Frost Mage DPS Spec, Builds, and Talents — Midnight Pre-Patch (12.0)

Standard Frostfire Frost. This is a pure no- Ice Lance set. There is an extremely minor DPS gain to be had by swapping Hailstones to Thermal Void and utilizing Ice Lance only ever after a Brain Freeze. For the sake of ease and how minor a gain it is, the recommended build is purely without.

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Standard Spellslinger Frost.

Be sure to make use of the 'Export Talents' button to import the best build directly into your game!

This is our recommended build for either dungeons or delves if you prefer to play Spellslinger.

Be sure to make use of the 'Export Talents' button to import the best build directly into your game!

This is our recommended build for either dungeons or delves.

Be sure to make use of the 'Export Talents' button to import the best build directly into your game!

This tab will go over some of the more important talents and certain talents that are notable to avoid at all costs. For a full list of descriptions, please see the Spell List page:

There is not a lot of choice here. You should probably route towards Temporal Realignment as a sustainability heal initially, and then whichever of the rest you feel most comfortable with. Inspired Intellect being your DPS trait, and Ice Block + Winter's Protection being the defensive option.

Mirror Image has a niche survivability potential for open world to distract mobs for a few seconds.

This section has a lot of leeway in what you can do and what you could potentially take. Of this section, you want Tome of Antonidas Tome of Rhonin, and Overflowing Energy by extension. These are the only true throughput talents in the section. Quick Witted is the most useful option to get there.

The rest of the points can honestly be assigned as you see fit. Incantation of Swiftness turns Greater Invisibility into a 40% sprint button. This is going to be heavily personal preference, so take whatever you think feels right.

Dragon's Breath and Supernova are both great AoE stops, although Dragon's Breath is more reliable, as knock-up effects have been known to not actually stop a cast occasionally. However, when they do work, the knock will last longer, as the mob has to actually land. Play around with both and see which feels right.

The optimal play is getting all three capstones. Getting to them is up to you. The standard play is to take both the left and right sides for the DPS stat talents, and then Energized Barriers to give you access to the center capstone talent.

Mandatory talents everywhere! Take everything, you do not have spare nodes.

Your primary target is Brain Freeze, then Ray of Frost.

Beyond those, it depends on if you are angling towards single target or AoE. Big components that are shared between them are Frozen Touch, Improved Shatter, Permafrost Lances, Winter's Blessing, and the Ray improvement node. Everything else ends up being a sliding scale of value, depending on how heavily you wish to lean into single target or AoE. The builds on the other tabs will inform your choices in most cases, but occasionally you might wish to mix and match a bit, especially for open world. Splitting Ice especially can be very useful for questing.

Glacial Assault and Improved Flurry are mandatory.

Thermal Void sees use in most builds, as it functionally doubles the damage per cast of an Ice Lance, even in builds that do not cast it very often, such as Frostfire AoE.

The Lonely Winter and Summon Water Elemental choice node is strong, but in most cases the Water Elemental falls off on any form of multi-target.

Glaciate and Comet Storm are functionally the split between Spellslinger and Frostfire.