Currently I’m level 113 and there aoe is insane which I’m very happy about but there single target not the best. I’m noticing to do decent single target damage I have to unload most of my abilities with are aoe to get decent single target unless I’m 3-4 icicles then I hit glacial spike. I really love the class but to unload most of my aoe spells to get decent single target dps kinda sucks. Any advice what I can do to get my single target dps up? And what should I focus on for on: crit, haste or mastery? Also the ability where u can do any spell regardless if has a cast time I’m going to assume it’s for glacial spike or other abilities requiring to move a a lot? I want to be able to use this character in raids so any advice would be awesome.
They arent as good as elemental shamans or bm hunters for raids and mythic plus.
Frost Mage is not in a bad place, most guilds would want a mage, and Frost has a few really good fights in BoD, and a few not so good ones, but that happens.
Its really about skill with the big difference between specs. Ele and BM hunter can be better. And they also can be worse. Its always about the player unless you’re doing World First Raiding, then its more about bring the spec, other than that, it doesn’t matter.
Frost does great in Mythic+. Its one of the better ranged classes there, mostly just for how well it can aoe burst a Reaping pack.
Raiding wise you’ll want around 27-33.33% crit, then Haste > Vers > mast.
Mythic + i’m not exactly sure but my raiding secondary stats still do really well so I cant see it being a problem.
Its not the best, but its not terrible. Its a lot better for M+ because you have great burst aoe which shreads reaping. And you are really good in ~2 minute fights.
Crit to 30% (you wont hit that number so just get as much as you want. I notice that around 24% i see a lot of crits with my flurry procs) > Haste > Vers/mastery
The spell i think you are referring to is Ice floes. You can move while casting when you use it. It is really good and it lets you keep Blink, which you can use to break out of roots and stuns, so its good for avoiding some mechanics. Just make sure that if you cast Ice floes while mid cast to wait about .25 seconds before you move because it will cancel the cast if you move to soon.
This isn’t how Frost has geared since Legion, and even then wasn’t a strict rule.
Just sim your gear setups.
No the soft cap of crit being at 33.3% is still very much part of the spec. If it wasn’t, it literally wouldnt be on every frost mage guide.
The softcap on guides tell you when crit becomes the leadt effective stat. Blizzard has done tbier due diligence in making sure you cannot meet the shattercap without hindering yourself. So while yes, having the higher crit is nice, most likey that haste, mastery, or even versatility will produce better numbers. As the guides say, sim yourself.
As far as how Frost Mages are. Mostly does depend on encounter mechanics, but they are fine. Unless you are majorly cutting edge. At that point, they sre there for rhe Int buff on fights where thier niche isn’t present.
Pulled from icey viens, ill go to wowhead and altered time next.
Critical Strike proc effects will skew this. They will cause an effective drop-off as you near 33.34% due to the nature of being Shatter capped for part of the fight, but not all. This issue is why simming gear changes, rather than relying on stat weights, is the best option in all cases.
There is an interesting artifact at play with stat weights because of how SimulationCraft calculates them. This does not impact the simulation, but it does impact things that use your stat weights to estimate gear upgrades, such as Pawn. As you near the Shatter cap, the stat weight will seemingly gradually fall off. This is actually not true. What is happening is that the simulation is checking what happens if you add 238 of a stat, and how much gain per point that would be. As you get closer and closer to cap, the sim will see that as a lower and lower average gain because more of the simulations are run beyond the cap. In reality, the change is sudden, and can be viewed by running a stat graph while near Shatter cap.
All that says is that there is a crit soft cap. It definitely doesn’t say to aim for it, and every guide written by any Mage worth a damn states quite clearly that aiming for the crit softcap is a terrible idea and that you will lose DPS by ignoring other stats.
What you’ve copied and pasted literally tells you to ignore weights and sim your gear, which is exactly what everyone should be doing. It’s a cap and not a goal.
Did i ever say ignore every other stat? No i did not, what i said there was a soft cap of crit and that to smooth your rotation its needed.
I do sim myself quite often, i have multeple sets of gear depending on the encounter, i however see a closed profile for one of you and the other isnt a mage.
Smooth is a poor choice of words. Optimize would be better.
You did just say “stack as much crit as possible without ignoring other stats” before editing it, which is misleading at best. Whether any of us are Mages or not is completely irrelevant to the point that stat weights and stat priorities are worthless beyond the leveling process and should be ignored in favor of comparative profile sims.
No one should be saying “Get crit to 27/24/30%” or whatever arbitrary number an individual player feels is best. No one should be recommending stat weights or priorities in BFA for any of our three specs.
When it comes down to it, Crit at its best isn’t strong enough to stack. At its worst, Crit’s a stat that Frost wants as little of as possible. There’s too many factors whether it’s encounter type, Azerite, talent choice, or available gear to ever recommend specific stat ratios or priorities.
If every guide, i mean Every guide, methods, altered time, noxxic, icey veins, has that abiitrary number that they all are saying has an effect on the spec.
Doesn’t matter what guides do or do not have. IV/Altered Time are the most reputable/correct of the guides listed, and even the IV guide says to ignore it. I’m assuming the reason the IV guide has it is because the guide writers are required to include it by whoever designs the guide’s structure.
Also, the Method guides say things like:
“It’s important to understand these(Stat Weights) are basics and will probably not be the same for you, so please don’t fixate on these and sim your character for a way more accurate result.”
Every single one of the reputable guides recommend against following weights and stat priorities despite their guide structure likely requiring them.
Yikes
Just sim. that 30% is when crit becomes, quite literally, worthless, but if you got to that point you would be sacrificing so much in other stats that your damage would be awful.
Just sim your gear upgrades etc and you’ll get a significantly better idea on what to equip then arbitrary stat weights in guides. BFA has made sure to get rid of all of that.
Literally read the next line after that.
(you wont hit that number so just get as much as you want. I notice that around 24% i see a lot of crits with my flurry procs)
Stop picking and choosing things
The whole point was that anyone who posts any amount of numbers at all is widely misleading anyone who does not understand stat values and assumes there is a specific stat to chase in the game like how there were years and years ago. Sim yourself isn’t just a meme, its the only true way to find out what every character needs.
I’m not sure how giving a second misleading number is the clarification needed for the first.
You don’t avoid the shatter cap, you don’t aim for the shatter cap, and you can reach it if you really tried. Simming yourself is the only correct option, and any crit% numbers given are misleading at best.
My crit is @ 20% my stat weights say to go for mastery vers and haste.