I just came back to WoW about a week or two after 8.3 dropped, after a 3-year break. A real-life friend of mine leads a guild that is on Mythic progression, and I’ve been trying to catch up to some of their main raiders as well as I can. I’ve gotten to run almost all of Heroic, but it’s hard to find a good PUG group at that difficulty level, and by the time I was geared enough to join my guild on runs, they were not running some of the bosses at all. (Still no Ilgy kills. 
)
Now, I feel like I’m still doing pretty well overall. I’ve played Frost Mage since MoP, when it was the best mage spec (barring extremely high ilvl). I parsed 89 on Heroic Skitra and an 82 on Carapace, as well as a 70 on my first Mythic Wrathion last night, but on our most recent Heroic N’Zoth, I did basically as well as I possibly could, with good gear, and got a 58 parse while people in the run (from my guild) were getting 90-95.
At this point, I don’t know what else I can add to do better. Possibly it’s just a better understanding of the fights, but I was cleaving and AoEing tentacles, hitting Psychus + Synapses with cleaving Glacial Spike, etc. I popped all CDs when we heroed, and generally didn’t let things like FO or Icy Veins sit unused for long in any case.
I also seem to be stuck around 78-82 parse on most other fights, actually doing slightly worse the last two weeks than my best runs despite feeling more comfortable on the fights.
How can I still get better? Is it likely a gear issue, such as having the right corruptions? Do I need different essences? Currently, the only corruptions I’m using are IS2 from Heroic Shgla’yos, and a 35 corr +mast on my gloves. I’m not comfortable dealing with the Thing From Beyond yet, but maybe that’s one part of what’s holding me back.
Thoughts? Suggestions? Any more info I can add?
Parsing high as Frost is almost entirely fundamentals and gear. There’s not much you can really do to maximize your rotation to any significant degree, so most of your DPS gains(and losses) will be downtime related. Proper positioning, always casting, using FoF procs and Shimmers to mitigate forced movement, and knowing when to hold for AoE/Cleave is important.
I suggest focusing on preventing cancelled casts and downtime. You’ll gain 7-20% DPS just from that alone for most of your encounters.
2 Likes
I wouldn’t worry too much about parses on N’Zoth. The fight is so high variance due to Psychus. Getting Brainfreeze procs and hitting one or two Glacial Spikes late into the Psychus phase when he’s at max stacks will substantially skew the numbers in your favor. Whereas not getting the proc at the right time or having to move instead of firing off GS toward the end of the phase will have the opposite effect. Another Frost Mage in my guild and I have very similar overall DPS on most fights. Sometimes I’m 20-25k higher than him for N’Zoth and sometimes he’s 20-25k higher than I am. That’s not the case for any other fight in which we are both alive. When we look at the damage differences, it’s almost entirely explained by differences in dmg dealt specifically to Psychus.
Also, although the N’Zoth fight is largely a multi-target encounter, I use a single target setup (gear/essences) because damaging him down quickly during the burn phases is the most important thing.
That being said, my tip for N’Zoth is to just tunnel Psychus and try to time your Glacial Spikes such that they cleave the Synapses, instead of the other way around. Frost isn’t great at killing low-health targets (such as Synapses) quickly, and so I adopted the strategy of spamming Frostbolt/moving while Psychus isn’t in range of a Synapse, then trying time Glacial Spikes for just after Psychus gets to the Synapse. This is definitely fine for the first Psychus phase, and in the Mindgate phase (when groups are split) you can still do it but be careful not to let the stacks fall of Psychus - some of the Synapses need to be targeted, particularly the ones in which Psychus/the tank have to run a long way to get to.
The aforementioned other Mage and I both do this, and although we do less % of our dmg to Synapses than some other DPS, our total damage dealt to Synapses is still at or near the top.
2 Likes
Thanks, guys! Both of these comments were super helpful. I got enough corruption resistance to add a +12% mastery corruption to my existing gear, and between that and your advice, I got my Carapace up from 82 to 90, and my N’Zoth from 58 all the way to 85! Felt a lot better this week. I was able to better manage rotations/CDs, and I also did quite a bit more damage to Psychus by cleaving properly with the synapses.