Tuesday, May 3, 2011

Frost Mage PvP. (prepare for QQ and butthurt)

(this post goes out to Frogoe from last post's comments! keep the comments coming, I love it!)
I hope yall have seen the comments on the patch notes any time since 4.0.3 dropped. If it's not "omg why did blizz buff frost mages again???", it's "ffffff blizz loves mages ther class is op," over and over.
(that was a joke, please never read the comments on Blizzard's website, it'll make your IQ drop 10 points)
But in all seriousness, Frost mages are absolutely dominating the PvP scene. We have burst damage, high mitigation (and 10-second immunity), and more stuns and roots than a tree on PCP.
That's why I want to go over some Frost PvP today. I PvP pretty actively, usually getting my 1343 Conquest points pretty easily. I'm at about 2.5k resilience, which is enough to keep me alive against all but the most hardened arena junkies. That said, I think I'm a pretty decent frost mage, and now I want to impart my information and knowledge on to some of you.
First off, know that while we're still the best class in the game, and handsome as all get out, we're still pretty fragile little cannons. Yes, we wear dresses into combat against guys bristling with metal spikes and teeth and emotional issues, all of whom want to mount our pretty dresses on their wall. So that means that we can't let them hit us! Which is where the Frost mage shines.
Let's make a quick list of things which can prevent us from being wailed on by the scary warrior who's holding two giant metal bludgeons:
Frost Nova (glyphed)
Cone of Cold (talented)
Blink
Freeze (pet)
Ice Barrier (talented)
Ring of Frost
Ice Block
This is where we take control. We've got a total of five freezes, two on super short cooldowns, and three that are on a somewhat longer cooldown. That's the point of frost mage PvP.
We freeze, we deep freeze, and we burst enemies down. Look at our nukes: Frostbolt is supestrong and super fast. Ice lance does ridiculous damage. So with those two things down, we can talk about strategies.
Well, use your pet's freeze pretty much on cooldown, and do all you can to keep your enemies frozen. We're talking Frost Nova, Ring of Frost, and Cone of Cold. Once they're frozen, we get a massive DPS boost, so if you're sure they're stuck, start unloading on them. If you can freeze them, get off a Deep Freeze, then you've got time to shoot off two Frostbolts and an Ice Lance.
Of course, this isn't PvE, so there are no definite strategies for opponents that shift their strategy. So the general idea is to keep your opponents as far away from you as possible (utilizing all your freezes/roots and Blink), and then you tear them a new one.
How you accomplish that is up to you.
Oh, and when you gear up with your Bloodthirsty/Vicious gear, shoot for haste, and around 201-240 spell pen, which will negate any and all resistances an enemy could have. Other than that, shoot for resilience and good luck on your arena matches! If I see you, though, no mercy ;)

4 comments:

  1. Argh when i'am reading this i want to play wow again. I abadondened wow because i had no time for it but PVP was always funnier than raiding.

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  2. 2 Frostbolts and an icelance on a deep freeze combo?
    Did they change something? It used to be that 3 icelances would absolutely destroy people, especially if they were low on resilience (I mean, getting hit 3 times for easily half of your health all while stunned is a bitch)
    But yeah, unless you coordinate to take down a frost mage quickly you get destroyed.
    On a side note, a 5s team of all frost mages in arena is incredible (one guy deep freezes and everyone starts icelancing, gg)

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  3. Well, Frostbolt has been buffed ridiculously recently - it has a cast time of 1.4 seconds every 15 seconds, with a 2 second cast time when it's not proc'd. Thus, with enough haste, you can get two frostbolts off (each doing 20% more damage due to Shatter), and throw the Ice Lance at the last second to have the server register them both as simultaneous hits - allowing both to utilize the frozen state of the enemy, instead of only one. This way you get your buffed frostbolts and an ice lance, because as it stands now Frostbolt does way more damage than Ice Lance, if you can spare the cast time. So that's why if you get the respite allowed by Deep Freeze, it's best to unload with Frostbolt.
    And yeah, I love doing BGs as frost, it's amazing how much control we have. Never tried a 5-man frost team, haha. Sounds amazing.

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