I leveled as frost. I loved it. Even though it was basically frostbolt spam, it just meant life was easy for me. I could kite things around in instances, and if a mob got loose from a tank, I could solo it without the tank having to worry about me (love me some blink action…when it’s not broken and I don’t go backwards). When I finally got to level 70 in BC (I started playing just after it came out) and after RPing myself over to arcane (Ravenholdt is an RPPVP server), I found myself…well, wanting to get back to frost. So I RPed myself back to accepting frost (one day I’ll post the entire story) but after a while, really did not enjoy raiding as frost.
At a friends suggestion, I tried raiding as fire, but spamming fireball + the occassional scorch didn’t really do it for me either. So I switched to my 39/11/11 spec, where I had Presence of Mind, Arcane Power, Icy Veins, and Pyroblast. This was at the time where casting Arcane Blast increased its speed each time you cast it, and you could use Arcane Power and PoM at the same time. My rotation was basically to start off popping Icy Veins and Arcane Power, spam AB, popping Arcane Missiles whenever Clearcasting procced (as, at the time, it was the highest damaging spell, just extremely expensive), hitting my instant pyroblast before the timer ran out on Arcane Power, and then falling into a rotation of ABx2, frostbolt, fireball, AB just before the proc disappeared so I’d get the damage bonus without the increased cost, interrupting that cycle whenever Clearcasting procced to get the free extra damage. Whenever PoM popped up, I’d insta-pyro, usually for a nice crit burst of damage combined with AP, which made it worth it to have that spell. Additionally, this was before dual speccing, so when trying to do dailies on the Isle of Quel’Gankus, having that insta-pyro to smack a bitch if they decided to mess with me often left them confused as to how I could glow so many colors and do so much damage.
But that was in the past (but what a beautiful past it was!) and now, I still find the most enjoyment out of my slightly altered arcane spec. However, I recently got very curious about frost raiding (even though looking at the tree, it was obvious it didn’t have much in the way of power for raiding) and, once I could afford dual spec, built my own tree. Why didn’t I go down the Arcane tree for TTW? Because I’d rather have a high-critting fireblast I can pop often with ignite (BURN!), and have a chance for my FFB crits to be huge AND leave a huge DoT (BURN BURN!), and so that I can have my free fireball, when it crits, have a chance to leave an igntie DoT (BURN BURN BURN!). The rotation basically was to wait until FoF procs, then cast Frostbolt, then FFB with an immediate Ice Lance for huge damage and a chance for a big DoT crit. Whenever the insta-fireball procs, I cast it unless FoF is up, and then I’ll wait until I’ve gotten my two spells out and toss it off. It’s a lot of BOOM BOOM BOOM! And it looks cool because it’s lots of colors. Also, I like having a friend next to me (my Water Elemental).
So I tried this spec out last night in a partial Naxx run. I tested it first on Heigan during the dance. Let me tell you something–Ice Barrier is priceless there. Absorbing the first 3k damage if you fail at dancing is amazing. Also, for some reason or another, if my water elemental is left up, it doesn’t die when standing next to Heigan while he makes us dance. Interesting. I came out second on dps, around 2.1k. It’s Heigan and most of my casts were Ice Lance while dancing, so whatever. Wasn’t the real test, but showed the versatility of frost. So then I tried it on Loatheb. I was used to pulling only around 3k anyway on Loatheb in Arcane, so I figured what the hell, now that spamming frostbolt isn’t the only option, I might do something close to the same. First of all, with Ice Barrier, yet again, the AoE didn’t hurt me nearly as bad as everyone else. Also, I never ran out of mana. Ever. With 30% mana back on all of my crits (which were every other cast) plus the constant mp5 (not much, but it helped) plus the reduced cost of all my spells anyway meant that I was always casting…always. However, the first attempt, we did not have the DPS to down him and we ultimately wiped. I ended up pulling 2.3k. I was a little sad, because I was hoping it’d be at least 2.5 or 2.6 so I could justify keeping it, but alas, that was not to be the case.
But still…I was third on DPS. Beaten by a rogue in almost all T7.5 and better, and some Ret Paladin in about the same level of gear. I’m only rocking 2 pieces of 7.5 and still have 2 blues, one of which is levle 78. I actually think that my dps would be higher if my hit rating was capped as frost. But alas, it is not–I noticed in my recount that I was missing. How I missed a giant fungus standing 10 yards in front of me I’ll never know, but whatever. Point being, I might have pulled a decent amount of dps, and the second attempt, in which I switched back to arcane, I only got 2.8kish anyway, so really, despite all the crap frost gets, it’s actually not as bad as people think…if you know what you’re doing. I’m going to regem my gear to get *over* the hit rating, because right now my gear is haste based. My Frostbolts were 2.09 second casts, which was pretty sweet, but I’ma have to give some of that up to max out my hit rating…or at least, get a few pieces of gear to increase my hit.
Final analysis to be determined, but it’s not as hopeless of a cause as people seem to think. More to come on that one. Until then…later all :-)
