WotLK Classic Frost Mage Spell Summary

Frost Mages offer a variety of useful buffs for themselves and the group they play in. These buffs can be used to increase stats, damage and healing taken, critical strike chance, and Mana regeneration. Other buffs decrease damage and healing taken and decrease damage taken. The armor buffs only castable on the Mage, while the other buffs listed below can be cast on any group member.

Arcane Intellect — Increases Intellect on the target. Can be improved with Glyph of Arcane Intellect.

Arcane Brilliance — Increases Intellect of everyone in the target's group. Requires one Arcane Powder to be cast and Tome of Arcane Brilliance 3 to be learned.

Dampen Magic — Buffs the target to decrease magic damage and healing taken. Can be enhanced by 50% with Arcane talents. Very niche use.

Amplify Magic — Buffs the target to increase magic damage and healing taken. Can be enhanced by 50% with Arcane talents. Useful on players that take Physical damage only or almost exclusively Physical damage. A very strong situational spell.

Molten Armor — 35% (or 55% with the Glyph of Molten Armor) of your Spirit will be converted into Critical Strike Rating. Deals 170 Fire damage per hit to melee attackers, decreases the chance to be critically hit by 5%. Can be enhanced with Fire talents to affect ranged and spell attacks as well.

Mage Armor — Increases magic resistance by 40 and allows 50% of the Mage's Mana regeneration to continue while casting. Can be enhanced by Arcane Shielding (50%) and Glyph of Mage Armor (20%)

Ice Armor — Increases the Mage's Armor by 930 and Frost resistance by 40 and slows enemy melee attackers. Can be enhanced by Frost Warding (50%) and Glyph of Ice Armor (50%).

Focus Magic — is a powerful buff to be cast on a friendly target. It increases their Critical Strike chance with spells by 3%. If they score a critical strike, your Critical Strike chance is also increased by 3% for 10 seconds.

Mages are sought after for their crowd-controlling abilities, such as Polymorphing enemies and Frost-exclusive slowing and freezing effects. Further, they supply their group and themselves with fresh water and food and open portals to all major cities of each faction. Mages can also remove curses from allies and magic from enemies.

Polymorph — With this spell, humanoids, critters and beasts can be turned into a sheep for a certain amount of time. This effect can end before its maximum time has passed. Through the Fragmented Magic quest and the Tome of Polymorph: Turtle book, enemies can also be turned into a pig or a turtle, which is of course a very nice cosmetic upgrade. Glyph of the Penguin can transforms your Polymorph targets into a penguin. Glyph of Polymorph removes damage-over-time effects from your Polymorph target, which could otherwise break Polymorph.

Conjure Refreshment — Conjured Mana Strudels, usable by friendly players, restoring health and Mana. Conjured items disappear from the inventory after logging out for 15 minutes or more. This spell can be learned from Mage trainers.

Ritual of Refreshment — Creates a portal two friendly players need to click in order to make a table appear. Costs 5 Arcane Powder. Each player can take up to 80 Conjured Mana Strudels from this table. Conjured items disappear from the inventory after logging out for 15 minutes or longer.

Conjure Mana Gem — A Mage can create different types of Mana gems, which can be used in combat to restore Mana. The highest rank of this spell restores most Mana. Mana Gems are unique; conjuring the highest rank does not allow you to conjure lower ranks of it. Does not disappear when logging out. Has 3 charges. Can be improved with Glyph of Mana Gem.

Teleport Spells: Every Mage can teleport to their faction's major cities, to Shattrath, or to Dalaran at the cost of one Rune of Teleportation.

Portal Spells: These spells are used to open portals to each faction's major cities, to Shattrath, and to Dalaran that the whole group can use. Costs 1 Rune of Portals.

Invisibility — The Mage fades out for 3 seconds and becomes invisible after that time. Each second before becoming invisible, the threat against all enemies is reduced. Any damage taken or action from the Mage cancels the spell. This can be used as a threat dump, to leave combat, or to sneak by enemies. Can be improved with talents and Glyph of Invisibility.

Evocation — A channeled spell that restores 60% of your Mana during 8 seconds. Haste effects make the channeling faster and damage taken while channeling reduces the Mana restored. Has a base cooldown of 4 minutes, can be reduced to 2 minutes with talents. Another small tip is that the Tier 3 2-set bonus (Frostfire Regalia) reduces the cooldown of Evocation by a minute. With this in mind, you can swap to the 2 pieces, wait for a second (the bonus needs a bit to activate), Evocate, and swap back to your normal gear. Be sure to only use this strategy out of combat, as you can only switch back to your normal gear out of combat and Tier 3 is terrible to wear during an encounter.

Spellsteal — Sometimes enemies have beneficial magical buffs you can steal with this ability. Stolen buffs last on you for two minutes. Some bosses require one Mage to steal a magical buff from an enemy, in order to be able to tank it. Range can be improved with talents.

Counterspell — This spell is used to interrupt enemy casting and to prevent any spell of the interrupted spell school from being cast for 8 seconds. Can be improved with talents.

Blink — Teleports the Mage 20 yards forward. This ability can be used to reposition during fights and save some running time, flee from enemies, break snaring effects, or to prevent fall damage by Blinking shortly before reaching the ground. Can be improved with talents and Glyph of Blink.

Slow Fall — At the cost of one Light Feather (0 with Glyph of Slow Fall), Mages can reduce their and allies' falling speed for 30 seconds. This can be used to survive falling down, or to move to locations normally unreachable, by jumping from a higher ledge to a lower position. Can be cast before mounting and it will persist while mounted.

Remove Curse — Removes a Curse from a friendly target. Glyph of Remove Curse makes the decursed target immune to Curses for 4 seconds.

Frost Nova — Freezes enemies 8 yards around the Mage for 8 seconds.

Freeze — Exclusively available to Frost Mages, this spell of the Water Elemental can freeze enemies in a 8-yard radius anywhere around the Mage for 8 seconds. Can be used in conjunction with Frost Nova to keep enemies away from the group or to slow them down while they approach. With the Shatter talent, frozen enemies have a 50% increased chance to get critically hit by Frost Mages. Please note that Glyph of Eternal Water removes your Water Elemental's Freeze ability.

Improved Blizzard — This ability can be used to control groups of enemies by slowing their movement speed. Together with the Winter's Chill talent, Blizzard increases your friendly casters' Critical Strike chance against all targets affected by Blizzard by 5%. Further, Fingers of Frost can proc off Blizzard ticks, giving your Blizzard basically permanent 50% crit from the Shatter talent, if there are enough mobs. Improved Blizzard is a very important talent for any Frost spec.

Frost Mages use different offensive abilities than Fire or Arcane Mages.

Frostbolt — Your main source of damage. Your target takes damage and will get slowed, the slow effect gets removed from the Glyph of Frostbolt.

Deep Freeze — Stuns the target for 5 seconds, deals massive damage to targets that are permanently immune to snares. Mostly used while moving or at the end of a Fingers of Frost proc.

Ice Lance — An instant-cast spell that deals triple damage against frozen targets. Very good to use directly after a Frostbolt ("Shatter Combo"), if the target is frozen. Can also be used to freeze a target with Winter's Chill while running from it.

Blizzard — Slows enemy targets by up to 60% for up to 4.5 seconds, if fully talented. While it is not the highest damage Mage AoE ability, it is very useful to slow down groups of enemies.

Cone of Cold — A frontal cone AoE ability that does high damage and slows enemies for up to 11 seconds with the Permafrost talent.

Fire Blast — An instant-cast ability, mostly used while running, as it does more damage than Ice Lance.

Arcane Explosion — The main AoE spell. Does very low threat if talented with the Arcane Subtlety talent.

Icy Veins — Increases your casting speed by 20% for 20 seconds. During the duration of Icy Veins, your spells are no longer subject to spell pushback. Use this when ability as often as possible.

Cold Snap — Resets the cooldown of all Frost abilities, which enables you to use Icy Veins twice in a row. This ability makes your DPS skyrocket in short fights.

Mirror Image — Should be used for additional damage, as the Mirror Images attack your enemy and do additional damage, or to disappear from the threat list while doing heavy burst (AoE) damage. Mirror images benefit from Bloodlust/Heroism if cast beforehand and only attack if an enemy is nearby and you are already in combat with them. Can be improved with Glyph of Mirror Image.

Every Mage spec has good defensive capabilities. They can absorb damage from different sources and even become immune to damage.

Mana Shield, Frost Ward and Fire Ward — absorb damage and can be useful in some PvE situations.

Ice Block — Puts the Mage in an Ice Block for 10 seconds, making them immune to almost all attacks and spells. Some boss abilities can penetrate the Ice Block immunity and Priests can dispel Ice Block with Mass Dispel. This ability can also be used to protect the caster from fall damage. After using Ice Block, you get the Hypothermia debuff that prevents you from using Ice Block again for 30 seconds. Can be improved with talents and Glyph of Ice Block.

Frost Nova — Freezes enemies 8 yards around the Mage for 8 seconds, allowing you to flee.