I have to be honest: I hate frost mages. Not quite as much as I hate the fear mechanic, but pretty fiercely nonetheless. That said, mine is level 74 and I’m having a blast being a royal pain in the butt to countless alliance that dare cross me!
Frost is Broken
My 74 mage is dual spec frost and fire. In full heirloom gear (head, chest, shoulders, weapon, trinks, back) and a mix of quest/dungeon gear otherwise I’m finding myself pulling about 2300 dps in fire. This isn’t a difficult rotation but does involve a handful of buttons and paying a little attention to DoT timers. On the other hand, frost can do 2100 single target DPS while pushing only frostbolt and ice lance during a fingers of frost proc or while moving. I hear the problem isn’t so bad at max level.
On the other hand, in PVP the issue is magnified. I can ice lance crit other players for 70% of my HP repeatedly if they’re frozen. Frost nova + ice lance is brutal. Not to mention adding deep freeze (a 5 second stun) plus a counterspell that is also a 4 second silence. I can often easily kill a healer of equal level and greater health without giving him the chance to even cast a spell. If there’s already a HoT or bubble on the target, spellsteal makes it mine. I got to witness an exaggerated version of this in arena at max level. Two weeks ago my druid/warrior 2’s team had 6 wins 3 losses with 2 of the losses against teams with frost mages. The week after that, we went 7 wins 10 losses, 9 of the losses being teams with frost mages (including a team that was dual frost mages). We did beat 2 teams with frost mages though. There is of course a possibility that our comp or skill just doesn’t have the tools to beat a frost mage, but I don’t feel like the problem should be that substantial. Finally, players tend to gravitate to what is most EZmode or over powered. So, 11 teams with frost mages out of 17 matches total? Seems a bit excessive. Wonder why the players are gravitating that way?
Frost is also freakin’ fun
There is another pretty strong reason players have decided to rock out with their frost out in PVP. It’s really fun! I’ve been spending most of my leveling time between 40-70 leveling and up until almost 70 I was playing with the fire spec. The talent points on my frost off spec slowly grew and grew, unspent, unloved. Until finally, one evening, I had my face repeatedly beat in by frost mages while pvping on a different toon. I decided that there must be something to this frost mage thing – and I’ve been slowing, freezing and murdering alliance as they try to feel in terror ever since. Leveling frost is definitely a solid choice for anyone bring their mage up. Although all specs can bring something interesting to the table, frost has a great skill set for preventing getting beat on by mobs or other players and makes it ideal for a class not running around in plate.