Mage Hero Talents - The War Within (11.0.2) (2024)

Last updated on Aug 21, 2024 at 18:20by Kuni113 comments

This guide will walk you through the best Hero Talents for Frost Mage for Raiding and Mythic+, how they impact your gameplay, and more.

This page is specifically about Hero Talents in The War Within. Ifyou want to learn more about the best regular talents for FrostMage, check out our Talents page:

Frostfire is sadly very behind Spellslinger. Atcurrent tuning, this tree has no place in raid.

Spellslinger is simply the default choice for raiding, regardlessof the situation. This is a very binary decision until Blizzard does a tuning passbetween them.

It should be noted that if you are prone to any form of repetitive straininjury in your rotational wrist, this Hero Talent will likely make this worse.During Icy Veins, upwards of 95% of your spell casts are Ice Lance, with stretches of casting nothing but Ice Lance and Frozen Orb for 40-60 seconds every 2 minutes.

Playing Spellslinger also almost necessitates the usage of WeakAuras to show when a Splinterstorm is about to go off so you can fire Ice Lance to hit the early applications of Winter's Chill.

Frostfire again, like raiding, it has performance issues that makeit mostly irrelevant in Mythic+. However, it may find a niche in low keys,where mobs are dying too quickly for Spellslinger to deal properdamage. This is likely offset by the steep loss in single target damage tobosses, however.

Additionally, while Frostfire has formidable AoE, this is relianton a bugged talent. If and when Blizzard fixes this talent, Frostfire losesabout 30% of its AoE damage.

Defensively, it is a solid pick, with the only defensive talent being a flatboost to our Ice Barrier with no caveats. Likewise, from a utilitystandpoint, a cooldown reduction on Blast Wave and Dragon's Breath is a very welcome addition, even with the reduction inthe importance of non-interrupt-based stops.

Spellslinger is, again, globally strong due to the imbalance intuning between the Hero Talents from a performance point of view.

Defensively, Spellslinger has the potential to be stronger, butboth options are tied to either Mirror Image or learning how to gameyour health to maximize the value of Reactive Barrier. The utility nodeis simply a sprint attached to Alter Time for its duration, which is astrong option, or a Displacement improvement, which is a class talentthat we cannot really take due to position.

Frostfire has no real interaction with your rotation. It simplyplays as if it had no Hero Talents other than the occasional instant Frostfire Bolt replacing your usual filler Frostfire Bolt.

Despite the Excess Frost and Excess Fire buffs lighting upyour Flurry and Ice Lance keys, you should not fire thesewithout their associated procs available. Or, in Flurry's case, it is lit upwhile you have no charge available. If this annoys you, consider addons to turnoff the glow effects outside of the usual proc circ*mstances.

There is no need to add any Fire element spells to the rotation, such as Fire Blast, as Frostfire Infusion has a hasted 30 RPPM procrate. This means that it will, on average, proc every just under 2 seconds. Youwill cap out your buffs as long as you are casting any spells at all.

The important components of this spec are Frozen Orb is now a procreset, via Spellfrost Teachings, and Splinterstorm appliesWinter's Chill.

This has the odd effect that while Icy Veins is going, the optimalgameplay is very nearly spamming Ice Lance and Frozen Orb. Noother spell of ours is fast enough to catch the early applications of Winter'sChill from Splinterstorm, and the entire thing wants you to optimizefor Splinters generated per second while inside Icy Veins due to Augury Abounds.

This pushes almost everything else out of the rotation during cooldowns. Ray of Frost is only cast when Freezing Winds is not up, soaround 1:20 into a fight, and Glacial Spike becomes a functional Frostbolt replacement on sheer strength alone, but not something youactively try and Shatter inside Icy Veins. The resultant "rotation" during IcyVeins is primarily Ice Lance spam, assisted by Weak Auras to check when thenext Splinterstorm is coming so as to have your Ice Lance land just afterSplinterstorm's first projectile does.