by Daniel Whitcomb

the basic frost DPS build is pretty nice in that it does allow a bit of flexibility in your build; that is, there are a few places where you can swap around points a bit depending on your gear level and personal needs. We’ll also take a quick look at optimizing sigil usage, which should come in handy for blood and unholy DPS as well. But first, let’s take a look at those frost talents.

• Subversion Subversion is a cornerstone of many a DPS build, thanks to the threat reduction. While threat reduction seems a bit laughable in the era of quick-and-frantic AoE DPS runs where it seems like most tanks can keep aggro by spamming a few buttons, it can come in handy, especially at later gear levels where DPS attack power starts to drastically outpace a tank’s ability to keep aggro. That said, Subversion is not great for frost DPS. We generally get enough crit power from Killing Machine and gear. If you don’t need the threat reduction, you should take the points out of it.
• Blood-Caked Blade While this is the easiest place to remove points if you want to bolster Black Ice or Subversion, it’s also the best place to put points back into if you want more DPS. Frost DPS does a whole lot of damage via weapon strikes, and a chance to do more damage on each strike is nothing to sneeze at. If you have no threat issues, just take those points out of Subversion and put them here. It’s going to be the best place to spend them if you want more DPS.
• Killing Machine Killing Machine itself is awesome. A free crit every so often is extra DPS in the bank. That said, there is too much of a good thing. If you don’t use the Killing Machine buff, that’s wasted talent points. If you have so much critical strike rating that many of your hits are critical strikes anyway, you may be wasting talent points. As a general rule of thumb, it’s probably safe to take one point out of Killing Machine some time after you reach 30-40% critical strike chance, but your mileage may vary. When you remove that point, it can easily go into either Black Ice or Subversion.
• Chill of the Grave This talent provides extra runic power, which is key for maximizing your DPS. Frost Strike is a very significant part of frost DPS, and you need the runic power to churn out as many of them as possible once your runes are on cooldown and when you have a KM proc to spend. Again, though, you can have too much of a good thing. If your runic power is consistently sitting at high levels instead of being spent on Frost Strikes, you’re essentially wasting your Chill of the Grave talent points. This can happen if you’re consistently getting healed by a restoration druid or discipline priest, or if you’re consistently getting lots of runic power from using Anti-Magic Shell. Keep an eye on your rotation, and if you find you’re flush with runic power, you can consider taking a point or two from this talent and apply it to one of the others on this list.
• Black Ice Black Ice is a pretty easy skill to leave half-full if you’d rather max Subversion or Blood-Caked Blade, but it’s still relatively valuable. You will be doing a pretty decent amount of frost and shadow damage, especially if you’re AoEing. If you don’t need the extra points from Killing Machine or Chill of the Grave anywhere else, put them in Black Ice.

Read the rest of this entry »

by Daniel Whitcomb

This guide will give you a rundown of the basic stuff you need to know to break into the ground floor of the spec. The goal is to make speccing, gemming, glyphing and doing damage as simple to understand and implement as possible, making it easier for you to break into the playstyle and start using it on your own character. In some cases, this means “cutting corners,” and in other places it means making judgment calls on gemming and glyphing options that are still a bit more nebulous once you get to the really heady theorycrafting stuff. This article is meant to make being moderately success at frost an easier task. Without further ado, then, let’s begin!
1. What is frost DPS?

As of Patch 3.3.3, dual-wield frost DPS is a solid, competitive build that keeps pace with unholy for raid damage. It does its damage through a combination of frost damage and physical weapon strikes and brings utility to the table primarily in the form of group melee haste buffing.

2. Frost DPS benefits

• Competitive single-target DPS and the best burst AoE DPS of all three trees
• Melee haste buffs
• Only tree that can use dual wield competitively

Read the rest of this entry »

by Daniel Whitcomb

With Icecrown Citadel now properly breached, hopefully even some of the less uber among us are making our way into the breach to say hello to the father of all death knights, the Lich King himself. Of course, as we start upon the final leg of the journey that started so long ago at Light’s Hope Chapel, as we trudge ever closer to our destiny to the fight that will bring our story full circle, that may lead to our damnation or to a brighter new destiny, there’s certainly a question that’s on everyone’s minds: What about the loot?

It’s a good question. Let’s take a look at the loot from the first few bosses up in the citadel. Before we do, though, it’s a good idea to take a quicker refresher course in why we choose what we choose:

A note on deciding stats for DPS

Essentially, Weapon DPS and Strength are the most important stats for all three trees. Armor Penetration is next for Blood and Unholy, since they now do much of their damage physically. It’s a bit less important for Frost because of frost damage, but even then, you shouldn’t ignore it, since you’ll be using Obliterate on bosses. Crit rating isn’t amazing as it is for some classes, since we have fewer abilities that rely directly on critical strike, but it still has a place. Haste is back to the bottom of the barrel for just about everyone now that Unholy has Reaping back.

Read the rest of this entry »

by Daniel Whitcomb

By now, I assume a good portion of you have managed to get on your daily heroics at least a couple times a week, maybe even have an ICC raid or three under your belt. If so, you’re starting to amass enough Emblems of Frost to maybe possibly think about buying a piece of gear. Of course, the problem with Emblem of Frost gear is that it’s a little bit more expensive than, say, Emblem of Triumph gear. You’re not going to get away with gearing up quite as fast, at least not until all of ICC is open and you have a good group for the place. No 25-emblem tier gear here. So that also makes it important, especially for the more casual player, to pick what you buy carefully.

Let’s take a look at the various options.

Tier Gear

Basic tier gear is, once again, purchasable via badges. Not only that, but if you want higher level heroic tier gear, you want to buy these since you’ll need to turn in the lower ilevel stuff with a drop from the proper instance to get the higher ilevel version.

If you’re DPS, it’s probably a good idea to start buying and get to the 2-piece DPS bonus as soon as possible. The damage boost to your main strike is considerable. For Unholy, it’s even better, since it pretty much makes Reaping worth taking as a talent again and Haste a decent stat to grab again after the hot fix weakened Scourge Strike pretty considerably at lower gear levels.

For tanks, it probably isn’t a horrible idea to grab some tier 10 to start either. For 5-man tanks, that 2 piece bonus should prove pretty helpful in establishing aggro over PuG DPS with no concept of threat, especially if you’re throwing down Death and Decay first like you pretty much always should be on pulls of more than 2. For raiding tanks, and even for 5-man tanks beyond the first 2 pieces, there is a pretty decent alternative to gathering more tier 10, but read on for that.

Read the rest of this entry »

by Daniel Whitcomb

So, death knight. You’re through with Outland. You just dinged 68 in Nagrand and want to move on to whiter, snow covered pastures. Maybe those pastures are in Northrend. Maybe those pastures are in Alterac Valley. Either way, let’s discuss getting through those final levels and pushing you through to the end game.

Gear

you may have decided to keep your starting gear because it looks so awesome, which is cool. However, once you hit Northrend, that gear’s going to start looking pretty weak. Luckily, you’ll have a wealth of quest gear to grab.

If you need a sum up of that, the basics are that Borean Tundra has a great blue 2-handed axe reward, so you should probably quest for that first. After that, Borean Tundra has more straight strength and critical strike rating on its gear, while Howling Fjord has more haste and armor penetration. You can probably level up in either pretty safely, though I went with Howling Fjord simply because I enjoyed the story lines there more. Haste turns out to be good for Unholy, and Armor Penetration for Blood, so the gear there is actually a bit better than it might first appear to the untrained eye.

Once you’ve kitted yourself out in the basic gear, you should be able to get to level 80 relatively easy, grabbing minor upgrades you go. We’d be here all day if I went over every zone, but there are a few things I can recommend you focus on:

• First, do the Wrathgate quest line in Dragonblight. By the time it’s over, you’ll have a few new blue upgrades a nice trinket in addition to having experienced the best quest line in all of Warcraft.
• Secondly, do all of the Kalu’ak reputation quests in Howling Fjord, Borean Tundra, and Dragonblight. Once you complete those and do a couple rounds of dailies, you’ll be at revered, meaning you have a nice new breastplate or two waiting at 76 and a new 2-handed weapon waiting at 78.
• Thirdly, once you hit level 77, head to Krasus’ Landing and take the free taxi to the Argent Tournament. The sooner you start on the dailies, the sooner you can start earning Champion’s Seals, which should provide you with some nice weapon and armor upgrades once you hit 80.

Read the rest of this entry »

Frost mages are a very good class for pvp if you know how to play them. They are pretty easy to play but it does take a lot of practice, knowlege, and some gear to play them well. That being said I’ll get on with the guide.

Specs

Chosing specs are pretty basic for frost mages but there are many variations that you can do depending on your play style.

The spec that I like to use is 20/0/51. This is probably the most used spec for frost mages.

You can switch the talents around from improved CoC into Permafrost or Frost Channeling. Basicly, if you go into perma frost, your going to be better against melee classes. But mages already have enough CC against melee where I don’t really think it’s necessary.. If you go into frost channeling your going to be better against casters in general. Most of mage counters are casters so I would personally chose frost channeling over perma frost. There is also Enduring Winter which can be needed depending on your arena set ups and other things but I personally don’t like it.

In the arcane tree you can also switch around talents, from torment of the week and Arcane Fortitude, and, if you feel you don’t need improved counter spell you can take those points out to.

Gear

Gear for frost mages isn’t that straight forward. It all depends on your play style really. Some mages like to have a lot of haste, some like to have more stam and resilience. I personally think haste is a must for a frost mage, but I know some pretty high rated mages that don’t have that much haste.

I read up on spell haste, and a lot of people say Spell Power is better than haste, but spell haste is better than crit rating.

Mages also really need spell pen against paladins / mages / etc. The spell pen I like to have is 120 so paladins frost resistance aura and mages mage armor is cancelled out.

Most of the best mage gear comes from raids which can be a pain but if you can join a guild that is farming naxx / ulduar I highly recommend doing so. The gear you really need from raids are:
A Main hand weapon – None of the PvP weapons really have decent haste/spell power on them. There are two weapons that I know of which are really nice for mages are Life and Death , and The Turning Tide – Item – World of Warcraft. There are other weapons that have spell haste ( I tried looking for a list of weapons that have spell haste but I didn’t find anything , sorry ).
Two Piece Tier 7 – Having two pieces of tier 7 is a must imo. With the two pieces you get a set bonus which increases the mana you get from mana gem by 40% and gives you around 200 SP which is really nice for outlasting and burst. The two pieces that I recommend getting is the shoulders and the legs because those two peices have haste.
… The list goes on for the PvE items that help you out in PvP.

Other things that you well want gear wise is the Winters Grasp PvP trinket (+111 SP), the other trinket that gives +res and has a use effect, also the wintersgrasp Salvation set (each piece gives decent spell haste a long with a lot of stam and res).

Read the rest of this entry »

I figured, like all class forums, the mage forum would be flooded with “WHAT SPEX SHULD I LEVL WITH” – now obviously there is no 100% best spec, but i hope to provide insight to anyone looking to level frost.

Ok, i’ve been leveling according to this guide and i’ve got to say (after leveling three mages this being my third, this is the fastest / most fun leveling spec i’ve experienced.)

Link to the build at the bottom, although the guide explains each talent point – in what order, and why its placed when and where it is.

———————————-
Leveling Frost
November 9, 2008 by Euripedes
An in-depth guide to the nuances of leveling up as a frost mage. Note that this is NOT an AoE build. This is a standardized leveling build, designed to take down monsters swiftly and safely.

If you wish see how Frost AoE can provide excellent, leveling, might I highly recommend this guide over at “Frost is the New Black”?

Baby Mage
As a brand new mage, your offensive spell options are limited to Fireball. This will be your only method of attack until level 4, when you get frostbolt. You don’t even get Frost Nova until level 10, so try not to do anything stupid (yet).

Anyways, level 1. Buff yourself with Arcane Intellect and Frost Armor, and head out into the big brave world filled with murlocs and trolls.

Your battle strategy is very simple, at first. Stand 35 yards away, and cast Fireball. Three fireballs should be roughly enough to kill or almost kill your target. If it’s not dead, typically for these first few levels you can simply use your pitiful auto-attack to finish them off in a hit or two.

If you want to be a little more professional and practice kiting, after the mob has hit you once, immediately turn and run away from it. Frost Armor provides a 30% snare and lasts 5 seconds. This gives you enough time to get a little ways away, and then whirl around and get off another fireball.

Read the rest of this entry »

General Information

This is one of the best, if not the best 2v2 comp for Mages and Rogues that is currently available. It’s easy to learn, but I’d argue hard to master. It takes quickly coordinated CC and a clutch opener to pull off a win, but when it goes wrong you’re going to need a lot of patience.

Strengths

The synergy between Mages and Rogues allows for large amounts of pressure through damage and CC. This team is also very capable of going defensive against certain comps in order to reset the fight multiple times. It is not uncommon to get 3+ minute long games as this team, depending on the map and situation.

Weaknesses

As you would expect, many games can be decided as a win or loss in an instant. An unlucky blind resist can screw up your CC chain and allow your opponent to score a lucky kill on your rogue. When something like that happens, which I guarantee you it will, then you’re just going to have to be patient.

For Mages

It is very important for your rogue to stay alive, it is also important that you use every CC available in order to score a kill while supplementing your rogues damage. Use Deep Freeze as CC.

You are going to want to be Spellstealing a lot vs certain teams, and Invisibility is another tool you’ll be using liberally.

For Rogues

The opener is EVERYTHING for this team, so you’re going to want to make sure you get a perfect one. Blowing Sprint in order to get a sap is perfectly acceptable; the longer you wait, the easier it is for your opponents to get the opener that you guys need so much.

As with most Rogue comps, patience is a virtue. You WILL get Hammered/Icy Touched/Ice Lanced/Auto Attacked out of Vanish multiple times, you just need to deal with the loss and move on.

Read the rest of this entry »

No one really knows the Death Knight. What I mean by that is people that have been playing their class for a year or two can say they know their class, anyone who says that about a Death Knight is full of themselves. I may not know all about the Death Knight but I have tried to learned as much as I could, starting with Frost DPS PvE. So enjoy and please comment.

Things to note:

* When doing DPS it should be in Blood Presence.
* Make sure Horn of Winter is up.
* Make sure diseases are up, they really increase your dps.
* You should use Fallen Crusader as your Runeforge enchant.

Acronyms:

Death Knight – DK
Icy Touch – IT
Plague Strike – PS
Blood Strike – BS
Obliterate – OB
Frost Strike – FS
Howling Blast – HB
Death Coil – DC
Blood Boil – BB
Death and Decay – DnD
Attack Power – AP
Runic Power – RP
Two-Hander – 2h
Damage Per Second – DPS
Global Cooldown – GCD

Read the rest of this entry »