Once your gear is accounted for and you’re all prepped and ready to go, it all comes down to how well you push your buttons! The most important thing to remember is ABC: Always Be Casting. As far as what you should be casting, I’ll cover that below with the optimal Frost Mage rotations for both single-target and AoE encounters.
Single-Target Rotation
Be sure to keep Molten Armor up and your Summon Water Elemental active and attacking at all times.
- Cast Deep Freeze on cooldown if you have a charge of Fingers of Frost.
- Cast Frostfire Orb on cooldown.
- Cast Freeze via your Summon Water Elemental.
- Cast Frostfire Bolt if you have Brain Freeze.
- Cast Ice Lance if you have a charge of Fingers of Frost or you need to move.
- Cast Frostbolt otherwise.
AoE Rotation
- Cast Frostfire Orb on cooldown.
- Cast Cone of Cold on cooldown if you need to move.
- Cast Arcane Explosion if you need to move while Cone of Cold is on cooldown.
- Cast Flamestrike to overlap its effect with Blizzard.
- Cast Blizzard otherwise.
Cooldowns
- Time Warp is equivalent to Heroism/Bloodlust and shares a cooldown with them. This raid-wide cooldown will usually be called for by your raid leader.
- Mirror Image should be used on the pull and whenever it’s off cooldown as it’s a strong DPS buff.
- Icy Veins Is another strong DPS buff that you should use on the pull and whenever it’s off cooldown.
- Cold Snap resets your other cooldowns and should be used immediately after you’ve used Icy Veins, Deep Freeze, and Frostfire Orb.
- Evocation should be used when your mana gets low. It also doubles as a healing cooldown thanks to Glyph of Evocation.
- Ice Barrier is a survivability cooldown that you should use frequently if there is a lot of damage coming your way.
- Mage Ward can be used on fights with heavy Arcane, Fire, or Frost damage as an additional boost to your survivability.
- Ice Block can give you total immunity for a short period and should be used to avoid taking a hit that might otherwise be fatal.
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About the Author
Luxrah
I've been playing World of Warcraft on and off since vanilla, usually as a healer or caster and often as a guild leader. I play both retail and classic. I also love RPGs, sandboxes, and sims.