Frost Mage Guide for The War Within

Welcome to our War Within expansion guide for Frost Mage. Ahead of launch, this page will contain everything you need to know about the Frost Mage spec in the forthcoming The War Within expansion, including changes, Hero Talent Trees, and some light predictions on the state of the spec going into the expansion.

This page is a constantly evolving work in progress, with regular changes expected as updates hit the War Within beta. This is not meant to be a launch guide for Frost Mage, but instead serves as a resource for you to keep up to date with how the spec is evolving on Beta, and what you can expect from its playstyle and feel on launch.

Frost Mage has gotten minimal changes. Ring of Frost and Ice Nova are now a choice node, which is slightly annoying for the times you wished to have Ring. Dragon's Breath has been moved to a more accessible location. Temporal Warp has finally been removed, with a passive 3% Intellect replacing it as the choice node against Time Anomaly.

On the Frost side of the tree, we have a few talents that are supposed to align with a non- Glacial Spike style of gameplay, but in practice try and force a Frostbolt-centric playstyle. While the new tier set tries to prevent Frostbolt spam specifically, tuning will dictate if that is possible. Otherwise, the gameplay is the same as it is on live.

While very little has changed for Frost Mage's core features, The War Within still has major implications for all specs thanks to the Hero Talent Tree system.

Frost Mage gets to choose between the Frostfire and Spellslinger Hero Talent Trees. In sections below, we will talk more deeply about the implications of these Hero Talent Trees for the spec.

Frostfire Bolt returns after having been removed in Legion, as a replacement for Frostbolt. The spec itself revolves around 14-second windows, in which you need to have 6 frost spells, and 6 fire spells cast within them to buff Ice Lance and Flurry. The fire spells are primarily handled by both Frostfire Bolt itself, which counts as both elements, and a small damage proc on a high RPPM that also counts as both elements.

Gameplay-wise, expect a mostly passive kit. This is a very flashy tree, but the gameplay is very similar to how Frost has played in the past. Most components of it do not need to be reacted to, and the procs that are attached to it are primarily passive improvements to your procs.

Power-wise, Frostfire has a fair bit of burst in the opener due to Comet Storm dropping a Meteor, and some Comet Storm cooldown reduction on the Excess Frost proc.

Defensively, you get the option of either another 5% health on your Ice Barrier, or to cast a full strength Blazing Barrier at the end of your Ice Block/ Ice Cold. There is also a 30% cooldown reduction to Blast Wave and Dragon's Breath, which is a minor buff to our M+ kit.

Spellslinger, while passive seeming, adds an extra proc to the rotation. The entire tree revolves around Frost Splinters that are procced primarily from consuming Winter's Chill on any target. Once 8 are active, across all targets, they recall and fire at your current target, and apply Winter's Chill again.

Gameplay-wise, there are a lot more Winter's Chill windows. Additionally, each Frost Splinter from both the primary impact and the Splinterstorm effect have an ~1.6% chance to reset Frozen Orb.

Power-wise, this spec is going to depend greatly on future tuning. The current iteration seems to have been over-nerfed slightly due to a number of bugs involved with the current implementation, resulting in significantly more Frost Splinters and Winter's Chill procs than should be expected if working properly. However, the Frozen Orb reset is coupled with a Frozen Orb damage buff, that applies to all Orb ticks that happen while it is active. This is looking to be an amazing funnel tree.

Defensively, Spellslinger has a choice of either 5% more damage reduction attached to Mirror Image, which is significant for how long a duration the spell lasts. It additionally adds a fourth image spawn, which in the rare situations where Reduplication actually works, adds another 10-second cooldown reduction to Mirror Image. The alternative is linear scaling on Ice Barrier, increasing in power another 50%, based on your health lost, with the most benefit when you are sub-50%. For any multi-hit or extended damage events, this is a fantastic boon that takes Ice Barrier up to 36% of your max health.

Below are the Tier Set Bonuses for Frost Mage in The War Within. After the wording of the bonus, you will find a brief note/commentary that is italicized.

• Mage Frost Season 1 2pc — Ice Lance damage increased by 8%.This is a nice passive buff that keeps Ice Lance in play for the current season.
• Mage Frost Season 1 4pc — Fingers of Frost empowered Ice Lance procs a small AoE effect. Entirely passive and extremely undertuned. We are talking less than 1% in single target contribution, and only about 8% in sustained AoE.

Both set bonuses are completely passive and will not have any gameplay impact.

How Good is the Frost Mage Tier Bonus in The War Within?

The 2p is fine, and in line with what a set bonus should provide throughput-wise. The 4p is tuned horrifically poorly, and unless it gets a buff, there is a large chance that we simply take better-optimized offpieces instead.

Strengths

• Fair defensive additions via the Hero Talents.
• Some pretty nice funnel potential via Spellslinger.
• Core gameplay preserved for the most part, with the potential for GS-less options.
• No longer eating a huge DPS loss if a fight does not want Time Warp on pull.

Weaknesses

• Spellslinger's AoE talent is extremely difficult to optimize around.
• Forcing us to pick between Ring of Frost and Ice Nova is painful for the few scenarios Ring was desired.
• Frost-side talents are extremely locked in.
• Frost-side talents that got changed are rewarding Frostbolt spam, which means that most builds actually run out of things to spend points on that are useful.