Frost Mage Guide - Talents, Rotations & More

The number one rule for casters is ALWAYS BE CASTING. This means you want to fill your global cooldowns with abilities always, even an "incorrect" rotational ability is more damage than no ability, with respect to mana of course.

Frost Mage dumps mana to do damage via:

Frostbolt: Single target ability, spammable.

Ice Lance: Single target ability, Ideally use against frozen enemy targets in a Frost Nova or a Frostbite. Or if Fingers of Frost procs.

Fire Blast Single target ability only used when you have nothing else and cannot cast.

Blizzard: Main AoE ability, channeled, so use when safe.

Cone of Cold + Arcane Explosion: AoE ability, use when you can't channel Blizzard, or to finish off many mobs.

Frost Blast: Weaker Frostbolt used to slow enemies.

Arcane Missiles: Single target ability, use when proc'd by Missile Barrage.

Conjure Mana Agate: Or other similar mana gems to restore mana.

Evocation: To restore mana if no gems or potions available.

Single Target Rotation Priority:

1. Maintain Ice Barrier if possible as it increases your damage by 3%
2. When Fingers of Frost procs, cancel your current spell and Ice Lance the buff off, this is because Frostbolt will consume Fingers of Frost and you prefer to have Ice Lance consume it.
3. When Frostbite procs if they are rootable, use Ice Lance after your next Frostbolt as they will hit the Frostbited nova at the same time and both benefit from Shatter.
4. When Missile Barrage procs use Arcane Missiles.
5. Spam Frostbolt till step 2 or 3 or 4 happens.
6. If you have to move your character cause of a mechanic or kiting and do not have a Fingers of Frost available, cast Fire Blast to just fill the global cooldown or other instant casts.
7. If you are OOM (out of mana) look to restore your mana with various mana gems like Conjure Mana Agate or other mana gems, potions like Mana Potion, or Evocation.
8. Use your Wand.

The goal of this spec is to spam Frostbolt's until either step 2 or 3 happens and then you try to hit big Ice Lance's, use Missile Barrage when safe to cast it, and careful as not all enemies can be frozen by Frostbite namely boss enemies.

AoE Rotation Priority:

1. Maintain Ice Barrier if possible as it increases your damage by 3%
2. If it is safe Precast a Flamestrike, but be weary as this is insanely high aggro against your tanks.
3. If you can cast always cast Blizzard hitting as many targets as possible.
4. If you cannot hard cast then start spamming between Cone of Cold and Arcane Explosion.
5. Spend Fingers of Frost + Ice Lance procs for movement.
6. If you are OOM (out of mana) look to restore your mana with various mana gems like Conjure Mana Agate or other stronger gems, potions like Mana Potion, or Evocation.
7. Use your Wand.

Frost mage AoE is pretty much just use blizzard if you are safe to channel it, and if you are not safe you use Cone of Cold and Arcane Explosion instead.

You can try the Frost Nova -> Flamestrike -> Cone of Cold combo that the AoE farming build talks about for big Shatter burst on AoE content as well just be weary that in dungeon content when others are hitting the Frost Nova it is likely to break and not get the benefits of Shatter.

This is a general guideline of stats that increase your DPS based off of beta testing. Subject to change when we reach 60 and gain more information on gear and max level.

1. Spell Hit Chance up to (17%) when available.
2. Spell Power or the spell damage of your spec (fire / frost / arcane)
3. Spell Critical Strike Chance
4. Spell Haste
5. Intellect
6. Spirit
7. Stamina

• Hit chance is always the most important but only up to a certain percent (17%) but not entirely obtainable while leveling.
• Spell Power is your strongest increase of raw spell damage outside of getting your hit up.
• Spell Critical Strike is right after Spell Power to increase critical strikes since many mage specs are amplified by crit.
• Spell Haste is next strongest but a very rare stat so not much thought here.
• Intellect is technically the most important stat but its so common on all pieces of gear that its not the crazy highest priority.
• Spirit increases your mana regeneration.
• Stamina increases your health.

These are consumables up to level 30, will update this more once the game is out and we have more information.

You can have one battle elixir and one guardian elixir, think of battle elixir's as one that increases your damage and guardian elixir's as one that increases your health or armor or etc. Your best flasks or elixirs or even food buffs will be ones that increase your Intellect or Spell power, and this will change depening on your level.

Battle Elixirs

• Lesser Arcane Elixir
• Elixir of Lesser Spirit
• Elixir of Wisdom

Guardian Elixirs

• Elixir of Defense
• Elixir of Lesser Fortitude

Potions

are a short duration buff that increases your stats so unlike flasks and elixirs that last long these last short, the big notable one I would look for at low levels is

• Lesser Spellblasting Potion

Food buffs

Food buffs now increase experience gained so if you are leveling I would highly recommend finding some sort of food buff for the experience increase. Some big notable ones at lower levels are

• Briny Seafood Stew
• Sagefish Delight

Scrolls

Scrolls are also a consumable which just act as a sort of raid buff, Arcane Intellect generally can't be stacked with your average Scroll of Intellect IV (or other ranks). So generally if you were scroll min-maxxing I would just aim for any Scroll of Spirit, Scroll of Stamina, or Scroll of Protection that are relevant for your level bracket. Keep in mind these like Intellect scrolls these cant be stacked with other similar class buffs.

You can pick any profession to suit your own class fantasy, but for mage the most synergistic professions are Enchanting, Tailoring, Engineering, and First Aid. You can pick 2 primary professions only, and as many secondary professions as you want.

Tailoring is a primary profession and lets you create very strong cloth gear even while leveling and some of it will end up being Best-in-Slot at max level so it is recommended if you want to be as strong as possible to level this up for max level.

Engineering is a primary profession and has many different utility gadgets and interesting toys for example items like SAF-T Nitro Boosts or other various bombs for DPS. Generally expensive if you don't pair it up with Mining.

Enchanting is a primary profession and has has synergy with Tailoring because any item you make from tailoring you can disenchant for more materials. Enchanting can also make various wands like Lesser Magic Wand or Greater Magic Wand which are very keen for early leveling, not to mention you can buff your gear with various enchants.

First Aid is secondary profession so you can get it along side primary professions. It is actually extremely important for mage because mage actually has no way to heal themselves up like other classes do, and mages generally have the smallest health pools so definitely look to keep First Aid up while leveling.

All racial abilities "sim" within margin of error (under 1%) meaning you should just pick your favorite racial abilities that suit you. Mages can now be Orc's and the new High Order Skyborne race, but only alliance for skyborne.

Alliance

Gnome

I believe is the best race in the game for Alliance mages or even mages in general.

• Eureka!
• Expansive Mind
• Escape Artist
• Engineering Specialization

The on use damage ability for Eureka! is proven to be very strong for DPS. As well as Expansive Mind to help with mage's hunger for mana. Escape Artist to break from roots if needed, which lets you save your Blink for a stun break.

Human

• Ruthless
• Will to Survive
• The Human Spirit
• Perception

Ruthless increases your critical strike chance. Will to Survive is good for annoying rogues but Blink can already break stuns. The Human Spirit increases spirit regeneration but spirit is not that important of a stat but good for leveling. Perception to see increased stealth detection against rogues or enemies in dungeons.

High Order Skyborne

• Wind Blessed
• Read Leyline
• Elemental Insight
• Walk on Air

Wind Blessed increases all spell casting haste by 2% which is interesting cause there is not much haste in the game. Read Leyline offers mana regeneration which I believe is insane for leveling. Elemental Insight lets you deal more damage to elemental mobs, pretty niche but Ragnaros is an elemental so could have value there. Walk on Air acts like a Slow Fall-like ability that you can steer.

Horde

Troll

Troll would be my go-to pick PvE content mainly because Berserking can be used as a cooldown for all of the hard casting spells.

• Berserking
• Beast Slaying
• Rapid Regeneration
• Regeneration

Berserking incredibly strong 3 minute on-use DPS racial ability. Beast Slaying for extra damage to beasts. Rapid Regeneration for self healing, and Regeneration (passive) for additional health regeneration.

Orc

Orc would be my runner up or likely better for Horde mage races simply just because of Blood Fury this racial was extremely buffed coming into forever and no longer has the negative healing effect it had in original vanilla.

• Blood Fury
• Shatter Curse
• Hardiness

Blood Fury incredibly fun and strong 2 minute on-use DPS racial ability that increases spell power. Shatter curse has less value for mages since we can already decurse ourself, however it does offer a magical damage reduction. Hardiness has watered down value because we can get out of stuns with Blink.

Undead

• Touch of the Grave
• Will of the Forsaken
• Cannibalize
• Underwater Breathing

The most interesting racial change undead has received is Cannibalize restoring mana making this insane for leveling or world content. Will of the Forsaken to get out of fears but this is mainly a PvP ability but has uses in dungeon or raid content if feared. Touch of the Grave offers some PvE damage.

Utility

• Polymorph: Hard Crowd Control's 1 enemy to be unable to attack or participate for X amount of seconds, the X being affected by what rank 1 of spell you use. Only usable on 1 enemy at a time, and only usable on humanoids, beasts, and critters. This spell is highly used in leveling dungeon content and is what mages are most known for.
• Counterspell If used while enemy is currently casting a spell, locks them out of that school of magic for 10 seconds. Incredibly strong.
• Frost Nova: An AoE rooting ability that freezes all enemies for up to 8 seconds. One of mages staples in controlling enemies. If they are scattering everywhere, hitting a Frost Nova will halt all enemies in place to sort of "pause" the pack down.
• Remove Lesser Curse: A spell to remove curse abilities off of friendly players and yourself. Not many classes can removed curses but mage is one of them.
• Cone of Cold: AoE slow ability that is instant.
• Improved Blizzard if talented offers a channeled AoE slow.

Defensive Abilities

• Mana Shield is a dire defensive but can be used as a defensive to mitigated physical damage namely auto attacks. I call it dire because even a single use can nearly deplete your mana.
• Ice Barrier is a Frost Mages most important defensive.
• Ice Block Immunity, but cannot move during.
• Frost Ward and Fire Ward to absorb its respective element of damage.

Buffs

• Frost Armor or Ice Armor (Frost Armor is replaced entirely by Ice Armor at level 30) Use this when you are solo farming / questing or expect to get attacked by Melee.
• Mage Armor Use this when you are not expected to get Melee'd, need spell resistance, or for the mana regeneration. Most commonly used in dungeon or raid content.
• Arcane Intellect or Arcane Brilliance to buff your group's intellect / mana pools.
• Amplify Magic and Dampen Magic are also buffs but be careful of their negative effect, not that commonly used but has its niches.

Portals / Food

• Portal: Orgrimmar: Mages have access to Portals to all major cities, allies after a dungeon ends will frequently ask for this, it does require a Rune of Portals item available from any reagent vendor to use though. You can also sell Portal services in trade chat for a quick buck.
• Conjure Water and Conjure Food: Conjure Water and Food for your allies that restore Mana (water) and Health (food). Your allies may request this in group content or you can even sell it to people in major cities for more quick bucks.

Mage has been known to down rank spells to the lowest rank in order to benefit from the spell in a low mana cost situation, some examples are

Recommended

• Rank 1 Frost Nova applies the same duration root as the max rank, the only difference is the damage it does, which is usually insignificant. Because of the mana cost it is not advised to use max rank frost nova.
• Rank 1 Frostbolt applies a slow to kite a mob at an extremely fast cast time and way lower mana cost. This was a staple of old vanilla / classic WoW. However with the addition of Frost Blast this should replace the role of downranking to rank 1 Frostbolt.
• Rank 1 Blizzard if Improved Blizzard is talented as it lets you AoE slow at a low mana cost.

Optional

• Rank 1 Fireball can be used to pull mobs from very far away as it has a longer range than most spells.
• Rank 1 Fire Blast or Rank 1 Ice Lance can be used to tag mobs as an instant cast
• Rank 1 Cone of Cold same thing as Frost nova it applies the same slow the only difference is the damage, and Cone of Cold is generally pretty expensive so if you just need the instant cast AoE slow this can be useful.
• Rank 1 Polymorph same thing as nova very cheap costed polymorph however the duration of the poly is much lower. Personally I had both of these keybound in case my mana was very low and I needed to Polymorph something.
• Rank 1 Arcane Explosion has some use case scenario if you are trying to tag mobs that are not hostile at a low mana cost as well, or to just finish off extremely low enemies.
• Rank 1 Dampen Magic or Amplify Magic can be used to apply a magic buff to yourself to add a kind of "purge" protection so your other magic buffs don't get Purge'd or Dispel Magic'd, this is mainly a PvP thing.
• Rank 1 Frostbolt applies a slow to kite a mob at an extremely fast cast time and way lower mana cost. This was a staple of old vanilla / classic WoW.