Season of Discovery Frost Mage DPS Talents and Runes

This build is intended for AoE grinding, but will also work just fine for single target damage, especially if there is a large health enemy alongside many weaker enemies due to the powerful Fingers of Frost + Balefire Bolt + Brain Freeze combo.

Improved Blizzard will all but ensure you obtain both Fingers of Frost and Brain Freeze procs after using Blizzard on multiple enemies. With both procs available, you can get an instant Balefire Bolt critical strike and a follow up cast still benefiting from the Fingers of Frost effect, dealing large single target damage perfect against high health targets, enemy casters mixed in the pull, or to finish stragglers after a successful AoE pull.

Thus, this is a great build to make gold solo, and it should also work well on dungeon content, especially if your group is capable of large pulls.

• Gloves — Living Bomb
• Pants — Living Flame
• Chest — Fingers of Frost
• Waist — Frostfire Bolt
• Feet — Brain Freeze
• Head — Deep Freeze
• Wrist — Balefire Bolt
• Back — Frozen Orb
• Ring — Frost Specialization
• Ring — Arcane Specialization

Living Bomb and Living Flame are used for area damage purposes, while Fingers of Frost, Balefire Bolt / Frostfire Bolt, and Brain Freeze are the linchpin of the single target follow up and general single target capabilities of the build.

While you are unlikely to top the raid damage meters as Frost with any build, this approach provides all the comfort of a 75% Blizzard slow combined with the high single target burst potential of landing all Frost procs at once.

Deep Freeze can also be used to stun frozen targets or as a large nuke against unfreezable enemies with Fingers of Frost procs.

This build has only one purpose; make Balefire Bolt (and Frostfire Bolt once at 9 stacks) critically hit as often as possible. This is achieved by cherry picking double (triple with Spell Power Rune) critical strike damage talents, and ways to critical strike more often than it should be possible with Fingers of Frost and Shatter, making it a great casino build even if expected damage is lower than pure Fire builds.

Unfortunately Improved Fireball and Improved Frostbolt do not work for Balefire Bolt, but we can still get strong talents such as Ice Block and Burning Soul, as well as Winter's Chill which is a fantastic debuff to have in a Mage heavy raid. As Fire builds will be looking to use Balefire Bolt and Frostfire Bolt in this Phase, your raid will have Winter's Chill and Improved Scorch at the same time, for a large Raid DPS increase!

• Gloves — Living Bomb
• Pants — Icy Veins
• Chest — Fingers of Frost
• Waist — Frostfire Bolt
• Feet — Spell Power
• Head — Deep Freeze
• Wrist — Balefire Bolt
• Back — Frozen Orb
• Ring — Frost Specialization
• Ring — Arcane Specialization

Other than the previously explained logic behind most Runes, in order to boost Balefire Bolt and Frostfire Bolt as much as possible, Living Bomb and Icy Veins are picked as valuable spells to have that do not take much time to use on cooldown.

Deep Freeze, as in the AoE build, can be used to stun frozen enemies, or as a large nuke against unfreezable enemies with Fingers of Frost procs.

Make sure to check our Mage Rune guide in order to learn where to get all the SoD runes!

The Frost tree is full of utility goodies for Mage, including powerful damage boosting talents at the end of the tree. While not all of them are reachable at Level 40, here's a preview of the best stuff the tree has to offer.

Permafrost increases the duration of your slowing effects by up to 3 seconds and makes them slow for 10% more. This allows lower duration slows, such as Improved Blizzard to be much more annoying and impactful on opponents, and makes Cone of Cold have a longer slow duration than its cooldown.

Cold Snap has a lengthy 10-minutes cooldown, but instantly resets all of your Frost spell cooldowns when used. This makes it an incredibly flexible tool, for damage in the form of back-to-back Cone of Colds, or for added control in the form of extra Frost Novas and Ice Blocks.

Improved Blizzard causes your Blizzard spell to slow hit targets by up to 65% for 2 seconds. When combined with Permafrost, the duration and slow effects are increased to 5, and 75%, respectively, which is extremely strong for controlling packs of enemies, or slowing single enemies with the Rank 1 version.

Ice Block literally turns you into an ice block, immune to all enemy attacks for 10 seconds, but also incapable of performing any action while it is active. It removes all debuffs on you, which makes it extremely useful against certain bosses, but its main use is to allow you to survive otherwise deadly damage.

Winter's Chill makes your Frost spells increase the likelihood further Frost spells will critically strike the target by up 10%, when at 5 stacks. This is a very powerful raid buff when there are several Balefire Bolt / Frostfire Bolt Mages present, and should be applied as soon as possible.

Ice Barrier creates a barrier of ice around you, absorbing damage for 1 minute. This is very useful, for the extra survivability, and also for the immunity to spell interruption from damage while it lasts.

The Fire tree allows you to pick up some interesting complementary talents.

Ignite allows your critical strikes to create a damage over time effect on the target for 40% extra damage over 4 seconds. This damage over time effect has its duration reset and grows for each additional critical strike landed while it is active.

Burning Soul is a straightforward damage pushback resistance talent with a high threat reduction effect baked in.

Improved Scorch, while not picked in our recommended Frost builds, is a staple of most other Mage DPS builds and thus likely to be present in your raid group, where it will boost your Balefire Bolt and Frostfire Bolt.