PvP Frost Mage Talents, Builds & Glyphs

wotlk pvp frost mage talents, builds & glyphs
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PvP Frost Mage

Talents & Builds

Talents, Builds & Glyphs

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Stat Priority

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Gems, Enchants, & Consumables

Gems, Enchants & Consumables

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Rotation & Cooldowns

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When it comes to Frost Mage builds and talents in PvP, it’s important to understand that you have a lot of flexibility. You can create builds that will empower your overall damage, or you can go the defensive route and increase your overall survivability at the cost of DPS — and there are many possible choices within these archetypes as well.

It is up to you to decide which build fits your playstyle and your personal preferences! We encourage you to experiment as much as possible with the talents and swap them in accordance with the type of PvP you’re doing, as well as what feels best for you.

Talent Builds

Click a build to see talent distribution and discussion!

This build dabbles in the Arcane Tree, providing you with strong effects such as Torment the Weak, Magic Absorption, and Improved Counterspell while also granting you a solid selection of talents in the Frost Tree. The build benefits from Precision, allowing you to min-max your stats better while also benefiting from effects such as Permafrost, Arctic Reach, and Winter’s Chill. While the build takes advantage of essential talents (and even niche talents such as Improved Blizzard) which allow you to have increased crowd control and zoning capabilities, it lacks the damage from Piercing Ice and Arctic Winds.

build 2
Click here to see the link to this build

This variation of the standard build has the same talent points spent on the Arcane Tree, however, it brings a different variant of the Frost Tree. It does not benefit from Precision, requiring you to gain Hit Chance from your equipment. The build grants you similar effects through talents such as Permafrost, Arctic Reach, Improved Blizzard, and Winter’s Chill. However, it provides additional DPS via Piercing Ice giving you increased damage and Cold as Ice granting you reduced cooldown for Cold Snap, Ice Barrier, and Summon Water Elemental.

The build retains one point in Enduring Winter for the refreshment effect, while having one additional point in Brain Freeze for increased proc chance. Due to the reduced points in Enduring Winter, we recommend that you use Glyph of Eternal Water.

buildnou
Click here to see the link to this build

This iteration of the standard build is best suited for battlegrounds, having 3 points in Improved Blizzard, adding a potent chill effect to Blizzard, and 3 points in Arcane Concentration allowing for more consistent procs of Clearcasting. Just like the second variant of the standard build, the battleground build does not benefit from Precision, however, it retains most of the talents from the standard build.

battlegrounds
Click here to see the link to this build

Notable Talents

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  • Improved Frostbolt reduces the casting time of Frostbolt by 0.5 seconds.
    • This talent is mandatory since Frostbolt will be our main damage spell. A simple and straightforward talent.
  • Ice Floes reduces the cooldown of your Frost Nova, Cone of Cold, Ice Block, and Icy Veins by up to 20%.
    • An often forgotten talent, however, since we want to spam our abilities as much as possible, we cannot skip this.
  • Frostbite is a crucial talent that grants our chill effects a 15% chance to freeze the target.
    • This talent is absolutely mandatory, as it will allow you to freeze your target by using spells such as Cone of Cold, Frostbolt, Blizzard, and Ice Armor.
  • Ice Shards increases the critical strike bonus damage of your frost spells by up to 100%.
    • A self-explanatory talent — since our gameplay relies upon critical strikes.
  • Permafrost is a very strong talent that increases the duration of all chill effects by up to 3 seconds and increases any slow potency by up to 10% while also granting your chill effects a 20% healing reduction effect.
    • This talent grants you one of the rare mechanics in the game, healing reduction, even if the percentage is not that high. This is a must-have PvP talent, especially against pesky healer comps.
  • Frost Warding increases the armor gained by spells such as Ice Armor and Frost Armor by up to 50%, while also granting your Frost and Fire Ward a 30% chance to completely negate the damage absorbed and grant you mana based on the damage absorbed.
    • Often skipped, but since the meta is heavily dominated by physical damage dealers, you will absolutely want to take it. This talent is especially strong when combined with Glyph of Ice Armor
  • Precision is a talent that increases your Hit Chance with all spells by up to 3% while also reducing their mana cost by 3%.
    • Extremely useful throughout the entirety of the expansion, allowing you to focus on maximizing stats such as Haste Rating instead of being forced to choose equipment with Hit Rating.
  • Improved Blizzard grants your Blizzard a chill effect, allowing you to slow multiple targets at the same time.
    • Offers you the possibility of zoning your enemies, allowing you to turn Blizzard into an effective crowd control ability. Since it can synergize with Frostbite, it will allow you to freeze multiple opponents at the same time. Normally, you will only want to spend only one point in this talent, however, it is advisable to spend up to 3 points if you are going to consistently play battlegrounds.
  • Arctic Reach grants you increased range for your Frostbolt, Ice Lance, and Deep Freeze abilities while also increasing the radius of Cone of Cold and Blizzard by up to 20%.
    • You will want to have this talent in all your builds, as the increased range is a core aspect of your gameplay, allowing you to effectively kite your enemies.
  • Shatter increases our critical strike chance by an outstanding 50% against frozen targets, allowing us to effectively burst any target.
    • This stands at the core of our specialization as our most powerful talent. There is no other talent in the game that offers such a high percentage of critical strike chance; you cannot play a Frost Mage without this talent.
  • Shattered Barrier grants you either a 50% or 100% chance to cast a Frost Nova whenever your Ice Barrier is destroyed.
    • This talent is very powerful against melee assailants, however, it does not provide any advantage against caster enemies. You can choose to spend only one point in this talent and still having a high chance of benefiting consistently from it.
  • Winter’s Chill that grants your Frostbolt a 3% increased critical strike chance, while also granting all of your Frost Damage a 100% chance to apply a debuff that increases the critical strike chance of all spells by up to 1%, stacking up to 5 times.
    • This talent further emphasizes our dependency on critical strike chance. You can easily apply it in a variety of ways, with the most effective way being Blizzard.
  • Empowered Frostbolt further enhances Frostbolt’s damage by up to 10% of your spell power, while also further reducing the casting time of Frostbolt by up to 0.2 seconds.
    • A simple and must-have talent.
  • Fingers of Frost grants your chill effects the chance to grant you a proc that treats your next two spells as if your target is frozen.
    • This talent is another must-have, especially since we are highly dependent on freezing our targets. This talent also grants you an easy way of applying Deep Freeze.
  • Brain Freeze grants you a chance to gain an instant cast of Fireball or Frostfire Bolt whenever you deal damage with a frost spell that can chill your target.
    • Most builds will only have one point spent on this talent, however, you can choose to spend multiple points for increased proc frequency.
  • Arcane Fortitude increases your armor rating by 150% of your total intellect.
    • You will definitely want to gain 3 points in this amazing talent, as the meta is heavily focused on physical damage dealers and our armor rating is low as a cloth user.
  • Focus Magic is a utility talent that grants a friendly target a 3% increased critical strike chance with spells. Whenever your ally deals a critical strike, you will also benefit from the same effect for 10 seconds.
    • Useful when playing with a caster ally, however, this talent can be skipped if you plan on partnering up with a Rogue or Feral Druid in arenas. It can, however, can be extremely potent in battlegrounds (as long as the ally affected by it does not die).
  • Improved Counterspell grants Counterspell the ability to also Silence your target for up to 4 seconds.
    • A very potent talent that turns your interrupt into a silence instead. Since silence effects can not be trinketed, this grants you access to a very powerful crowd control ability.
  • Magic Absorption grants you 80 resistance to any magic school, while also granting you 2% of your total mana pool whenever you resist a spell.
    • Since this effect can stack with any other magical resistance effects in the game, it allows you to become heavily resilient to any type of magic.
  • Torment the Weak allowing you to deal 12% increased damage with most of your offensive spells against slowed or snared targets.
    • This is avery powerful talent — “Snared” targets, includes anything affected by our Freeze effect. You will always want to acquire this talent if pursuing the Arcane Tree, as a 12% increased damage buff is extremely powerful and its conditional requirement can be instantly accessed.
  • Improved Cone of Cold increases the damage of Cone of Cold by up to 35%.
    • This talent is quite useful against melee assailants, however, it can be considered entirely situational, thus, making it optional.
  • Arctic Winds is a talent increases your overall damage by up to 5%.
    • Weak when compared to a talent such as Torment the Weak, especially since it requires 5 points in order to reach its full potential. However, you can choose to opt for both talents by sacrificing points in other utility talents like Shattered Barrier.
  • Frost Channeling reduces the mana cost of all frost spells by up to 10%.
    • Completely useless for PvP unless utilized in a build that primarily spams Blizzard. You may want to consider it if you want to create another variation of the battleground build.
  • Frozen Core reduces all damage taken by up to 6%.
    • This talent can be strong when combined with other defensive talents that increase your armor rating or resistances. However, it requires 3 talent points in order to reach its true potential, and there are generally better options.

Glyphs

Major Glyphs

Glyph of Ice Barrier increases the amount that you can absorb with Ice Barrier by an additional 30%. This glyph is particularly useful for battlegrounds or duels. It can prove to be useful situationally in arenas, but dispelling beneficial effects is much more common in arena matches (so your Ice Barrier may not last long).

Glyph of Evocation is a very powerful glyph that grants you access to the healing — with this glyph, Evocation causes you to regain 60% of your total health pool (in addition to the 60% mana pool regeneration that you always gain from Evocation). This glyph is a must-have!

Glyph of Polymorph removes any DoT effect present on the target when afflicted by Polymorph. This glyph is extremely potent for arenas, ensuring that your Polymorph won’t be automatically canceled by DoT effects. However, this glyph is useless for duels or battlegrounds, as the sheer quantity of abilities spammed in battlegrounds will make it impossible to maintain a polymorph.

Glyph of Frost Nova is a glyph that increases the damage threshold at which the Frost Nova effect automatically breaks by 20%. This glyph can be particularly useful against melee classes, as it allows you to cast additional Ice Lances before the effect expires.

Glyph of Water Elemental reduces the cooldown of Summon Water Elemental by up to 30 seconds. This glyph is generally considered weak, however, you can choose to use this glyph if you expect long fights and want to use your elemental’s freeze ability more often.

Glyph of Ice Armor increases the armor rating and resistances granted by Ice Armor by up to 50%. This glyph is surprisingly strong, due to a meta dominated by physical damage dealers and armor penetration. This glyph massively boosts your survivability, especially in higher-rated arenas where comps such as Arms Warrior/Holy Paladin dominate the scene.

Glyph of Eternal Water grants you the ability to transform your Water Elemental into a permanent pet, with the tradeoff of it losing its freeze ability. This glyph can be extremely potent in longer fights, even if it leaves you without a point and click freeze; the Water Elemental itself has a lot of damage that will compensate for the loss of utility.

Minor Glyphs

Glyph of Frost Ward grants you a 5% additional chance to reflect any Frost spell cast towards you while Frost Ward is active. This glyph is a standard choice.

Glyph of Fire Ward grants you a 5% additional chance to reflect any Fire spell cast towards you while Fire Ward is active. This glyph is standard and should always be taken.

Glyph of Slow Fall removes the need for a reagent when casting Slow Fall. This is extremely useful, especially in battlegrounds with elevation.

 

About the Author

Nevermore

Hey there folks, I am Nevermore and have been deeply passionate about WoW for more than a decade. Whether we talk about the hidden mysteries of Azeroth or the otherworldly Outland, my journey brought me here to share the things that I have experienced with you all.
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stav
stav
2 years ago

thanks this is a nice guide for lvl 1-80 fire is good and all but it cant keep me alive as well as frost

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Kpap
Kpap
3 years ago

kinda good ty

Last edited by Kpap
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Qxu
Qxu
Reply to  Kpap
3 years ago

Glad you found the guide helpful.

Last edited by Qxu
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alireza
alireza
3 years ago

works for pve as well?

Last edited by alireza
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Qxu
Qxu
Reply to  alireza
3 years ago

Frost mage has no burst nor consistent damage compared to fire mage or even arcane in PvE, I wouldn’t recommend it.

Last edited by Qxu
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KORDIAn
KORDIAn
Reply to  Qxu
3 years ago

best mages use fire to make a lot of dps 😀

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Imba
Imba
Reply to  KORDIAn
2 years ago

And their manapool melting like butter in a volcano.

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luka
luka
Reply to  Imba
1 year ago

not when u use your mana gems properly. can run 5 min fights

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