The character I used was the pre-made Mage, who had 5/5 Heroic Tier 9, and had all the right gems and enchants. He had 2788 Spell Power, 29.73% Critical Strike Rating, and 500 Haste Rating. That was including [Flask of the Frost Wyrm].

The DPS I was able to produce on Dr. Boom from full health to death? 4002 DPS. Remember that this is only self buffed, without Glyphs, and most importantly, without a Water Elemental. Caught up to Fire or Arcane yet? Not quite there yet, but I’m liking it. I’m still waiting for the [Glyph of Eternal Water] to work on PTR to see how well our Water Elementals do.

Deep Freeze

Deep Freeze was hitting on average for more than a Frostbolt crit. The average hit was for 9,200 damage, and the average crit was around 19,700 damage- with my highest crit at 20,032 damage.

The play style for Frost PvE went from Frostbolt spamming while timing your cooldowns, to a style similar to Fireball Spec- a more reactive play style, but with a pet! Since your pet is permanent this time, you’ll have less cooldowns to manage! There is another difference to the Fireball’s nuke>nuke>big nuke though. Pyroblast doesnt have a cooldown.

Deep Freeze has a 30 second cooldown, which prevents you from taking advantage of the many Fingers of Frost procs you will be getting. There must be a way to fix that…

[Glyph of Deep Freeze], seriously, who needs a 46 yard Deep Freeze? Even in PvP, you won’t be using this Glyph. What if we change it so that it reduces the cooldown on your Deep Freeze by- let’s see… how does 20 seconds sound? Or even 15 seconds. How about, when Deep Freeze deals damage, it refreshes the cooldown on the spell? Just a thought.

Frozen Core

Frozen Core has been reverted back to the current state, removing the Haste buff you get after an Ice Lance crit. This puts an end to having “Shatter Combos” for Frost PvE.

We all pretty much knew this change was not going to remain. It was too powerful for PvP and wasn’t a big enough buff for PvE. Plus we were running into Global Cooldown issues with Frost.

Water Elemental

Like I said earlier, the Glyph isn’t testable on PTR yet, so there is no telling how much and how long our frosty pet can DPS. Hopefully with the next PTR Build, I get to mess around with Squirtle.

Speaking of Squirtle… when we get a permanent pet, will we get to name it?! I call “Squirtle”!

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.

More tweaking and tinkering done by Blizzard, and they have come up with another build, the WotLK Beta Build 9014. This time from a mix from WorldofRaids.com and MMO-Champion.com, I have come up with a revised list of changes from this new beta build. Here is a look at the new changes for our Mage class.

Here is also a link to the new Mage Talent Tree for Build 9014.

Arcane

• Evocation – Cooldown reduced to 5 minutes.
• Sound Effect Spell – Polymorph Penguin and Polymorph Sheep added.
• Missile Barrage – Now affects Arcane Barrage. Now has a 3/6/9/12/20% chance to proc.

Fire

• Empowered Fireball – Renamed Empowered Fire. Now affects Frostfire Bolt.
• Living Bomb – No longer knocks targets into the air.
• Hot Streak – Now works with Fire Blast as well.

Frost

• Deep Freeze – Now does no damage.
• Frost Warding – Moved from Tier 1 to Tier 2
• Frostbite – Moved from Tier 2 to Tier 1

Still no new changes to Arcane Blast yet. It is still at an increase of 200% Mana cost. Looks like Blizzard is trying to make us try out various Spell rotations, instead of having a pre-set one. With the change to Missile Barrage, your rotations will be based on procs, and your own reactions.

For Fire Mages, throwing in a Fire Blast every so often will help out your DPS, especially when it procs Hot Streak, and you get an instant Pyroblast out of it. The loss of a knock up on Living Bomb was a pretty big hit in the PvP game. Living Bomb could have been used strategically to interrupt Spell casting when players get knocked into the air.

Frost Mages also took a hit in the PvP category. The damage on Deep Freeze was decreased in the last build, and now in this build, it has been completely dropped. Although it is still a very good control mechanic for a Frost Mage, we are now lacking even more in the damage department.

Arcane

• Arcane Shielding (Tier 4) now decreases the mana lost per point of damage taken when Mana Shield is active by 17/33%. (Previously was 10/20%)
• Improved Counterspell (Tier 4) now has a 100% chance to silence the target for 2/4 secs. (Previously was a 50/100% chance to silence the target for 4 secs.)
• Torment the Weak (Tier 4) is a new 3 point talent. It increases damage done to slowed targets by 2/4/6%.
• Incanter’s Absorption moved to Tier 7.
• Spell Power moved to Tier 10.

Fire

• Impact (Tier 3) has been changed to give your damaging spells a 4/7/10% chance to stun the target for 2 secs. (Previously was a 5 point talent 2/4/6/8/10% and only worked on fire spells)
• Molten Shields (Tier 4) now includes both Fire Ward and Frost Ward, and now increases chance to reflect the incoming spell by 15/30%. (Previously only worked on Fire Ward and was 10/20%)
• Fiery Payback (Tier 8 ) changed to include all damage, and now increases the cooldown of pyroblast by 2.5/5 secs when below 35% health. (Previously only worked on physical and fire damage, and did not increase cooldown time)
• Firestarter (Tier 9) is now a 2 point talent and was changed to 50/100% chance to make your next Flamestrike instant cast. (Previously was 15/30/45% and a 3 point talent)
• Burnout (Tier 10) has been increased to 10/20/30/40/50% critical damage bonus to all fire spells. (Previously 5/10/15/20/25%)
• Living Bomb (Tier 11) has been completely changed and now the target becomes a Living Bomb, taking 612 Fire damage over 12 seconds.  After 12 seconds or when the spell is dispelled, the target explodes dealing 306 Fire damage to all enemies within 10 yards and knocking all targets up in the air.  This spell can only affect one target at a time.

Frost

• Frost Warding (Tier 1) has been changed and now increases the armor and resistances given by your Frost Armor and Ice Armor spells by 25/50%.  In addition, gives your Frost Ward and Fire Ward a 15/30% chance to negate the warded damage spell and restore mana equal to the damage caused. (Previously was 15/30% increase to resistances)
• Improved Frost Nova (Tier 2) has been replaced with Ice Floes (Was Tier 6) and reduces the cooldown of your Frost Nova, Cone of Cold, Ice Block and Icy Veins spells by 7/14/20%.
• Arctic Reach (Tier 4) now includes the spell Deep Freeze.
• Frost Channeling (Tier 4) now reduces the mana cost of all spells by 4/7/10%. (Previously only affected frost spells and was 5/10/15%)
• Cold as Ice (Tier 6) is a 2 point talent and replaces Ice Floes. It reduces the cooldown of your Cold Snap, Ice Barrier, Deep Freeze and Summon Water Elemental spells by 10/20%. Requires Cold Snap.
• Winter’s Chill (Tier 6) is now a 3 point talent and gives your frost spells a 33/66/100% chance to apply the winter’s chill effect. increases the chance Arcane, Fire and Frost spells will critically hit the target by 2% for 15 seconds. Stacks up to 5 times.
• Shattered Barrier (Tier 7) now gives your Ice Barrier spell a 50/100% chance to freeze all enemies within 10 yds for 8 seconds when it is destroyed. Requires Ice Barrier.
• Empowered Frostbolt (Tier 8 ) changed to a 2 point talent and now increases the damage of your Frostbolt spell by an amount equal to 5/10% of your spell power and increases the critical strike chance by an additional 2/4%.
• Fingers of Frost (Tier 8 ) now works on 2 frost spells. (Previously only affected the first one)
• Improved Water Elemental (Tier 9) changed to restore mana to all party or raid members an amount equal to 1/2/3% of their total mana every 5 secs. (Previously health was restored)
• Deep Freeze (Tier 11) is now Instant Cast. (Previously had a 1.5sec cast time)

Again there is also an upgraded version of the Mage Talent Tree here. It is up to date with the current WotLK 8770 Beta Build.

Thoughts

Finally Arcane Mages get an actual use for Slow. It is a nice boost for PvP, but for PvE, I’m not too sure on how many bosses are affected by Slow. If bosses can be affected by Slow, then this would be a nice boost for Arcane Mages in PvE, though it would cost quite a bit to put up the Slow debuff over and over again.

For Fire Mages, they will get an increase in AoE damage with the change in Firestarter. With a 100% chance to get an instant cast Flamestrike whenever you cast Blast Wave or Dragon’s Breath, that is a lot of potential damage. DB > FS > BW > FS all in less than 6 seconds. Burnout also gets another buff, increasing a Fire Mages damage even more. Also the new Living Bomb design has taken a page out of the book of skills from Baron Geddon in Molten Core.

For Frosties, we get buffs all around. Fingers of Frost, now affects the next two frost spells instead of one. This would up our DPS a lot, pretty much giving us a guaranteed crits on the next two frost spells with Shatter. Improved Water Elemental now returns mana instead of health would be a huge benefit for the entire raid. 3% mana every 5 seconds, for 60 seconds. That would return 36% of your mana if the Water Elemental were to stay alive for the entire duration, and you could Cold Snap and resummon again for another 36%. Deep Freeze being an instant cast is a huge PvP buff, especially with the damage still on it. This makes frost still the spec to be for PvP.

Let’s not forget about the Elementalists out there now, especially with the buffs they are getting in WotLK. Most of all the talents in all three trees now effect all school of Mage magic. I haven’t looked too much into an Elementalist spec yet, but I could see Frostfire Bolt being a very powerful spell given all the right talents. It could have a 10% chance to stun AND 15% chance to freeze the target. And I haven’t even mention the talents further down the trees yet… Too good.