PvE Frost Mage Guide

Frost Mage DPS

Stat Priority

Talents & Builds

Pre-Raid & Best In Slot (BiS)

Glyphs, Gems, Enchants, & Consumables

Rotation, Cooldowns, & Abilities

Welcome to Warcraft Tavern’s guide on how to play a Frost Mage in World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade Classic! In this guide we will cover gearing, enchants, gems, spell rotations and more. While not the most popular choice for endgame content, Frost Mages are spectacular in heroics and even raids, as well!

Best Races

Alliance

Human: In terms of PvE content, Human Mages only benefit directly from The Human Spirit, increasing their total spirit by 10%. In terms of overall content, Diplomacy is a beneficial racial for when you are trying to increase your reputation with various factions.

Gnome: In terms of PvE content, Gnome Mages benefit greatly from Expansive Mind, increasing their total Intellect by 5%, allowing them to have the most mana on the Alliance (Assuming the same gear would be equipped) With our Pre-Raid set, Gnomes have an extra 21 Intellect, increasing their total mana by 315. Gnomes are also able to escape from more movement-impairing effects than others, thanks to Escape Artist.

Draenei: In terms of both PvE and PvP content, Draenei Mages benefit from Inspiring Presence, granting them and their party members increased spell hit chance. It grants them 1%, causing their requirement to fall to 15% Spell Hit Rating. Draenei also have Gift of the Naaru, which is simply a free heal-over-time (HoT) that may be beneficial if you find yourself in a situation where your healer is out of mana and you’re in need of a heal.

Horde

Undead: While Undead don’t have a specific racial that directly benefits Mages in PvE content, Will of the Forsaken will assist you in staying alive throughout various levels of content.

Troll: In terms of both PvE and PvP content, Trolls benefit from Berserking, allowing them to increase their spell-casting speed. While most players won’t see the full 30% increase since they won’t likely be that badly injured, a 10% speed increase is still incredibly beneficial. Coming behind Berserking, Beast Slaying increases our total damage against beasts by 5%.

Blood Elf: In terms of PvE content, Blood Elves do have Arcane Torrent, which is incredibly useful if used as a support tool to help tanks orient their pulls by silencing casters in a small radius around you, effectively causing them to become melee mobs and follow your tank. As well as silencing mobs, Arcane Torrent also grants you 161 mana for each charge of Mana Tap you currently have active.

Best Professions

Tailoring

Tailoring is our first choice in terms of professions. It allows us to craft multiple pieces of our Pre-Raid BiS set, and our Phase 1 BiS set, along with each Phase’s BiS set. It also allows us to craft our own Spellthread (Runic or Mystic)

Enchanting

Enchanting provides us the opportunity to make a little extra gold by disenchanting drops and selling the materials on the Auction House. However, the biggest advantage Enchanters receive is the ability to enchant their rings with one of four enchants – ours being Enchant Ring – Spellpower.

Alchemy

Alchemy provides us the opportunity to create our own consumables, which can be considered expensive to maintain if we purchase them from the Auction House. In Phase 5, Alchemists obtain the ability to craft one of the best trinkets for casters in the game, Sorcerer’s Alchemist Stone.

Leatherworking

While there are no direct benefits to Leatherworking for Mages of any specialization, Leatherworking allows you to craft beneficial items such as Drums of Battle, which are always a welcome sight for various raid groups.

Engineering

Beginning in Phase 2, Engineers can craft various types of Goggles – Cloth, Leather, Mail, and Plate armor. For cloth wearers, we’d look at crafting Destruction Holo-gogs which can be further upgraded with future phases. Along with various types of dynamite and bombs, Engineers can also craft fun, party-like items such as Blue Firework.

Jewelcrafting

Jewelcrafters are able to craft various high-level gems that are slightly better than the ones that players that aren’t Jewelcrafters can use, such as Blood of Amber and Don Julio’s Heart. They can also craft various trinkets for different roles. One of the main trinkets that Mages may be interested in is Figurine – Living Ruby Serpent.

Gathering Professions

With Tailoring, we don’t need a gathering profession, but often times gathering professions can be used as a way to make some extra gold to fund your adventures in Azeroth and Outland!