How does shatter work? Is there any way to freeze a target besides frost nova? Can you even freeze a boss? I have been confused about the frozen target and notice I only really see increased damage with winter’s chill after a flurry proc.
You don’t have to freeze the target to benefit from shatter. You simply have to make your spells treat the mob as if it were frozen. That way your 20% chance to crit gets bumped up to 80%.
Fingers of Frost makes your next Ice Lance treat the mob as if it were frozen. That way you can benefit from both the increased chance to crit and the triple damage Ice Lance deals to frozen targets all without having to actually freeze the target.
As you mentioned, Brain Freeze procs make Flurry apply the Winter’s Chill debuff. The idea behind this is Flurry has a higher velocity than Frostbolt and Glacial Spike. If you precede a BF enhanced Flurry with a Frostbolt, then the first hit from Flurry should reach the mob before Frostbolt. That way both Frostbolt and the subsequent two hits from Flurry will both benefit from the Winter’s Chill debuff for increased chance to crit. After the Flurry you can follow up with two Ice Lances to consume the two charges of Winter’s Chill left by the third hit from Flurry. That nets you a nice combo of hits where most of them benefit from the Shatter passive all without having to freeze the mob in place.
This all assumes you are at least a certain minimum distance from the mob so that Flurry can pass Frostbolt while both are in flight to the target. The same idea applies to Glacial Spike, but substitute in GS in place of Frostbolt.
A recent suggestion I’ve seen others make is, if talented into Ray of Frost, is to replace the second Ice Lance from a Frostbolt–>Flurry–> Ice Lance–> Ice Lance combo with Ray of Frost. That way RoF gets the benefit of Shatter without having to freeze the target. It sounds like RoF is currently pretty weak compared to Thermal Void, but it makes for an interesting possible future option should things change.
The above descriptions are based mostly on how it worked in Legion and BfA with what I’ve read others describe heading into Shadowlands. For a bit it was really messed up on the beta server, but it was thankfully later corrected. Hopefully if I got any of that wrong someone more practiced will correct me.
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ok, awesome, so I have been playing correctly, I thought I was just missing a core part of the loop to make shatter do something. I didnt know the effects from that flurry proc count for activating the shatter passive.
The above answer is very cohesive but these are all your spells that freeze targets incase you were curious
Base
- Frost Nova
- Freeze (from your water elemental)
Talents
- Ice Nova
- Glacial Spike
- Ring of Frost
Treat targets as if they were frozen
These procs are the only thing that will let you utilize Shatter with against anything that cannot be frozen (aka most bosses, elites, etc.)
- Fingers of Frost
- Brain Freeze
PvP talents that can assist
- Frostbite - very useful. All your spells that slow have a 15% chance to freeze your target for 4 seconds. This includes most of your offensive spells (except Ice Lance, and the talents Comet Storm, Glacial Spike, and Edonbolt), and also your defensive Ice Barrier. In other words if something hits you with a melee attack they have a 15% chance to be frozen as long as your barrier is up with this talent selected.
Once targets are frozen via Frostbite, you can then utilize your Shatter on them.