For background: I am a shadowlands frost mage that is coming back after skipping dragonflight. Doesn’t seem like our class focuses on extending icy veins anymore nor are we focused at all on brainfreeze anymore.
I am struggling when to use comet storm (during icy veins), and ice lance (outside of icy veins) during the st rotation for a spellslinger Frost Mage. I used a guy named " Javier" youtube video named " Frost Mage The War Within Guide - Season 1 M+ & Raid" as my basis/reference.
The priority for ice veins according to the video is:
- Ice lance ( if target has 2x winters chill) > 2. Flurry (if prior spell was GS or FB) > 3. Frost orb> 4. Ice lance if fingers of frost or 1 stack of winters chill > 5. Comet storm if winters chill is on the target > 6. Shifting power > 7. Glacial Spike ( if we have 5 icicles) > 8. Flurry > 9. Frostbolt if all else is exhausted.
Number 5 during icy veins rotation, comet storm. When the hell would we use comet storm? Ice lance always gets priority over it and will use up/exhaust the winters chill debuff.
Outside of icy veins :
- Flurry (if GS or FB was used prior) > 2. Ice Lance ( if winters chill/or fingers of frost and you have 4 icicles) > 3. Ray of frost 4. Frozen Orb 5. Comet Storm ( if have winters chill) > 6. shifting power > 7. Glacial spike at 5 icicles > 8. Ice lance (if have winters chill or fingers of frost) > 9. Frostbolt
The lack of ice lances is making this feel very unintuitive. Do you really only use ice lance at 4 icicles?
This icy veins rotation doesn’t make sense to me? Why would we comet storm winters chill? I’ve never seen comet storm pop a winters chill. And it’s saying to do that and GCD right before a glacier spike. and why open up with ice lance? Very confused here.
To your last point: You would not really ‘open’ with ice lance in icy veins, it would just get priority over all else if you already have 2x winters chill.
but yes comet storming on a winters chills doesn’t make sense to me either. The priority makes comet-storm a non-factor because you will always have ice lance accessible at 1x or 2x charges of winters chill. I am wondering why even mention it unless I am missing something big.
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I don’t use comet storm but it causes the target to suffer 6% more damage from you and does not consume winters chill. So comet storm>flurry>ILx2 will make come storm benefit from winters chill getting shattered and gives you 6% more damage.
Not shattering Ray of Frost with winters chill feels bad.
Hero talents suppose to no alter your rotation but at least for frost it’s turning the spec into a IL spam, like no more decision making on what spell to shatter with WC buff, all IL😐
Edit: I read the guide on wowhead and things have changed since the last time I read it. Ray can be used with winters chill just not during Icy Veins.
Is ray of frost fun? I spent most of DF refusing to use glacier spike or ROF, I just dedicated my entire rotation to fingers of frost, shatter and winters chill damage with ice lance. But I started using glacier spike and have been enjoying it, have yet to try Ray of frost. I’m worried that it will take what I consider to be a relatively reasonable rotation and make it more complicated.
I have Nymues spindle and Loom awakened fully upgraded and am still using them for high burst, and I’m still wondering about when to replace those and whether or not ray of frost will fit into my kit.
Ray of Frost is okay, but I’d personally never use it with Glacial Spike. I’d use Ray as a replacement for it. The one thing I never liked about Ray is that it has sort of a long cooldown.
Clarifying some stuff as I hopped into frost maging toward the end of DF and had to work through some of the interactions that didn’t make sense.
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Comet Storm with Winter’s Chill. Yep, this is real. Comet Storm will not consume the debuff, but the debuff causes the target to act as though it were frozen, which means Comet Storm gets the Critical Strike bonus chance modifier from “frozen” targets.
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During Icy Veins, almost all of your actions will be Ice Lance. This boils down to it being the most efficient generator of Frost Splinters, which create more Splinterstorms, which create Winter’s Chill, which create Frost Splinters when consumed with Ice Lance… etc. Flurry is used to pad gaps in Winter’s Chill uptime, Frozen Orb gets usage as well due to constant resets from Frost Splinters, Fingers of Frost Generation, etc.
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Extending Icy Veins is still a thing. Thermal Void talent, which works off of… you guessed it, Ice Lance.
Following this thread, as I’ve used my Mage for world content the last two expansions. Love the class, but always felt like I wasn’t using an optimal rotation. Frostbolt > Flurry > Ice Lance (with Glacial Spike and Frozen Orb tossed in) can get kind of boring.
I’d use this mage in dungeons more often, but can’t seem to get my spells off before what I have targeted is dead…