Gonna Go When the Volcano Blows (10 player)
The Summit of Storm Peaks
Stocking Up
The Twilight Zone (10 player)Frost Specs with the WotLK Beta Talents
Now that Alpha is over, and the Beta Phase has just started, I might as well post up the spec I will most likely take. There hasn’t been a change from what I posted with the Alpha Talents, and the Talents released in Beta, so I pretty much kept the same specs.
PvE Raiding Spec – 10/0/61
10 Points into Arcane:
2/2 Arcane Subtlety will give you 40% reduce threat for when there are AoE situations for Arcane Explosion spamming. 3/3 Arcane Focus for +3% Spell Hit for Arcane spells to ensure your Polymorphs won’t get resisted or break early. 5/5 Arcane Concentration for mana conservation.
61 Points into Frost:
The basic 51 points for a Deep Frost spec with Shatter. 2/2 Winter’s Grasp to give you a 10% chance to make your target be considered “Frozen” for 5 seconds, which will pretty much give you 3 to 4 Frostbolt crits. 3/3 Improved Water Elemental will increase its duration for 15 seconds, and increase its health and mana by 30%. More pet dps will mean more dps for you. 5/5 Chilled to the Bone to increase your Frostbolt and Ice Lance damage by 5%.
PvP Improved Counterspell – 17/0/54
17 Points into Arcane:
1/1 Arcane Fortitude for the extra armor, it is not much, but it helps. 2/2 Magic Attunement for 6 extra yards on your Polymorphs. 2/2 Improved Counterspell for the 4 second silence, which is pretty much the only reason that you are going down the Arcane Tree.
54 Points into Frost:
5/5 Shatter for the Spell Crits and burst damage. 3/3 Frostbite to give you a 15% chance to Freeze your target with your chill effects, which will give you more chances to Shatter. 2/2 Ice Floes to help you keep up Ice Barrier as much as possible, and to use Cone of Cold to keep your opponents slowed. 4/5 Winter’s Chill for Polymorph protection, and for the extra Spell Crit debuff. 5/5 Arctic Winds to increase your damage by 5% and to reduce the chances of your opponent of hitting by 5%. 3/3 Improved Water Elemental to help your pet live longer. 2/2 Winter’s Grasp to make your opponents be “Frozen” more often for more Shatters. 1/1 Deep Freeze will give you a way to stun your target for 5 seconds.
PvP Full Frost – 0/0/71
71 Points into Frost:
For those of you who don’t think it is worth it to use up 17 points just for Improved Counterspell, can dump those points into the Frost Tree. What you gain by giving up Imp CS is: 3/3 Permafrost which will increase your slowing effects by 10% and for 3 seconds longer. 3/3 Frost Channeling to lower the mana cost of all your Frost Spells by 15%. 2/2 Arctic Reach to increase your Frost Spell range by 20%. 3/3 Improved Cone of Cold to increase your Cone of Cold damage by 35%. 3/3 Brain Freeze to reduce the chance of being hit by 15% whenever your target is effected by Frost Nova and Frostbite.
PvE Arcane/Frost – 40/0/31
40 Points into Arcane:
This spec is for Arcane Blast and Frostbolt rotations without the use of Arcane Missles, and without letting the Arcane Blast debuff fall off. Your spell rotation will differ depending on your mana situation (no shadow priest?). 2/2 Magic Attunement for the extra 6 yard range on your Arcane Spells will put you at the same distance as your Frost Spells.
31 Points into Frost:
This spec is built assuming you will have a Deep Frost spec Mage with you to apply Winter’s Chill and Winter’s Grasp for you. When paired up with a Deep Frost Mage, this spec gain a huge boost in dps. Your biggest problem will be mana conservation. If you have a S.Priest and Shaman in your group, you can go with a AB x 10, FrB x 2 rotation. If not you may go with a AB x 5, FrB x 2 rotation. Again you have to adjust your rotation depending on your mana consumption.
My PvE/PvP Mix – 3/0/68
This is probably the spec I will be using when WotLK hits. It will serve its purpose for both PvE and PvP without the need to respec all the time. Only 3 points into Arcane for Polymorph, and the rest into Frost. It has all the essential Frost talents for raiding, and the most important talents for PvP.
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i’m rushing my new mage up to 70 so i can be ready when wrath comes out. your “all-purpose” spec is pretty much what i’d picked out for leveling already; beautiful control and survivability for those long days grinding quests.
even with 4 70s (warrior, hunter, pally, mage) to pick from, when the time comes it’s probably going to be the mage, at least as a second to my tank.
So, is there a good AOE spec mixed in there that I overlooked?
I figure part of my fun of being level 80 will be soloing instances that I couldn’t do at 70. I haven’t tried any of the Outland instances at this point but am pretty good doing the packs in undead Stratholme
Bluehairmage / Valdesta
http://wowgrrl.com
Hmm… an AoE spec for Frost. With the new talents and Improved Blizzard, you can make it so that Blizzard decreases the speed of your target by 85%. That is insanely slow, and would actually be pretty fun in battlegrounds.
It looks like the AoE spec to be would be Fire. The Fire Tree is getting a new AoE spell, plus talents to increase AoE damage.
Still, it is probably safer to go with Frost AoE.
Imp Bliz > Cone of Cold > Frost Nova > distance > repeat
I think the big builds are going to be the specs which prioritize frostfirebolt and an arcane build. Arcane barrage is confusing as to where it fits in the game. But a 0/36/35ish build assuming that the talents with vague terms such as fire spell and frost spell all affect frostfire bolt. Your looking at insane crit % with winters chill and improved scorch both benifiting frostfirebolt as well as playing with fire, fire power, critical mass, artic winds, ice shards, piercing ice, maybe even sacrificing some fire spells to get the new winters grasp to hit frozen targets which trigger the 100% bonus from crits. I think the PVE potential here is extreme. As far as pvp of course Frost will be number 1 with new water Elemental and the new stun.
Who knows what will change by the release.
the only problem with the thefrostfire bolt idea is that it does FIRE damage unless the target is immune to fire THEN it does frost, not both
Frostfire right now is being tested by many players on Beta right now, and there are still questions still being answered. As of right now, when you do damage with Frostfire Bolt, the combat log says, “Frostfire Bolt hits X for Y Frostfire Damage.” It doesn’t specify Frost or Fire.
I’ll keep digging around and let you know what I find whenever I find it.
The first spec is entirely wrong for a raiding frost spec, u will need to imp frost nova and shatter as lets be honest, how many bosses do u expect to freeze? lawl. Remember thrash means nothing so dont even argue that way. U need the spirit and the arcane mediation from the arcane tree to increase your mp5 so u can stack lots of haste to make frost close to viability in raids. The advantage of frost is the mana cost, take advantage of it, u can successfully stack more haste than any other spec without depending on a shaman and spriest to sustain u too much. The mana return from the new WE will be imba as well for ur raid viability and the 15% chance of getting a instant fireball will be a frostmages Windfury (accept with the problem of an added global cooldown). Your pve spec has too much pvp in it to be honest. Im not flaming u or anything, im just suggesting u take advantage in the core strengths of the frost spec and boost them more.
edit to last post, “u will need to remove improved frost nova and shatter”
@ Philip
The reason I have Imp Frost Nova -> Shatter is for Winter’s Grasp (now Fingers of Frost), which gives you a 10% chance to make your target considered “Frozen” which DOES work on bosses. With Shatter, that means you get the +50% chance to get a critical strike.
At end game raiding, you should never have any problems with Mana. With SPriests, and Shamans, Clearcast is more than enough to keep your Mana up for the entire fight. With Evoc and the new Water Elemental, Mana shouldn’t be an issue.
The reason why I didn’t take the instant Fireball is because I don’t think it was worth 3 points for it. If you are that deep into the Frost tree, you won’t have any fire talents for that Fireball to do much. I’d rather cast 3 x Frostbolts in 7.5 seconds, then have a Frostbolt + Fireball -> Frostbolt in 6.5 seconds.