Playstyle & Rotation
General Rotation
Frost doesn't really have a set rotation anymore, instead we have a priority list that I want to go over in the opener section.
Always be casting - by far the most important thing for a range dps caster is to always cast something, if you are on the move and you cannot use shimmers to get to where you need ice floes might be something you want to look into. Keep in mind that even unbuffed ice lance is still some damage on the move if we absolutely cannot stand still and cast, some damage is better than no damage.
Ray of frost is taking a step back in our gameplay. We don't really spec into it with how spammy frost gets with ice lance procs from spellslinger and orb we don’t really want to stand still channeling ray of frost for 4 seconds.
As I mentioned above, because we get so many flurry resets and ice lance procs from frozen orb and spellslinger tree glacial spike takes a very low prio in our rotation which means that unless we don’t have an active fingers of frost and frozen orb is on CD and we cannot cast anything else we want to cast glacial spike.
Also with losing the tier set from Dragonflight S4 and the cleave component it had, with the emphasis on ice lance, glacial spike is taking a very low priority in our rotation because of that.
Glacial Spike Shattering
There is an old, but useful, technique as Frost Mage that we used to do with glacial spike and flurry. We used to shatter our Glacial Spike, followed by Flurry whilst inside the Winter’s Chill window; similar to what we do with the Shatter combo with Frostbolt, flurry and 2x ice lance.
How we want to do that is to try to have Flurry ready when we are close to or at 5 Icicles, then cast Glacial Spike and immediately follow up with Flurry to make our Glacial spike benefit from Winter’s Chill.
We achieve that benefit because Glacial Spike has a sort of “formed“ animation, plus Flurry projectiles are very fast compared to Glacial Spike, so with this technique Glacial Spike benefits from our Flurry’s Winter’s chill window, which increase Glacial Spike damage by a lot It’s extremely crucial to master this technique.
Assuming you have played Frost Mage before and performed that combo with Flurry, you just replace Frostbolt with Glacial Spike > Flurry > Ice Lance.
If you don't have a Flurry proc ready, you can freeze mobs (more M+ focused) with Frost Nova in order to achieve something similar; you need to be close to the pack and press Frost Nova as soon as you release your Glacial Spike keybind. You can also use Pet Freeze, but it only works when you have Icy Veins available.
With that being said, we NEVER hold glacial spike for a Flurry Proc.
Opener
- Precast frost bolt into flurry and 1 lance (we still got 1 more winter’s chill stack because flurry gives 2)
- Cast icy veins and frozen orb and comet storm(we want to hit comet storm on the 2nd winter’s chill stack to shatter it)
- At this point we will be swimming in fingers of frost and flurries. We want to react to them accordingly with the priority of spending fingers of frost before we spend flurries. However, there will be a point when we just don’t have enough time to react to all of the procs we get so just spend them it's more important rather than they expire.
- Cast Shifting Power (it creates splinter storm and giving us more winter’s chill)
- After we have nothing else to press and our Frozen Orb is on CD we can cast glacial spike (ideally we want to line it up with a flurry or with 1 winter’s chill stack on our target to shatter it)
Multi Target:
Not much has changed for the AoE rotation as frost if you played frost in DF it’s pretty much the same:
- Frozen Orb on CD
- Comet Storm on CD
- Spend fingers of frost and flurry procs accordingly
- Shatter Comet Storm with Frost Nova or Ice Nova on AoE for a bigger impact
- Icy Veins on CD
- Blizzard on CD (on 3 Targets or more with Freezing Rain)
- Fill with Glacial Spike
Playstyle
Cooldown Usage
Icy veins isn't the most impactful CD, however it does make us cast faster in Mythic+ situations we want to use it on CD.
During the raid, unless you need to hold it for any type of damage phase amp or an chunky add that spawns (like Fyrrak infernals) feel free to use Icy veins on CD.
You should treat frost as a "if it is glowing and ready", then just press it. Frost is an uptime spec, which means we don’t really want to hold anything specific unless we absolutely have to.
Defensives
As mentioned above, frost has excellent survivability and good Mobility with Mirror Images, Alter Time, 2x Shimmer, 2x Ice Blocks (with cold snap), Greater Invis (which also increases our movement speed if talented), and Ice Barrier.
Rotating our defensives properly can significantly increase our chance to live high sources of incoming damage!
Note - Don’t be afraid to be aggressive with defensive CD since shifting power reduces all our CDs by 10 Seconds, while on 1 minute CD.