike in bgs I’d play splitting ice and probably ebonbolt too for the brain freeze proc. Ebonbolt > glacial > flurry > IL > IL should be enough to snipe off a healer and do some intense cleave at the same time.

Problem with the glacial build is none of the leggos/conduits support it much. With an IL build you can just drop mastery which helps you get your haste and vers up.

Also isn’t ray the go to because you can shatter the whole beam? Or did they fix that?

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You can shatter the whole beam
I don’t think they will fix it, because shatter should work on the next x spell(s)
not only x tick(s) of a channeling ability (but frost shatter is badly designed anyway, comet storm 2 first ticks consume shatter, probably flurry too but it reapplies it so it’s ok, etc.)

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It’s because Ray considered a dot, as well as Orb and Blizzard, but each hit from Flurry and Comet Storm is considered direct damage.
Curiously enough, for Radiant Spark each tick of RoF is considered a direct hit, but Orb and Blizzard do not trigger it at all.

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Thanks for this guide. I am looking to try some frost so ill give it a shot!!

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Ooaft. It’s called constructive criticism based on player experience. If your guide has contradictory information and is highlighted. How about explaining the logic behind it rather than attacking folk.

Unbelievable

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