Welcome to Skill Capped’s Guide on the Best PvP Talents & Hero Talents for Frost Mages in The War Within 11.0

All sections for Frost Mage PvP have been divided into corresponding sections for the most optimal hero talents, class talents, spec talents, race, stats, gear, enchants, gems, and macros. This will help you have a good understanding of Frost Mages in PvP for The War Within, the strengths and weaknesses associated with this specialization, and help you conquer the arena. This section will guide you on the best Frost Mage PvP Talents in The War Within.

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Hero Talents: Frostfire
Class Talents
Spec Talents
PvP Talents

The War Within expands our arsenal of talent options, which include our new talent hero talent trees, Frostfire and Spellslinger. Since Spellslinger is quite lackluster and provides no significant benefits, we will focus our attention solely on the Frostfire tree.

Hero Talents: Frostfire | Default Build

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This will be your default loadout in most matchups, which focuses around Ice Lance and Flurry to deal direct damage onto your opponents, while dealing some heavy cleave with our newly improved Frostbolt, Frostfire Bolt, while Icy Veins is active.

Now, let’s delve deeper and understand the effects of these talents and you can best use them to optimize your gameplay.

Frostfire Bolt replaces our Frostbolt ability, allowing us to gain more value out of Frostfire Mastery in the process. We are constantly spamming this during our Icy Veins windows to benefit out of Death’s Chill and Fractured Frost for some absurd cleave. Not to mention, we have Severe Temperatures and Frostfire Empowerment that enhance our throughput coming out of our Frostfire Bolt during these windows, or even outside of Icy Veins to continue pressuring our opponents.
Elemental Affinity gives us a cooldown reduction on Dragon’s Breath and Blast Wave, allowing us to have more uptime when we need to peel, or initiating Crowd Control when needed. This also shortens the cooldown of our primary PvP talent, Ring of Fire, to receive more benefit out of Fire Mastery.
Isothermic Core summons Meteor on the target affected by Comet Storm, meaning that you’ll want to use Ice Nova afterwards to benefit out of Shatter, as well as to prevent players from escaping out of your incoming Meteor.
Flash Freezeburn, as our capstone talent, gives us more uptime on our Frostfire Empowerment whenever Icy Veins is used, even when procced by Time Anomaly. You’ll also retrieve maximum stacks of Frostfire Mastery after using it.

Hero Talents: Frostfire | Frostfire Bolt Build

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This will be your alternative Frostfire Bolt build that focuses more on casting as opposed to direct instant cast damage. This should be selected if you predict to not be the target, as you will be constantly throwing out stronger Frostfire Bolt for more Fingers of Frost and Brain Freeze procs, and become even better when affected by Shatter.

Down below are the talents we receive that make up this alternative build.

Frozen Touch makes Frostfire Bolt more potent to cast in order to benefit off more procs, and when Icy Veins is active the likeliness of receiving these procs dramatically increase since your Frostfire Bolt cleaves to 2 additional targets.
Deep Shatter makes Frostfire Bolt even better after hitting a frozen target, which will commonly occur on targets mainly affected by Blizzard and Frozen Orb thanks to Frostbite.

Mage Class Talents

In the Mage Class talent tree, most of your talent choices will be mandatory when advancing onto each tier. Some of most noteworthy mandatory talents are:

Dragon’s Breath acts as an additional Crowd Control initiator, which can be followed up with Ring of Frost, if specced out of Ice Nova, or Polymorph. This will be primarily effective on Healers.
Diffusion Barrier helps us reduce the cooldown of all our barrier effects once one breaks. As Frost, this applies for Ice Barrier and Mass Barrier, and with Imbued Warding added into our toolkit, we receive a weaker Blazing Barrier to benefit more from this talent node.
Time Anomaly allows you to randomly proc Icy Veins, Brain Freeze, or Time Warp. All of these spells will enhance your overall performance as a Frost Mage, while also applying some unpredictable burst.

Our updated talent tree gives us access to a lot of basic tools. Most of your toolkit contains a lot of “no-brainers”, where we pick up Ice Block, Spellsteal, Remove Curse, Mirror Image, and Alter Time.

Additionally, there is another talent selection between Ice Floes or Shimmer in the second tier that can be flexible depending on the matchup faced or preferred playstyle.

Shimmer is your most recommended option, as this changes your Blink ability to be instant, and can be used while casting. This does not remove Stun effects like the original Blink, but can allow you to avoid getting stopped on important casts.
Ice Floes allows you to freely cast while moving, but reverts your Blink ability back to its original counterpart. Blink now becomes a spell that removes any Stun effects and requires a global to use. Make sure to choose this against compositions that prioritize stuns on you, especially into Rogues and potentially Feral Druids if you are confident that your team will be winning on mana.

Another choice node that constantly alternates is the selection between Ice Nova and Ring of Frost.

Ice Nova is super helpful as we can Shatter more deliberately on our Frostfire Bolt or during Comet Storm. This becomes even better if Ray of Frost or Glacial Spike ever becomes viable later in the expansion.
Ring of Frost is worth playing into pet-oriented classes, or as another method of landing Crowd Control without having to solely rely on Polymorph. This becomes stronger against Restoration Druids since you can’t apply Polymorph on them when they are shifted into any form.

Then there will then be a few flexible talents that can be moved around depending on the composition that you are facing.

In the first and second tiers you have two flexible talents; Remove Curse, and Arcane Warding. These can be swapped around for a talent point in either Frigid Winds, and Cryo-Freeze. If you plan on playing double DPS 2v2, it’s preferred to use Cryo-Freeze for some extra survivability.

Frigid Winds increases the effects of our snares. This is great since Frost has a lot of those in its toolkit.
Cryo-Freeze will provide a periodic heal on yourself when in Ice Block.
Mass Polymorph allows you to apply Polymorph on all targets in its radius, and can apply to players after initially casting it out of Line of Sight. This can be great to counteract BM Hunter pets, and ignores Grounding Totem.
Remove Curse against Shamans to remove Hex or Warlocks to get rid of Curses that are buffed by Amplify Curse.
Arcane Warding reduces the amount of Magic damage that is dealt to you. This will be typically chosen in most circumstances.

Frost Spec Talents

For our spec talents, most of these will be mandatory as you advance onto each tier. Some of the most noteworthy talents are:

Shatter gives us a massively increased Critical Strike chance on Frozen targets. This talent has a lot of interactions with the rest of our toolkit, making it a mandatory pick.
Frostbite has a 10% chance to freeze the target from spells that apply Chill effects. This is great because it means you can Shatter more frequently and peel for yourself.
Chain Reaction increases the damage of your Ice Lance up to 10%, and may change your rotation slightly to maintain its damage buff.
Icy Veins is your biggest offensive cooldown, as this now summons a Water Elemental, giving you access to Freeze for more Shatter combos. This cooldown benefits well with Thermal Void, increasing the cooldown of our Icy Veins and providing more uptime with our pet.

Frost Mage PvP Talents

For Frost Mage PvP talents, Ice Wall, Ring of Fire, and Concentrated Coolness will be your default loadout in most games.

Ice Wall is unique as this allows you to remove line of sight from any location. This can be utilized offensively and defensively, allowing you to peel for yourself or allies, or to prevent enemy healers from connecting to their ally in order to score kills.
Ring of Fire has more significance in The War Within as we play with our Frostfire talent tree, as this benefits from Elemental Affinity for a shorter cooldown, and enables us to generate Fire Mastery stacks way more efficiently. This spell is also convenient in cases where we get interrupted on Frost and want to keep the pressure rolling.
Concentrated Coolness buffs the damage of Frozen Orb and allows you to control where it goes.

For your flexible talents, these can be swapped with Concentrated Coolness based on the composition you are playing or facing.

Master Shepherd is a great option, especially in Solo Shuffle, as this removes the healing effect from Polymorph, and provides us with a boost of Versatility when enemies are affected by it.
Snowdrift is quite promising if you play as a wizard composition that inherently lacks stun effects, as you can CC as many targets as long as they remain in your Snowdrift‘s radius. Keep in mind that the Snowdrift stun effect will cancel if the opposing player uses any freedom effect or Fade from enemy Priests