I really see no reason to argue about that because more than likely it’s just going to scare you, but if you want to know it’s because the rotation has a lot of complicated hidden garbage all over it - but before I go on it’s important to note that you don’t need to know most of this stuff to get started.
To get started, what you have to know is you want to proc shatters, and shatters are proceed by hitting enemies with affected by Winter’s Chill or who are frozen in place (slow isn’t enough, other roots don’t work) with frost spells like frostbolt, ice lance, and glacial spike. Since frostbolt does paltry damage, make sure to save one flurry charge until you have 4 or 5 icicles so you can frostbolt → flurry → glacial (4 icicles) or glacial → flurry → ice lance 2x (5 icicles). If the enemy mob can be frozen, you can ice nova it instead of using flurry, or you can use your pet nova (freeze) or frost nova or ice nova.
For AoE you’ll get far by waiting for mobs to gather up, going near melee, orb, blizzard, comet storm, ice nova just before it lands, cone of cold, orb, blizzard, comet storm, and then use blizzard and orb whenever available and filling with all the ice lances you get from the orbs being there.
But if you wanna know how it gets more complicated? Here you go:
Things like:
You want to shatter.
That requires enemies to be frozen.
Some mobs are immune to being frozen.
So you must use Winter’s Chill
Flurry applies Winter’s Chill - three times in rapid succession, each time refreshing to 2 stacks. This is important, because it means you get a 3rd shatter if you use it immediately after a cast instead of on its own.
Frostbolt, Ice Lance, and Glacial Spike benefit from it but take a charge from it
Comet Storm, Blizzard, Frozen Orb, and Ray of Frost also benefit from it but do NOT take a charge from it
Therefore, never use Ray or Comet Storm if Winter’s Chill is not on them. Comet Storm is also good in single target (glacial → flurry → comet storm → ice lance → ice lance)
But they all do break roots
Other players can break roots, too - potentially before your spells hit, so try to time it. +
For example having around a 0.3s time where you’re not casting for comet storm → ice nova is quite a common move, but remember not to do that if you have winter’s chill on them
In cases where you must AoE many mobs that can be frozen and one which cannot, use flurry to get winter’s chill on unfreezeable target and ice nova to freeze freezable target so you get shatters on them all
Roots and slows can mess with affixes - especially sanguine, so sometimes hold casts. Conversily, your rampant slowing and rooting is useful on spiteful weeks
You can root mobs with 4 different abilities - Frost Nova, Ice Nova, Freeze, and potentially Cone of Cold (nobody specs this, but it exists). And then there’s the passive Frostbite but nobody picks that either
Cone of Cold also applies Winter’s Chill to all targets - so you can Comet Storm on it, which is very nice as it also resets comet storm (and frozen orb) - but if you ice lance anything while they are falling the winter’s chill goes away and you will not shatter after all
At least one flurry must be used before you use Icy Veins, as Icy Veins immediately generates a charge due to the water elemental that spawns
You cannot apply flurry to someone who is immune to magic due to an anti-magic shield, but you can use the charges if they’re already on the target to deal enough damage to break through the immunity. How does that even work? Heck if I know.
You can continue casting even when you shimmer
If you use Ice Floes when the cast is less than half done, it will be consumed by the end of the cast
If you use Ice Floes when the cast is more than half done, it will not and you have it for another cast
When you Ice Floes, it does not immediately activate - it waits for a roundtrip to the server, which is usually ~200ms. Btw you gotta dodge that swirly still! It feels a little more tight than it should
Splitting Ice cannot split into totems or things like the tree roots in Darkheart Thicket (2nd boss), but you can attack the roots and have Splitting Ice cleave onto the boss.
The rules for when Splitting Ice applies are seriously unintuitive, but you’ll catch it eventually
Splitting Ice checks whether the target it hits is frozen even though the tooltips for the abilities that are split clearly state that it checks your target, not the target the spell hits
Blizzard lowers the cooldown of frozen orb - that’s simple. Make sure you place it where the tank will move all the mobs! This is more tricky than it sounds lol
You cannot benefit from other mages’ winter’s chill, but you can benefit from shattering into their roots.
Frost requires some pretty peculiar macros for pet control much other weirdness
For example, a water elemental doing a waterbolt cast on the target you just attacked may finish it just before your polymorph lands. The waterbolt then lands a splitsecond later, breaking the polymorph
Water Elemental may run off or you may run from it, making it unavailable for casting your freeze
And then there’s a bunch of other stuff but fire suffers this too to the same degree frost does.
Some of these also hit fire, but less. Fire has no pet, the weird rules with splitting ice don’t apply (ignite spreads onto the roots on the tree boss in Darkheart for example), you have to with hardcast pyro less often than you have to glacial, and glacial has almost as long a cast time, and in general you do far more instant casts.
People have a really nasty tendency to think frost is nothing more than an ice lance machine. They have no idea…
BUT - you start simple and you work your way up. Please don’t get scared off by that, it starts off a lot simpler than that:
All I’m saying pick whichever one you like, I guarantee you’ll be able to learn it, but it will take time. If you want something that feels reasonable to learn though, don’t pick arcane. A new build is coming around that focuses a lot on orbs because people are tired of the standard complicated rotation, but for now you’re better off just avoiding all that.
Frost or fire.
Here’s some of my macros so you don’t have to worry about figuring all that out:
Water Elemental summon and control + nova on the same bind:
#showtooltip
/dismount [nopet]
/cast [@pet,dead][nopet]Icy Veins;Freeze
/use [nopet] Balefire Branch
/petfollow
/stopmacro [nomod:alt]
/petpassive
/run PetDismiss()
Replace Balefire Branch with the on-use trinket you use or remove it completely
Hre you can hold down alt to dismiss the pet, say if you need to jump down a cliff just after popping CD’s and don’t want it running around the place and pulling everything along its path
Securely enter Ice Block and only leave it when holding down shift (so you can spam it without concern!)
#showtooltip Ice Block
/cancelaura [mod:shift]Ice Block
/stopmacro [mod:shift]
/cqs
/stopcasting
/cast !Ice Block
If you want to place AoE effects with your cursor instead of having to press them and then use the cursor to place them, here’s how you do that:
#showtooltip
/cast [@cursor] Blizzard
Cast polymorph, making sure your water ele won’t break it - also useful if you want it to come over - it won’t cast poly if you’re moving or casting something els while pressing it:
#showtooltip
/cqs
/cancelaura Ice Block
/petfollow
/use Polymorph(Sheep)
Make sure your water elemental assists you and remembers to cast Water Jet (will do automatically on target it’s on) - also, you’re ready to come out and attack the enemy, so let go of all the immunities that might prevent that
Ele will attack its old target if it exists unless you press ctrl, in which case it will attack yours
#showtooltip
/dismount
/cancelaura ice block
/cancelaura invisibility
/cancelaura slow fall
/petattack [nomod:ctrl,@pettarget,noexists][mod:ctrl][]
/cast [spec:3]Frostbolt
Hopefully you can benefit - let me know if you have any questions. I’ve played both frost and fire to 3k rating. I’m no Manather though - but remember: Take things one step at a time.
