Frost 4.03 spec (at level 85)
***edit*** updated for level 85 and 4.03 info.
Frost, Raiding @ Level 85: http://www.wowhead.com/talent#oZfcbZffMosuszro
Keeping the Frost tree to only 31 points gets pretty tough. There's about 30 points in frost that have a direct dps increase; and in a perfect world we'd like to get Ignite, FirePower and Netherwing Presence from the Fire and Arcane trees for more dps too. And that's not counting any of the the situational freezes and additional defenses that have always been the trademark of a Frost mage. The build above sacrificed all the situational freezes first, but still needed to cut some more. Ice Shards, Permafrost, and Enduring Winter will be the next to get cut. The value of Enduring winter will really depend on if other people in the raid are providing replenishment - if they are, I've gladly move those points back into permafrost.
| ? | Int | SP | Hit | Crit | Haste | Mastery |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Scale Factors | 3.9502 | 2.4345 | 2.8091 | 1.3029 | 1.0850 | 0.9402 |
| Normalized | 1.0000 | 0.6163 | 0.7111 | 0.3298 | 0.2747 | 0.2380 |
| Gear Ranking |
This basically means Int >> Hit > Spell Power >> Crit > Haste > Mastery. Of course we're still aiming for 17% hit for the cap, but if we have a choice between an pure Int gem and a Int/Hit one, we should take the pure Int one (socket bonus not withstanding). Once we're hit capped, then Crit to 33% with raid buffs (about 25% self buffed). Once we get our Crit over 33% with all buffs, then Haste and Mastery will be more useful. Keep in mind that we probably won't get hit capped until 3.1 hits - it's pretty tough to do, even with all the best gear currently available.
Quoting Lhivera here - first real numbes I've seen for frost
What I've got below is a very rough idea of the value of the various Frost DPS talents whose value is less obvious than the massively powerful abilities such as Fingers of Frost, Shatter, and the Water Elemental.
Early Frost
With zero haste, EF takes a Frostbolt cast from 2.0 secs to 1.3 secs, saving you 0.7 secs. With 10% haste, EF takes a Frostbolt cast from 1.82 secs to 1.18 secs, saving you 0.64 secs. So 10% haste effectively reduces the value of Early Frost by 8.6%. Just note that in generaly the more haste you have the more the value of EH will dimish. But our stats will actually fall quite a bit as we move from T10 to T11 and the new level cap.
- EF appears to be worth about 1.14% DPS per point
Ignite
This is assuming that it is unintended for Frostfire Orb to be unable to generate Ignites (Flame Orb can). If it turns out to be intended, the value will decrease. Keep in mind that we're simply not casting all that many FFB's -- only about one for every 10 Frostbolts. Probably worth it if we end up specing into Burning Soul for pushback protection and Master of Elements for more mana. But if these talents don't provide any real value at 85 then spending 8 points to pick up ~4% more DPS just isn't worth it when some of the freezes may be more useful early on for trash control.
- Ignite appears to be worth about 1.4% DPS per point
Fire Power
This is useful for Frost Fire Bolt (from Brain Freeze) and for Frostfire Orb. Early in Beta it wasn't clear if this would be benificial for Frost mages, but at least as of 4.03 it is still a good dps talent for us (better than Netherwing Presence, not quite as good as Ignite). If you need to cut points out of your secondary talents, this would be where it comes from.
- Fire Power appears to be worth about 1% DPS per talent point
Netherwind Presence
Netherwind Presence is a pretty weak talent for us. It's partly hurt by the fact that it doesn't affect the Water Elemental (though Haste Rating does), and partly by the fact that it cannot help us cast additional Deep Freezes, Freezes or Frostfire Orbs. Those four sources make up a considerable percentage (about a third) of our damage. Useful, but both Ignite and Fire Power are better.
- A point of Netherwind Presence is worth about 0.7% DPS.
Brain Freeze
Good return on investment, especially considering it also provides some mobile damage.
- 3-4% DPS each talent points for 3 points.
Cold Snap
Obviously varies a fair amount with encounter length, but clearly worthwhile even without considering the utility it provides. The generic usage model will be to pop coold downs on the pull and then use Cold Snap to make them all available and use them again, immediatly after the first set.
- 3% DPS @ 1 talent point
Frostfire Orb
Not a bad return on investment. The second point is purely optional, giving you an extra snare on Frostfire Orb itself, and a hefty 70% (with max Permafrost) snare on Frostfire Bolt, making it a really good spell to open with when soloing.
- 1-1.5% DPS @ 1 talent point (the 2nd point only improves the snare)
Improved Freeze
Really good. This is a must-have. Makes for a pretty expensive tier, but it's worthwhile. Note that your WE's freeze doesn't have to work (or even successfully target anything) - you just have to cast the freeze to get 2 more charges of FoF. This is the whole reason to use your WE's freeze every 8 seconds when its up. This + deep freeze will probably our opener for most boss fights (assuming the tank can generate quick aggro).
- 5-6% DPS @ 3 talent points
Water Elemental
It's not a talent, but just for the record, it's worth about 15% of our total DPS by itself - not counting the Imp Freeze benifit we get as well. This aslo means that a Frost mage will do about 15% less threat per point of dps than the other mage classes. With the removal of all threat reduction talents this may end being signifigant if we find ourselves threat capped.
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Frost mage stat priority
* You end up 5-10% higher than your paper doll will show - 5% Molten Armor (glyphed), 5% glyphed frost bolt (and 5% for Ice Lance from 2pc T11) but keep in mind that Ice Lance, FrostFire Bolt and Deep Freeze will still be 5% lower. You should have some additional crit from raid buffs too, depending on your raid composition. Crit above 33% is subject to diminishing returns because Shatter multiplies your crit chance against frozen targets by 3x and anything above a 100% chance to crit is wasted - we should be hitting frozen targets almost 50% of the time between things like Fingers of Frost and all of our various freeze abilities.
** Haste above 30% will be subject to diminishing returns as we end up under the GCD cool down pretty easily, but it doesn't look like we'll be worried about capping hit, crit and then haste for quite a while, but it may be an issue late in the cata patches.
*** Just keep in mind that Mages no longer get any benifit from spirit at all. Seriously, 0. We may as well start stacking agility or armor pen. Go reforge whatever Spirit you may have sitting around on your gear into something useful. Go convert all your old purple gems (with spirit) into ones with hit rating. Maybe check out the badge vendors to see about picking a few new items, etc. But from now on if it has spirit, leave it for the priest (or that warlock who doesn't know what he's doing).
-edit-
updated with some new information based on T11 stats
T11 numbers
Paraphrasing Lhivera from EJ again here
Given the following starting stats, which include gems and enchants in mostly T11 gear:
Spell Power: 6393
Hit Rating: 1216 (94.87%)
Haste Rating: 1072 (10.37%)
Crit Rating: 1509 (23.62%)*
Mastery Rating: 1406 (15.84)
Meta Gem Active: Yes
+250 Int (+591.97 dps / +4.30%)
+250 Hit Rating (+385.14 dps / +2.80%)
+250 Mastery Rating (+225.31 dps / +1.64%
+250 Haste Rating (+199.15 dps / +1.45%)
+250 Crit Rating (+101.4 dps / +0.74%)
* Note that when self buffed and with standard enchants Frost will already be at the 33% crit soft cap in T11 gear.
Gemming
As far as I can tell, most of the socket bonuses are worth it now - previously you really gave up a lot going for blue sockets.
Red socket = Brilliant Cardinal Ruby (Red, +20 Int)
Blue socket = Veiled Dreadstone (Purple, +10 Int & +10 Hit)
Yellow socket = Potent Ametrine (Orange, +10 Int & +10 Crit) or Reckless Ametrine (Orange, +10 Int & +10 Haste)
I don't think we have any mastery gems in the game yet, but when we do (and we find out what color they are) then they could be very useful too.
Yellow I think
will be the 20 Mastery gem. Not sure about other gem cuts in Cata, I'm sure there will be plenty of Mastery/insert stat here to choose from.
!
Not even a week and he's breaking out the spreadsheets. You scare me, Mage.
How good is your calculus?
There's a few good advanced theory crafting sites out there that really take to a whole new level. I'm just a semi-pro amateur here.
Mage has agrro again!!!
Not sure how I missed this, but none of our specs have any threat reduction talents anymore. I ran 1 heroic last night and I still had unspent talent points, ungemmed gear, and only a few items reforged - I was ripping threat off a fairly well geared tank on every pull. Maybe the tank just hadn't gemed/reforged/talented himself fully yet (or he just generally had no idea what he was doing), but it wasn't just a matter of getting in a few early crits. My TPS well exceeded the tanks TPS - something definitely worth studying a bit.
That 2% threat reduction cloak enchant from TBC may actually be useful now.
Tanks are missing their level 81 talent point
and at least in some cases are pretty screwed until that point. Even after attending to 4.0 stuff (glyphs, gems, reforging, etc) you still can have threat problems. Ran heroic with Kibito last night--our dps was ret pally, fury warrior, and enhance shammy. Kibs was a sad panda--said he couldn't hold threat on anything. Mind you this is Kibs, not some pug scrub.
I'll tank a few more heroics over the weekend and see where things are at. The thing I noticed most for paladin tanks is that I don't run out of mana...my god that is a huge difference. I may have hit Divine Plea once.
They may hot fix some things that will help, but yeah...casters got the love big time (see especially shaman, elemental).
yeah...
It's worse for druid tanks. Everyone else has some sort of DoT or peroidic damage they can lay down or hit everyone with. So instead of hitting a pack with one aoe and getting some "free" aggro from a dot I have to blow GCDs to apply a lacerate to each one and by that time someone gone done pulled aggro off my main target. It didn't help you were spamming aoe the entire time. =P
we're all learning
and I apologize for spamming aoe the whole time--I guess some of the new stuff I got is an aoe. And yes, my frisbee has a much shorter cooldown and no longer causes me to loee half of my mana, so yeah...druid tanks need something like that too. Nice going Blizz ;p
Yeah.
It's a short term problem hopefully and we'll be able to handle packs like other tanks can now. Just need one more level!
from what I noticed.
you really need to give the tank a couple seconds before getting into your rotation. Especially if it's a pack. They need to move in gather everyone up and then can hit their AoE. After that, then they can start building real threat on their primary target.
Pet Macro
In case you hadn't followed the discussion in 3.0, several people found out that adding a "/cast waterbolt" onto your frostbolt spell made your water elemental spam his waterbolt spell more often. (if you don't keep telling him to attack he pauses for a second in between each attack for some reason - warlock pets generally do this too.)
So then we got into a discusison about what about when your pet died and the error messages that would generate (because you were still spamming a macro for a pet that didn't exist anymore) - so that's what the "/stopmacro [nopet]" is about. Then someone had the good idea to build in contol over which target your pet is attacking. Bascially this macro will keep your pet attacking whichever target he's on until its dead (his first target will be your target if possible - if not it will be the closest enemy), then he'll automatcially change to your current target after his first one is dead. If you want him to change to your target, just hold shift while casting your frostbolt.
#tooltip
/cast Frostbolt
/stopmacro [nopet]
/cast [mod:shift] [@pettarget,exists,nodead] [] Waterbolt
/petattack [mod:shift]
/stopmacro [@pettarget, exists, nodead]
/petattack
Water Elemental Scaling
Water Elemental scaling:
Talent Build, Haste, Glyphs
Regarding the talent build, mine is similar except I put the point from imp CoC into early frost, one point from enduring winter into ice shards, the point from shattered barrier into Master of Elements, and the missing point (the build has only 35 points, not 36) into Master of Elements. The points in Master of Elements might well better be spent on Burning Soul.
Regarding haste: You said you have 1200+ haste, yet in your stat priority you listed haste last. According to that, you should reforge all the haste you can into mastery or crit, right?
Also I read that glyph of frostfire is better than glyph of molten armor if your crit is above 33.33%, which it probably will be despite reforging.
True - I'm still considering
True - I'm still considering Arcane to be my main spec at the moment (which really needs a lot of haste - although I did reforge a lot too).
Yes, FFB will be better than Molten if your crit is over 33% (because we have a 3x time to crit against frozen targets - so anything above 33% is only 50% effective).
As for Master of Elements - I'm don't think it'll help much. We crit a lot, but at least so far we don't have any issues staying very high on mana. I'd rather put 2 points into Enduring Winter to ensure 100% up time for the rest of the raid.
T11 stats and testing
Lhivera posted this up on EJ recently, but I know a lot of people read up on that often. There's been some discussion and analysis of Early Frost which revealed that it can reduce the gcd below 1.0 sec - which actually makes it a useful talent. This is still all based on the beta, and we're already seeing a few cases where live has been updated more recently, so its unclear if some of the mechanics from beta or live will be what finally goes into effect. I did update my first post above with this new information.
K, with the following stats derived from T11 and equivalent gear, using mostly veiled gems (which are now purple) to fill red and blue slots, and a hit enchant on the bracers:
Health: 89633
Intellect: 4086
Mana: 80554
Spell Power: 6393
Hit Rating: 1216 (94.87%)
Haste Rating: 1072 (8.37%)
Crit Rating: 1509 (23.62%)
Mastery Rating: 1406 (15.84)
Meta Gem Active: Yes
The percentage numbers include talents and base values.
I've added a feature to always use the average base damage of a spell rather than a random range to decrease variance a bit. Still pretty subject to RNG; even with 500 iterations I'm getting results varying by as much as 80 DPS. I think to correct that I'll need to implement an option to use average damage based on a given cast's crit chance. This'll also involve averaging the MOE return.
Anyway, point is, it's hard to get extremely precise on the value of individual talent points. But here's my best estimate at present.
Base Test
No Early Frost, no Ignite, no Netherwind Presence.
Early Frost
The GCD change seems to have really evened out the value of the two talent points. You get full value except when running over 30% haste. Value does decrease a bit with haste.
With zero haste, EF takes a Frostbolt cast from 2.0 secs to 1.3 secs, saving you 0.7 secs. With 10% haste, EF takes a Frostbolt cast from 1.82 secs to 1.18 secs, saving you 0.64 secs. So 10% haste effectively reduces the value of Early Frost by 8.6%. This explains why the value I'm getting with gems and enchants is a bit lower than the value I posted a couple days ago.
Ignite
This is assuming that it is unintended for Frostfire Orb to be unable to generate Ignites (Flame Orb can). If it turns out to be intended, the value will decrease.
Netherwind Presence
Netherwind Presence is a pretty weak talent for us. It's partly hurt by the fact that it doesn't affect the Water Elemental (though Haste Rating does), and partly by the fact that it cannot help us cast additional Deep Freezes, Freezes or Frostfire Orbs. Those four sources make up a considerable percentage (about a third) of our damage.
Enduring Winter
As expected, better gear greatly increases our endurance and full points in Enduring Winter becomes increasingly unnecessary. I set the spec to optimal DPS (2/2 EF, 3/3 Ignite, 2/3 NP), and increased the duration to 10 minutes. Over 500 runs, it determined the average time at which the caster was unable to cast any spells at all (spells would be cast later in the simulation as Evo came off cooldown or through regen). I don't now how long fights will be, but I suspect that even if we need 3/3 EW when starting T11 content, we'll be able to drop to 2/3 by the end of that content, if not even 1/3.
Optimal opening rotation
Prepull A - Mirror Image prepull
Prepull B - Volcanic Potion prepot
1 - Icy Veins + On-Use Trinket + Frostbolt (Uses Early Frost)
2 - Cast "Freeze" then immediately -> Deep Freeze + Ice Lance
3 - Frostfire Orb
4 - Cold Snap
5 - Frostfire Orb (2 Frostfire Orbs will be up simultaneously now)
---
6a - Use Deep Freeze again immediately when a FoF charge is available (Cold Snap just reset the cooldown)
6b - "Heavy Ice Lance Spam" (Due to the 2 Frostfire Orbs being up simultaneously, will be mostly Ice Lance Spam for the next 15 seconds
---
7 - Icy Veins (As soon as the first one expired)
8 - Normal rotation
-------------
Some of the encounters do have ~6 minute enrage timers (such as Maloriak). We have to choose whether to cold snap at the start, or with Blood Lust/Time Warp at the end. Many fights do have a -20% (or equivilant %) soft/hard-enrage burn portion, so there will be pressure for raids to use heroism towards the end. On short fights (less than 6.5 minutes) where BL/TW will be used at the end and we don't have time to wait for cold snap cool down to be used again, it may be best to save cold snap for use with BL/TW.
Other fights, especially heroics, are much longer. Some pushing closer to ~10 minutes. With Cold Snap being a ~6.5 minute cooldown, we'll have the option to use it shortly after the pull and again later with BL/TW. It depends on which encounter you're doing, and when you actually use heroism.
Volcanic Potion - Item - World of Warcraft lasts 25 seconds, with a 1 minute cooldown invoked upon use. Using two Frostfire Orbs simultaneously will ensure both receive full benefits of the potion.
Updated for 4.03
I updated the first post. There's been a few changes since 4.01 and the beta. Here's the currect "best dps" build, but the theorycrafting does show that it's ok to move a few points around to get some more freezes/survivability without a major impact on dps. Things like reative barrier vs permafrost vs enduring winter continue to be a personal choice.
http://www.wowhead.com/talent#oZfcbZffMosuszro