Frost Mage Introduction Guide

My name is Tamir, also known as tam1h.

I've been pushing high mythic+ keys since Legion as a mage and raiding since Warlords of Draenor. I have been raiding in the top 30 scene throughout most of Shadowlands and Dragonflight.

Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/tam1h

Twitter: https://twitter.com/TamirWow

Patch 10.2.5 Frost Mage Changes

Frost Mage received no changes in Patch 10.2.5 that impact the guide!

Frost Mage Tuning Patch 10.2

Going forward to patch 10.2 as a Frost Mage is looking really good to be honest, Frost didn't receive that many changes from the 10.1.5 Rework (see section below for more info) and Frost was already in a very strong spot. It's certainly looking like you cant go wrong with Frost in 10.2.

• The single target remains very good with 2-minutes Icy Veins
• Strong Burst AoE with Comet Storm  and Cone of Cold combo
• Very strong Cleave thanks to our Glacial Spike

Changes in Patch 10.1.7

There haven't been any changes to Frost Mage in Patch 10.1.7 that have required updates to the guide.

Patch 10.1.5 Frost Mage Rework Changes

All 3 mage specs are receiving significant changes in the upcoming patch 10.1.5, lots of abilities getting removed, moved, and reworked, on top of tuning.

I will list the most important things to note for Frost Mage in the next upcoming patch 10.1.5:

• Rune of power getting removed (all abilities getting buffed by around 12-15% to compensate for the loss of rune of power).
• Incanter’s flow replace invisibility in the class tree (our default choice).
• Cold Snap and Blizzard are now baseline abilities for Frost Mage.
• Shifting power has been moved in the class tree.
• New talent: Ice Cold Replace Ice Block - reduces all damage taken by 70% for 6 seconds but no longer grants immunity, this spell is off the GCD (meaning you can press it while casting something else).
• New talent: Mass Barrier: Cast mage spec based barrier (ice barrier for frost) on yourself and 3 nearby allies on 2 minutes CD (very strong for Dungeon Content).
• Icy Propulsion has been removed from Icy Veins.
• New talent: Mass Invisibility, similar to the mage pvp talent. You and your allies within 40 yards instantly become invisible for 10 seconds, taking any action will cancel this effect and only works outside of combat (similar to shroud).
• Icy Veins has been redesigned from 3 minutes to 2 minutes, but grants 20% haste instead of 30% haste. Activating Icy Veins now also summons a water elemental that apply a debuff on your target increasing your frost damage up to 15%.
• Thermal Void has been redesigned. Thermal Void extends icy veins by 5 seconds (was 10) and Ice Lance extends Icy Veins duration by 0.5, from 1 second. Glacial Spike increases icy veins duration by 3 seconds.
• Glacial Spike has been redesigned and buffed. Glacial Spike now deals 100% damage to a second nearby target (unlike 65% with ice lance splitting ice).
• Ray of Frost CD has been reduced to 1 minute (was 75 seconds) and buffed.
• New Talent: Cryopathy - The damage of your next Ray of Frost is increased by 8% each time you consume Fingers of Frost, stacking up to 80%. Icy Veins grants 10 Stacks instantly.
• New Talent: Coldest Snap - Cone of cold CD is increased to 45 seconds, and if cone of cold hits 3 or more enemies, it resets the CD of frozen orb, and Comet Storm. In addition, cone of cold applies winter’s chill to all enemies hits, but is no longer affected by shifting power. This talent is EXTREMELY powerful on Mythic+ content, offering a huge AoE burst of damage, which is what frost desperately needed.
• New Talent: Winter’s Blessing - Your haste is increased by 8% and you gain 10% more Haste stat from all sources.
• Frost Mastery has slightly changed as well, Blizzard and Glacial Spike now scaling with our Mastery, which empowers our AoE capability with Mastery as a stat.

Thoughts and Conclusions on the Frost mage tuning in Patch 10.1.5

I think the rework puts frost in a great spot overall.

The return of glacial spike with those huge crits is something I know a lot of people missed, including me.

We have a lot of raid and mythic+ utility with mass barrier and mass invisibility.

The haste buff with the new talent, Winter’s Blessing, is a great feeling to smooth out Frost’s overall gameplay and how the spec flows. The idea behind this talent is that the spec will feel fast and fluid, even outside of icy veins since it’s not 100% uptime anymore, so now we have a lot more haste, it's a great feeling.

I think the removal of rune of power in modern wow is a good thing, there are so many occasions when you use rune of power and get targeted by something and have to move. This was always just an overall bad feeling, and a lot of people are happy with rune of power being removed, so now your damage window won’t be tied to a 8 yards range.

And of course, the new coldest snap talent is such a great addition for Frost Mage toolkit, having an AoE burst on demand is something that frost needed for so long and it's gonna make frost as a spec feels so much better in M+ and raid when you have multiple adds spawning that need to be burst down.

The new talent, Ice Cold, can be extremely useful in some content when you don’t necessarily need an immunity. On top of this, you can heal yourself with the Cryo-Freeze talent and you can also Cold Snap + Ice Cold as a talent (still affected by hypothermia). Currently on 10.1.5 PTR, Ice Cold is also affected by Shifting Power, but keep in mind this can change.

Having Blizzard scaling with Mastery to buff our AoE is such a great addition to Frost’s toolkit, both as a spec and our AoE Damage Profile, making Mastery a very desirable stat for us now, especially on AoE.

Overall, I'm extremely happy with the direction Frost Mage is heading in with patch 10.1.5, reviving some old spells that are coming back to keep the spec fresh and new is a great thing.