PvE Frost Mage DPS Stat Priority & Reforging

Frost Mages in Mists of Pandaria prioritize Intellect, Hit, and Haste, followed by Mastery as their most impactful stats to improve their performance. Critical Strike Chance is far less important for them than the other Mage specializations due to how their Brain Freeze & Fingers of Frost procs interact with the Shatter mechanic.

Stat Priority

1. Hit (Until Cap)
2. Intellect
3. Haste (Until Soft Cap/Breakpoint)
4. Mastery
5. Critical Strike Chance

Hit Chance is a secondary stat that ensures your spells land against higher-level mobs. In Mists of Pandaria, Expertise also contributes to the amount of Hit Chance you will have as a Caster specialization. You will need a 15% Hit Chance to never miss against level 93 bosses, with each 340 Hit granting a 1% Hit Chance. Due to how Expertise now affects casters, some races will have increased Hit Chance when using specific items due to their racial bonuses.

Intellect is a primary stat for Frost Mage, providing them with increased Spell Power and Spell Critical Strike Chance. The stat no longer provides Mana; it is the primary source of Spell Power and is innately found in all appropriate gear for Frost Mages. After reaching the Hit Cap, this stat should be stacked as much as possible through gems, enchants, and consumables.

Haste is the most important stat after Intellect and Hit for Frost Mages! This is due to three different aspects: the reduction of spell cast time, the increased tick rate of their DoTs, such as Living Bomb & Nether Tempest, and their Mastery: Icicles, which is directly tied to how fast you can cast Frostbolt and trigger Brain Freeze procs. Each 425 Haste will result in 1% Haste, and Frost Mages can use Frost Armor to gain a 7% base Haste Rating!

The common conception is that you will want to get 14242 Haste while raid buffed and fully geared to obtain the most optimum output without being affected by Berserking, Icy Veins, or Bloodlust/Heroism/Time Warp. This translates to roughly 33.53% Haste Rating, meaning that you won’t reach a 1-second cast Frostbolt cap unless affected by those effects. You must raise your overall Haste to around 80%-85% to get the 1-second Frostbolt cap; however, that will dampen the rest of your stats.

The following stats are the breakpoints without the 5% increased Haste buff.

Mastery is the stat you want to stack after reaching the 33% Haste soft Cap! Mastery is directly tied to the new 5.4.8 Frost Mage Mastery: Icicles effect, introducing a new mechanic to their gameplay. Thankfully, Frost Mages now benefit from this mechanic, making them highly viable in PvE, allowing them to store a portion of their damage dealt with Frostball and Frostfire Bolt and launch them through ice shards using Ice Lance. You will want to stack a considerable amount of Mastery since this stat also improves the damage of your Water Elemental. The more Mastery you acquire, the higher the portion of the damage stored by the passive gets, including the increase to the elemental damage.

Finally, Critical Strike Chance is a controversial stat for Frost Mages. The main reason this stat is last in terms of priority is the Shatter mechanic, which already doubles their Critical Strike Chance against frozen targets and adds a 50% additional baseline against them. Since their gameplay is based on procs that enable damage against frozen targets, such as Brain Freeze & Fingers of Frost, you will only need a small amount of Critical Strike Chance to ensure you will always land critical strikes with your procs.

Reforging

Reforging can only be done on secondary stats, meaning you can’t acquire more Intellect through it! As a Frost Mage, you will want to primarily reforge your secondary stats into Hit, followed by Haste. After that, you will want to prioritize gaining Mastery to increase the value stored by Mastery: Icicles as much as possible. You will want to avoid acquiring Critical Strike Chance through reforging!

1. Hit (Until Cap)
2. Haste (Until Breakpoint)
3. Mastery