I feel comfortable with frost mage but it doesnt show on my parses. I’m not sure what my issue is.
https:// www.warcraftlogs .com/reports/XRv1mTJzxkWCacpw/#fight=12&type=damage-done&source=9
I compared my parse to the frost mage in my group, i managed to cast 5 less glacial spikes and a fair bit less frost bolts, but more ice lances. I did cast blizzard a few times to help reset frozen orb.
Edit: i had to put stupid spaces in my link
GS requires icicles and to get icicles you have to cast frostbolts. He clearly spent way more time casting Frostbolts than you did and it paid off.
The other Frost mage cast the same number of frozen orbs as you did and didn’t cast Blizzard. Is that because he had the azerite trait or is that because in a single target situation Blizzard isn’t worth casting at all?
But his not casting Blizzard doesn’t account for the entire difference in Frostbolts. You cast 10 blizzards when you could have cast 10 Frostbolts which would have given you 2 more GS, but the other Frost mage still cast way more Frostbolts. Speculating here… positioning. He is moving less and this is giving him more time to cast FBs whereas you are running more and casting ice lance while running. More running=less FB’s.
Surprisingly, comet storm doesn’t show in either of your data. Is splitting ice that much stronger? It can be ultra annoying when it misses, but I thought most things in that fight stood relatively still…
If I may ask a follow-up question based on @Tinkerizmo’s response, is it more important to get to 5 icicles for GS or to be using up Fingers of Frost for Ice Lance as you are building?
I’ve thought about just saving Fingers of Frost for times when I know I have to move and just building to five icicles for GS.
With Glacial Spike talent, your icicles don’t fire off with ice lance or when you get to 5 etc… Instead once you get to 5 you can then cast GS and when you cast GS it takes all 5 icicles and makes one big monster Spike and boom chacka lacka baby, you deliver some hurt.
In a pve fight, there isnt any reason to “save” a FoF. You can only have 2 FoF’s and once you get 2, a proc that might have given you a FoF will get discarded. Better to use them when your get them.
If you’re going to hold them, cast ice Lance when you get to 2 FoF so you can get another FoF.
On mythic Grong, adds can be spawned next to each other for splitting ice cleave (not guaranteed). If they do, you would be casting Glacial Spike on demand and disregarding Flurry (still shatter if it’s possible).
If you delay your first orb until adds spawn, all your next orbs should align pretty closely when adds are up.
In regards to holding Ice Lance, only time you will be holding it for movement/cleaving is when you have the gears to do the no IL build.
The single target rotation that for frost that I’ve been doing that I’ve had the best parses with, is literally only casting frostbolt/spike (and ebonbolt and orb obviously). While you are building spikes do not use any procs that you get whatsoever, none. And then after you spike (with the flurry proc ofc) you then spend all of your FoF procs… If you’re using all of your fof procs as soon as they come up it really slows down your dps… Now for 2+ targets with splitting ice, you do use your fof procs as they come up
On Mythic Grong, you get 2 adds, and theres a good chance that they spawn close enough for splitting Ice to be worth it, but sometimes they are just outside of range, and too far, but as far as I know, is even if there’s one time where they spawn beside eachother it out weighs CometStorm
@Yvendria So should I just cast Ice Lance when I need to move or when I can hit 2 targets with SI? while letting the FoF procs sometimes overlap or fall off?
Good to know. Thanks
Yes, spend all procs you have after your spike and then start building spike again. It sometimes feels like you’re wasting procs if you’re just chilling at 2 while building spikes but I found my dps to increase when I hold
I will definitely try that next time. Thank you.
I’m interested to know how that ends up working out for you
Its helping a little bit but its still super weird for me. I looked at my parses tonight on my best kill parse since i made this post. Got a 62 parse tonight, 78 for iLvL. I got more glacial spike casts, and hits than my fellow mage, who does main frost, while I main fire but still. Without Incandescent Sliver I have about 26.51% crit, which I know have more than the other mage by a bit, but he’s geared a little more for M+ than raiding I believe.
I do have a big question as I am running Incanters Flow, should I save my glacial spike for 5 stacks of incanters? or just cast as many GS’ as I can. I do often not pay attention, but if something goes right I can sometimes make it to where I can cast a GS, then by the time I can cast another one I’m gaining stacks and I’m at 3ish so I will have 5 when i finish casting GS. Othertimes it doesn’t work out due to mechanics as it is Mythic after all.
Are you making sure to always use a flurry proc with each spike? I wouldn’t worry too much about silver. While it does sim higher than like every trinket, those sims do assume you have the buff 100% of the time. And incanters flow is purely passive you don’t have to play around it.
If you are running comet storm try to use it on CD, you don’t have to worry about shattering it. I’ve seen plenty of mages not use it on CD, same with ebonbolt. You want to use it on CD instead of holding it forever.
I took a look at your logs and see that you do have 3 flash freeze and similar stats to your other mage (I was looking at jadefire) so maybe just take a look at his replay and see if he did anything slightly different?
Also I notice you’re on mythic, while I’m 0/9 mythic you likely know a little more than me since you have experience with the fights. But those are my two cents
Also, this was 8 days ago when you posted this. How has it been going?
I always use flurry after every spike, like i try my best to do it.
I would like to point out that Grong has 2 bot adds, not 1 on mythic, so it makes splitting ice better than comet, and its always nice to have SI to cleave for jadefire cause you stack them.
I don’t run with Sliver on Grong cause its better for us to stack together for raid healing and then cds. But I do on Jadefire. I normally hold ebonbolt for when I need the flurry proc for a Spike. I really only main frost for those 2 fights, because Fire isn’t great on those, especially when my guild was on prog.
I think my largest issue was the fact i had 3 400 azerite pieces, compared to my fellow mage who has 3 415 azerite with 3 Flash Freeze.
I spend a lot of time trying to make sure I get a GS with 5 stacks of incanters.
Everything I’ve ever heard and read about Incanter’s Flow says its a mistake and a dps loss to try and time things with IF.
When you delay casting a spell to make it line up with IF, that means you’re casting it less frequently and that’s a dps loss right there. Plus you run the very real risk of making a mistake and your cast doesn’t line up and that delay is for no gain.
Edit: To put some hypothetical math on this:
IF’s damage bonus cycles from 4% to 20% in increments of 4% every 10 seconds. On average that’s a 12% dps buff.
Let’s say for example, that you’re only delaying your GS casts by 2 seconds to maximize your damage and you’re timing is perfect and you get the 20% damage buff every time.
But that 2 second delay means that for everything 5 GS’s you cast, someone else not delaying and totally ignoring the timing of IF would be able to cast 6 spikes with a buff
If both your and the non-delayers GS’s did 10,000 damage…
The total damage of your 5 maxed out spikes: 60k.
The total damage of the other guys 6 average buff spikes: 67.2k
My math could be wrong and my implied assumptions could be off… If it is, I would certainly listen to better advice.
Not many people know this but there is actually a thing where if you have enough mastery and haste it is almost better to ignore most of your Fingers of Frost procs on a ST situation and just generate Icicles + Brain Freezes through Frostbolt to faster generate massive GS casts at a much faster rate. Only time where someone might do Fingers of Frost casts are when you are moving. That being said it is really a rng crapshoot and might have either a slight dps increase / loss or a massive dps increase / loss, just depends on your RNG of Brain Freeze procs and whether or not the adds are stacked near eachother to cleave from. With 2 targets you want to make sure to just launch a GS whenever you have it available instead of waiting for a Brain Freeze, if you can guarantee that the splitting ice will hit both targets.
The no IL build just really isn’t worth working twords or running at this point TBH. Most fights aren’t pure ST, and the ones that are you don’t need the (lets be honest here) minor DPS increase to kill it.
Roll with it to try and parse god those 2 ST fights but otherwise, eh, might as well keep with normal frost
I have 3X flash freeze. And go for mastery. I only ice lance for movement or if there are targets to cleave on. My damage has been a lot better now that I’ve stopped using ice lance.
Since i asked the original question, I really only cast Ice lance after I dumb a glacial spike > Flurry > Ice lance > (Maybe another 1 or 2) > Frost bolt > etc. > etc.