Hi,i want to main frost mage.Which covenant is bis for PVE m+ ? And which legendary ? Ty
Venthyr.
For m+: The one that makes IL explode
For raids: The one that reduces Icy Veins cooldown
I’ll give you my suggestion. I am also focusing on M+ entirely. If you are really interested in M+ follow my advice and don’t make the same mistake i did.
Covenant : Necrolord (Emeni)
Legendary : Freezing Winds
Conduits : Icy Propulsion & Ice Bite
Venthyr is the best covenant for raids. In M+ you need to boost your single target dps and with Necro you get some really powerful burst for bosses or when trash groups needs to die really fast.
Glacial Fragments (the legendary that makes your icelances explode) is good for aoe but in m+ doing meaningful damage to priority targets is much more important than flat aoe damage. Thats why people take fire mages over frost mages, because they can do meaningful aoe damage that can down important mobs in seconds.
Freezing winds Legendary gives you a charge of Fingers of Frost every 2 seconds while frozen orb is active. Which means that you can do amazing cleave damage every 50 seconds in worst case scenario. Blizzard is lowering the CD of frozen orb every time it deals damage so in a trash pull of 4+ you will be able to cast frozen orb (and spam empowered icelances) at least twice before they die.
The damage of each icelance at 219ilvl is arround 10k on your primary target + 60% of that on a secondary target with splitting ice talent. Its THE BEST cleave in the game by a huge margin. And thats without using RoP or Deathborne (Necrolord ability). If you put down Rop + Deathborne your IL damage skyrockets.
At 219ilvl while popping everything my icelances are hitting for arround 15k each on the primary target. Overall on trash pulls of 5+ targets i’m doing 12-16k dps. I’m not telling you these numbers for bragging, they are just to show you how good the spec performs with Freezing Winds + Deathborne.
Another reason why Freezing Winds is better than Glacial Fragments is because you get sooooo many guaranteed crits that your Icy Veins CD goes down from 3 minutes to few seconds and its duration to over a minute depending on how big the tank pulls.
Also using Venthyr with Freezing Winds will make you munch on procs ALOT because frozen orb will give you so many Icelances that you will inevitably munch on pretty much every proc of MoT.
If you really like frost and you really want to learn and surprise people with your dps take my advice. Here is a video of how all of the above i said works.
He is using Venthyr though only because he is also a raider and as i said Venthyr is the best choice for Raiding.
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I started as Kyrian, because of the looks and their ability is not too bad as frost as it increases IL dmg if you use it with a Brain Freeze.
Pelagos soulbind is also good for more endurance/solo content as I had access to both a healing shield and regenerating Ice Block, and an extra healing potion that also dispels harmful dots.
However as I got into higher keys and aimed for KSM, I started to notice, I lack single target damage. Frost is not great at burst, but Mirrors of Torment gives you 3x free Brainfreezes on demand. Also Nadjia gives you a frequent haste procc, which also makes the spec work smoother in any content, as haste is one of our best secondary stats.
The only thing I miss is that I don’t have access to 2x endurance conduits, so I use the Ice Block regen only. The extra potion was also good for survival, but in any instanced pve content, there must be always a healer, so they can save your butt anyway.
I didn’t regret swapping to Venthyr, because in my experience, it gives frost useful things that it misses. The damage portion of my gameplay feels better, I lack only in survival for solo content.
Venthyr is also good for arcane (if you want to try it), you can swap to arcane along with Theotar. He gives mastery buff instead of haste.
Notice for M+ with the suggested legendary (Icebringer):
I never use Mirrors of Torment on trash packs/multiple mobs, because I either cast Blizzard or spam IL while cast Frozen Orb on cd. In practice, it’s inconvenient to find the optimal high health mob that lives long enough for Mirrors, so I use it only on really powerful st mobs or bosses.
You will get better dps on big packs (3+) using IL spam with Blizzard and Frozen Orb (spam IL even w/o Orb). It sounds mongo, but it works, no need for extra buttons.
For raid Legendary, I would use Freezing Winds over Slick Ice. I don’t raid much, but I tried both in practice and Freezing Winds is a winner for me (I also see it used by many in the logs), because it does the same as Mirrors of Torment: gives you and on-demand burst, and because of the instants, you can move freely without losing dps.
Maybe Slick Ice is better on paper, but in practice, I find it more awkward to use than Freezing Winds. Freezing Winds also got a buff in 9.0.5, it gives you FoF in every 2 seconds, instead of every 3.
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MoT and Thrill Seeker is usefull mostly in a raid content while you use slick ice legendary power. The reason thrill seeker is good for raiding is because it cicles as you are constantly in combat.
In a M+ scenario that’s not the case though. Between pulls you will lose stacks really fast which will make the actual buff pop usually at the end of a trash pull.
Also in a M+ you get o much CD reduction on your Icy Veins thats its pretty much a permanent buff.
Icebringer is good in order to look good on the damage meters but the damage itself is just uselless. In a trash pull there are mobs that needs to die asap, icebringer is doing flat damage on all mobs which won’t help your group down that mob fast.
And tbh, as i have both icebringer and freezing winds legendary i can assure you that there is no overall damage difference between icebringer and freezing winds.
I strongly recommend you craft freezing winds and put it on a test. It just works sooooo much better with Thermal Void build.
In a good M+ and higher keys where the difficulty matches your gear (the mobs/bosses don’t die in 30-45 seconds), there is almost permanent/long enough combat. Either fortified or tyrannical week, you can use the haste buff, it works like a second trinket (great for IL spam).
How would it be useless?? There is a big fat meatshield before you: mob packs. Ain’t no damage is useless on them…
Again, I don’t run 18-20+ dungeons (they would bring fire anyway), but at 14-16, mobs don’t die fast enough to make difference. Also you don’t really have the means to “burst” any mobs fast as frost, no matter what you choose.
I have Freezing Winds (as I wrote before, I could try it in raid), and it still stands what I wrote before: it’s a good legendary for raiding/burst damage for 1 or 2 targets. But when you have no Orb, it’s has no use (and you have only Frostbolt to generate FoF - you are gonna spam Frostbolt on an aoe pack?).
Icebringer provides a constant aoe, even when Orb is on cd. Freezing Winds is good for burst, but in a M+, as frost you throw away your funnel damage if you don’t use Icebringer. Don’t even try to excel on st/cleave burst. As frost, you are not that guy. Mirrors can help a bit though.
Btw, I did a gear compare on raidbots and Freezing Winds is 7% behind Icebringer (maybe more, depends on the pulls). Also, why don’t you post on your main, so I can see your key runs/gear setup?
As i said. In raids Venthyr is better and freezing Winds is not that great in ST simply because you have 1 target that your blizzard is hitting so the CD reduction you get on frozen orb is not noticeable.
In M+ freezing winds is the best legendary by far. Not in terms of damage per say, but in terms of meaningful damage. Lets say you have a trash pull that has a priority target and 3-4 extra mobs. Priority target must die asap.
In this case icebringer is useless because you’ll be casting blizzard (flat damage aoe) and then icelances with icebringer (flat damage aoe). Lets say overall you did 300k damage on that pull. That 250k is devided EQUALLY to all 5 targets. 250/5 = 50k on all targets.
With freezing winds that 250k damage is 80% on your targeted (priority) target. In the end both legendaries did the same damage, but freezing winds did that damage in a more meaningful way, aka to the priority target.
Also in bossfights inside a M+ Freezing Winds is MILES ahead than icebringer simply because icebringer brings absolutely nothing to the table.
In my runs i usually end up 1st on damage in every boss.
What are you talking about? Frost with Freezing winds has THE BEST cleave damage in the game by a very huge margin. There is no class in the game that can do more damage than a frost mage in cleave fights. Especially if you use Deathborne the damage is absurd.
Share me your results and i will tell you why you are wrong.
I have a fetih on forums to always post on my favourite character (the oldest one). I play M+ exclusively and i play in the range of +14. I am trying to get my KSM atm.
Here is my other frost mage.
Linked my rio page for your convenience 
Fragments sims way better on 5 targets but in reality it does seem to me freezing winds is better in your average, small pull pug. This week especially with inspiring. Higher keys with better players you can stick to aoe and trust other players to do prio dmg.
This guy gets it. I didn’t want to repeat myself, but this is exactly the case: don’t try to focus prio target as frost, there is no point of it. Boomkin or even a ret does is way better. However when it comes to overall damage (because you finish a dungeon with overall % of trashmobs plus boss hp), frost shines, because of the constant, reliable aoe and funnel damage.
That’s why I never use RoP, it’s inconvenient and awkward to use, especially as frost. It’s a kind of a lie for frost, because it promises a 40% dmg bonus for sure, but you have no other spell or talent to exploit it’s power by stacking it with some other powerful cd as fire or arcane.
Constant, reliable, flat damage is frost about. If you want burst, go fire or arcane. You won’t redeem the world of st/prio burst as frost, as Minnji said, there are other classes/specs to do prio damage - most of them lack in the constant aoe/funnel what frost can provide however.
I have no idea what the logs behind the sim Minnji posted but it is definitely something wrong.
As i have both icebringer and freezing winds i simmed my character on a 5 target dummie with 1 minute duration. Here are the results.
Icebringer
https://www.raidbots.com/simbot/report/ccEPk13Pwa8YYgdyfmFH9g
Freezing Winds
https://www.raidbots.com/simbot/report/24HZNGA6qMunN6y8fS2XE4
The difference is nowhere near the results Minnji posted. And in reality in M+ when tank kites those mobs icebringer loses much more damage than using freezing winds (don’t make me explain why this happens, i believe you already know it).
So in reality the above difference is even less if not zero.
Freezing Winds has some nice burst potency. Its not the best, but its not trash. In the end of the day using whatever covenant, legendary etc is your own choice and both are really good damage wise. I just state the fact that in M+ freezing winds is better for priority targets.
And thats why i use Deathborne. It synergies incredibly with RoP giving me alot of ST burst when i use it on bossfights or when something needs to die in 3 seconds.
The only bad thing is its the very long CD, but if you ask for the tank to post the route he will be following you can plan your CD management arround it and get the best results out of it.
Oh, and last but not least. Since icebringer is bugged in Necrotic Wastes, freezing winds is pretty much your only choice there.
Safest pick would be Night Fae if you’re only gonna play M+
It has the highest aoe output of all covenants and you have the option to play some fire on the side if you like.
However, if you plan not to go higher than 15’s: play any covenant you want.
Short answer: Venthyr + Freezing Winds
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The best advice is - pick whatever you like for the theme - on your casual level it literally doesn’t matter what you play - pick what you like by your guts, not by min maxing
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