Frost Mage DPS Rotation, Cooldowns, and Abilities — Midnight (12.0.1)

Single-Target Opener

1. Pre-cast Blizzard at 2 seconds on the countdown.
2. Cast Flurry to start the cooldown.
3. Activate Time Warp if popping on pull.
4. Cast Glacial Spike.
5. Cast Flurry again.
6. Cast Ray of Frost.
7. Cast Frozen Orb.
8. Follow your normal priority, as indicated below.

• Cast Flurry.
• Cast Flurry if Thermal Void is not already active and you have Brain Freeze.
• Cast Frozen Orb.
• Cast Glacial Spike when available.
• Cast Comet Storm.
• Cast Ice Lance at 10 or more stacks of Freezing, or if Fingers of Frost is active.
• Cast Flurry if you have a charge available but no Brain Freeze.
• Cast Ray of Frost.
• Cast Frostfire Bolt.

This works out to functionally "get everything on cooldown" and try to incidentally optimize around Thermal Void in an entirely passive way. The gameplay loop is very simple once you get a feel for it.

Frost likes to continue to single target even on 2 target cleave, the AoE rotation does not take over until 3 or more.

AoE Opener

1. Pre-cast Blizzard at 2 seconds on the countdown.
2. Cast Flurry to start the cooldown.
3. Activate Time Warp if popping on pull.
4. Cast Glacial Spike.
5. Cast Flurry again.
6. Cast Ray of Frost.
7. Cast Frozen Orb.
8. Cast Comet Storm.
9. Follow your normal priority, as indicated below.

• Cast Blizzard if Freezing Rain is active.
• Cast Flurry with Brain Freeze.
• Cast Flurry with Brain Freeze if Thermal Void is not already active.
• Cast Frozen Orb.
• Cast Glacial Spike.
• Cast Comet Storm.
• Cast Blizzard.
• Cast Ice Lance if Fingers of Frost is active or you have 10 or more Freezing on the target.
• Cast Flurry if you have a charge available but no Brain Freeze.
• Cast Frostfire Bolt if you have Frostfire Empowerment active.
• Cast Ray of Frost.
• Cast Frostfire Bolt.

Cone of Frost is currently undertuned, and not worth casting for Frostfire. You should instead try to proc Frostfire Empowerment using the rest of the kit.

1. Pre-cast Glacial Spike at 1 second on the countdown. - Click for Notes

   • You want this to finish casting after combat has begun, so if it procs Brain Freeze the following Flurry's Thermal Void is not lost on combat start.
2. Cast Flurry to start the cooldown.
3. Cast Frozen Orb.
4. Cast Ray of Frost.
5. Follow your normal priority, as indicated below.

Single-Target Priority

• Cast Comet Storm.
• Cast Flurry with Brain Freeze.
• Cast Flurry with Brain Freeze if Thermal Void is not already active.
• Cast Ice Lance if you have two Fingers of Frost.
• Cast Frozen Orb.
• Cast Glacial Spike when available.
• Cast Ice Lance whenever you are at or above 6 Freezing on target, or you have Fingers of Frost.
• Cast Flurry.
• Cast Ray of Frost.
• Cast Frostbolt.

This works out to functionally "get everything on cooldown". Thermal Void is something you ignore when deciding to Ice Lance, and simply hope that it consumes more than 6 stacks. The gameplay loop is very simple once you get a feel for it.

Frost likes to continue to single target even on 2 target cleave, the AoE rotation does not take over until 3 or more.

AoE Opener

1. Cast Blizzard.
2. Cast Flurry.
3. Cast Frozen Orb.
4. Cast Ray of Frost.
5. Follow your normal priority, as indicated below.

• Cast Comet Storm.
• Cast Blizzard if Freezing Rain is active.
• Cast Flurry with Brain Freeze.
• Cast Flurry with Brain Freeze if Thermal Void is not already active.
• Cast Ice Lance if you have two Fingers of Frost.
• Cast Frozen Orb.
• Cast Glacial Spike when available.
• Cast Ice Lance whenever you are above 6 Freezing on target, or you have Fingers of Frost.
• Cast Ice Nova.
• Cast Cone of Cold.
• Cast Flurry.
• Cast Ray of Frost.
• Cast Blizzard if you are fighting 7 or more enemies.
• Cast Frostbolt.

Non-instant Blizzard is fairly weak when compared to continuing to generate Splinters, which will reduce the cooldown of Frozen Orb, which is both a massive AoE increase and the proc for instant cast Blizzard.

Freezing is a debuff stacked on the target by most of your spells. This can be triggered by Ice Lance, Comet Storm, and Glacial Spike when talented into Glacial Shatter. This will trigger Shatter, dealing damage to the target and a lesser amount to targets nearby based on how many stacks were consumed by the spell. Additionally, this AoE component will fire if the target dies, via Winter's End, dealing reduced damage in AoE that it would have normally triggered for that many stacks.

You will routinely over-cap the stack cap of 20. This is, sadly, unavoidable.

FAQHow Many Stacks of Freezing do I Lance at?

6+ on Spellslinger, 10+ on Frostfire.

Hand of Frost causes any Shatter event to have a 10% chance to fire an extra spell that hits fairly hard, and adds 1 stack of Freezing to the target.

Hand of Frost takes that, and increases the proc chance based on how many stacks were consumed. Each time the damage spell procs, gain a 1% damage buff for a few seconds. This can stack, and each stack is timed individually, so they will rise and fall gradually as you play.

Hand of Frost procs 4 of the damage spells over the duration of Ray of Frost, buffs Ray's damage, and adds a second charge to the spell.

For the most part this is an entirely passive talent, but it is fairly strong. The flexibility of having a second charge on Ray of Frost allows us to pool a charge for important things, such as trinket procs or vulnerability phases.

Ray of Frost is our "main" cooldown, available every minute. It causes you to channel for 4 seconds, dealing significant damage to the target, and stacking Freezing every tick.

It has two improvement talents directly under it in the talent tree, Frigid Focus and Splintering Ray. Frigid Focus is self explanatory, but Splintering Ray will pick the nearest 5 targets to your Ray target, and deal a portion of the damage each tick to those.

While talented into Comet Storm, the button transforms into Comet Storm after a cast.

FAQWhy is Ray of Frost Such a Low Priority?

Since Ray of Frost generates so many Freezing stacks, it is better to consume as many as required for your Hero Talent before casting it, to maximize value.

Frozen Orb is our secondary cooldown. This deals AoE damage every half second for 15 seconds.

On cast, it will fly outwards rapidly until it hits a target, at which point it will slow drastically. After 3 seconds, it will start to slowly track the mob you originally had targetted when you cast it.