Feral info for Fsob

[Tassager]

Cat:
- General Guide (a bit dated, but still pretty darn good) HERE
- Leveling 80-85 guide HERE

Bear:
- General Guide HERE

Hope that helps! I'd be jazzed to answer any questions, too.

[Fsob]

Thankie thankie! Exactly the kinda info I was looking for.

[Tassager]

So... Fsob. I think it may be time to finish leveling my MAGE... and I want to do it frost. There doesn't seem to be much good frost information that I can easily find? Is there a good guide hiding in a spot other than EJ or the official forums?

[Fsob]

Frost mage guides?

There aren't many of them simply because of how few people actually play frost in endgame PvE.

Icy-Veins.com has one here.
There is one of the official forums here.
There is a blog here about PvE frost that has the rotations and such.
And last but not least. There is one on the MMOChampion forums here that has more discussion then any of the others.

All of these guides are for raiding as frost. If there are any for leveling I don't know about them, but all of the above ones detail how the spells work together and the like. Good info to have.

For leveling you're going to want a spec/glyphs something like this. I really like the improved blink for leveling and with those frost talents you'll have unlimited freezes available for shattering.

[Tassager]

Okay, so question #2. How can I make my elemental stop being so damn dumb?

#3: Can I make a poweraura to show when my target is frozen?

#4: Looking at the blog that shows rotations and such... what's the benefit to casting a frostbolt on the second FoF charge rather than an ice lance?

TY!

Leveled a bit today, and had a blast. God this is a fun spec.

[Fsob]

Apologies for it taking so long for me to respond. I was MIA all weekend.

Tassager wrote:

Okay, so question #2. How can I make my elemental stop being so damn dumb?

Ya can't really. I tend to manually tell him which targets to attack in both raiding and pvp. He'll break cc and stay out of freeze range otherwise. I have all the pet movement keys and abilities keybound. I think the new Pet Assist feature is decent for keeping the dumbness in the AI to a minimum. I've just gotten used to using several keybinds and haven't really liked the limitations of /petassist

Tassager wrote:

#3: Can I make a poweraura to show when my target is frozen?

Yep. Just make it so it checks debuffs on your target and add Freeze, Improved Cone of Cold, Deep Freeze, Frost Nova, and Shattered Barrier. Some other non mage freezes count as well like hunter traps and hungering cold.

Tassager wrote:

#4: Looking at the blog that shows rotations and such... what's the benefit to casting a frostbolt on the second FoF charge rather than an ice lance?

You keep one FoF as backup the whole time so if you get a FFB proc, or DF comes off cd, you can use them right away. Exceptions to this being when FFO is out (you can proc 2 FoF in the same Frostbolt cast while it's active) and when Freeze is off cd (since it give you 2 charges anyway and you don't want to overwrite/waste the one you were keeping as backup).

Tassager wrote:

Leveled a bit today, and had a blast. God this is a fun spec.

Whole-heartily agreed!

I believe this macro was brought up while we were talking last week. Not sure if it's loitering around someone on the site but wanted to tack it on here in case it wasn't.

Code: Select all

#showtooltip [@pet,nodead,exists]Freeze;Summon Water Elemental
/cast [nopet]Summon Water Elemental
/cast [@pet,dead]Summon Water Elemental
/stopmacro [@pet,dead]
/cast !Freeze

[Tassager]

Okay... so. I'm certain that as I get more gear, I'll get more procs, no? Seems that sometimes I'm waiting quite some time for 'em, and other (more uncommon) times I'm simply buried in procs and can't fire 'em off fast enough (I like those moments, ).

Also... Frustratingly poor AOE, as best I can tell? Been playing with flamestrike, even?

Do you generally try to save your freezes for deep freezes? The difference in CD between the two makes that a bit of an interesting choice...

Dinged 84 on him today, so real gear isn't far off...

[Fsob]

Tassager wrote:

Okay... so. I'm certain that as I get more gear, I'll get more procs, no? Seems that sometimes I'm waiting quite some time for 'em, and other (more uncommon) times I'm simply buried in procs and can't fire 'em off fast enough (I like those moments, ).

Well, more haste = more frostbolts = more procs. Other stats won't affect the proc rate though. With FFO out I can easily get a BF and 2 FoF procs while casting one Frostbolt. There were a couple fights vs Direbrew boss where all my attacks were instant.

Tassager wrote:

Also... Frustratingly poor AOE, as best I can tell? Been playing with flamestrike, even?

This is my, and most other frost mages, biggest complaint about frost pve. Blizz has acknowledged the retardation of frost mage aoe and is planning to fix it at some point in the future. Can't come soon enough for me. With all cd's blown I can peak at maybe 30k aoe dps. Compare that to Apok hitting 90k+ on every other trash pull. >_>

Tassager wrote:

Do you generally try to save your freezes for deep freezes? The difference in CD between the two makes that a bit of an interesting choice...

Nope. You waste too many possible procs. 25 sec cd on Freeze and 30 on DF means that in a 6 min boss fight you get 4 extra FoF procs if you use freeze on cd instead of waiting for DF. By holding a FoF in reserve you will always have one when DF comes off cd anyway.

Tassager wrote:

Dinged 84 on him today, so TIME WARP isn't far off...

Fixed that for ya!

[Tassager]

So... Two things.

1. Oh. My. God. Fsob. I'm so sorry. I've played this mage as frost in lvl 85 dungeons for ONE DAY, and the amount of abuse I've taken about being frost is simply staggering. So not fun. Unbelievable. All the while leading DPS in gear 20 levels lower than theirs...

2. I get a BF proc and a FoF proc at the same time... Do I ice lance then ffb? Or just ffb?

[Fsob]

I give you the the official frost mage song! (For the next 2-3 hours at least)

Hopefully in 2-3 years people will start wising up and stop giving others shit for playing the spec they want to. Somehow I doubt it.


BF + FoF > IL + FoF. Especially if you have ignite.

[Millya]

Meantime, we will hoard all of the Frost mage awesomeness to ourselves. Shh, don't let word get out. ;p

[Tassager]

You two are cracking me up this morning. :-)

[Adgamorix]

Do what I do Tass.

/party "If you want me to sheep anything, please mark it with a moon."
/party "I play frost because I like it, this is a random heroic, not Paragon going for a world first kill. Unless you're topping my DPS by more than 2k, your opinion doesn't matter"
/party "This macro will self destruct and disable my party chat in 5 seconds"


/profit