FROST MAGE ADVANCED TIPS

SHATTER SUBZERO AND WINTERTIDE

Alright, in the next few videos we're going to be dissecting the core elements and the mechanics of Frostmage's offensive kit, allowing you to understand what exactly is making Frostmage deal so much damage, and how you can leverage it to your advantage just like the pros do.

So, without further ado, let's jump into our first fundamentals video, where we're going to be covering Shatter and Sub-Zero. Now, my apologies to you more advanced players, but this really wouldn't be a Frostmage guide if we didn't cover how Shatter works in The War Within.

Basically, it's still the same as in Dragonflight, multiplying our critical strike chance against frozen targets by 1.5, as well as adding 50% flat crit chance on top of that too.

Now, what this means is that when we deal our biggest damaging abilities, such as Comet Storm or Glacial Spike, we're going to want to freeze the target first, as to benefit from Shatter and allow our abilities to crit, resulting in the spells dealing 150% damage. Due to the PvP crit modifier.

Now, additionally, if we're opting to play the Icy Vein's Frostbolt build, they're going to be dealing even more than this, due to the deep Shatter talent further buffing the damage.

Now, when we say that targets are, quote, frozen, what this means is that the target is in any sort of freeze effect, such as Ice Nova, Pet Freeze, Ring of Frost, or even a Hunter's Freezing Trap.

However, these aren't the only ways we can dish out Shatters, though, as the large majority of Shatters we'll be using will be from hitting into Flurry's Winter's Chill effect, meaning that the targets will act as if they are frozen for the next two spells that we connect for the next eight seconds.

When consuming these Winter's Chills, we're often going to be sending out two Ice Lances into them, as this is going to make the Ice Lance deal three times its normal damage. It's going to stack our chain reaction buff and stop us needing to cast.

Unempowered Ice Lances into Freeze, however, will deal the same damage as Fingers of Frost Ice Lances. Now, it's also important to note that Winter's Chill doesn't get consumed by all of our abilities.

However, it will still make them benefit from Shatter. You can see this here with Ray of Frost, Comet Storm, and Meteor, as all three abilities are technically Shattering, yet no stacks are going away, allowing us to still consume the Winter's Chill with Ice Lance after for extra damage.

With Patch 11.1, this also works with Fingers of Frost Ice Lances. With Patch 11.1, this also works with Fingers of Frost Ice Lances.

With Patch 11.1, this also works with Fingers of Frost Ice Lances. So don't worry about wasting your procs.

So moving on, our final big modifier is Sub-Zero. Now, what Sub-Zero does is increase our damage by a further 10% when hitting a target that is frozen and rooted, meaning that this only applies when hitting into Frost Nova, Ice Nova, or Pet Freeze.

Now, because of this, when we really want to send out burst damage, we're going to want to make sure that we're utilizing Ice Nova as frequently as possible for the extra 10% of our damage. We're going to want to make sure that we're utilizing Ice Nova as frequently as possible for the extra 10% of our damage.

We can also just toss out Pet Freeze into the mix, and it's essentially giving us damage for free, as it's not even really on our global cooldown.

You can see Gelo do this here as he roots the end of his Ray of Frost, allowing the larger portion of the Ray to deal as much damage as possible, as it's not only benefiting from Shatter, but Sub-Zero as well.

ICY VEINS TIPS

Welcome back to our Fundamentals segment, where we're going to tell you all about those core mechanics and cooldowns of Frostmage. In this video, we're going to be addressing Icy Veins, our largest cooldown for setting up huge damage and kill windows.

Coming in with a 2-minute cooldown, Icy Veins is our most powerful modifier, giving us a 20% haste bonus, removing those annoying pushbacks from being attacked when we cast, as well as summoning a Water Elemental, which gives us access to Pet Freeze, an extra Flurry proc, and a 15% damage increase.

And if all this really weren't enough, when we activate Icy Veins, due to our Frostfire hero talent, we're going to be given a Frostfire Empowerment proc, allowing us to generate that 6% haste and mastery, as well as the extra buffed Ice Nova on our next Flurry.

Now, because of all these crazy bonuses, we're going to want to be trying to fit in as many Icy Veins, uses as we can in each and every game, resulting in us using it very early on in the match, often allowing us to close out shuffle games on our second or third use of Icy Veins, as the damage simply becomes unhealable due to the high dampening stacks.

Other than using Icy Veins early on in the game, we're also going to want to always make sure that we're doing two other things with each use, the first being that we have one Flurry charge on cooldown.

This is because our Water Elemental, will automatically cast Water Jet when Veins is pressed, and unless you want to have an extra keybind for this, which we're going to cover why this is even worse in this expansion later on, you're going to be wasting a charge of one of your key abilities.

You're also going to want to always be sending out Frozen Orb with your Icy Veins, as due to the haste modifier Veins gives us, our global cooldown is going to be lowered, which allows us to spam out more instant casts.

We'll also be doing this because of the Thermal Void talent, which extends our Icy Veins, per each Shattered Ice Lance and Glacial Spike. Icy Veins isn't just great as a damage amplification though, as due to our cast being so fast, it can also help us fake cast and land polymorphs more reliably.

Here you can see Gelu fake Counterspell on a Dragon's Breath Sheep, and still have time to safely Sheep after without the healer being able to escape.

Now, as we mentioned earlier, Icy Veins summons our Water Elemental for its entire duration, which actually hits surprisingly high, and is really hard in the War Within, so we really want to make sure it's not on passive and always hitting our target.

Water Elementals definitely are not smart though, so you're going to want to have a keybind to make sure it's on the right track.

But aside from its raw damage, Water Elemental also gives us access to Pet Freeze, which if you've watched our Shatter video, you're going to know that this means we can benefit from an additional Sub-Zero Shatter.

And since Water Elemental is always going to be up for at least 30 seconds, and its Pet Freeze is only a 25% chance, we can get two of these Sub-Zero Shatters into our burst rotation. Whether it be on Frostfire Bolt, Comet Storm, or Lance, just make sure you're using it to not waste potential damage.

Now, as a final note here, in the War Within, our Time Anomaly is now giving us Water Elemental whenever our Icy Veins randomly procs, meaning we're going to be able to benefit from Sub-Zero far more often.

But it also means that if we were to turn Water Jet off auto, we'd probably end up missing out on Water Elemental, and we'd be able to get out on some flurry procs, as there's a very small window of error on pressing it.

So, for these reasons, we definitely recommend just leaving it on auto, and letting the Brain Freeze procs fly in.

SHIFTING POWER

In this final fundamentals video, we're going to be going over everyone's favorite Covenant ability, Shifting Power. Somehow, someway, mages have kept the Covenant ability of Shifting Power for yet another expansion in The War Within, giving us access to a 12 second cooldown reduction ability every one minute.

However, unfortunately, unlike in Shadowlands, this ability is on the Arcane school, so can be risky to use if the enemy team have kicks.

In fact, because of this ability being a frequent target for interrupts, you're often going to be looking to use Shifting Power behind a pillar as to avoid being locked, allowing you to benefit from the full strength of the Shifting Powers 12 second cooldown reduction.

Its damage pales in significance compared to its CDR effect. Now, when using Shifting Power, we're ideally going to be looking to use it early on in the game to reset our offensive power. cooldowns that we've blown in the opener.

Think Icy Veins, Comet Storm, Frozen Orb, and Ice Nova. In fact, when using it while Icy Veins is up, it will actually channel faster as the ability scales with haste, allowing us to get our cooldowns back even faster.

After this initial shifting power, we can then basically use it on whatever we want as the occasion sees fit. Here, you can see Gelo use it to get Veins, Ray of Frost, and Comet Storm back as the opponent are behind a wall, allowing him to channel it freely.

Or here, where Gelo knows his Frost Bomb is going to be dispelled, so he's shifting powers after landing it, forcing the next one to sit as the healer no longer has their dispel ready.

Now, other than using it on high damage abilities, we can also use shifting power for defense, allowing us to kite far more effectively by reducing the cooldown on our Shimmer and Ultra Time.

Here, you can see Gelo do just that, as he's Shimmered for offense, so using shifting here means that if the enemy Monk were to swap to him, he would be able to escape without having to immediately use his Ultra Time.

Now, as for the final use of shifting power, we can of course use it to reduce our crowd control abilities, which results in us being able to lock down the game far more frequently.

A very common play you can make as a Mage is to shifting power after using Ring of Frost, or as Gelo does here, shifting power to get Dragon's Breath, and reduce the cooldown on Mass Polymorph, creating an easy 3-on-1 on the enemy Elemental Shaman.

We can even take this one step further by using shifting power after landing Counterspell, making you able to kick players twice in very quick succession.

This play is particularly powerful as, fortunately for us, most people's add-ons don't track shifting power's cooldown reduction or the quick-witted talent, so the second kick is often easier to land.

SNOWDRIFT TIPS

Did you know there is one talent that you're not using that can start winning you countless rounds in Solo Shuffle? In Shuffle, there's just some classes that don't pair well together.

You might not have a Mortal Strike in your comp, you may have overlapping crowd controls, or you might just be stuck with the exact same class as you.

Shuffle's a numbers game after all, so every single round really counts, and having these frustrating losses due to the composition is one of the worst feelings in the world of Warcraft. Fortunately, we can relieve some of this pain and start winning a lot more of our games with classes we don't usually pair well with.

Take Death Knights for example. Now when you think of a popular Death Knight comp, your mind probably goes to Demon Hunter Death Knight or Death Knight Wind Walker.

What do both of these classes have in common here? An AoE stun that hits the whole team after the Death Knight has used their Death Grip.

Well, thanks to the talent of the Death Knight, you can easily get a good deal of Snowdrift. We can actually emulate this effect and start chaining off our Death Knight's Blinding Sleet, allowing us to stun the entire enemy team and cleave them all down with our Frozen Orb and Comet Storm.

And the best thing? Thanks to Snowdrift being a freezing spell, everything will shatter in the stun, causing us to deal huge damage.

And what's even better is that because of shifting power and our talent of time manipulation, we can get Snowdrift before they even get their Blinding Sleet back, leading to potential situations like this one where the Death Knight can just grip the enemy into a fairly reliable stun, resulting in the enemy dying before their cooldowns come back around.

Just do make sure to tell your Death Knight you're playing Snowdrift or they might not play how you expect them to. It's not just Death Knights that this talent is excellent with though, as it's fantastic when playing with caster comps too, where you would usually kind of lack a stun there.

Take this game here. Gelu's able to stun the enemy team, but he's also able to stun the enemy team.

So, if you're playing with a good talent, you'll be able to stun the entire enemy team on their cooldowns, forcing trinkets from both DPS that they would have otherwise not got without Snowdrift.

Or you can even create kill opportunities of your own, like Gelu does here, Snowdrifting the Rogue behind the pillar, strong-arming the Rogue to trinket and vanish on his own.

THE BEST CROWD CONTROL YOURE NOT USING

Mages are packed full of crowd controls, but what you may not know is that the best mages in the game are getting a ton of their kills through a crowd control that doesn't even have a diminishing return.

Now we're not going to get much into politics here, and we're not saying that Trump was right, but building walls does seem to be a very effective way to create pressure in Arena. This is because there's basically no risk involved.

We can be on the other side of the map and toss one of these bad boys up, splitting the healer and the DPS apart. It's basically a sheep without a diminishing return.

However, unlike Polymorph, we don't even need an initiation crowd control to land it. We just simply slap it down and create a pillar in the middle of the map that no one can do anything about.

Well, apparently you can Spirit Link through it, but every wall has its cracks though. I guess.

Now, if you're wondering what's the best way to use Ice Wall, the ideal situation is one like this. Where you can completely land a DPS.

You can use the DPS to block the healer out of the game, as the wall blocks every single path available. This leaves them just whacking the wall for the entire 15 seconds that it's up, desperately trying to break through it.

Oh, and did I mention you can also use Mass Barrier on it to stop it dying? Let's not tell Blizzard about that one though, right?

But anyway, even if you can't get these perfect wall goes, simply splitting the healer apart from their partner forces them to come in, commit huge defensive cooldowns, and then still be vulnerable to Polymorph afterwards, as you've now completely forced their positioning to be in a spot they didn't want to go to.

Finally, although not very meta here, Ice Wall can be insane into Holy Priest, as when they enter their Angel form, they can't move, forcing them to waste their 2 minute Mass Dispel on it if they want to get any value from their Spirit of the Redeemer.

SURVIVING AS A FROST MAGE

Surviving in the arena as a Frostmage isn't just about pressing Ice Block when you're in trouble, it's about mastering mobility, using your defensive tools proactively, and making sure you're always one step ahead of your opponents.

If you're struggling to stay alive, it's likely because you're not using your mobility correctly. Don't worry though, today we're going to be going over a mobility gameplan that top-rated Frostmages use to stay slippery, avoid damage, and stay in control, so let's break it down.

As soon as the gates open, your goal should be to slow down the enemy before they even have a chance to reach you. You're a Frostmage after all.

The first thing you want to do is activate Icy Veins and hit the closest target with Pet Freeze. This immediately puts the enemy in a pretty tough spot.

They either sit in the root, or they burn a mobility tool to get to you. Now while they're dealing with that, your next step is to apply snares, which you can easily do by sending out Frozen Ore.

This accomplishes two things. First, it slows down the enemy, and then it slows down the enemy.

Second, it slows down the enemy, and then it slows down the enemy. First, it slows down the enemy, and then it slows down the enemy.

While making it harder for melees to reach you. And second, it unlocks Instant Blizzard, further stacking the pressure on your opponents.

At this point, you've already forced them to waste resources while creating a comfortable distance. Now let's talk about one of your most crucial survival tools, Alter Time.

This is a game changer, but the key is using it early. Don't wait until you're low on health.

If you do, it's probably going to be too late. Instead, pop Alter Time before you take it, and then you can use it to take any serious damage.

This lets you play aggressively while knowing you can always return to full HP if things go wrong. Here's a pro tip, too.

When you Alter Time back, you're going to refund one charge of Blink, so make sure to pair it with a Shimmer early on. If the enemy overcommits to chasing you, you can press Alter Time again and completely reset the fight, leaving them to waste their mobility while you're already out of reach.

How you use Alter Time depends on your composition, though. If you want to sustain damage melee like a Rogue or Feral, Alter Time can be a great safety net to push aggressively onto the healer for crowd control.

If you're playing in a more passive caster comp, use Alter Time to force melee to overextend before they can even connect to you. But whatever you do, don't just stand still after pressing Alter Time.

Make the enemy chase you. Once Alter Time is on cooldown, your next major survival play comes from Shimmer, but don't use it randomly.

Maximize its effectiveness. Combine Shimmer with Barrier.

Barrier isn't just an absorb. It's also a mobility tool.

Thanks to energized Barriers, every time you use it, you remove slows, which increases the gap between you and your enemy. So, by popping Barrier right after Shimmer, you make it even harder for your target to reach you.

Now, this brings us to the golden rule of mobility trading. For every gap closer your enemy uses, you trade one, and only one, mobility tool to counter it.

For example, if a Warrior uses Charge, counter it with a Shimmer. The key here is to make sure you never waste your escape tools.

If you panic and use everything at once, you're going to have nothing left when they come at you again. Now, that said, combining Blast Wave and Shimmer can also be beneficial in some situations.

It lets you outrange enemy gap closers, which allows you to create even more space and giving you the breathing room you need to reposition and cast Frostfire Bolts. But what happens when mobility alone isn't enough?

That's where Greater Invisibility comes in. This ability is essential for preventing burst damage, especially when Ultra Time is on cooldown.

If you know the enemy team is about to hit you with a huge burst, use Greater Invisibility preemptively to reduce the incoming damage. Greater Invisibility isn't just useful when Ultra Time is on cooldown, though.

You can also use it in conjunction with Ultra Time, if you suspect your Ultra Time is going to be purged. This acts as a safeguard against RNG, which gives you extra protection in case things go wrong.

So now let's address the elephant in the room, Ice Block. One of the most common mistakes players make is using Ice Block either too early or too late.

The key to Ice Block is timing it correctly. You want to use it early if your healer is stuck in a long CC chain, but if your healer is free, hold off a little bit longer to see if they can pick you up.

Wasting your healer's cooldowns can be just as bad as wasting your own cooldowns. Finally, remember that blocking at low health becomes more dangerous as dampening increases.

It's harder for your healer to recover you as dampening ramps up, so avoid blocking prematurely. With these guidelines in mind, and by remembering to stay proactive with your mobility and defensive tools, you're going to be well on your way to surviving longer than ever before.