Frost Mage PvP 5.4

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Introduction:

 

I would like to start a kind of Discussion/Guide on Frost Mage PvP seeing that Icy-Veins lacks class specific pvp guides. I will adjust the guide as we get some advice from experianced Mage players.

As a Frost Mage, your role in PvP instances (arena, battlegrounds, etc) will be to deal damage to other players with the goal to kill them.

 

 

Strengths:

1) Great Burst

2) Basic spells will snare targets for at least 50% movement speed.

3) You have multiple Control spells that can root and incapacitate your opponents.

 

Weaknesses:

1) Very low healing capacity and health pool.

 

Stat Priority

Haste is considered the best secondary stat in PvP since it allows you to cast faster, resulting in less interrupts, more chance to move and more ticks on your DoTs (Living Bomb and Nether Tempest)

Spell Hit to 6% > Int > Haste > Critical Strike to 25% > Mastery > Critical Strike after 25% > Spell Hit after 6%

 

 

Gear: 

 

Getting Started:

 

Get yourself the latest crafted PvP gear. "Crafted Malevolent Gladiator" on Auction House, or let your friends / Guild craft it for you.

Crafted from Tailoring:

Crafted Malevolent Gladiator's Silk Handguards

Crafted Malevolent Gladiator's Silk Cowl

Crafted Malevolent Gladiator's Silk Trousers

Crafted Malevolent Gladiator's Silk Robe

Crafted Malevolent Gladiator's Silk Amice

 

You will notice there are several off-pieces (Back, Waist, Wrists and Feet). You can get the one that mostly fits your build (Mastery or Haste)

 

Crafted from Inscription:

Crafted Malevolent Gladiator's Medallion of Tenacity

 

Skills:

 

Talents:

Tier 1:

Blazing Speed - Recommended. This works extremely well when trying to kite melee. 

Presence of Mind - Also Recommended, works well with Polymorth. Would not recommend using this with Ring of Frost.

Ice Floes - Not a good option compared to the other 2.

 

Tier 2:

Temporal Shield - Recommended when playing against opponents that burst extremely well since all health lost will be regenerated. "Can be used while stunned" is extremely helpful when a rogue or warrior opens with stun (Cheap Shot or Charge) and your Blink is on cooldown.

Ice Barrier - Works well when the other team only applies pressure, but not burst. Also helps that your spells won't be delayed by damage.

Flameglow - Not really a good option, only works well when you have a healer and the other team is not bursting you.

 

Tier 3:

Ring of Frost - Recommended. Most used talent.

Frostjaw - Is a good CC+Interrupt when used with Presence of Mind. This is mostly only picked by fire mages. Nice setup for Deep Freeze.

Ice Ward - Not recommended

 

Tier 4:

Cold Snap - Recommended, one of the few heals that a mage has.

Cauterize - Only recommend when you have a healer. Make sure to use Ice Block to remove the DoT.

Greater Invisibility - Only recommended in battlegrounds for when you want to slip past a team battle to cap a flag.

 

Tier 5:

Nether Tempest - Recommended when using a Haste Build. Great for Battlegrounds.

Frost Bomb - Recommended for Burst Tactics.

Living Bomb - Recommended when using a Haste Build, great for when you don't want Nether Tempest removing CCs.

 

 

Tier 6:

Incanter's Ward Recommended. Gives a nice shield and you get to channel Evocation for health.

Invocation - Not recommended. Heal is minimal and you don't have time to apply the buff each time if expires.

Rune of Power Not Recommended. Everyone loves hitting a stationary target.

 

Glyphs:

Glyph of Evocation - Evocation becomes a healing spell, great since Mages don't have many healing spells. Be sure to use when the opponent cannot interrupt you.

Glyph of Icy Veins- Great for burst situations. 

Glyph of Armors - Allows you to boost the damage reduction on Molten Armor or the DoT reduction on Mage Armor.

Glyph of Deep Freeze - Recommended for Arena use when you want to stop opponents going LoS.

Glyph of Ice Block - Recommend when playing against other casters since it provides a 3 second invulnerability to spells. 

Glyph of Polymorph - Recommended in arenas when you and your team members have DoTs on a target you want to control.

 

and Minor Glyphs:

Glyph of Momentum - If you want to blink in the direction you are strafing.

 

Spell Categories:

Your spells can be divided into the following categories

 

Survival-Control:

Freeze (Root)

Freeze

Frost Nova

Ring of Frost

 

Slow (Snare)

Cone of Cold

Frozen Orb

 

Interrupt:

Counterspell(Improved Counterspell)

 

Lose Control:

Polymorph- Important: Don't use this spell on targets that are already injured, because they will regenerate at a much faster rate than normal when polymorthed.

 

Stuns:

Deep Freeze- Also a DPS-Cooldown

 

Survival-Movement:

Blink - Important: Blink breaks Stuns!!

Blazing Speed

 

Survival-Absorbs-and-Heals (Imporant: Can be used while stunned):

Temporal Shield

Incanter's Ward

Cold Snap

Alter Time

Ice Block

 

Survival-Control Breakers:

Blink - Blink breaks Stuns!!

Ice Block

Prideful Gladiator's Medallion of Cruelty

 

Some other spells you can use are:

AoE Spells to reveal enemies in Stealth:

Arcane Explosion

Blizzard

Flamestrike

 

DPS-Cooldowns:

Mirror Image

Icy Veins

Deep Freeze

Prideful Gladiator's Badge of Dominance

 

 

Gameplay:

In PvE, you have a DPS Rotation

In PvP, you have combos, and conditional casts.

 

Combos is where you cast certain spells together for an effect, like a Burst.

Conditional Casts is when you use certain spells under certain conditions for example using Blink when you are stunned by a Rogue.

 

Your gameplay mostly consists of completing Goals, these Goals can consist and be adjusted according to the instance you are playing and the type of opponent(s) you are facing. For example:

 

Goals when playing against Melee opponents:

 

1. Get some distance  (Survive)

Reason: If they are not close to you, they cannot hit you.

How: By using spells that Root / Snare them, or using spell to get away (Mentioned in the spell categories with "Survival" in their name)

 

Normally, you open with your Pet Freeze just to keep them where they are, and to generate a Fingers of Frost (Free Ice Lance or Deep Freeze)

If they are close to you, use Frost Nova instead. 

If both are on cooldown, you can use Cone of Cold to slow them, and then cast a Ring of Frost between you and them to block their path.

 

If these are on cooldown and they are getting close / used their anti-spell defensive cooldowns, use a "Absorb" type spell.

 

 

Goals to killing opponents:

1. The Setup (for a kill)

Reason: If you use your DPS Cooldowns while they still have their defensive cooldowns, you won't be able to kill them.

 

How: As you Root and Snare your opponent, you can cast your Mage Bomb and use some Ice Lances, Frostfire Bolts, Frostbolts to damage your target. They will start using their PvP Trinkets and Defensive abilities just to counter the damage while rooted or snared. Another way to force someone to use their PvP Trinket is to use Polymorth (Do not cast on injured opponents).

When you know they have used their Trinket/Defensive Cooldowns, you can proceed to Burst them.

 

2. Burst

Reason: Normal damage will allow the target to [cast heals/ to be healed]. Bursting is a effective way to kill someone without them getting heals.

How: 

First, you will need to freeze (root) them with your Pet's Freeze / Frost Nova / Ring of Frost. Another option is to have 1 Fingers of Frost (from using Frozen Orb / Pet Freeze / Frostbolts).

 

Next is:

Use your DPS Cooldowns (Icy Veins, Mirror Images, PvP Power Trinket, Berserk, etc)

Cast Mage Bomb, then Frostbolt.

While the Frostbolt is still traveling, cast Deep Freeze (While you have FoF or the Root on target). Any spells cast while the target is under Deep Freeze's effect will also trigger Shatter. 

From here on, spam Ice Lance until Deep Freeze wears off, then cast your Frostfire Bolt.

 

The following spells should hit for:

1x Mage Bomb (75k)

1x Frostbolt (25k non-crit, 50k crit)

4x Ice Lance (each hits for like 80k)

1x Brain Freeze (50k)

 

Total: 495k (Keep in mind this amount can change according to thier resilliance and your PvP Power)

 

That is all folks, thanks for reading, Please leave some constructive comments/tips so we can bring out an Official Icy-Veins Frost Mage PvP Guide later on.

Edited March 5, 2014 by Archimage

[Marco 51]

First of all, thanks for your efforts. This is a nice start, so I pinned this topic.

 

Maybe a suggestion on the formatting; when we started thinking about our PvP guides, I posted this structure:

 

The format proposed here should be used for all class guides to keep them consistent. It is of course subject to both discussion and change.

• Introduction: The main role of the spec/class. Viability in arena, battlegrounds and overall PvP. Strengths and weaknesses, briefly touched.
• Stats: Stat priorities / Target stat values.
• Gear: Gear discussion (Trinkets, possible weapons, etc.) Gems, maybe options with discussion (if any). Enchantments, discussion as well. Alternatives to costly enchantments. Useful professions.
• Skills: Breakdown of all useful class skills, categorized for example into offensive, defensive and utility. Optimal talents with discussion, situational changes. Glyphs to choose.
• Gameplay: How to play your class in general. Highlight both offensive and defensive play. Detailed content has to be discussed spec-wise.
• Addons and Macros: Useful addons and mandatory macros.

The emphasis clearly lies on discussion. While it is important to point the reader in the right direction, obviously, I also believe that it is elementary that the reader understands why they are choosing that talent, or that glyph. Why one stat is more important than the other, or why an enchantment is more viable than another one. The structure above is only a suggestion though, so you do not need to adhere to it if you want your guide to stay pinned here. 

 

Making this guide official poses a greater challenge. You might have noticed that the other (non-class) PvP guides are published in a subsection of the forum and not on the official site. This is the best I can offer to you, and I will only move it there if you want it to be there and only when Damien, Vlad and I feel that the guide is ready for "publishing". If you want it to appear in the menu above, you need to discuss that with Damien directly. But we are not there yet by any means, and I only mention this because you have used the word official.

[Archimage 98]

I have adjusted the guide to the format Marco suggested. 

 

Looking for some input from PvP experienced Mage players

[Polysprocket 0]

Hello.

First, good guide, enjoyed reading it.

 

About the stat priority, what I always miss (but maybe that's just me) if people mention stat priorities they don't mention how much more important a stat is compared to the next stat in line. For instance, I don't expect the difference in importance between Intellect and Haste is equal to the difference in importance between PvP Power and Mastery. Or is it?

I hope you understand what I mean.

 

Could you maybe elaborate a bit on that if possible?

Edited February 27, 2014 by Polysprocket

[Exec 0]

I was just passing by looking for something in particular and I was curious if someone was giving proper information to anyone curious about PvP, unfortunately this guide is VERY wrong and suffice to say it's very frustrating when people try to help a community by giving it all the wrong information especially something as delicate as mage PvP. 

 

To start: 

 

STAT PRIORITIES:

 

Hit (6%) > Haste (as much as possible) > Mastery (if it has haste on a piece, you should be reforging the rest into this) > everything else should be ignored, you want the most haste possible and the rest goes into mastery.

 

SKILLS: 

 

 

Tier1:

 Blazing Speed - Good in specific situations. This works extremely well when trying to kite melee. 

 Presence of Mind - Best option for almost all cases, will go into detail later on how to use properly

 Ice Floes - Ignore

 

Tier 2:

 Temporal Shield - Only option in this tier, this is the most iconic mage ability at the moment and proper timing of this can result and not having to use CDs, more on this later

 Ice Barrier - Ignore, easily purged and it's absorbtion is mediocre at best in arena

 Flameglow - Nerfed into the ground, it's almost useless in comparison to barrier and temp. 

 

Tier 3:

 Ring of Frost - Recommended. Most used talent.

 Frostjaw - Only picked by fire mages to setup for Deep Freeze.

 Ice Ward - Extremely good vs warriors and ww monks, tied with blazing speed (T1 talent) and melee have a rough time touching you at all. 

 

Tier 4:

 Cold Snap - Only option. w/ out 2 blocks in the current meta game you are sol

 Cauterize - Never use this. 

 Greater Invisibility - REALLY NEVER USE THIS.

 

Tier 5:

 Nether Tempest - If you like getting all the cc you just worked really hard for getting broken by your opponent walking past his healer this is the option for you

 Frost Bomb - Nerfed into the ground, good luck getting it off vs. warriors.

 Living Bomb - Only option. Great single target (20k ticks) and doesn't break cc. Lower GCD so it's amazing for tapping groundings.

 

 

Tier 6:

 Incanter's Ward Only option, the shield is easy to break so the dmg modifier is easy to achieve even with small dots/diseases, also the buff lasts longer then the cd meaning in 100%+ uptime

 Invocation - Negatory, you will RARELY get a chance to hardcast evo in someone's face and if they have a brain they will kick it and you won't be able to blink/poly

 Rune of Power If you like standing still eating all the damage possible, this one's for you

 

 

IDK how to link stuff like you have so i apologize for stealing your icons and what not, as far as glyphs are concerned they are as follows

 

 

GLYPHS: 

 

Major: 

Deep Freeze - mandatory, having your deep on the gcd can and will result in your opponent, either getting of your frost orb or out of your line of sight. This is extremely detrimental to your damage and control.

 

Polymorph - as a majority this is also mandatory, almost every class you will play with has some form of dot, mage is ALL about control and your biggest control spell is polymorph. If your polymorph breaks as a result of a dot remaining on a target that you are trying to peel off your teammate or for control on the healer to score a kill, you could potentially lose the game because of this.

 

Armors - again as a majority this is also mandatory. Melee classes are very prevalent in arena atm, having 9% more physical reduction on molten armor can be absolutely huge. This is frequently swapped out for glyph of Ice Block vs. casters. 

 

Ice Block - the primo overpowered glyph vs casters, when block is used properly vs casters it can either make you impossible to kill for 3 seconds or unpeelable for the same amount of time. 

 

 

Minor:

 

All of these are completely irrelevant and are just flavor. 

 

 

 Polymorph- Important: Don't use this spell on targets that are already injured, because they will regenerate at a much faster rate than normal when polymorthed. 

 

^ that couldn't be more wrong, there's VERY many times that someone could even have 100k hp and you will polymorph them in order to engage a swap, IE: rmd (rogue, mage, priest) vs lsp (lock, elemental shaman, hpally) > rmp opens on the lsp's holy pally, there's a sap on the lock in order to stop howl of terror and shadowfury, and there's an chastise on the elemental shaman to stop his aswell, the rmp blows a decent amount of cooldowns and forces the pally to bubble the priest uses md to negate the pallys bubble, depending on the situation and the fact that the pallys teammates are now coming out of cc they are now able to peel the rmp the pally will generally get away at this point (all good), pom poly now goes on the hpally (even though he is at near death) and the rmp swaps onto the elemental shaman. As you can see PvP is very complex and there's a million ways to counteract EVERYTHING. 

 

I could sit here and write all day on proper mage play and how you should be doing damage, correcting your mistakes, finding every flaw and nitpicking it till your perfect but the truth is people don't learn this game like that. It's countless failed matches, it's your partners noticing something you didn't and you having an open mind to fix those mistakes, it's going as far as streaming privately or publicly and going back and watching vods of things you did wrong. Every action calls for a reaction out of your opponent, learn everything about every class and what they can do in that instant to stop what you're doing then take it a step further and think of how you can counteract them counteracting you (be 2-3 steps ahead, i'm doing this and the only logical thing they should do is this so in reaction to that i'm going to do this (see the complexity?!)) and you will become successful. 

 

What i can tell you is proper openers:

 

if you are playing a caster comp with locks being the exception (you cannot invis out of the gates playing with a lock, your job except for on RoL, and Tol'vir is to stop the opposing team stopping your lock casting gateway, you do this by running on your mount and pet nova'ing the dps): 

 

Invis > position yourself so you are in a good spot to ideally hardcast a sheep on the healer and immediately damage the dps > pet nova dps > frozen orb > deep the kill target > if the opposing healer is going to be hit by your orb, regardless of them being in sheep here you use CS on the healer if they are not being hit by orb ignore this > at this point ideally both of your trinkets have procced and you have 2 fof and 1 ffb proc > alter time > unload your procs into deep > help from your teammates with cc'ng your healer here is ideal, if not and they are no longer in frozen orb or never were you re-sheep > continue to do damage with your procs if possible > 3rd sheep is here and you have exhausted your cds and cc at this point. 

 

Onto melee comps!:

 

BE AS MONGO AS POSSIBLE, lol, but really, do it. Run into their face if you are

 

with a warrior, pet nova > orb > deep > pom sheep healer > alter > unload.

 

If you are with a rogue it's usually Sap healer > Open kill target (ALL of your damage comes from cheap shot modifiers when playing with a rogue) > Orb > alter > spam procs, but save 1 fof before you go back in time for deeping the healer off of sap > alter back spam procs > CS healer (should've trinketed so you should be aiming to cs as that happens) >  pom sheep healer > spam more damage

 

 

Hope this helped, cbf atm to go over EVERYTHING. Just remember, play games, HAVE FUN, learn from your mistakes, and mage IS CONTROL. bye bye. 

 

 

Edited March 5, 2014 by Exec

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@Polysprocket:

If you are looking at the reforge pane, just reforge the lowest priority stat to the highest priority stat. eg. if you can reforge Critical Strike: if there is an option to reforge into Haste, you take it, if not you chose the next best stat.

As for the weights of each one (AskMrRobot setup) you can select the "(PvP: Default)" option. Note it prefers Mastery over Crit, you can swap their values.

 

@Exec:

This guide is generally targeted for people starting with Random Battlegrounds. For now I just want people discussing the Talents, Glyphs and spell combos. If they give some great advice or tips, I will add them to the first post. An arena guide would take vasts amount of time to create due to the different compositions and needs to be written by someone who has lots of experience in their arena comp.

 

Stat Priority: I would generally prefer having ~25% Critical Strike since then you can be sure that your Ice Lance will crit. Note that when wearing a full Prideful set, your Critical Strike is already at 30% and then you can reforge to Haste/Mastery.

 

I would really recommend the Evocation glyph in battlegrounds since mages lack heals. In arena, you should only use Evocation when you are Line of Sight (LoS) and away from opponents since they can interrupt you.

Glyph of Deep Freeze isn't needed for LoS issues in Battlegrounds since the fights are mostly in open grounds. 

Glyph of Armors is definitely a yes when facing physical damage classes.

Edited March 5, 2014 by Archimage