I’m Baaaack!

After falling off the face of Azeroth, I have returned. After the holidays (hope everyone had a good one!), my schedule has been changed around quite a bit, and it has taken me a bit of time to get used to it. I now have a bit less WoW time (which sadly also includes raiding), and blogging time, but I’ve been trying to adjust my schedule around to try to get a bit of both in.

I hadn’t signed on into WoW for about 3 weeks, and it felt good to be in Azeroth again. Sucks that one of the things I signed on to do was to tell the Guild Leader that I was going to be unable to make pretty much 66% of the raids for a bit. So I’ve been doing 10 and 25 mans with a few friends on the server, or PUGing them if everyone is already saved. I don’t do them unless I know the guild has already cleared that raid for the week, so I don’t get saved into an raid, and happen to free up a raid night.

Now for the main topic… yep, I are Frostfire spec!

Krizzlybear saw this coming a month ago, and Grainger has already caught me red-handed (well reddish blue-handed). It wasn’t a sudden change, I actually was planning on going Frostfire before Wrath was even released. It was decided back during the Wrath Beta when I got to play around with all the new specs.

There were a few guidelines I had to meet before making the switch though:

• High enough Critical Strike Rating
• Four Piece Frostfire Set
• A Raiding barrier to overcome

Frostfire bolts were hitting for lower than my Frostbolts, but the critical strikes were a lot higher. I gave myself the minimum of 25% Spell Critical Strike Rating before making the switch. At 25% Spell Critical Strike Rating, it gave Frostfire bolt a 34% Critical Strike Rating with talents.

Next was the 4 Piece T7 bonus. The set bonus gave our offensive Spells a 5% increase to our Spell Critical Strike damage. After getting 3 Pieces of the Valorous Frostfire set, I went and bought the [Heroes' Frostfire Robe] for 80 x [Emblem of Heroism]. My old robes were better, but the 4 Piece bonus and Spell Hit more than makes up for the 14 Spell Damage and Spell Haste that I lost.

Last was a raiding reason to make the switch. After clearing all of the current raiding content, what else could there be? Heroic: You Don’t Have An Eternity. To achieve that, you would need to kill Malygos in less than 5 minutes. A fight where every bit of DPS will help, this is when I decided to make the switch.

Frostfire Impressions

Frostfire is a very good Raiding spec, IF you have the Spell Crit to support it. While I was Deep Frost, I was sitting around 55% Spell Crit Rate with Frostbolt in raids. Frostfire is around 40% with the same gear in a raid setting. Those are my percentages when I was around 25-26% Spell Critical Strike Rating. I’m sure there are a lot of players who made the switch earlier, but I think you should have over 20% to get any good results from Frostfire.

Anything else, it is no fun. If you are hiding in the back, and are left alone, sure you can do some massive amounts of killing on the battlefield, but if an enemy even looks at you, you’re pretty much done. The survivability of Deep Frost is something I really really miss. The control and burst damage of Frost is another thing I miss.

Despite how much more damage I can do as Frostfire now, I really hate doing Heroics now as this spec. Especially during AoE pulls. I really miss having my awesome overpowered Blizzards, and how much safer it was AoEing as Deep Frost.

Will I go back to Frost?

Heck yes! In fact, when that achievement is done, I will make the switch back. When new raiding content is released which will call on Frostfire again, I will make the switch back, but Deep Frost is what I enjoy the most. You are playing this game for enjoyment aren’t you?

Related Posts:

• PTR Patch 3.1.0 – Newest Build Give Mages Buffs
• PTR Patch 3.1.0 – Set Bonuses and Crit Nerfs
• PTR Patch 3.2 – Frost Mages Get Mortal Strike and More Haste
• My Dual Specs
• Mage Guide to Ignite