Freezing cold, the Frost Mage covers his opponents with powerful ice balls and frost storms.
If you choose the mage specialization Frost, everything will revolve around ice and cold in the future. Alternatively, you can heat up your opponents as a Fire Mage or harness the power of the arcane as an Arcane Mage.
The most important changes
Your Arcane Intelligence buff now only adds 5% Intelligence to the party instead of the previous 10%. As a Frost Mage, you now have access to the Arcane Explosion and Fire Strike abilities again.
The former Mirror Image talent is now available as a base ability. The damage of Mirror Image has been significantly reduced. The developers see the ability as more of a defensive component in the Shadowlands due to 20% reduced damage, rather than an offensive cooldown as before.
The Time Shift ability is also back. When activated, your position and health are saved as a baseline. After ten seconds or when activated again, you will be returned to your starting position.
The Rune of Power talent has been revised. An additional Rune of Power is now positioned when you use Icy Fingers. Your passive ability Shatter now increases your critical strike chance against frozen targets by 50% instead of 25%.
How to play the Frost Mage
As a Frost Mage, your attribute priorities should be as follows:
- Intelligence
- Critical hit chance (up to 33.34 percent)
- Speed
- Versatility
- Mastery
| Stage | Talent | Description |
|---|---|---|
| 15 | Lonely Winter | You can no longer summon your Water Elemental, but Frostbolt, Ice Lance, and Hail deal 25% more damage. |
| 25 | Shimmer | Teleports you forward 20 meters as long as nothing is in the way. Is not affected by the global cooldown and can also be used when casting spells. Maximum of two charges. |
| 30 | Incanter’s Flow | In battle, magical energy passes through you, increasing until a 20% damage increase is reached and then decreasing until the damage increase is 4%. This cycle repeats every ten seconds. |
| 35 | Chain Reaction | Your uses of Ice Lance against frozen targets increase the damage of your Ice Lance by 3% for ten seconds. This effect stacks up to five times. |
| 40 | Frigid Winds | All your hypothermia effects reduce the target’s movement speed by an additional 10%. |
| 45 | Comet Storm | Drops a sequence of seven ice comets on the target and its surroundings, dealing up to 2,448 frost damage to all enemies within six meters of the impact locations. |
| 50 | Ray of Frost | Channel a beam of icy power at an enemy for 5 seconds, dealing 1,049 frost damage and slowing them by 60% every second. Each time Frost Ray deals damage, the effect’s damage and slowing are increased by 10%. Creates two charges of Icy Fingers over the course of the effect duration. |
Always use your offensive cooldown Icy Veins when it’s available, because it gives you 30% more speed. Cast Hail on the target if you have the Brain Freeze condition. Immediately after, follow up with Ice Lance, since Hail has frozen the target and Ice Lance now deals triple damage. Now hurl the Frozen Orb at the target.
If you have a charge of Icy Fingers, cast Ice Lance on the target. Ice Lance does damage from Icy Fingers as if the target were frozen. You can use Frost Ray to generate charges of Icy Fingers when Frozen Orb is unavailable.
Only then do Comet Hail and Frostbolt follow in the priority list. Against multiple targets, build Blizzard into your rotation. Don’t forget your strong offensive cooldown Time Bend.
