FROST MAGE FUNDAMENTALS COURSE

FROST MAGE PLAYSTYLE

Hello and welcome to Skillcapped's damage course for Frostmages in The War Within. In this first video, we're going to be breaking down the general playstyle of the spec in Arena so you know exactly what to expect from the class.

Now, first and foremost, Frostmage is often seen as a carry class, providing strong burst damage along with great crowd control, allowing them to put their team on their back and lead their squad to victory throughout plays and setups rather than overwhelming consistent damage.

Now, unlike other expansions where Frostmage had a heavy reliance on icy veins to score kills, well, this really isn't the case anymore, as our Ice Lances and Comet Storm Shatters are packing a punch all game long, which means that every single crowd control or bit of damage that we can squeeze out actually matters and assists our team with the kill, resulting in us having far less AFK downtime while we wait to be useful.

Now, because of this, Frostmages are often going to be playing aggressively as we have the damage to back up our CC chains and make taking those risky plays far more rewarding.

Now, you're going to often see high-rated Frostmages do this by shimmering or running on top of the enemy healer for Dragon's Breath Sheeps and smashing them with Ice Lances while the enemy healer can't react.

Now, this isn't the only way to play Frostmage, however, as Frostmages are just too difficult to land consistent crowd control into. Think Double Melee or an elusive Restoration Shaman.

Frostmages can slow the game down significantly through their snares, defensive shimmers, and rotational polymorphs on the DPS to alleviate pressure on their party, allowing them to win in Dampening, as the other team just cannot connect to the mage who is deleting their entire team with Ice Lances and well-placed Shatters.

Now, it's also important to note that Frostmages, in War Within, are cleaving a ridiculous amount, so any Double Melee team you face is going to be shred to pieces by your Orbs, Comet Storms, which are now proccing Meteors, Ice Lances that are triggering extra Frostfire damage, while giving Brain Freeze procs.

Needless to say, pushing in for CC into these comps really isn't always necessary to win. So, if you're looking for a class with a heavy emphasis on control, incredible burst damage, and want to be the bane of every Melee play, in literal existence, then look no further than War Within Frostmage.

FROST MAGE GOALS

Alright, in this next section we're going to give you some basic goals for Frostmage that you should be looking to achieve throughout every single game that you play. By understanding and prioritizing these objectives, you can make sure that you're really playing the class to its full potential.

So, to kick things off, our number one goal as a Frostmage is the same as all casters, which is to always be casting something.

Now, what we mean by this, and which has been proven to us through countless VOD reviews, is that lower rated players, and mages in particular, just don't put enough value on dealing damage at all times.

Now, fortunately for us, Frostmages are pretty blessed in the War Within with a bunch of instant casts, so much so that you can basically never run out of high impact instant damage globals to use.

So, what this means is that it's imperative that you're dishing out those comet storms on cooldown and consuming every single one of those. So, if you're a Frostmage player, you're going to want to fingers of frost you can, or you're going to be really underperforming.

So, it's also important to not fall into the trap of thinking you need crowd control on the healer for this to be effective, as every global of damage you deal will result in the enemy team using at least one global to counter it and support themselves.

If you fall behind on dealing damage, the enemy team gain a huge advantage on globals, and with those globals the enemy healer would be using on healing, well, now they're going to be able to deal with it.

So, if you're a Frostmage player, you're going to want to be very careful with your damage, and you're going to want to be very careful with your damage, they can use them on utility or damage of their own, making it far harder for you to play.

Remember, in shuffle there are no perfect goes, it's all about having high pressure and using your cooldowns as often as humanly possible.

So, for our next goal, we should be looking to be as annoying as possible to our opponents as we can, as this won't just reduce their output, but allow us to dish out more damage at the same time.

Now, as a mage, we can be very disruptive to the enemy team through our polymorph ability, which becomes even stronger as it gives us extra damage through Master Shepard's versatility increase, and no longer heals the target it's on.

Now, throughout our games, we want to be able to use polymorph on the off target to effectively remove them from the match for several seconds at a time, reducing their damage and allowing us to get ahead on pressure.

Now, when doing this, we should be polymorphing the off target once for dispel, and then following up with another polymorph on the off target. So, we can do this with the off target, which will sit due to the healers dispel being on cooldown.

We can then take this one step further and use this polymorph on the off target as cover as we push up on the enemy healer and stick them into a sheep without their teammate being able to help. Polymorph isn't the only crowd control we have though.

As you can see, Gelu constantly harassed the enemy healer here with a counter spell followed by an ice wall to stop them connecting heals. So, we're going to do this with the off target, and then following up with another this in the span of a couple of seconds.

Now, all this does make crowd controlling a lot sound amazing on paper.

However, do just be cautious though that if you're playing a composition that relies on spread pressure, like with a Shadow Priest or an Affliction Warlock, you should avoid overusing Polymorph or you're going to be receiving a ton of very angry whispers as you remove half of your partner's damage.

And very rarely is it worth polymorphing high impact dots from DPS targets. So, moving on from Polymorph, our third goal as a Frostmage is to try and reduce the amount of damage that we take.

Now, although Frostmages are the bane of all melee's existence, this only rings true if you trade your defensives and you kite really well, as after all we are still a squishy cloth class at our core.

And if we're taking overwhelming amounts of pressure, we're not really going to be able to spend our Globals on dishing out as much damage as we can as we're going to be able to do that. So, if you're playing a Frostmage, you should try and reduce the amount of damage that you take.

Now, although Frostmages are the bane of all melee's existence, this only rings true if you're taking overwhelming amounts of damage as we're going to be running for our lives and sitting on a pillar.

So, to avoid this situation, we should also be making sure that we're maintaining a snare on the enemy melee so that when we blink, we have more time before they reconnect to us, allowing us to trade out more offensive cast without taking a beating.

We can do this by either cone of colding them before we shimmer, or just simply toss in a regular slow on them. We're going to want to be trading our defensive cooldowns like Alter Time very early on in the game, as it's going to give us a safety net to safely pump out damage.

Without having to worry about the enemy team bursting us too hard with their entire kit, we can instead just go ham with our cooldowns instead, rather than effectively crowd controlling ourselves by sitting in an ice block.

Finally, it's also very important that we always try to match the mobility of melee's, such as only blinking when charged, which we're going to get more into in one of our Master in Minutes videos later on. If you can manage to stick to these three goals, you're going to be able to get a lot of damage out of your melee.

So, stay tuned for our sustained priority video coming right up.

FROST MAGE DAMAGE PRIORITY

Welcome to our Frostmage Sustain Damage Priority Course, where we're going to teach you exactly which buttons are hot and which are better left on that keybind that you just can't quite reach. Now, although before we jump into it, do be aware that this isn't a rotation.

Don't think about it like that. But it's rather a hierarchy of the power behind each of your spells, allowing you to make informed decisions on what to press and when.

To kick things off, we're first going to be placing Frostfire Bolt when under the effect of the Frostfire Empowerment buff. This is because Frostfire Empowerment will make Frostfire Bolt instant and deal far more damage, meaning that when you get these procs, you should make sure you shatter them for massive crits.

Up next, we then have casted Frostfire Bolt shatters. With the change to Wintertide, Frostfire Bolt shatters have pulled ahead and sustained now, so look for those whenever you can, be it from launching them into Winter's Chill effects or into your pet freeze.

Doing this regularly is also the only way we can efficiently generate our Fire Mastery haste bonus, since Ring of Fire is no longer a rotational ability. Coming in at number three, we then have Ice Lances into Frozen Targets or with Fingers of Frost.

Ice Lances is currently our hardest-hitting instant spell when not inside Icy Veins, so should be used as soon as possible. The point is drilled down even further, though, due to the Chain Reaction talent, increasing the spell's damage the more we press it.

Right now, Ice Lance hits exactly the same whether it's with Fingers of Frost or into a freeze effect, so do your best not to overlap Fingers procs into your pet freeze or Ice Nova. Next up, we then have Flurry, whether it be empowered by Brain Freeze or not empowered by it at all.

This ability doesn't really hit particularly hard on its own, however, it is going to allow our next two spells to shatter. Winter's Chill is also no longer consumed when using Fingers of Frost Ice Lances into it, so don't worry about over-fragging it.

It's just a matter of overlapping these effects. The best way to shatter into Flurry is through either Frostfire Bolting if possible, or Ice Lancing if there's no room to cast.

Next up, we then have Blizzard if there's more than three targets stacking. This will reduce the cooldown on our Frozen Orb, allowing us to burst more frequently, as well as spamming out our Frostbite Root on everyone, making them get affected by Sub-Zero randomly throughout our sustain.

When using Blizzard, we're going to often be doing it through the instant one that Frozen Orb provides. However, in the pet classes, it can be worth to hardcast as the cooldown reduction is just that beneficial.

Finally, after all this is said and done, we have the simple hardcasted Frostfire Bolt. This ability won't do crazy high damage, however, it will allow us to potentially proc Brain Freeze and give us two stacks of both our Hero Masteries.

Want to learn more about those Hero Talents we keep yapping on and on about? Well, then look no further than our next video, where we're going to deep dive into exactly how it works.

HERO TALENTS: FROSTFIRE

Interested in learning all about those coveted hero talents? Then let's jump right in and learn all about Frostfire, the only hero talent tree worth talking about for Frostmages.

Now, if you're wondering why we're picking Frostfire, there's two major reasons to it. The first, Bing just improves our burst window drastically by adding in Meteor every time we press Comet Storm through the Isothermic Core talent.

This Meteor hits pretty hard and is also affected by Shatter, so when we send out that Comet Storm-Ice Nova combo, you're gonna be packing a huge punch.

The Frostfire hero talents are also going to be increasing our sustained damage and crowd control potential by reducing our fire abilities cooldowns by 30%, allowing our Dragon's Breath to be a 32-second cooldown baseline, as well as dropping our blast wave to 18 seconds.

So, moving on, Frostfire also gives us access to Blazing Barrier. Whenever we use Ice Barrier, providing extra defense and purge protection, although this isn't too impactful as the barrier is only 25% effective and is often gone a literal split second after you put it up.

Now, fortunately, this isn't all Frostfire has to offer though, as it also gives us a new ability in Frostfire Bolt, which is going to replace Frostbolt and have all the same interactions as Frostbolt does.

However, unlike Frostbolt, it comes with a new ability, which is Frostfire Bolt, which is gonna be a new ability, with a proc to make it instant, which is actually worth pressing even when we're not playing the Frostbolt build.

So to get this proc, we can either just gain it from doing our regular rotation and proccing it from literally any damaging ability we have, or we can simply gain one by pressing Icy Veins.

Now, when we get this proc, we're going to want to use it as soon as possible, not just because of the damage that it provides, but also because it ties into the other major aspect of Frostfire, its mastery component, allowing you to gain up to 6% haste and 6% mastery stat as you plow through your rotation, with each fire ability giving one fire mastery stack, which is also known as 1% haste, and each frost ability giving one frost mastery stack, aka 1% mastery.

However, instant Frostfire bolts give six stacks of both instantly. With patch 11.1, these abilities are going to be used to make your fire mastery stack, and you can also use them to increase your frost power.

So, if you're going to use these abilities, you can actually just stack sticks now though, so you don't need to worry about them too much.

Instead, all our procs are now tied to Comet Storm, meaning that not only will we drop a meteor whenever we press it, but we'll also gain the excess fire damage proc on our next Ice Lance.

And when we consume that, we'll then be gaining our excess frost perk of a stronger automatic Ice Nova and cooldown reduction on Comet Storm when using our next flurry. Overall, you can see how powerful the Frostfire tree is.

And by mastering these little interactions with additional Ice Novas and meteors, you're really going to notice a difference in your sustain and your burst.

FROSTBOLT BURST

For the next rotation, we're going to be covering the Frostfire Bolt rotation, which we're going to be using when we're able to cast while playing with the Death's Chill and Fractured Frost talents.

Now, this burst rotation is incredibly simple, and it revolves around shattering as many Frostfire Bolts as possible to build up your Death's Chill stacks, making your damage ramp higher and higher as time goes on. To begin this rotation, we're going to first send out a Flurry to apply Winter's Chill to the target.

We're then going to use our Icy Veins, allowing us to increase our haste and generate more damage. Next up, we're going to use our Frozen Orb to allow us to build Fingers of Frost stacks and deal some passive damage while we go through our rotation.

Following this, we'll then use our Comet Storm and shatter all of its projectiles with Ice Nova, allowing them to all benefit from Sub-Zero. And then comes the easy part.

From here, we're just going to start pressing Frostfire Bolt into our Winter Chill effect. Followed by another Frostfire Bolt.

Followed by yet another Frostfire Bolt. And then a Flurry to shatter it.

Followed by three more Frostfire Bolts and a Pet Freeze for that extra Sub-Zero damage. And then we're going to repeat this until we run out of Flurries, at which point we're going to use our Ice Lances.

Finally, once our Comet Storm comes off cooldown again, we're going to do one last Comet Storm into Winter's Chill, or Flurry, if available.

ICY VEINS INSTANT BURST

In this video, we're going to be going over our instant burst rotation with Icy Veins. We're going to be using this rotation whenever we want to deal damage, but there's too many interrupts on the enemy team for us to cast.

Now before we begin, just note that if at any point you get an instant Frostfire Bolt proc, it becomes priority as long as it's hitting into a freeze effect. To begin this burst, we're going to first be using a Flurry to apply Winter's Chill to the target.

We'll then follow up with Icy Veins for the haste, damage increase, and extra Flurry damage. Next up, we'll use Frozen Orb to build Fingers of Frost charges, and then send out our Comet Storm, making sure it shatters.

And also make sure our target can't move away from the Comet Storm with our Ice Nova. After, we'll then use our instant Frostfire Bolt that we generated from our Icy Veins, shattering it into our Winter's Chill.

Next, we'll Ice Lance with our Fingers of Frost proc into the last Frostfire Bolt that we generated from our Icy Veins, followed by another Flurry, into two more Ice Lances, followed by yet another Flurry, and even more Ice Lances.

And then to finish, we can use our instant Blizzard to try and fish for more Ice Lance procs.

FROST MAGE OPENER

Alright, that's enough theory crafting for now. Let's get into a real game, so we can see how to apply all we've learned so far.

So to begin the game, we're going to be popping up our Conjure refreshments and applying Arcane Intellect for that nice stat boost.

And depending on if we're playing Overpowered Barrier, we can also use Ice Barrier if there is more than 30 seconds before the gates open, as this will allow the barrier to last until the game begins without being removed.

After all the maintenance has been taken care of, it's time to begin the match, which we'll do by jumping into the fight and using one charge of Flurry. We're going to do this every opener, as when we Icy Veins, we'll refund a charge from Water Jet, so this prevents us from overcapping.

Following this, our next goal is to use our Icy Veins to prepare for our burst, while also sending out our Frozen Orb for extra damage. At this point, it can also be a good idea to use Alter Time, so you don't have to play defensive while you're ramping up, allowing you to free cast.

From here, the spam begins. Start hammering out as many Frostfire Bolts as possible, as we want to build those Death Chill stacks.

And don't worry about shattering these earlier cast, as they won't deal as much damage, but make sure you always stay below 2 stacks of Flurry. Once you have high enough stacks, and your target is already low, you can start to build your Frostfire Bolts.

And if you're not sure what to do, you can start by using your Frostfire Bolts, and then you can start to build your Frostfire Bolts.

As for the actual crowd control itself, you can either set up with your Dragon's Breath, or CC off your teammate's crowd control, just make sure you're making use of dual school casting by using Ring of Frost and Sheep. This way, if you get locked on one school, you'll always land the other.

After this, continue dealing as much damage as possible, and you'll be able to use your Frostfire Bolts to do your job. Gellu does this here by using Comet Storm while he's at 15 stacks of Death's Chill for maximum effect.

Don't get carried away with dealing damage though, as you need to make sure you land those re-polymorphs to make your Frostfire Bolts do their job. Once your Sheep effects expire, and diminishing returns are no longer a concern, your job of harassing the healer is not over yet.

You can extend your crowd control further by using Ice Wall and Blast Wave if needed, or simply threatening with a Counterspell. You can also use Frostfire Bolts to deal damage to your opponent, and then, depending on how many cooldowns you force, either run away to free cast more, or stay in and commit for the kill.

No matter what you do though, don't tank damage if you don't need to.

Storm Shatter with Ice Nova And even though the Shaman breaks his crowd control for a second time, he's still able to re-polymorph here, and then he uses his Greater Invisibility to negate the Shatter damage on him as his Alter Time is still on cooldown and he doesn't want to lose his current pressure by having to Ice Block during his go, forcing enemy Paladin's sacrifice and wings.

Gelu's forced all that he was looking for out of the enemy, and with the Paladin being diminishing returned on polymorph, he pops a Ring of Fire to put it on cooldown and disengages from the fight with Shimmer.

And now that all his abilities are on cooldown, he goes for a Shifting Power so he can re-enter his next crowd control phase as soon as possible with his Alter Time, Frozen Orb, Chilling Eve, and Whirlwind. This opener differs when playing with a melee however.

This is mainly because when you play with a melee you need to be in with them to support them, as otherwise they're going to be isolated and killed while your healer and yourself are happily PvEing in the background. So as we start this game, we're immediately going to be walking in with our melee.

This allows our healer to be able to heal both of us at the same time and dispel any crowd control that hits our way. And here we're being joined by the Shatter and Emissary as well! partner.

Gelu takes this one step further by shimmering in with his warrior and landing a sheep on the enemy elemental shaman, forcing the game to be a 2v3. After this, he then swaps his polymorph to the enemy healer, knowing that his warrior has uptime.

Therefore, any crowd control at this moment on is going to result in a ton of pressure. And after frostbombing the mage, Gelu does something else that is so important to mention here.

He frostfire bolts the mage, which is critical due to its snare allowing the warrior to reconnect just a little bit easier. Following this, Gelu goes into his burst rotation on the enemy mage.

However, do notice that his warrior is swapping targets. At this point, Gelu has to make a decision.

Shimmer after the mage and continue bursting his favored target, who's just blown several of their defensives, or commit to a new target together with his partner. The answer to this question should generally be a no-brainer to you.

A caster can connect to whoever you want, so swapping to your melee's target is always the play, well, 90% of the time. So, instead of shimmering after the mage who's still at half health, Gelu swaps to his warrior's target, which allows them to force astral shift and guardian spirit due to their combined pressure.

The moral of this story is you always want to let your melee lead, as you can always connect to their target, but they can't necessarily connect to yours.

So, for our final opener here, we're going to be showing you all what to do when facing a melee, as with the right plays, you can make their life an absolute living hell. So, first, as you go in, your main goal is to slow the game down as soon as possible and prevent the melee from connecting.

You can and should always do this by ice novaing them on their mount, as this will freeze them in place, allowing you to then cast a snare on them afterwards.

So, after this, you can make your melee to a caster, who's just blown several of their defense targets, and you can this, you can then go ahead and either pop Icy Veins and toss a Frostfire Bolt on them for the snare, or as Gelu does here, flurry them for that huge slow effect and damage component.

At this point, the melee's probably going to use a mobility tool on you, so as Gelu does here, you can just pop an Alter Time as they're going to often try to stun you afterwards. And then you can just Shimmer once Alter is used, as it's going to refund a charge when you Alter Time back regardless.

After this happens, you can just start dealing damage to whoever you want. Just make sure you have a snare or Line of Sight on the melee so they can't easily reconnect.

So in this clip, Gelu just simply avoids the Warrior with the Pillar to prevent charge while he attacks the Warlock. And after Alter Timing back, he then makes sure to have as much range from the Warrior as possible to avoid their next charge.

Frustrated, the Warrior then commits Heroic Leap to connect, but all Gelu needs to do is rinse and repeat by matching his mobility and maintaining snares on him. And there's, honestly, nothing the Warrior can do about it.

FROST MAGE WIN CONDITION

Now let's go over our win condition as a Frostmage in Solo Shuffle. Our main objectives align closely with our opener, setting up strong crowd control and unleashing massive damage during our Icy Veins window.

With this in mind, Gelu begins preparing for his win condition 30 seconds before Icy Veins comes off cooldown. This timing ensures that when Icy Veins is ready, the healer's polymorph diminishing returns will have reset.

His primary goal at this stage is to force the healer's trinket before his burst window. To do this, Gelu begins by moving towards the healer for a Dragon's Breath.

Fortunately, his healer lands a Hammer of Justice on the priest first, however, so Gelu utilizes this by dual-schooling with a Ring of Frost, allowing him to land the CC despite kicks being available. With a lucky Icy Veins proc, this alone is enough to force the healer's trinket, allowing the plan to take motion.

Next, he looks for an Icy Veins. He uses the Priest Wall to extend the CC chain, but is swiftly interrupted by a fear.

Undeterred, he keeps up the pressure, dealing as much damage as possible, as he knows he can force the healer to panic since he still has Counterspell available. From this exchange, they force the Hunter's Turtle and an overlapped Life Swap without even committing major cooldowns.

With his Icy Veins coming up soon, then switches to defensive play to try and avoid damage while also forcing the priest to run into the middle of the map if he wants to heal their team. Unfortunately, Gelu is then forced to block, but his positioning has baited the priest into a pretty bad spot.

Right as Icy Veins is about to come up. So with a clutch fear from his teammate, all Gelu needs to do is follow up with a Polymorph and unleash his burst damage to easily secure that final killing blow on the Hunter with a sub-zero Frostfall.

This entire sequence highlights the key to winning as a Frost Mage in Shuffle, mastering crowd control and setting up the perfect moment to capitalize on your Icy Veins window. The Dragon's Breath the evokers and is able to kill the Rogue with some well-placed Shatters despite the Dragon trinketing the go.