my frost mage stat priority

[icey 1]

let me start with a disclaimer: I am by no means what I would consider to be a "top mage" I would however, consider myself to be a skilled mage, and very adept at theorycrafting. i have always considered icy-veins to be in invaluable tool in maximizing my dps, and recommended it to others. that being said, mage discussion on these forums, in my opinion, is very lacking, especially when you look at say... the warlock forums. much of what i am about to share has been tested in-game by myself, after thoroughly researching the mmo-champ mage forums. it is the general consensus that there are in fact, 2 viable frost mage builds. the haste build, which is undeniably the best multi-target/cleave build, and the mastery build, which is undeniably better at single target damage. if you are on the bleeding edge of progression, you will probably want to reforge/regem for the encounter you are currently progressing on (or just play arcane lol)

 

That being said, this thread is mainly for the frost mages looking to find a "1 build fits all" build, that is comfortable and enjoyable to play.

 

First things first: you want as much haste/mastery gear as possible (especially haste gear) im sure this much is obvious to any frost mage worth his salt, but here is where many of you will be thrown off guard... i propose gemming INTELLECT as much as possible while maintaining 54.2% haste fully raid buffed. (15,832 haste rating with frost armor and spell haste buff, 15,255 if you are a goblin) this means you will gem as much haste as needed to reach 54.2%, and then prioritize more int afterwards.

 

why 54.2% haste? 2 reasons: 1: this amount of haste will give u +7 ticks of nether tempest. 2: this amount of haste will also give frostbolt a 1.00 second cast time during bloodlust/meta gem procs.

 

why int instead of mastery? mastery only scales our frostbolt, FFB, and water elemental damage. while mastery certainly scales with these spells better than int, int scales with EVERY spell (and also improves mastery scaling.) its also the ONLY stat that scales with ice lance (excluding haste before the GCD, but that is a moot point considering u will have 1 sec GCD with this build). its also the only stat that scales with (glyphed) cone of cold, and arcane explosion. (again, excluding haste before the GCD cap, a moot point) int also of course, scales with our mage bombs, mastery does not.

 

im sure any mage open minded enough to test this build will have fantastic results. the result is that u will still deal good damage single target, as you will be not be "wasting" too much haste, while excelling in multi-target/cleave fights

 

edit: proper credit was not given to the mages at mmo-champ that helped me compile this information, especially Akraen

Edited October 12, 2013 by icey

[Oltier 471]

Thank you for sharing these information with us, I can confirm that this build is perfectly viable :)