Frost Mage PvE

[Kuni 28]

To be entirely fair, I've seen exactly one gearset that had Freezing Rain ahead, and I haven't been able to work out why. It's decidedly not the norm, as you found out. Oddly, it was INCREDIBLY Vers heavy, more than anything else, and was running GF single target. There's likely some interaction at extreme Vers due to the minor gain of Flurry>Blizzard>Lance>Lance being optimal single target GF usage. ...Why they were running GF single target sim is absolutely beyond me, however.

2t cleave, no. Glacial Fragments still beats it. GF is ridiculously out of line in terms of relative power gains on any multi-target.

That doesn't change that the target cap is 5. Adding a 6th target does not change the total GF damage amount. In your scenario, both Lances would hit all 5 targets, each on primary+4. In a scenario of, say 8 targets, while the specific targets hit may change slightly due to positioning differences on the far edges, the overall damage of GF's explosions does not change. You're still going to get GF burst*5 per Lance impact on any size of pack that has at least 5 mobs, even if you have 40.

[ChrisO 0]

Has anybody tried this combination? :

1) Acquire Blocking Fodder, Dimensional Blades, Alluring Cheese, and Clouded Diamond. I believe this would make it so a) you get a copy of yourself every blink, blinking through mawrats gives you 3 blinks. You have the ability to create mawrats. Killing a mawrat causes it to explode causing damage to nearby enemies.

2) Before fighting the final boss, conjure refreshments until the entire floor is just covered in 100s or even a 1000 mawrats.

3) Pull the boss, when it chases you, blink around the boss, repeatedly, creating copies of yourself, never running out of blinks, and having your copies and mawrat "bombs" kill the boss.

Just a thought since this strategy doesn't appear to have been tried?????

[Kuni 28]

The amount of setup that requires is... not great. It'd likely work, but I'm not aware of anyone who has tried it. The primary issue is that Alluring Cheese gives 1-3 rats, and Conjure Refreshment is on a 15 second cooldown. To get the amount of rats needed, you're going to spend as much time summoning tables as the entire run to that point.

I'm also unsure how long spawned mawrats last for. That could be a thorn.

ETA: They start despawning after about 5 tables.

[Guest Breaktheice]

On 1/15/2021 at 7:37 AM, Kuni said:

2t cleave, no. Glacial Fragments still beats it. GF is ridiculously out of line in terms of relative power gains on any multi-target.

 

Still not understanding why wowhead recommends Slick Ice legendary for 2 targets over Glacial Fragments. The obvious justification being that you also generate and cleave stronger icicles, plus proc generation rate increases sharply once the buff piles on. However I do believe there is some merit to the info over at wowhead since Frost mages seem to be producing near identical results on 2 target fights with both Slick Ice vs Glacial Fragments (like Huntsman or Stone Legion generals, for example).  

I guess I was curious because this week I'll have my Slick Ice and Glacial Fragment legos both maxed out at 4/4, and I was wondering what to craft next. I was thinking Freezing Winds for fights that can shift from 2 targets to 1, and then back to 2 - or mythic+ which can pivot from AoE to ST in a matter of minutes, or something like Sludgefist for guaranteed proc generation during his stunned phase. 

[Guest WoWDaD]

On 1/3/2021 at 12:09 AM, Kuni said:

You... don't hard stack crit. That's just the point crit becomes crap.

Do I need this in big red letters? Is this the cause of all the questions we get in discord?

Can you please explain "You don't hard stack crit"?  Please excuse my noob-ishness

[Kuni 28]

On 1/19/2021 at 2:05 AM, Guest Breaktheice said:

Still not understanding why wowhead recommends Slick Ice legendary for 2 targets over Glacial Fragments. The obvious justification being that you also generate and cleave stronger icicles, plus proc generation rate increases sharply once the buff piles on. However I do believe there is some merit to the info over at wowhead since Frost mages seem to be producing near identical results on 2 target fights with both Slick Ice vs Glacial Fragments (like Huntsman or Stone Legion generals, for example).  

I guess I was curious because this week I'll have my Slick Ice and Glacial Fragment legos both maxed out at 4/4, and I was wondering what to craft next. I was thinking Freezing Winds for fights that can shift from 2 targets to 1, and then back to 2 - or mythic+ which can pivot from AoE to ST in a matter of minutes, or something like Sludgefist for guaranteed proc generation during his stunned phase. 

Shrug. Also Slick Ice doesn't improve Icicles in any real fashion other than faster generation. They removed the Frostbolt damage component of Icicles back in Legion. They're flat spell power based on Mastery amount.

I'm sure there's some edge cases of "there's going to be cleave but not for the entire fight", or heavy burst needed through extra FoF generation where FW might pull ahead. Sludgefist as you said is a very likely candidate. But Sludgefist is also going to heavily depend on how far you can extend IV.

2 hours ago, Guest WoWDaD said:

Can you please explain "You don't hard stack crit"?  Please excuse my noob-ishness

Basically if a stat shows up as your top for stat weights, it will not remain so if you stack it to the exclusion of all else. There's examples underneath the graph in the first section, where the two screenshots of stat weights are:https://www.icy-veins.com/wow/frost-mage-pve-dps-stat-priority

It's both a mix of an artifact of how SimC calculates stat weights, and that stats will amplify each other ever so slightly. Faster crits (haste) vs more crits (crit), for instance. There are tipping points where having too much or too little of a stat can mean that it will, sometimes drastically, impact your stat weights. This is why I don't like stat weights and prefer people just sim gear upgrades, because a lot of the time it can appear to be, for example, a bad Mastery-heavy piece, but is in reality a heavy upgrade just because nothing is useless, just suboptimal.

[Guest WoWDaD]

13 minutes ago, Kuni said:

Basically if a stat shows up as your top for stat weights, it will not remain so if you stack it to the exclusion of all else. There's examples underneath the graph in the first section, where the two screenshots of stat weights are:https://www.icy-veins.com/wow/frost-mage-pve-dps-stat-priority

It's both a mix of an artifact of how SimC calculates stat weights, and that stats will amplify each other ever so slightly. Faster crits (haste) vs more crits (crit), for instance. There are tipping points where having too much or too little of a stat can mean that it will, sometimes drastically, impact your stat weights. This is why I don't like stat weights and prefer people just sim gear upgrades, because a lot of the time it can appear to be, for example, a bad Mastery-heavy piece, but is in reality a heavy upgrade just because nothing is useless, just suboptimal.

Thank you!  I'm at Ilvl 200 with the following: Int -12.3% / CS - 14% / H - 18% / M - 21% / V - 6%, and my best upgrades (197 to 207) sadly would give up more Crit for Mastery.  197 belt has Crit / Haste, and I just got a 207 that's Vers / Mast 😞

[Guest Breaktheice]

On 1/21/2021 at 4:42 AM, Kuni said:

Shrug. Also Slick Ice doesn't improve Icicles in any real fashion other than faster generation. They removed the Frostbolt damage component of Icicles back in Legion. They're flat spell power based on Mastery amount.

I'm sure there's some edge cases of "there's going to be cleave but not for the entire fight", or heavy burst needed through extra FoF generation where FW might pull ahead. Sludgefist as you said is a very likely candidate. But Sludgefist is also going to heavily depend on how far you can extend IV.

Simulating my 215 Frost mage with Icebringer vs Frostburn. Both at 4/4 upgrades, both have Crit/Haste as their secondaries so the only thing that changes is the legendary power between setups. 

For Ranged DPS 2 target cleave setup, Frostburn yields 6,753 DPS vs the 6,661 DPS from Icebringer. So I think depending on how much Mastery one has (my Mastery is a tad high) it actually can compete well on 2 target setups. 

[Guest Breaktheice]

The other thing I wanted to confirm for sims even though it's probably already calculated: does each Flurry used count as 3 spells for Cold Front? Each BF-Flurry counts as 3 'spells' for Icy Propulsion, and although it's very rare for the first shard to crit the 2nd and 3rd often crit and it serves as a great GCD for Conduit-use tradeoff. I can't seem to wrap my head around why Cold Front is 60 (😶) casts, would this explain why its requirement is so high?  

I'm sure you already know that the Fire mage equivalent (Molten Skyfall) requires only 25 casts. 

[Kuni 28]

Slightly surprised that it sims higher, but I suppose 2t is its absolute best scenario.

Yeah Flurry is 3 spells for the legendary. It was to prevent us from spamming hard cast Flurry 5 times to spam Orbs out.

[Guest Breaktheice]

Thanks so much for the consistent input. I also sim better on ST with Theotar over Nadija, but the difference between the two is within the margin of error. I ran the sims when I noticed that several of the top Frost parses on some ST fights used Theotar as their soulbind (after all renown 30 isn't available yet). 

[Guest Georgina]

Hey why is the opener section still recommending the BFA pot? Wouldn't the SL pots with oils be better?

[Kuni 28]

On 2/2/2021 at 3:09 AM, Guest Georgina said:

Hey why is the opener section still recommending the BFA pot? Wouldn't the SL pots with oils be better?

Damn, thought I got all of those. Good catch.

[Guest Sandinio]

On 03/02/2021 at 11:44 AM, Kuni said:

Damn, thought I got all of those. Good catch.

Same for Mythic+

 

You recommend to use Worldvein Resonance before Frozen Orb. 

 

Thanks for guide anyway 👍

[Kuni 28]

On 2/6/2021 at 9:23 AM, Guest Sandinio said:

Same for Mythic+

 

You recommend to use Worldvein Resonance before Frozen Orb. 

 

Thanks for guide anyway 👍

I gotta stop putting expansion-specific examples in descriptions.

[Guest Breaktheice]

Hey,

Just curious about 2 things in the enchants and consumables page:
+ Have you intentionally left out the cloak enchant(s)? 
+ In your opinion, what is the best AoE potion for Frost? Assuming Oil is applied to weapon, would Exorcism be better than an Int pot in such a case? Or would the Int pot still win? 

[Kuni 28]

On 2/26/2021 at 7:37 AM, Guest Breaktheice said:

Hey,

Just curious about 2 things in the enchants and consumables page:
+ Have you intentionally left out the cloak enchant(s)? 
+ In your opinion, what is the best AoE potion for Frost? Assuming Oil is applied to weapon, would Exorcism be better than an Int pot in such a case? Or would the Int pot still win? 

I have, yes. Cloak enchants have no throughput, so it's really up to personal taste.

Int is half a percent better on 4t. Exorcism is equal to Phantom Fire on 4t. It's kind of a "pick whichever is cheaper on your server" scenario.

[Guest Breaktheice]

Thanks so much ❤️ 

Also I'm super excited for Freezing Winds/Cold Front potentially making a comeback in 9.0.5; have any sims been run on them ever since their proposed changes? 

[Guest Jackfrosty]

I’m a new player my question is this how do the stat weights work is it good to say have 20% crit and 20% haste which would be balanced or should my crit be higher than haste 

[Kuni 28]

On 2/27/2021 at 8:57 PM, Guest Breaktheice said:

Thanks so much ❤️ 

Also I'm super excited for Freezing Winds/Cold Front potentially making a comeback in 9.0.5; have any sims been run on them ever since their proposed changes? 

Preliminary 1/3/5ts have been done, but neither win any of those categories. FW might win 2t, since it's extremely close on 3t, and I'll likely start looking at them more seriously now that we're release candidate.

 

On 3/1/2021 at 8:25 PM, Guest Jackfrosty said:

I’m a new player my question is this how do the stat weights work is it good to say have 20% crit and 20% haste which would be balanced or should my crit be higher than haste 

Stat weights tell you how much DPS you gain per point of any given stat added to your gear. They're interesting from a statistical point of view but they are commonly misused by the general populace.

Determining gear upgrades from any given gearset is best determined by simulating new pieces of gear, rather than guessing based on numbers that are only (semi-)accurate for +1 stat. It is entirely possible that your personal stats will differ from any given example set of stat weights, and following them in that fashion is folly. From what you've said, having more of those two stats than the other two is very likely an optimal choice, but which of the two should be higher is less the question than what given piece of gear you find is better/worse than what you have.

Frankly, the only reason I don't remove that section is the higher ups get inundated with complaints that it's not there.

[Kuni 28]

23 hours ago, Kuni said:

Preliminary 1/3/5ts have been done, but neither win any of those categories. FW might win 2t, since it's extremely close on 3t, and I'll likely start looking at them more seriously now that we're release candidate.

2t it still loses to GF. Shame.

[Guest Breaktheice]

On 3/5/2021 at 2:35 PM, Kuni said:

2t it still loses to GF. Shame.

Sims on my mage shows it's ahead of GF on 2 targets only, but considerably behind 3 targets onwards. However I get that everyone might sim differently. I still think it'll be interesting on fights that swing from 2 targets to 1 and back up to 2. Thanks so much for the update 🙂

[Kuni 28]

On 3/9/2021 at 7:23 PM, Guest Breaktheice said:

Sims on my mage shows it's ahead of GF on 2 targets only, but considerably behind 3 targets onwards. However I get that everyone might sim differently. I still think it'll be interesting on fights that swing from 2 targets to 1 and back up to 2. Thanks so much for the update 🙂

Yeah it's gonna be somewhat variable. I was using the T26 profile rather than a personal sim. On the whole, from a guide standpoint, I'd say it's not worth outside of an off-piece for Necrotic Wake, since GF is buggy in the last half of the dungeon. If you're just starting up, crafting SI and GF is absolutely the larger gain in almost all scenarios.

[RefluxDoomhammer 0]

From my testing, the Unrelenting Cold conduit outperforms Ice bite by roughly 50% damage on 3 targets (more with more targets, obviously).  This is because the guide is outdated and doesn't reflect that Ice Bite is down to +5.1% from 9.1%,
With a margin like that, I think it's pretty safe to go with Unrelenting... even for single target bossing.

Edited April 3, 2021 by RefluxDoomhammer

[Kuni 28]

4 hours ago, RefluxDoomhammer said:

From my testing, the Unrelenting Cold conduit outperforms Ice bite by roughly 50% damage on 3 targets (more with more targets, obviously).  This is because the guide is outdated and doesn't reflect that Ice Bite is down to +5.1% from 9.1%,
With a margin like that, I think it's pretty safe to go with Unrelenting... even for single target bossing.

The guide literally says that UC is better than IB on 3+. The problem is that building for sustained AoE is questionable. It's an approximately 2% difference in UC over IB on single target, for a 2% gain on 3t. If you're Venthyr, you can just slot UC on Nadjia's second potency slot and swap to it if you're in a sustained AoE scenario. But I mean if you're building for sustained AoE then you might just be better off going Necrolord or Night Fae, with Korayn being especially good in M+.