Frost Mage DPS Spec, Builds, and Talents — 12.0.5

Frost in Season 1 of Midnight has quickly solidified into an above-average, easy to play caster. It has extreme mobility most of the time, as the majority of your casts are instant, although it is fragile around Ray of Frost's cast. The cost of this is a very mediocre defensive kit paired with a somewhat repetitive playstyle.

Given that our Apex Talent provides Ray of Frost a second charge, and we have no traditional damage boosting cooldowns otherwise, the spec is very flexible in when you utilize your burst. This allows for saving a charge for damage bonuses, be it from a boss mechanic or a trinket cooldown.

Spellslinger is the go-to for all content, as Frostfire is significantly behind. There is very little talent variation, primarily opting for how much cleave you wish to have.

Frost's AoE is unique in that it does not cast our primary AoE skill, Blizzard, instead relying on ambient cleave while focusing a primary target. While this is an unfortunate, tuning-based issue, it does leave the spec the ability to be very easily picked up by new players, and the flexibility of not needing to memorize what target counts to shift rotations between single target and AoE.

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The builds listed above are popular recommendations, covering various different loadouts suited to each style of endgame content. Each Talent Build will have it's own rotation, and can also be manipulated further for specific types of content and to better benefit your group.

Combat Information

Rotations and Mythic+

Want to dive deeper? These guides will teach you how to utilize our Talent Builds in endgame content!

RotationMythic+

Hand of Frost causes any Shatter event to have a 10% chance to fire an extra spell that hits fairly hard, and adds 1 stack of Freezing to the target.

Hand of Frost takes that, and increases the proc chance based on how many stacks were consumed. Each time the damage spell procs, gain a 1% damage buff for a few seconds. This can stack, and each stack is timed individually, so they will rise and fall gradually as you play.

Hand of Frost procs 4 of the damage spells over the duration of Ray of Frost, buffs Ray's damage, and adds a second charge to the spell.

For the most part this is an entirely passive talent, but it is fairly strong. The flexibility of having a second charge on Ray of Frost allows us to pool a charge for important things, such as trinket procs or vulnerability phases.

Available at level 71 Hero talents are mutually exclusive trees you can choose to slightly alter gameplay and visuals. Frost Mage has access to the Frostfire and Spellslinger Hero Talent trees.

Frostfire is slightly burstier, and all of its damage is fairly front loaded. Generally speaking it is better suited to outdoor content, or content that dies quickly.

On the AoE side, having access to Meteor, with an increased damage to both it and Comet Storm, and the exploding Glacial Spike, it excels at burst AoE.

Spellslinger in comparison is more about more rapid, smaller hits from Splinters.

Spellslinger remains the only way to reduce the cooldown of Frozen Orb through Spellfrost Teachings, giving it a nice niche of more frequent Orb casts. It trades this for not really being able to spec for Comet Storm, and losing the burst possible from that talent.

Since Battle for Azeroth, there is the option to enable "War Mode." Enabling War Mode grants the following benefits:

• PvP talents enabled in the outdoor world.
• 10% increase in World Quest rewards at max level.
• 10% more experience gained while leveling.
• Earn Conquest Points, which can reward gear every week.

With the benefits of enabling War Mode for leveling and PvE content, it is recommended enabling the feature to maximize your leveling and rewards at max level. However, doing so will enable PvP combat and the possibility of being attacked by members of the opposite faction while leveling or doing World Quests exists.

• Concentrated Coolness is pretty great with no downsides.
• Frost Bomb is a great choice. A nice delayed burst AoE hit.
• Snowdrift works as a decent short-term stun, but the damage is underwhelming and requires targets to be extremely close to you. There are better options.

Ice Wall is going to get a special mention. Having the ability to force line of sight or wall an enemy player, either in with you or away from you, is a pretty powerful utility. This feels like one of those things you should have with you just in case you are in War Mode. It is deceptively strong for the area denial utility.

There are some interesting Honour Talents, but since they are restricted to the open-world and unusable in instances, they generally are not simulated. Thus, the above are simply the thoughts and feelings of the author.

Kuni

Guide Author

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This guide has been written by Kuni, one of the best Frost Mages in the world, who raids in Mortal Desire.