WoW Forever Frost Mage — Guide (Beta Test)
viewsAbout the Class
This guide is based on the World of Warcraft: Forever beta and covers gameplay up to level 20. The talents and combat tips are starting recommendations built on the spells and talents available in the beta. They will be refined as testing continues.
The Frost Mage is the archetypal caster of cold. Where Arcane steers the flows of Mana and Fire mindlessly burns everything around it, Frost controls the battlefield: you slow and freeze enemies and finish them off before they reach you. And if one does get to you, its blows scrape helplessly against your icy defenses.
Strengths
- The best crowd control of all Mage specs: the enemy is almost always slowed or frozen.
- One of the strongest area damage toolkits in the game, even at low levels.
- Strong crowd control:
Polymorph, 
Frost Nova, 
Cone of Cold, and 
Counterspell as an interrupt. - Your own food and water from
Conjure Food and 
Conjure Water, and Mana gems later on. 
Blink speeds up travel around the world.
Weaknesses
- Single-target damage is more modest than Fire's: the focus is on crowd control.
- Cloth armor and low Health — pulling mistakes are punished immediately.
- At level 20 the toolkit is heavily cut down, and there is no full rotation yet.
- It is easy to pull threat in dungeons: tanks at these levels have an incomplete toolkit too.
Stat Priority
- 1Hit
- 2Spell Power
- 3Spirit
- 4Intellect
- 5Critical Strike
- 6Stamina
There is no specific gear for level 20 yet: the beta is at an early stage, and items will be added later.
Talents
Talent Notes
Elemental Precision 5/5 — increases the critical strike chance of your spells.
Ice Shards 2/5 — increases the critical strike damage of Frost spells.
Frostbite 3/3 — a chance to freeze the target when you hit it with slowing spells.- Ice Lance 1/1 — a finishing spell that hits noticeably harder against a frozen target.
Ability Priority
- Keep your buffs up:
Arcane Intellect and one of the armors, 
Frost Armor or 
Mage Armor - Cast
Frostbolt until the freeze from Frostbite procs - As soon as the target is frozen, add Ice Lance for the bonus damage
Don't cancel a
Keep in mind that damage can break the freeze, and Ice Lance is exactly the kind of spell that can knock it off. Start your next Frostbolt to buy yourself time to decide, and queue whichever spell fits the situation.
If the enemy gets right up to you, use Frost Nova and back away while you keep hitting with Ice Lance. If the Nova is on cooldown, refresh the slow with Frostbolt and finish with your wand while you keep widening the gap.
Important Abilities
Frost Armor against physical damage and Mage Armor for Mana and magic resistance
Best in Slot (BiS)
There is no BiS list in the beta: the test is at an early stage, and level 20 gear will be added later. For now, pick items with a sensible mix of stats rather than ones skewed toward a single stat.
Enchants, Gems, Consumables
ConsumablesBest Professions
Almost always the best choice: cloaking devices, target dummies, explosives — all of it adds both survivability and damage.
The second most useful option: the cloth you are collecting anyway turns into armor, and at high levels the profession provides very powerful items.
Author
Fouren
Fouren has been playing World of Warcraft for over 15 years. He is an active player with 12 Cutting Edge achievements under his belt, and has reached the top 1% and 0.1% multiple times on various classes. His main classes are healers, particularly Holy Paladin.
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