Frost Mage pvp guide

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I feel I'll enjoy writing this guide, mostly because frost mage combos are one of the most fun you can try. For a start lets get a decent build. Remember you must have a pvp build according to what your partner most needs, without losing the vital pvp talents your tree offers. Luckily, frost specs aren't very different between each other.

This is the standard frost spec for frost mage:



Having the 2 talents in reduce 40% threat and 30% spell dispel reduces the chance for your ice barrier to be dispelled. Having +3% hit allows you to stack more haste or crit(not to mention 4% is the necessary hit to never miss a lvl 80 target). Going deep arcane for improved counterspell, gives us the option to choose to get either clearcasting talents, or spell resistance + armor. Remember mages aren't big damage diminishers, but instead damage "absorbers", so the armor bonus isn't the best option, unless your resilience is very low. Choosing increased spell resistance might sound fine, unfortunately going high end pvp gear, most spell based dps will have at least 100 spell pen (being 130 recommended), which makes your spell resistance useless(As for cataclysm, there's no more spell pen). Putting 5 in clearcasting is the best option, since in fact will reduce overall the mana cost of your damage spells by 10%. If you play with a retri pala just don't put 1 in Enduring Winter, instead move it to +2% frost damage.

Click here for Cataclysm talent spec

As for Cataclysm, spending talents in Arcane Concentration is not a wise option, due to mana gem providing more mana, and with the introduction of great talents such as Burning Soul, which was what frost spec'ed mages were hoping to get. If you feel that your mana goes down too fast, you can remove talents in Netherwind Presence and move them to Arcane Concentration.

• Mage team comp:

In pvp, mage is very similar to rogue, both avoid damage instead of diminish it, but if caught without guard, they are downed easily. Therefore, a mage should play with a class that provides enough CC, in addition to the mage's CC. In a 2dps team, mage might provide CC and damage support, rather than be the top dps. In a heal/dps team, the mage and its healer will have to use their CC with precision in order to succeed, since frost mage's burst damage isn't that high.

 Dis priest/frost mage:

This is a very effective and popular comp. If you try this comp fights might take time unless your priest hastens it by using mana burn on healer. The damage absorption and damage mitigation is ok, due to priest's good armor and discipline talents, however you might find problems fighting druid or shaman comps, due to immunity to poly and purge. There is a variant of dis priest build, which adds a few capabilities.

Pros: Good damage absorption, high shadow resistance, good CC, average overall damage, effective against warr/pala teams.

Cons: Hard to beat druid teams, like feral/spriest, resto/warr, resto/dk. If battle prolongs too much, priest will go oom, forcing it to drink.

Ret/mage:

This comp might not seem good at first, but actually mage provides all that Retri paladin needs: slow, CC and silence. Just let your retri pop wings after you CC healer, and see your foes fall :). Make sure your paladin knows how to cover you. This team comp is good against most druid teams.

Pros: Good damage, mage supports paladin and paladin supports mage.

Cons: Hard to beat high CC teams, due to paladin's weakness towards it.

Spriest/mage:

This clothie team provides great damage and huge amounts of CC. If you poly first, you have to perform a second poly, and then your partner can fear, after fear is done make sure our partner silences, then you use Counterspell to interrupt another 8 secs, allowing your polymorph DR(diminishing return) to reset. Your Spriest wont have much problem against feral druid, and frost mage is naturally good against paladins. Both can purge, which is a +. On this comp, the spriest performs the most of dps, while the mage acts as support dps+CC.

Pros: Good damage, good CC.

Cons: Weak against warlock teams, and shamans due to tremor totem, since Spriest's fear is the only good CC it can provide.

Mage/warlock:

If your warlock is destruction, it provides great burst damage, and CC with fear. The CC mechanics are similar as for spriest/mage, but lock's fear is spammable, which is better against shaman teams, not to mention destruction warlock's spell damage mitigation. Both classes can kite very well melee foes, and have silence and stun.

Pros: Great burst and CC, the most effective against paladin teams.

Cons: If the warlock is destruction, shadowfury stun could fall in Deep freeze's DR. If the warlock is affliction, the fight will lose burst, overall damage and damage mitigation.

Nice try, but the following dont work:

1. Frost/rogue

• What spells you should use:

Well, the beginning usually depends on polymorph, then dispell whatever buffs he/she has, and then FB(frostbolt) him. If he's a melee, you'll want to kite him from far, except if he's a retri pali. Retri palas will LOS and heal or regen mana, to prevent this you should kite from ~15 yards, and keep him buffless all the fight to steal freedom or wings asap. Warrs will have spell reflect ready when you're about to throw your FB, to counter this you have to predict when will he use it. Most warrs use it when they're rooted; have the mindset to stop casting FB and cast fire blast or IL(ice lance), then FB him. As you can notice FB is your main dps spell, you should use IL only when you cant cast, and you have FoF buff (fingers of frost). Remember mages are fleshy, and a proper kiting takes you halfway to victory against melee foes. Fighting ferals is a bit harder, since they can shapeshift, they'll be in close range most of the time (~10 yds), to counter this you'll have to spamm CoC (cone of cold) plus nova and FB rank 1 everytime you can, even if he gets freed from slows by shapeshift, his mana will go down everytime, until he can no longer use it, yes its hard but you can win against ferals, they're afraid of you as much as you are of them.

To fight casters, polymorph first is a must. Most casters have buffs, so stealing those buffs its a must. Spellsteal is expensive but use your mana gems properly and you won't have issues. Once he loses buffs, apply FB and nova+stun. Casters have interrupts. As frost mage, you would think that your frost tree is the most important, however this is not always true; at the beginning of the fight your polymorph is the most important spell you can cast, and until your foe is dispelled or Polyed, your polymorph (arcane) is the most important. To prevent this you can either fake cast, or 'taunt' interrupts by casting scorch.

If you're running low health/mana, throw a  Ring of Frost and Evocate out of his LOS (Make sure his trinket is in CD).

• What buffs I should use?

The usual buffs any mage uses. Ice Armor against Rogue, feral and warrior; and Mage Armor against anything else. Your most important buff during the fight will be Ice Barrier. Keep it up everytime you can when you're not fighting purging foes.

• My Ice Barrier gets purged every time, what can I do?

Depends on the foe. One great thing about mages is the insanely high amount of haste rating you can achieve. Lets say you're playing against an elemental shaman, he purged your first barrier, and you CS (counterspell) his Lava Burst, the next spell he'll use is Chain Lightning, which hits really hard; since your haste is high you'll be able to cast Ice Barrier just when he's about to finish his cast. Your barrier will most likely break after receiving the hit, but it served its purpose and shaman didn't purge it. In case it doesn't breaks, the shaman will not purge it since the barrier will be almost depleted, and if he purges it, he'll waste a GCD and mana doing it.

• How to gear up your Frost Mage

From low gear to high end, your primary stat will always be haste. Of course you stack spell power(intellect in cataclysm), but as for yellow, stacking 20 haste works great. Remember, as Frost is an element that many classes have high resistance (auras, totems), you should have at least 100 spell pen, going for 130 as recommended spell pen. Having resilience is important as a mage, but remember that you're a damage absorber/evader, rather than damage mitigator; most mages use pve trinkets or pve rings to get more haste, since pve gear provides +haste than pvp one.

• How to use Blink

 Blink is perhaps the best spell in the mage pvp arsenal of abilities. Not only freeds you from roots and stuns, it also further increases the mage kiting capabilities. Obligated uses for blink are: After a DK's Death Grip, a paladin's Hammer of Justice, a rogue's Kidney Shot, A druid's Maim, a warrior's Charge, another mage's Deep Freeze, and... as interrupt!

Yes, in the peak of mage skills, you'll use Blink as interrupt. An experienced mage will kite Warrior from ~7 yards, to prevent getting charged and as well avoid melee damage, as for casters an experienced mage will kill from 18~19 yards, just as your foe is about to finish his cast you have to use blink and appear right behind him, wasting his cast time. This is one of the reasons mages need so much haste.

Well that's all for now, hopefully I cleared enough to make you a better pvp'er. Until next post!