Glacial Spike rotation question

[Lager159 2]

Hi, recently I have switched to GS and I am having little trouble with the rotation. I know there is rotation section which I have read but still did not find answer to my question. I would like to know if I am doing everything right.

So basically this is what I do (Frostbolt - Fb, Ice Lance - IL, Flurry - F, Glacial Spike - GS, Brain Freeze - BF, FoF): 

Scenarios:

#1

[Fb > Fb > Fb > Fb > Fb(BF) > 5 Icicles > Fb]

Now I have 5 Icicles and the last Frost bolt gave me BF but to achieve 0% downtime I instantly started casting new Frost bolt after the 5th one. I often see the 6th Frost bolt gives me another Brain Freeze but that is normal right? I just finish casting 6th Frostbolt and then cast GS.

 

#2 [5 Icicles > Fb(BF) > Ebonbolt > Flurry > IL > GS > Flurry > IL]

Similar to the first scenario. I have 5 Icicles and BF ready to cast GS. I already started casting Ebonbolt so I will use that first brain freeze on Ebonbolt and then use the second one on GS.

 

#3 [0 Icicles > Fb > Fb(BF) > Fb > Flurry > IL > Fb] 

I believe this is right. but if I have 3 Icicles and I am casting Frostbolt with BF can I do Fb > Flurry to get 5 Icicles or should I just keep the BF for GS? If Ebonbolt is off cooldown is it okay to use the BF with frostbolt for 5 Icicles?

 

#4 I have 5 Icicles, no BF, Ebonbolt is off cooldown. Should I instantly cast Ebonbolt to get BF or should I try casting a couple of Frostbolts?

[jammi 4]

#1 Finish the frostbolt cast and then cast GS with the brainfreeze, ice lancing afterwards per usual.

#2 You're correct.

#3 You should always try to spend brain freeze procs as soon as you get them so you don't overwrite them. Cast the flurry with the frostbolt, and then ebonbolt for your glacial spike's brain freeze proc.

#4 Use the ebonbolt, don't fish for the brain freeze procs if you can just use ebonbolt. 

Keep in mind that even with glacial spike, you'll still fire out icicles if you're at 5 icicles. So you're not wasting icicle damage (besides the increased crit chance of shattering them) by holding onto your glacial spike til you have a shatter to go with it.

Also this is for single target, use Glacial Spike as soon as you have it if it'll hit two targets.

[Lager159 2]

Thank you jammi! Yeah in dungeons when there are 2+ targets I always cast Glacial Spike and then use pet's Freeze to shatter it or Frost Nova if I am close enough. 

[Extremeasaurus 0]

I have a question about your #2 scenario.  If I understand right, you're saying in this scenario you are assumed to have 5 icicles and no other procs up.  In the second step it sounds like you casted a Frostbolt which gave you a Brain Freeze proc, if that is what you meant, why would casting an Ebonbolt immediately after be the correct step when it would just overwrite the first brain freeze proc?  It wouldn't give you a second charge and you'd never want to hard cast a flurry.

#2 [5 Icicles > Frostbolt(BF procs) > Ebonbolt > Flurry > ice lance > Glacial Spike > Flurry > Ice lance] (copy/paste but just expanded the abbreviations)

Wouldn't the correct alternative to the above situation just be a normal glacial spike/flurry/lance combo? Why include the ebonbolt?

Edited September 7, 2018 by Extremeasaurus
a word

[Lily 23]

9 hours ago, Extremeasaurus said:

I have a question about your #2 scenario.  If I understand right, you're saying in this scenario you are assumed to have 5 icicles and no other procs up.  In the second step it sounds like you casted a Frostbolt which gave you a Brain Freeze proc, if that is what you meant, why would casting an Ebonbolt immediately after be the correct step when it would just overwrite the first brain freeze proc?  It wouldn't give you a second charge and you'd never want to hard cast a flurry.

#2 [5 Icicles > Frostbolt(BF procs) > Ebonbolt > Flurry > ice lance > Glacial Spike > Flurry > Ice lance] (copy/paste but just expanded the abbreviations)

Wouldn't the correct alternative to the above situation just be a normal glacial spike/flurry/lance combo? Why include the ebonbolt?

 

As Lager159 already explained below:

On 8/24/2018 at 10:26 PM, Lager159 said:

Similar to the first scenario. I have 5 Icicles and BF ready to cast GS. I already started casting Ebonbolt so I will use that first brain freeze on Ebonbolt and then use the second one on GS.

 

Since the Ebonbolt cast already started, you shouldn't really cancel it (afaik you need to be really fast to not result in a DPS loss). Therefore simply use the BF from the 5. FB to shatter the Ebonbolt (Ebonbolt itself deals a good amount of damage) and then the next BF like usual on GS.

[Lager159 2]

18 hours ago, Extremeasaurus said:

I have a question about your #2 scenario.  If I understand right, you're saying in this scenario you are assumed to have 5 icicles and no other procs up.  In the second step it sounds like you casted a Frostbolt which gave you a Brain Freeze proc, if that is what you meant, why would casting an Ebonbolt immediately after be the correct step when it would just overwrite the first brain freeze proc?  It wouldn't give you a second charge and you'd never want to hard cast a flurry.

#2 [5 Icicles > Frostbolt(BF procs) > Ebonbolt > Flurry > ice lance > Glacial Spike > Flurry > Ice lance] (copy/paste but just expanded the abbreviations)

Wouldn't the correct alternative to the above situation just be a normal glacial spike/flurry/lance combo? Why include the ebonbolt?

The scenario was that I had 5 icicles, procced brain freeze and I was already casting Ebonbolt. In this case, if you use flurry right after ebonbolt, the ebonbolt will give you another flurry (read ebonbolt tooltip) and then you can cast glacial spike > flurry > ice lance so it would be [5 Icicles(BF) > Ebonbolt > Flurry > Ice Lance > GS > Flurry > Ice Lance].

[Elradrierion 0]

How long does the Winter's Chill effect actually stay on a target?

GS is a 3 second cast from what I'm seeing on Wowhead

I understand the combo in theory, but how does it line up with procs and spell casting times

[Lily 23]

11 hours ago, Elradrierion said:

How long does the Winter's Chill effect actually stay on a target?

GS is a 3 second cast from what I'm seeing on Wowhead

I understand the combo in theory, but how does it line up with procs and spell casting times

Flurry hits the target 3 times and it travels faster than Glacial Spike. Winter's Chill only lasts for 1 second, but depending on the distance to the target GS will either hit the first Winter's Chill debuff or the second. And the Ice Lance directly after the global cooldown of Flurry hits the third Winter's Chill debuff.

So casting GS -> Instant Flurry -> Ice Lance works flawlessly for every distance ?

[Charlz 0]

On 9/20/2018 at 10:00 AM, Lily said:

Flurry hits the target 3 times and it travels faster than Glacial Spike. Winter's Chill only lasts for 1 second, but depending on the distance to the target GS will either hit the first Winter's Chill debuff or the second. And the Ice Lance directly after the global cooldown of Flurry hits the third Winter's Chill debuff.

So casting GS -> Instant Flurry -> Ice Lance works flawlessly for every distance ?

Hi, im quite new to Mage, and i can't get this rotation to work. In my eyes, GS always hits before flurry and won't benefit to the Winter's Chill debuff.. i need almost 20 yards between me and the target to get this to work.

Edited November 27, 2018 by Charlz

[jinsu2301 273]

14 hours ago, Charlz said:

Hi, im quite new to Mage, and i can't get this rotation to work. In my eyes, GS always hits before flurry and won't benefit to the Winter's Chill debuff.. i need almost 20 yards between me and the target to get this to work.

Are you buffering Flurry? You can buffer-cast a spell before the cast of the previous one has finished, that way there is no delay between spells and Flurry should go off at the exact same time as Glacial Spike. I just tested it myself, Flurry will always hit first even when standing next to the target.

After some continued testing, it turns out that while Flurry does always hit before Glacial Spike, the Winter's Chill debuff does not get applied fast enough. This is either a latency or server tick rate issue. With ~25ms ping on my end, 10 yards seems to be the closest I can get to the target for the combo to work, and even then it only works about 80% of the time.

 

Edited November 28, 2018 by jinsu2301

[Charlz 0]

Thanks for answering

I tried this out more today and just "hammered" my flurry button while casting GS and it seems that flurry goes off a bit earlier then (i guess this i what you are referring to "buffer-cast" the spell. And now i can get the rotation to work (when it's not laggy ?) and the distance is also shorter for it to work. 

Thanks again!