Breaking the Ice

I have been hassled and bothered by Maj over there to drop a little specific info on your heads. He keeps asking "How do I kill frost mages?"

Here's the short answer, and you're not going to like it.

You can't.

Here's why. Your burst damage as a deep fire or hybrid arcane/fire spec cannot overcome the inherent survivability of a frost mage combined with his substantial burst damage, water elemental burst damage and freeze effects, and crowd control capabilities. Work all these together with Arena gear and high resilience and your crit-happy fire spec gets the fork stuck in it.

Arcane/ fire and deep fire all require critical hits to be truly effective. Your only way to resist spell pushback is Mana Shield. Never, ever use mana shield. With the low +Intellect on Arena gear, your mana pool is going to be hurting anyways (another reason to steer clear of AP+POM+Pyro). Since most Arena fights turn into "drain the other healer of mana faster," you're in for trouble.

But a frost mage? Ice Block and Ice Barrier. These options, especially Ice Barrier, are far and away superior to Mana Shield. Pre- 2.3, Rank 5 Ice Barrier absorbs 1003 damage. More importantly, spellcasting cannot be interrupted or pushed back during this time. With Cold Snap, that's 2006 damage absorbed. No Hypothermia debuff. 24 second cooldown when talented.

Oh, did I forget to mention that Ice Barrier damage absorption scales with +spell damage in 2.3 (which drops Tuesday and I gave to you first)?

But not just Ice Barrier. No way. The frost mage's 41- talent point spell is "Summon Water Elemental." Yep, you can have your own elemental fight for you for 45 seconds. His DPS adds with yours. That's two spells for the price of one. That's almost twice the damage at no extra mana cost. And with Cold Snap, he comes out twice, pounding upon thee for almost two minutes straight.

This nifty elemental doesn't just DPS though. He has a ranged Frost Nova that you can place practically anywhere. Damage is negligible, but it has a wide area of effect and otherwise operates just like your own Frost Nova. It's a ranged root and no one else has it. Do they trinket out only to get stuck again in your Frost Nova? Or do they eat those tasty, tasty Ice Lances?

Which reminds me, Ice Lance. Wicked spell, this one is. Untalented, this spell costs 150 mana, has no cooldown, is an instant cast spell and triples it's damage against frozen targets. An example is needed.

An example 17/0/44 frost build.
Elemental Precision reduces your opponent's resistance.
Ice Shards increase your critical damage bonus by 100%.
Frostbite gives all your frost spells a chance to freeze a target in place for 5 seconds.
Piercing Ice increases our frost damage by 6% across the board.
Shatter increases our critical strike chance against frozen targets by 50%.
Winter's Chill gives us the chance to increase our critical strike rating by *another* 10%.
Arctic Winds increases all our frost damage by *another* 5% and decreases the chance we're going to get hit by 5%.

Let's say we have a 25% spell critical strike rating. Add a full 5- stacked Winter Chill debuff (it probably won't happen, but you never know). That puts us at a 35% chance to crit with our frost spells. And we have a 15% chance to freeze an opponent in place with a normal frost spell, plus our Water Elemental's Frost Nova and our own, which gives us a bonus 50% spell critical strike rating. Math is your friend. Enjoy.

Now let's say we have +600 frost damage. Ice Lance takes about 42% of your +damage and applies it to the spell. That's about 300 damage on an instant cast without a frozen target. Triple that damage on a frozen target. About 900 damage, right? Now double it because of Ice Shards. Roughly 1800 damage. On an instant cast spell. That costs 124 mana. With no cooldown. And +600 frost damage is... conservative.

Maj, one on one, you're going to have rough going. Of course a well- played and well- geared fire mage can beat a poorly- played frost mage. I won't talk about mages in Arenas because, well, they're about as prolific in 2v2 and 3v3 as a hunter is. 5v5 is better, though.

Oh wait, you wanted me to tell you how to beat one, didn't you? (That's my dig.)