Thanks for the vid! Like you said, really disappointed that they didnt incorporate S3 DF 4 piece set bonus into the tree. Love the GS playstyle and it feels REALLY bad to hold onto it rather than sending it. Also, love the WA additions for Excess Fire and Frost! I hope they fix/buff Frostfire. Anyways, keep up the great work brother!
Hey man I really love your videos! May I suggest using the addon that shows the order in which yo press each ability? (Other streamers used it and is helpful!)
Thanks, the WoWhead guides, while good, can be a bit tricky to decipher at times. I'm glad frostifre is getting nearer to spellslinger. I'm not a huge fan of spellslinger frost. I'm really enjoying sunfury arcane but frostfire feels fun to play and it's good to have something to swap out to from time to time.
Really love your guides and watched them multiple times. I would really enjoy having the addon/weakaura that shows which abilities you pressed so I can better follow the gameplay examples :)
Nice video! :) But Why ignor Ice nova? Is it not good for casting Comet Storm and then Ice Nova so when the Comets hit, the targets are frozen? Cone of cold have smaller range then Ice Nove?
Long time Mage here, and I'm finding the SS Frost to be bloated and weird. For one thing, Winter's Chill and Fingers of Frost should be merged just to make the spec more simple. Then these Splinter things are a bit annoying. I have Weak Auras that tell me how many Spinters there are, and when Winter's Chill is applied. But I don't know... kind of annoying spec now with too many spells put in there over the years and now these Splinters. Anyway, excellent guide. I still like it because Mage is always fun, but yeah.
Finally learned arcane its actually the easiest spec. Spellslinger frost is carpal tunnel lance spam nightmare but still clunky. Frostfire is ok but underperforming. Arcane is simple but engaging and rewarding.
I'm new to retail and leveled up to 80 as Frostfire, had a ton of fun. Just took like a general AOE type setup without Ray of Frost or Glacial Spike. What a shame to hear that Frostfire is bugged and significantly weaker. Either way, I stumbled across your Arcane guide video and have been trying to learn that the last couple days, having a lot of fun. I can see why the Spellslinger setup is so strong. Actually looks kinda fun where Frozen Orb is randomly coming off cooldown. I may have to check this build out too once I'm done scratching the arcane itch. It seems like the gear priority would be pretty similar? Probably Crit > Mastery for Frost vs the other way for Arcane. Either way I'm not looking to be a top player on the server, just trying to have fun, and your guides have been invaluable. Thanks much
could you please explain the frozen orb tracker so i can tell every 3 seconds we track fingers of frost but how do i stack the combo ? i think im doing it to fast or wrong thanks for the vid
Combo thing doesnt matter, its just aesthetic (its for how many orbs youve sent without freezing winds dropping). The tracker is mainly for you to know if you would be able to ice lance as your next spell rather than starting a frostbolt cast
thanks man! thats what i thought hehe.. dude i struggle sooo much with frost, i execute the aoe rota quite good on dummies (5 targets) ill pump 2.8-3 mio burst with 605 but after that it falls to 1.8… do these numbers feel weak gs wise? rather struggle with single target idk even watched your guide arcane feels so much smoother and i execute it better
anyone have the feelings that (Time Anomaly) isn't worth in dungs and M+?? it works more often at the last second of the pull, while we running to next pack. Does (Inspired Int) 3% flat intellect doing any good in TWW??
Spellslinger seems like it doesn't want glacial spike (thematically), it'd add to the theme of icicles & splinters firing constantly so you get to be a magic gatling gun. I suppose I need to still take GS? Phooie
Can someone correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems like the annoying part of trying to time ice lances is basically only in ST. In AoE it seems like you just send ice lance constantly because you're always having procs.
Thanks for making this guide. I really hate that we were sold that it's simply Ice Lances when it's kind of just garbage style of game play. Guess I'll be an arcane mage this xpac.
As for any class rotations are much more easily understood when you level up your character and access to some abilities per level so you can test priorities yourself. Once you ding 80 and have a good grasp at your character then and only then you can appreciate guides like this one. Unfortunately ppl still use to character boost and struggle to understand all of the abilities at the same time
R1 frost mage here from previous m+ - and played only frostmage for 10 years. I just dont understand how to play around winter's chill debuff that is randomly gained from splinterstorm. I tried 5 hours to make custom WA that would suit me and even the WA you mentioned does not fit me well, makes me more confused/hesitating than not haveing it. Lets say I completely ignore/miss everything going on with splinterstorm and just use icelance like I normally would, when I have proc or after flurry - Basically just playing frost like spellinger does not exist. What will my dps loss be? Many time they overlapp anyway meaning you have finger of frost proc when you get winter chill debuff from the splinterstorm, so it seems it might not be crazy high dmg loss. Thanks!
The greatest guide ever. By the way, I can't find where are the stats priority in the video. Could you suggest one pls as a frost mage? tyvm in advance.
Appreciate your fantastic tutorial; I would like to clarify that when we encounter the boss in the dungeon, we use the ST rotation? (under the M+ build)
quick question, if playing spellslinger, the play style is orb and fingers of frost, which are all instant, why would haste be required aside from the global cooldown reduction?, is everything is instant is way better to get up to 33% crit and around 40-45% mastery filling up with haste. Or am I missing something?
In dungeon, when you get to bosses, do you go back to ST rotation and cast glacial spike? And do you cast glacial spike when there’s less then 4 target?
Frostfire is easier to pick up, and the ST rotation doesnt change between m+ and raid build, just ca nt use the talents you dont have like ray of frost for instance.
The Winters chill WA does not show winters chill for me at the start of the pull so the first winters chill appplications are not displayed properly. Does anyone else have this problem?
Yes, it has to do with how the WA is coded. You can go to load conditions and remove the in-combat requirement. And then if you want it hidden out of combat but still function, just go to conditions and add if in combat false then alpha 0%.
I have a issue - i want the WA to always show, but it doesnt, i go into WA --> Conditions --> Alive and in combat, but it still wont show outside combat. What am i doing wrong?
Thank you for your guide ! If I understood correctly, when weak aura is purple, we need to spam ice lance also ? No comet storm or glacial spike if there are procs and weak aura is blue or purple ? Sorry I’m french and I try to learn english at the same time haha
About 1 gcd after your weakaura turns purple you should use ice lance. So you can use frozen orb/comet storm and then ice lance to fill that gap. Comet storm should be used if the weakaura is purple.
I'm only about 3 minutes into the vid, so I don't know if you'll mention this, but an addition to the “frozen targets” is that Glacial Spike also freezes the target. The effect lasts for 4 seconds and also counts towards the damage multiplier of Ice Lance. :D
I'd recommend wowhead as a written guide, I'm not connected to any of the sites atm, but all of the writers are admins in the mage discord so they are trustable.
So you don't waste an icicle, if you do frostbolt>Flurry at 4 you will waste an icicle that could have contributed to another glacial spike. So at 4 you just send a naked flurry because it will generate just 1 icicle and then you can cast glacial after.
I actually like the spellslinger/ice lance approach. Last time I watched a frost guide from you it was during DF and I ended up not playing WoW because it sounded so compilcated like I was back in College and learning for an exam or something. Much too compilcated. Thats my opinion at least. Thx for the guide mate!
Very fair, I tend to get pretty in the weeds too about things so I definitely make things sound a little more complex than they are, but happy to have you back interested in frost.
It is a weakaura. Weakauras are a WoW addon that allow you to create or import a lot of custom things. For instance its what I use to create the bars for my cd uptime, to show icons when abilities are up, do complex calculations and display numbers on my screen if i want. Very widely used in the WoW community. The advantage of them is you can have information you want from the game displayed in a format that best suits you. So if you have the WA addon you can go to wago.io (I linked the snowflake weakaura in the pinned comment) and copy the import and then import it in game after typing /wa.
I just got back into the game, last time I played was shadowlands season 3 where I was top 20 on tich. Thank you for making these videos, would you ever consider making some fire mage content? Thanks for the great information on frost :)
hi i got 720k dps 6 minutes fight dummy ST but my top2 dps ability is glacial spike (not orb like in your video). Is that bad? I'm trying to use it only when can't use lance
You generally would in combat, the blizzard before orb is more of sneaking some precast time in and it gets more ticks if you icy veins after placing it.
Not without a significant dmg loss in ST and cleave. In m+ if you want more aoe you can drop it for frostbite. But again, about a 5% dps loss in ST. You gain an ok amount of aoe if you are hitting freezable targets.
Because it is significant ST dps. If you are hitting a lot of freezable mobs you could move the gs point to frostbite and the splintering cold points to subzero, but I'd only do that for spellslinger and its still a 5% dps loss in ST for a gain only present on freezable targets.
Can I assume that if someone wanted to play a glacial spike only frost build, played in the basic style of old, that spellslinger would bw the spec to do that in? This would be an alt of mine and I’m not looking to do anything new, just derp in raids/dungeons/(and yes delves) with the most amount of damage while sticking with the basics.
I guess I’m asking for your opinion on what the optimally non-optimal build would be for frost, one that feels smooth and familiar (ie not looking to track or think about those shards)
@@Manather Errrr I'd want to play glacial spike, but not with RoF. I also don't want to abide by any of the new rules of playing around ice lances (ice lance spam). Would spellslinger hero spec still be the way to go while playing GS build the old fashioned way? I guess I'd be behind optimal dps by around 15-20%?
@@benjamincook321 I'm by no means a top level player, so maybe Manather can give you better insight if he gets around to it. But looking at the two hero trees, I would think Frostfire is the way to go if you just want to spec Glacial Spike and not have to worry about anything too much. Frostfire is just a lot more passive in how it affects your rotation. Frostfire Bolt replaces Frostbolt as your filler and does everything Frostbolt does, except thanks to the Frostfire passive you'll be stacking Mastery and Haste with each cast. Then a lot of the tree is just passive effects that make things you're already liable to be doing better. E.g. you get a frost and fire barrier each time you cast barrier, your Comet Storm calls down a Meteor, your Ice Lance applies Living Bomb etc. None of that really impacts your gameplay much, you can just sort of play as you would and you're getting passive benefits just for casting your spells. Spellslinger on the otherhand seems like it really encourages a specific playstyle and I just don't see how Glacial Spike fits comfortably into it. Whether or not Frostfire is tuned competitively enough is another question. But Manather indicated in this video that playing Spellslinger suboptimally (which ignoring the splinters would be) would result in a ~20% DPS loss. I struggle to believe that Frostfire is tuned much lower than that and at least with Frostfire your numbers are low because of tuning and not incorrectly playing the rotation. Remember, tuning can and likely will change over the course of the expansion - baseline it seems like Frostfire is more what you're looking for.
@Manather 35:09 In Single Target, you said that you basically don't want to cast anything because Storm could trigger and thus you'd prefer just ice lance. As long as we know that Storm will trigger within 0-2s (server check) while our target has at least 8 Frost Splinters embedded, why wouldn't we track the amount of splinters embedded with a WeakAura, and prevent from casting anything that could lead to unwanted Ice Lance delay when our target has for exemple 5-6 Splinters embedded ?
Been leveling with glacial spike just for fun... Does the shatter combo (spike>flurry>lance>lance) not work with glacial spike anymore? I feel like my glacial spikes are hitting for the same numbers as if I just casted it by it's self, but if I flurry first, it hits for double. Been a bit since I played so this could have changed in dragonflight and I might just be living under a rock lol
For Frost Fire, are you ever casting flurry on it's own without a frostfire bolt or glacial spike? In single target it seems like no, in AoE it was hard to tell, but at a few points it looked like you had 0 charges of flurry. Do you just sit on 2 charges for long periods of time generally?
in st yes, if you have 4 icicles. In AOE also yes, because we dont cast gs (at least with tier set), so you just use it as a filler below empowered ice lances unless you will overcap excess frost.
Would it be worth taking ROF along with Cryopathy + Splintering Ray in M+, now that they buffed the latter by 5%? Assuming that you can shatter the AoE damage after Cone of Cold rotation? Or is it a huge dps loss? Cause in return I'd have to give up on GA, FF and DC. I'm not a huge fan of the Frostbolt spam early into IV so that's why I'm curious if this is a viable alternative.
Huge dps loss, you only use DC with frostfire and frostfire just isnt really worth it to play in M+ tbh, spellslinger AOE is basically just good old frost aoe with ice lance spam.
@@Manather I see... Appreciate it! Hopefully they tune/fix bugs for Frostfire by the time season 1 starts, cause I don't find Spellslinger very appealing tbh
Thanks for the guide! I have a question for you. When I fight against 5 targets, and my current target isn't fronen and the others are frozen, I cast flurry > Glacial spike > frost nova(or Ice nova) for all Glacial Spike critical. Is this a good idea for higher overall dps or it's overall dps loss?
glacial spike doesn't explode on other targets anymore since that was just a set bonus from the previous season. Now glacial spike will only hit 2 targets, assuming u take Splitting Ice which you should, so that's why he said don't use glacial spike on more than 3 targets.
Hey bro let me ask..if in m+ we kinda rarely touch on the ice spike. Wouldn’t it be better to have that frozen beam with the aoe and the extra dmg instead? Good af for single and very good for aoe.. Or am I trippin
Ray requires 3 talent points to get what you are talking about, Glacial Spike is 1 talent point. Its also not worth casting ray in AOE and you use it even less than GS since we dont use ray at all in IV. So no, not worth it.
Is spellslinger still jank? Im lvling frost mage and enjoying frostfire hero talents with the intent to switch to spellslinger since its better. Tbh video is making me want to drop mage altogether.
Was this on the PTR or something? My gear is very comparable to his if not slightly better at this point and my my ice lance does around 550k, not even close to what his are doing.
Nice guide but dial back all of the "It's tough" comments with Spellslinger. We got the point the first 2-3 times you said it. It's wasted air and time afterwards.
Frostfire has a lot of things that would break cc, and spellslinger supports a very spammy ice lance style. I've been told spellslinger is op in pvp, but it also would break some ccs likely and I imagine your splinters can be dispelled which would be a bit annoying. Fwiw I'm not an insane pvper just around rival 2 mostly.
@@Manather Thanks. I tried both out on the dummies and I do more DPS as FF just because I'm better at it. Spellslinger confuses the shit out of me so the DPS tanks.
7% for my character atm, probably less once we get full geared but still very significant. There are just no good talents to take, most are frostbolt/IV talents which is anti-synergistic with spellslinger.
.5 guide can be found here: th-cam.com/video/8bgHfOcVMcI/w-d-xo.html
Dear mr frost man, your guides are precise, easy to learn and fun to watch. Thank you for all your work and dedication to this class and specc!
as a new player this is not easy to learn whatsoever. ive been in stormwind for over 2 hours. i was doing more dps with cms crit aoe in dragonflight
@@Xivuarath-p4odid you find a simpler video?
Thanks for the vid! Like you said, really disappointed that they didnt incorporate S3 DF 4 piece set bonus into the tree. Love the GS playstyle and it feels REALLY bad to hold onto it rather than sending it. Also, love the WA additions for Excess Fire and Frost! I hope they fix/buff Frostfire. Anyways, keep up the great work brother!
Sick guide, straight forward and clear
Hey man I really love your videos! May I suggest using the addon that shows the order in which yo press each ability? (Other streamers used it and is helpful!)
YES PLEASE! Otherwise Im not able to learn this...... I have no clue what you are pressing, super hard to follow you.
Thanks, the WoWhead guides, while good, can be a bit tricky to decipher at times. I'm glad frostifre is getting nearer to spellslinger. I'm not a huge fan of spellslinger frost. I'm really enjoying sunfury arcane but frostfire feels fun to play and it's good to have something to swap out to from time to time.
Honestly, found your channel by accident but you made me keep insisting on my Mage. Great content, gonna watch the fire one now.
Cheers
Really love your guides and watched them multiple times. I would really enjoy having the addon/weakaura that shows which abilities you pressed so I can better follow the gameplay examples :)
Man I just feel so fkn stupid, even after watching videos and reading about how to play spellslinger frost my brain still can’t process wtf to do
´but can i basically just play the regular rotation but as soon as those snowfall wa's shine blue or purple i just cxast ice lance?
Thank you for always researching and uploading videos
I need a spelltrack to watch your rotation in your example gameplay plz!
do you find any?
The content creator has to have one running when he streams his rotation.@@felipevargassepulveda1785
Thanks as always mr manather for your time and effort !
"Hello? welcome to frost mage" love it XD Ty for the good video bro
great guides dude! and thnx for sharring your profiles and etc. This is helpful.
Nice video! :)
But Why ignor Ice nova? Is it not good for casting Comet Storm and then Ice Nova so when the Comets hit, the targets are frozen? Cone of cold have smaller range then Ice Nove?
Long time Mage here, and I'm finding the SS Frost to be bloated and weird. For one thing, Winter's Chill and Fingers of Frost should be merged just to make the spec more simple. Then these Splinter things are a bit annoying. I have Weak Auras that tell me how many Spinters there are, and when Winter's Chill is applied. But I don't know... kind of annoying spec now with too many spells put in there over the years and now these Splinters. Anyway, excellent guide. I still like it because Mage is always fun, but yeah.
i wish we could just go back to shadowlands frost mage
@@dakotajalbert6119 Just give us back actual choice instead of forcing one build on us
what weakaura are you using to count splinters
Are the splinters that go to random targets at minute 32:20 a problem for pulling where I shouldn't, is there any fix? :(
Nope, blizzard issue
i cant figure out how to get the bar you have in the middle of your screen showing how many stacks you have, can you help?
thanks
Thank you for the video! :D
Freaky shoe transmog u got there sir.
How do I setup that WA to show purple when splinters are going to come up? the aura also disappears when I'm not in combat
Can you explain in simple terms the reason we cast some glacial spikes during our ice lance spam? I cannot understand it for the life of me
Finally learned arcane its actually the easiest spec. Spellslinger frost is carpal tunnel lance spam nightmare but still clunky. Frostfire is ok but underperforming. Arcane is simple but engaging and rewarding.
So what was the difference between purple and blue snowflakes?
Purple is a splintstorm is coming
I'm new to retail and leveled up to 80 as Frostfire, had a ton of fun. Just took like a general AOE type setup without Ray of Frost or Glacial Spike. What a shame to hear that Frostfire is bugged and significantly weaker. Either way, I stumbled across your Arcane guide video and have been trying to learn that the last couple days, having a lot of fun. I can see why the Spellslinger setup is so strong. Actually looks kinda fun where Frozen Orb is randomly coming off cooldown. I may have to check this build out too once I'm done scratching the arcane itch. It seems like the gear priority would be pretty similar? Probably Crit > Mastery for Frost vs the other way for Arcane. Either way I'm not looking to be a top player on the server, just trying to have fun, and your guides have been invaluable. Thanks much
the best guide in youtube
ty for guide
thanks so much once again!
could you please explain the frozen orb tracker so i can tell every 3 seconds we track fingers of frost but how do i stack the combo ? i think im doing it to fast or wrong thanks for the vid
or is it just how many procs of frozen orb i weaved in
Combo thing doesnt matter, its just aesthetic (its for how many orbs youve sent without freezing winds dropping). The tracker is mainly for you to know if you would be able to ice lance as your next spell rather than starting a frostbolt cast
thanks man! thats what i thought hehe.. dude i struggle sooo much with frost, i execute the aoe rota quite good on dummies (5 targets) ill pump 2.8-3 mio burst with 605 but after that it falls to 1.8… do these numbers feel weak gs wise?
rather struggle with single target idk even watched your guide arcane feels so much smoother and i execute it better
So does flurry apply 2 stacks of winters chill per hit? So, 6 stacks technically if there wasn't a max cap of 2
Yes
anyone have the feelings that (Time Anomaly) isn't worth in dungs and M+??
it works more often at the last second of the pull, while we running to next pack.
Does (Inspired Int) 3% flat intellect doing any good in TWW??
its quite a bit worse than TA, TA will get better with m+ when we spend a lot more time in combat.
Frostfire buffs this week! Let us know what you think @Manather
made a vid
Spellslinger seems like it doesn't want glacial spike (thematically), it'd add to the theme of icicles & splinters firing constantly so you get to be a magic gatling gun. I suppose I need to still take GS? Phooie
No other talents to compete with it really. Its strong for 1 point.
@@Manather true true!
Can someone correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems like the annoying part of trying to time ice lances is basically only in ST. In AoE it seems like you just send ice lance constantly because you're always having procs.
Apologies if I missed it, but do you know how much % difference frostfire is? Spellslinger sounds crazy annoying
About 15% in st last I checked
@@Manather wtf, that isnt even close
@@aeryluna It might change as we get closer to raid. But Spellslinger isn't even worth playing IMO
Thanks for making this guide.
I really hate that we were sold that it's simply Ice Lances when it's kind of just garbage style of game play.
Guess I'll be an arcane mage this xpac.
its crazy what wow has become , u need 10 guides and 100 pages to play a class on a decent level
Frost used to be one of the easiest speccs and now we have this crap
Coming back from a long break and can't agree lzss
As for any class rotations are much more easily understood when you level up your character and access to some abilities per level so you can test priorities yourself. Once you ding 80 and have a good grasp at your character then and only then you can appreciate guides like this one. Unfortunately ppl still use to character boost and struggle to understand all of the abilities at the same time
You really dont . Why you just flat out lie ?
@Telados the players asked for change.
R1 frost mage here from previous m+ - and played only frostmage for 10 years. I just dont understand how to play around winter's chill debuff that is randomly gained from splinterstorm. I tried 5 hours to make custom WA that would suit me and even the WA you mentioned does not fit me well, makes me more confused/hesitating than not haveing it. Lets say I completely ignore/miss everything going on with splinterstorm and just use icelance like I normally would, when I have proc or after flurry - Basically just playing frost like spellinger does not exist. What will my dps loss be? Many time they overlapp anyway meaning you have finger of frost proc when you get winter chill debuff from the splinterstorm, so it seems it might not be crazy high dmg loss. Thanks!
pretty sure he said its a 20% dps loss if you mess up with ice lancing the purple splinterstorm procs
The WA kinda throws me off, seems like it updates when the Ice Lance hits the target not when you cast so theres a delay. Am I right?
The greatest guide ever. By the way, I can't find where are the stats priority in the video. Could you suggest one pls as a frost mage? tyvm in advance.
Haste > crit >= mastery (prio mastery higher if you want to offspec) > vers
@@Manather tyvm
Appreciate your fantastic tutorial; I would like to clarify that when we encounter the boss in the dungeon, we use the ST rotation? (under the M+ build)
yes
ST goes by single target, so yeah
Damn spellslinger is fun af. Finally a more interesting version, just hope they tracked splinterstorm somehow without the use of WA.
Question Manather although its been a few days since video release.
You don't ice nova or frost nova when you use comet storm anymore?
never did
quick question, if playing spellslinger, the play style is orb and fingers of frost, which are all instant, why would haste be required aside from the global cooldown reduction?, is everything is instant is way better to get up to 33% crit and around 40-45% mastery filling up with haste. Or am I missing something?
Thank you so much for this. Please do one for arcane T_T It seems like nobody can explain it without making it more confusing than never.
Arcane one was just posted actually lol
@@Manather you're a life saver! As always ❤️
In dungeon, when you get to bosses, do you go back to ST rotation and cast glacial spike? And do you cast glacial spike when there’s less then 4 target?
Hello @Manather love the video
Frostfire is easier to pick up, and the ST rotation doesnt change between m+ and raid build, just ca nt use the talents you dont have like ray of frost for instance.
@@Manather Awesome, thank you 😊even though spellslinger is better I think I will play frostfire just to get comfortable with playing a mage
The Winters chill WA does not show winters chill for me at the start of the pull so the first winters chill appplications are not displayed properly.
Does anyone else have this problem?
Yes, it has to do with how the WA is coded. You can go to load conditions and remove the in-combat requirement. And then if you want it hidden out of combat but still function, just go to conditions and add if in combat false then alpha 0%.
@@Manather Yeah i noticed, when its always loaded it works properly, but that suggestion with the alpha 0% is perfect thanks man ;)
I have a issue - i want the WA to always show, but it doesnt, i go into WA --> Conditions --> Alive and in combat, but it still wont show outside combat. What am i doing wrong?
Thank you for your guide !
If I understood correctly, when weak aura is purple, we need to spam ice lance also ?
No comet storm or glacial spike if there are procs and weak aura is blue or purple ?
Sorry I’m french and I try to learn english at the same time haha
About 1 gcd after your weakaura turns purple you should use ice lance. So you can use frozen orb/comet storm and then ice lance to fill that gap. Comet storm should be used if the weakaura is purple.
@@Manather Ok thank you so much ! So much thing to track I understand now why you say it’s not quite funny to play it…
hi Manather, could you share your keybindings?
You can see them on my bars, not sure what else you are looking for.
since in aoe in SS its not worth casting glacial spike,should we just spec out of that talent then?
Nope, its still very strong in ST and low target cleave
I'm only about 3 minutes into the vid, so I don't know if you'll mention this, but an addition to the “frozen targets” is that Glacial Spike also freezes the target. The effect lasts for 4 seconds and also counts towards the damage multiplier of Ice Lance. :D
ice lance will travel faster than glacial spike however, so if you GS -> ice lance you wont shatter the ice lance.
is there a written guide on the rotations? Love the video by the way, have been trying this build for a few days now!
I'd recommend wowhead as a written guide, I'm not connected to any of the sites atm, but all of the writers are admins in the mage discord so they are trustable.
Great guide as always.. When guide on fire? Or is it just down so bad no one will play it.. We need some fire parses to get it buffed
What addon are you using for the flurry icons on screen?
hello one question
Why flurry at 4 icicles?
So you don't waste an icicle, if you do frostbolt>Flurry at 4 you will waste an icicle that could have contributed to another glacial spike. So at 4 you just send a naked flurry because it will generate just 1 icicle and then you can cast glacial after.
I actually like the spellslinger/ice lance approach. Last time I watched a frost guide from you it was during DF and I ended up not playing WoW because it sounded so compilcated like I was back in College and learning for an exam or something. Much too compilcated. Thats my opinion at least. Thx for the guide mate!
Very fair, I tend to get pretty in the weeds too about things so I definitely make things sound a little more complex than they are, but happy to have you back interested in frost.
id argue this is more complicated except not by intention which is very cringe if you ask me
Unable to import the ui profiles etc atm i just get alot of lua errors? also whats the snow crystals you got in the middle?
sorry im very new, what is the add on that does the two snowflakes? thanks
It is a weakaura. Weakauras are a WoW addon that allow you to create or import a lot of custom things. For instance its what I use to create the bars for my cd uptime, to show icons when abilities are up, do complex calculations and display numbers on my screen if i want. Very widely used in the WoW community. The advantage of them is you can have information you want from the game displayed in a format that best suits you. So if you have the WA addon you can go to wago.io (I linked the snowflake weakaura in the pinned comment) and copy the import and then import it in game after typing /wa.
I just got back into the game, last time I played was shadowlands season 3 where I was top 20 on tich. Thank you for making these videos, would you ever consider making some fire mage content?
Thanks for the great information on frost :)
Time to finally learn arcane I guess
Arcane guide out tmmrw lol
@@aeryluna if u think frost is annoying to follow dont go arcane😅
@@phnxx5301 nah arcane is way easier and more intuitive than spellslinger frost
Lmao yes frost is now awful to play
This is the content
hi
i got 720k dps 6 minutes fight dummy ST
but my top2 dps ability is glacial spike (not orb like in your video).
Is that bad?
I'm trying to use it only when can't use lance
So if i have 4 out of 5 isecicles, do i frost bolt with flurry, or just flurry and then glacial spike?
1st if you are spellslinger, and 2nd if you are frostfire
as a new player im super confused. also why dont you cast orb first for the instant cast blizzard
You generally would in combat, the blizzard before orb is more of sneaking some precast time in and it gets more ticks if you icy veins after placing it.
Hi I'm a noob frost mage, what build would you suggest for Delves? Thanks!
Frostfire M+ build
If I don’t mind no glacial spike, can’t I drop it in spellslinger for an extra talent
Not without a significant dmg loss in ST and cleave. In m+ if you want more aoe you can drop it for frostbite. But again, about a 5% dps loss in ST. You gain an ok amount of aoe if you are hitting freezable targets.
for M+ ss frost, why even spec GS then? could move the point to subzero for m+?
Because it is significant ST dps. If you are hitting a lot of freezable mobs you could move the gs point to frostbite and the splintering cold points to subzero, but I'd only do that for spellslinger and its still a 5% dps loss in ST for a gain only present on freezable targets.
Why did they get rid of the elemental the frost mage pet :(
They made it far more relevant than it has been in the past by tying it to icy veins.
I feel like a complete weird and crazy man. But i rlly love this playstyle of full uptime, first time playing mage tho
There were more enjoyable forms of it in the past. You can look at my sennarth video from s1 of df to see an example if you want.
What does Purple Snow Flakes mean ?
dont worry about it, its meaningless come tuesday
Why did they do a great job with the frost rework only to dumpster it
Hi, do you cast blizzard on target with a macro? If yes can you teach plz.
Thanks
You cant
@@Manather ok, i ask because i didnt saw the green area when you cast it.
Many thanks for the tips, you win a new follower.
@@fabiocosta5160 The best you can do @Cursor macros with Blizzard.
#showtooltip
/cast [@Cursor] Blizzard
That will save you clicking.
I was wondering the same too , how to cast blizzard without the green area thing on the floor @fabiocosta5160
Can I assume that if someone wanted to play a glacial spike only frost build, played in the basic style of old, that spellslinger would bw the spec to do that in? This would be an alt of mine and I’m not looking to do anything new, just derp in raids/dungeons/(and yes delves) with the most amount of damage while sticking with the basics.
I guess I’m asking for your opinion on what the optimally non-optimal build would be for frost, one that feels smooth and familiar (ie not looking to track or think about those shards)
If you want to not play glacial spike youd untalent it for frostbite and play spellslinger.
@@Manather Errrr I'd want to play glacial spike, but not with RoF. I also don't want to abide by any of the new rules of playing around ice lances (ice lance spam). Would spellslinger hero spec still be the way to go while playing GS build the old fashioned way? I guess I'd be behind optimal dps by around 15-20%?
@@benjamincook321 I'm by no means a top level player, so maybe Manather can give you better insight if he gets around to it.
But looking at the two hero trees, I would think Frostfire is the way to go if you just want to spec Glacial Spike and not have to worry about anything too much.
Frostfire is just a lot more passive in how it affects your rotation. Frostfire Bolt replaces Frostbolt as your filler and does everything Frostbolt does, except thanks to the Frostfire passive you'll be stacking Mastery and Haste with each cast. Then a lot of the tree is just passive effects that make things you're already liable to be doing better. E.g. you get a frost and fire barrier each time you cast barrier, your Comet Storm calls down a Meteor, your Ice Lance applies Living Bomb etc.
None of that really impacts your gameplay much, you can just sort of play as you would and you're getting passive benefits just for casting your spells.
Spellslinger on the otherhand seems like it really encourages a specific playstyle and I just don't see how Glacial Spike fits comfortably into it.
Whether or not Frostfire is tuned competitively enough is another question. But Manather indicated in this video that playing Spellslinger suboptimally (which ignoring the splinters would be) would result in a ~20% DPS loss. I struggle to believe that Frostfire is tuned much lower than that and at least with Frostfire your numbers are low because of tuning and not incorrectly playing the rotation. Remember, tuning can and likely will change over the course of the expansion - baseline it seems like Frostfire is more what you're looking for.
@@DefinitelyAhriman Good reasoning and well articulated, thanks m8
@Manather 35:09
In Single Target, you said that you basically don't want to cast anything because Storm could trigger and thus you'd prefer just ice lance.
As long as we know that Storm will trigger within 0-2s (server check) while our target has at least 8 Frost Splinters embedded, why wouldn't we track the amount of splinters embedded with a WeakAura, and prevent from casting anything that could lead to unwanted Ice Lance delay when our target has for exemple 5-6 Splinters embedded ?
Been leveling with glacial spike just for fun... Does the shatter combo (spike>flurry>lance>lance) not work with glacial spike anymore? I feel like my glacial spikes are hitting for the same numbers as if I just casted it by it's self, but if I flurry first, it hits for double. Been a bit since I played so this could have changed in dragonflight and I might just be living under a rock lol
Still works, just cant be right next to/inside the mob when you GS -> flurry. Which often happens when leveling as you have aggro.
@@Manather Ah, yep that's what's been happening lol thanks for the response and thanks for the guides! :)
Is it worth cancelling your GS, or anything, if my cute little snow flake turns purple?
no
What wins out in M+, frost or arcane?
Arcane
GS and RoF in the same build? Let me try tomorrow but idk...
Was that way since the rework.
For Frost Fire, are you ever casting flurry on it's own without a frostfire bolt or glacial spike? In single target it seems like no, in AoE it was hard to tell, but at a few points it looked like you had 0 charges of flurry. Do you just sit on 2 charges for long periods of time generally?
in st yes, if you have 4 icicles. In AOE also yes, because we dont cast gs (at least with tier set), so you just use it as a filler below empowered ice lances unless you will overcap excess frost.
@@Manather thank you for the reply. Great mage content as always!
what addons are u using?
Would it be worth taking ROF along with Cryopathy + Splintering Ray in M+, now that they buffed the latter by 5%? Assuming that you can shatter the AoE damage after Cone of Cold rotation? Or is it a huge dps loss? Cause in return I'd have to give up on GA, FF and DC. I'm not a huge fan of the Frostbolt spam early into IV so that's why I'm curious if this is a viable alternative.
Huge dps loss, you only use DC with frostfire and frostfire just isnt really worth it to play in M+ tbh, spellslinger AOE is basically just good old frost aoe with ice lance spam.
@@Manather I see... Appreciate it! Hopefully they tune/fix bugs for Frostfire by the time season 1 starts, cause I don't find Spellslinger very appealing tbh
Thanks for the guide! I have a question for you. When I fight against 5 targets, and my current target isn't fronen and the others are frozen, I cast flurry > Glacial spike > frost nova(or Ice nova) for all Glacial Spike critical. Is this a good idea for higher overall dps or it's overall dps loss?
glacial spike doesn't explode on other targets anymore since that was just a set bonus from the previous season. Now glacial spike will only hit 2 targets, assuming u take Splitting Ice which you should, so that's why he said don't use glacial spike on more than 3 targets.
@@KurrieSauce thanks!
Ty a lot Manather for that guide! U are amazing! Can i ask u the stats % for spellslinger please? Ty a lot!
Haste >= crit > mastery > vers
Hey bro let me ask..if in m+ we kinda rarely touch on the ice spike.
Wouldn’t it be better to have that frozen beam with the aoe and the extra dmg instead?
Good af for single and very good for aoe..
Or am I trippin
Ray requires 3 talent points to get what you are talking about, Glacial Spike is 1 talent point. Its also not worth casting ray in AOE and you use it even less than GS since we dont use ray at all in IV. So no, not worth it.
@@Manather Thank you man!
Is spellslinger still jank? Im lvling frost mage and enjoying frostfire hero talents with the intent to switch to spellslinger since its better. Tbh video is making me want to drop mage altogether.
Its getting fixed in a month, you can just play frostfire till then.
Was this on the PTR or something? My gear is very comparable to his if not slightly better at this point and my my ice lance does around 550k, not even close to what his are doing.
It was on beta
FIRST! I have been waiting for this video... switching from fire to frost this season and have no idea how it works.
thanks for the guide, really good info but why is your character bare foot? 🤨
so is GS more like a filler now?
how reset the frozen orb always in the openings?
Cone of cold talent, 45s CD on CoC but reset comet, and orb so too strong in AoE openers and CoC freeze all targets for 6 secs
If you’re talking about the single target opening the reset is RNG.
Great guide! Will you be doing an arcane one as well?
Pretty likely
@@Manather Outstanding, looking forward to it.
@@JimSmith-g2d its out now
Nice guide but dial back all of the "It's tough" comments with Spellslinger. We got the point the first 2-3 times you said it. It's wasted air and time afterwards.
Not sure if this is your wheelhouse but you explain mage better than most. Would frostfire be better in ovo than spellslinger?
Frostfire has a lot of things that would break cc, and spellslinger supports a very spammy ice lance style. I've been told spellslinger is op in pvp, but it also would break some ccs likely and I imagine your splinters can be dispelled which would be a bit annoying. Fwiw I'm not an insane pvper just around rival 2 mostly.
@@Manather cool thanks
@aeghis
which weakaura do i need for spell slinger
The winters chill one in the pinned comment
Whats better damage wise, spellslinger or frostfire?
spellslinger, in every situation
Is this still current? Just hit 80 on my mage and way prefer Frostfire.
Still current. Just play frostfire would be my advice.
@@Manather Thanks. I tried both out on the dummies and I do more DPS as FF just because I'm better at it. Spellslinger confuses the shit out of me so the DPS tanks.
How far behind is non gs version of spellslinger?
7% for my character atm, probably less once we get full geared but still very significant. There are just no good talents to take, most are frostbolt/IV talents which is anti-synergistic with spellslinger.
for aoe or m+ spellslincer is better or frostfire?
spellslinger
@@Manather ty mate ❤️❤️❤️
L as a keybind? how long are your fingers
its 100% a mouse button remacro'd
Can you also make a Guide for arcane Mage?
It'll be out tmmrw