So I’ve been leveling this mage as Arcane and I want to try out the other specs. One of the things I noticed about Frost is some of thw skills do more damage if the target is Frozen but none of the skills say they freeze the target. Am I misunderstanding something here?
You might want to check out the icy-veins frost guide as it will explain most of it. Other than abilities that actually freeze your target, like frost nova, your fingers of frost and flurry procs cause the target to be treated as if they are frozen. There’s some pretty good nuance to the way both can be used optimally so I’d recommend watching a video on YouTube or reading that icy-veins guide for a more in-depth explanation.
Spells that freeze targets: Frost Nova, pet’s Freeze
Talents that freeze targets: Glacial Spike, Ring of Frost, Ice Nova
Procs/Debuffs that treat the target as if it were frozen: Fingers of Frost (buffs Ice Lance), Winter’s Chill (applied by Flurry used via Brain Freeze).
Other options to Freeze targets: in PvP mode, the talent Frostbite allows any spell that chills a target to freeze it
Spells that chill are anything that slows. Example: Frostbolt, Flurry, Frozen Orb, Blizzard, Ice Barrier (if they hit you and it’s up).
Be careful, the Brain Freeze proc just makes Flurry do 50% increased damage and makes it instant. It doesn’t make the spell treat targets as if they’re frozen.
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You’re right, I misspoke. Brain freeze causes your flurry to be instant, the only time you cast said spell, and that applies winter chill which causes the target to be considered frozen.
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I’m also having a hard time understanding this. I read icy veins. It talked about flurry always following Glacial Spike. just so I get this strait.
I’m spamming ice bolt to build up ice cicles. If I get a free proc of flurry I should save it so that I can cast it immediately after my glacial spike GCD end? That makes glacial spike shatter and then I use ice lance to shatter the freeze left over from glacial spike?
If I don’t have a free proc of flurry when I hit 5 cicles, do I sit on my Glacial spike and keep hitting frost bolt until I get a flurry proc? To then do the GS-flurry-ice Lance?
Welcome to the most frustrating part of the spec! In an ideal scenario, you’d always want to get 1 Brain Freeze as you’re building up to 5 icicles. This way, you always have the ability to use Flurry right after Glacial Spike, but at the same time you are not wasting procs via munching since unfortunately you can only hold 1 Brain Freeze at a time.
So to answer your question: if you’re running Edonbolt and it’s ready, you can use the Flurry pre-5 icicles, then Edonbolt to generate another Brain Freeze for your Spike. If you’re not using Edonbolt, then it’s a gamble. Generally not worth it though, just from a probability point of view, but this is the RNG nature of the spec that you always deal with no matter how much you scale.
In Glacial Spike sets, once your Mastery is high enough, you (in MOST cases) ignore Ice Lance, even after Spike > Flurry. It is never a part of your base rotation and should only be used as movement filler when you can’t cast on the move. The rationale is that the GCD is better spent on casting another Frostbolt to generate another icicle so that you can get back up to Spike sooner. Sim yourself to know if you have enough Mastery (default sim setup uses Ice lance after Flurry, but you can remove this condition to see which one is better).
No, fire the Glacial Spike anyway since it’s your main damage dealer on this setup. You’re basically going to “yolo” and hope it crits. It’s still DPS-neutral to fire a Glacial Spike without Brain Freeze flurry if it will land on your target at 5 Incanter’s Flow stacks.
The other alternative you have is to use your pet’s Freeze if the target can be Frozen, or to use your Nova if your target can be frozen and is close to you. This basically applies the same effect that your Brain Freeze Flurry does. If your target cannot be frozen (elites, bosses, etc.) then this won’t work.
This is also where Ice Lance might occasionally come back into your rotation, if you can fire a FoF-Ice Lance at lower stacks of Incanter’s Flow (usually 3) to ensure that Glacial Spike will land at 5 stacks of Incanter’s Flow, it’s actually a minor DPS increase.
^ The above is for single target, though it translates very well to 2 target cleave as well provided you have enough Mastery. At mid/low levels of Mastery it might be worth it to use Ice Lance after Flurry on 2 targets if you have the Splitting Ice talent selected. Again, sim is king to figure this out. However ever since MOTHER started sales of corruption, mages just stack mastery and Ice Lance has completely fallen out of relevant PvE rotations. You’d only have to sim yourself after pre-patch I suppose since the corruptions will be gone.
Good luck!
Thanks for explaining that it makes more sense now. I’m not too concerned about ice lance not being part of the meta rotation rn. I’m more trying to get a feel for how it might play in SL. It sounds like lance is coming back.
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Winter’s chill from flurry, Frost Nova, Pet Freeze or pvp talent frostbite. If the target is frozen it has a significantly higher chance of critting.