So I’m playing frost on my mage for pve. Trying to make the best of it with basically non-existant resources on the nuances on it.
I know it’s considered only a pvp or dungeon spec for wrath, but I’m still enjoying it and I just can’t stand playing arcane, and fire I generally don’t like until there are higher levels of crit available.
Last night I did my first naxx 10 run. Most bosses went pretty well, but I noticed huge gaps in fingers of frost procs on on patchwerk, sapphiron and kt. (i did malygos last week as well as archavon, and there seemed to be huge gaps in getting fof procs on archavon too) Is there any way to look up if these bosses have higher levels of frost resistance? Is there any way around this? Sapphiron was the worst. I’m pretty sure she was resisting about half of my damage. There was no warlock in the raid for the option of a coe. Not being able to deep freeze the boss every 30-40 seconds drastically reduces my damage output. I also noticed huge variances on my deep freeze crits. ranging from around 11k up to over 21k.
Overall, I actually did competitive dps over the course of the raid. I think overall I was in 3rd to 5th place dps (out of 6 dps) most fights, but I stayed within about 20% of the rest and top dps in the raid, and even came in first place for 1 fight and 2nd for two others.
I get a huge advantage on fights where I actually get fingers of frost procs, and I can open with Icy Veins and use cold snap for two Deep Freezes in a row and a 2nd Icy Veins right off the bat.
Anyone else riding against the current have any advice, tips or tricks for frost mage in a raiding environment?
Will probably be really hard to find someone with solid input here, since the spec is so rare among raiders. I have seen people in the mage discord who are avid Frosties though and who raid with the spec, so maybe check there.
i like how the whole spec works, yes. and while frost bolts do a lot of my damage, there is interplay with brain freeze and fingers of frost procs using ice lance and deep freeze. but that’s not what this post is about. i assumed it was obviously directed at any other frost mages that might share my viewpoint or have any input. not people calling it weird or a meme spec or telling me to respec.
I understand that they provide the magic damage taken debuff, but what I was referring to was mainly the part of CoE that reduces the targets resistances by 165.
Thats basically allready a lot you need to assure: have COE.
Theres a weird hidden mechanic or something active in parts of the game.
I´m also a fan of so called “memespecs”, even more memelike then just playing frostmages, and there seem to be some hidden mechanics regarding spells in weird places, that can be buffered with COE.
I meme specced a hardcast pseude meeleshaman with full elemental gear, and my lightning bolts where always resisted, mostly on crits.
Same never happens anywhere close to that when im playing elemental, even tho there is no deep elemental talent that would explain why that happens.
But coe fixed that somehow.
I asked this question in the mage discord a few days ago and yeah, you need CoE for Sapphiron or your damage is just gonna suck. I believe having CoE more or less brings your damage back to ‘normal’ levels of boss resistance. Or you can gem for spell pen.
I was under the impression that spell pen had no effect on any PVE targets. I’ve tried googling it and looking it up in every way I know how, but I can’t seem to get any uncontested answer, but many say that it just has NO effect on PVE, which doesn’t seem correct, or at least doesn’t seem backed by any clearly stated in game mechanic.
Anyone know if there is a resource anywhere that lists boss statistics like their resistances? If spell pen does work, is there anywhere that would show you how much is needed to make a difference?
The main issue I have is with Patchwerk and Sapphiron. It’s not just the reduced damage, but the fact that I get barely any Fingers of Frost procs. I go stretches of 2 or more minutes without a proc so I have no way to cast Deep Freeze, which regularly crits now for around 22k. And on Sapphiron, even with CoE up, I still only manage around 3k dps, whereas I can usually sustain closer to 4-5k on most fights.
Perhaps an elemental spec giving you frost and fire, or frost and arcane, probably wont be as good as Arcane or Fire respectively, maybe you can combine the styles increasing your dps while maintaining some happiness playing something you enjoy?
Respec to something else. You are hurting your overall raid dps playing frost.
With that said, the key is to know when to ice lance vs frostfire bolt. That’s pretty much the rotation. Frostbolt until fingers of frost procs then ffb or ice lance. Use perma frost on cooldown for the instant damage. I believe it’s a 30 second cooldown.
The opener should look something like pop all cooldowns > perma frost > cold snap > perma frost > then IV during the last 20 seconds of lust.
