The PTR Patch Notes have been updated once again on the WoW website with a few new changes to the upcoming patches. You can view the the full patch notes here. The only reason you are here reading however, is because of the new change to Deep Freeze.

The new change to Deep Freeze is:

Deep Freeze: This spell now deals a large amount of damage to targets permanently immune to stuns.

A PvE buff to a Spell that doesn’t effect the PvP aspect of it! Good job Blizzard!

We have yet to see what this “large amount of damage” is, but it is nice to see that Blizzard is trying to work our Deep Freeze spell into more than just a PvP talent. With this change and the change to Frozen Core, we can see how Frost Mages are going to work in “Shatter Combos” into our Spell Rotations.

PvE Frost Spec – 18/0/53

Ignoring Brain Freeze for now (not until 2pc Tier 10), this is the PvE Spec I came up with that will include Deep Freeze.

So how will we fit Deep Freeze and Ice Lance into our rotations? Whenever Fingers of Frost procs, we have a few seconds to figure out what to cast.

When FoF procs, we should already be in the middle of casting our next Frostbolt. That is fine. There goes one of our charges. The other charge will also be used for another Frostbolt, but right as the cast is about to complete, we will be using one of the “Ghost Charges” for Ice Lance or Deep Freeze.

“Ghost Charges”

For any Veteran Frost Mage, especially if you PvP, you should already familiar with how to do a “Shatter Combo”- essentially getting a Frostbolt and an Ice Lance to land on a Frozen target at the same time.

It is pretty much the same concept for “Ghost Charges”. You are using the 2nd charge from Fingers of Frost, on the 2nd Frostbolt and Ice Lance at the same time.

The problem with using “Ghost Charges” is that any latency issues may cause your Ice Lances to come out too late, and not get the FoF bonus. Any non-Frozen Ice Lances is a total waste of a Global Cooldown, and is a huge DPS loss.

Quartz is a very useful addon that will allow you to adjust your casts depending on the latency you are having. This will help make sure that no Ice Lances goes to waste.

So when FoF procs, you will cast a Frostbolt, then Frostbolt + Deep Freeze. If Deep Freeze is on cooldown, replace with Ice Lance. Deep Freeze has a 30 second cooldown, so you will have try to keep track of that at all times.

Cold Snap?

With the new Glyph of Eternal Water, you no longer have to use your Cold Snap to summon another Water Elemental.

Now you have two other offensive Spells you could possibly use your Cold Snap for: Icy Veins and Deep Freeze. A good time to use your Cold Snap could be during Icy Veins and you just used Deep Freeze on a FoF proc.

This will give you a chance to use back to back Icy Veins, and to bust out another Deep Freeze in a short period of time.

Still Some Questions

We still don’t know how much this “large amount of damage” is, and if it is worth casting. It would have to do at minimum the damage Pyroblast does for Fire Mages when Hot Streak procs. Especially since Deep Freeze has a 30 second cooldown, you should expect it to do MORE damage.

Although Deep Freeze’s stun won’t work on the boss, but will it cause the target to become “Frozen” for 5 seconds too? If so, this would shorten the DPS gap between Frost and the other two DPS Trees.

We still need to consider how much DPS the Water Elemental will be doing too. The mana cost for Waterbolt has been reduced by 80% to ensure that the Water Elemental won’t go OOM too quickly. But is that enough to last a long fight?

Deep Freeze hasn’t been changed yet, and the Glyph of Eternal Water is available yet on the PTR, so there isn’t any testing on them yet. Hopefully we can see these changes soon in the next PTR build so we can see if these changes are worth it.

Related Posts:

• PTR Patch 3.3 Testing: 20k Deep Freezes
• PTR Patch 3.3 – Fingers of Frost Change
• PTR Patch 3.3 – Permanent Water Elemental
• PTR Patch 3.1.0 – New Mage Glyphs
• PTR Patch 3.2 – Frost Mages Get Mortal Strike and More Haste