So the past few weeks i am wondering of why is Ventyr better as a frost mage. I mean its great to get BF procs but with the way frost mage is designed atm, we are wasting BF procs with FoF because of RNG.
So i looked up to other covenants and see what they have to offer. Necrolord has a very interesting ability (Deathborne) which tbh was my personal choice when i entered Shadowlands but every mage and website said that venthyr is the best for frost mage. So i picked Venthyr.
But now that i’ve played frost spec for some time, i cant stop thinking how my frost mage would perform as Necrolord.
-----Covenant Abilities------
Deathborne: A casted spell that gives 10% increased spell damage for 20 sec on a 3min CD. Its a flat damage increase, period.
Mirrors of Torment: A spell with 3 charges that gives you BF procs. Sounds awsome, but in reality many times those procs overlaps and BF has only 1 charge. Its too much RNG that there is no way to handle it, resulting on actually losing those procs.
------Soulbind Abilities--------
Emeni on Necrolord has a signature passive ability that has great synergy with Deathborn (covenant ability). While Deathborn is active your primary stat (Intellect/spell damage) is increased by 5% and 2% up to 4 nearby players. For every nearby player affected your primary stat is increased for another 2%. Which makes it a total of 13% intelect buff in best case scenario.
This sums up to 23% damage buff during Deathborne (20 sec) and 13% damage buff for 10 seconds after Deathborne fades.
Nadjia on Ventyr has a signature passive ability that gives you 20% haste for 10 seconds. It is very powerfull for ST fights on a raid since the fight lasts alot so you basicaly get 20% haste every 20 sec for 10 sec.
But in M+ scenarios this is completly RNG and useless most of the times (except boss fights) because you cannot control the Thrill Seeker stacks so you may actually get this 20% haste buff between trash pulls, which makes it completely useless.
So i am wondering and actually asking on what you guys think. Should i give Necrolord a chance? Or is it a waste of time and resources?
PS: My content of prefference is M+. I dont do raids as i dont have the available time for it.
I honestly don’t care what people want me to play, Night Fae all the way 
You do understand that for the content you are running (PvP). Night Fae is the covenant people wants you to play right? 
in 9.0.5 Deathborne get buffed - it will last 25 sec instead 20 sec and give 15% spell dmg instead 5% that could lure some mages to necrolord to try it out.
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Nice to see that Emeni Necro is 3rd on sims. But those sims are for raid i think, aren’t they. I dont do raids atm. I had my thoughts based on M+ runs to which there cannot be any relyfull sim.
Anyway, i’ve already switched from Venthyr to Necrolord last night. I dont have access to my second potency conduit yet as i need to increase my renown, but in terms of short boss fights Deathborne feels really powerfull when used with other CDs. Especially in cleave bosses it give some major dps boost
Even more good news then 
. Btw Deathborne atm gives 10% increased damage, not 5%.
You can set it to one/two/five targets at the top 
No, i mean for raid as in long boss fights etc.
In a M+ you can use Deathborne on trash pulls as well because its on demand. Thrill seeker cannot be controlled on when it will pop. And in M+ boss fights lasts like 2 minutes average. So Thrill Seeker will probably pop 3 times. But since we can use BL and Icy veins back to back, the haste Thrill Seeker will give you is kinda irrelevant because you will have a haste buff for arround 1,5 minute anyway.
In a boss fight with 1,2,3 targets (doesnt really matter) the fight will last so much that The haste buff from Thrill Seeker will ramp up and eventually will make Venthyr a better choice for Raiding. M+ is a totally different gameplay and ramp up on combat buffs values differently according to the time spent on a fight.
Edit: Ofc i might be wrong as i never seen a frost mage playing Necrolord while he was Venthyr before in order to have a better understanding on what is better for M+ content. I guess i will have to wait for a couple of weeks to get access to my second potency conduit so i can see for myself. 
still don’t care play pve too a bit
theres somewhat of a work-around to the procs conflict and it has to do with your rotation (you will still waste a few procs more than likely), on your opener after your precast frostbolt, throw your frozen orb and use its first proc, followed by mirrors of torment cast. During mirrors of torment uptime, depending on the opponent (if its a melee opponent that hits a lot for instance) you should actually stop your frostbolt casts to throw flurry and double icelances. If your opponent is a spellcaster (spellcasts take longer consuming the mirror) you can sorta optimize everything a bit better.
You are also neglecting a lot of things, the passive effects in your soulbind tree are a large part of the reason why Venthyr is so good for frost, the haste bonus helps us generating more procs during icyveins, which in turn helps us extend the icyveins duration with icy propulsion coupled with several other reasons, it doesnt all resume itself just to the covenant ability.
My personal opinion however is that you should just play what you enjoy and have fun playing with. I dont agree with people telling you to go night fae for frost m+ its just not gonna be as good (even if sims suggest a very slight gain for aoe night fae) the bis all around will be venthyr, but just play what you enjoy playing with.
IF you were to play multiple specs (arcane and fire as well) then i’d suggest you to go night fae, since its all in all the best one with all 3 specs in mind.
Is that like 2% overall dps increase?
Actually on a target dummie test fight of 2 minutes i counted somewhere arround 6% damage increase compared to Venthyr. But in that test i was missing my second potency conduit (ice bite) which is kinda important.
Gotta love it when people running mediocre content in whatever area (like not pushing hard M+ keys or raids or gladiator arena) try minmaxing super hard over little percentages rather than play what they like more due to lore, tnmog or just coolness of the soulbinds idk.
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Dps life is hard. Even on mediocre content as you say, you need to be the best in order to survive.
Other than that i dont find anything wrong with trying to minmax over little percentages on your character’s dps. Even a 2% improvement is still considered an improvment.
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I do mediocre content myself and I don’t sweat over minimal dps gains as it doesn’t matter, literally
I beg to differ.
For example, Venthyr vs Necro. In my opinion Venthyr in M+ is less competent than Necrolord simply because Necro’s signature ability is an on demand major dps CD. on the other hand Venthyr’s Mirrrors of Torment is an ability that can be used more often but the damage output significantly less.
So Necrolord is better if you use it on bosses in a mythic+ dungeon because it gives you some major dps increase (aka killing bosses faster) when you actually need it.
Overall , at the end of the dungeon, the difference is not huge (arround 6-8%) but the difference is in what covenant/abilities/powers etc fits better in a content.
In a raid content where the bossfight lasts longer Mirrors of Torment gets more value because it gives you haste more often plus procs of BF where Necrolord will be usefull maybe twice in the whole fight.
This may seem to you like a minimal dps increase, but in reality, it is not. Its knowing what and when to use it.
If pure ST frost, then yes, Venthyr is said to be the go-to. If a multi-spec player, then you can get along with NF since it’s bis for both arcane and fire.
Indeed. And btw, the only thing i dislike so far in shadowlands is the fact that you cannot freely switch covenants.
If covenants were just for cosmetics mounts etc then i would be ok with it. But we are looking into a major dps difference if you pick the “wrong” covenant.
Anyway. Now that i’ve unlocked my second potency conduit i can safely say that in a M+ scenario Necrolord is indeed much better than Venthyr. Also the buffs that Necrolord provides to the group are much better imo.
Dont forget about venthirs mini bl, about really great st increase and burst. 20% haste proc is really often in m+ and 10% of time at solotarget.
Yes i know. I was Venthyr before i switch to Necrolord. But the mini BL of Venthyr is only good for Raid content because in a boss fight you are always in combat so Thrill seeker will actually have alot of uptime.
But in a M+ scenario it can proc at the end of a trash pull and end before the next pull. Also stacks are dropping really fast while you are out of combat. Also in a mythic+ bossfight it will pop twice maybe 3 times in a best case scenario.
Having that in mind, Necrolord is actually better because you can use on demand. You can use it in every bossfight and in aoe trash pulls if you know the boss fight is 3 minutes away.
