Note: Some aspects of this guide may not apply to your character until higher level. If are interested in getting your character to max level quickly, take a look at this leveling guide.
Glyphs come in three varieties, Prime, Major and Minor. Prime glyphs enhance core aspects of your class and generally provide the greatest benefit of the three types.
Major Glyphs, while not quite as powerful as Prime Glyphs, are still useful and continue to provide a myriad of benefits.
Minor Glyphs often times provide small quality of life improvements or visual changes, such as the Glyph of Shadow Form for priests which makes the character more visible through Shadow Form. However, a few are known to provide more significant benefits such as the warrior glyph of Berserker Rage.
Prime Glyphs:
Major Glyphs:
Minor Glyphs:
Here are your highest priority abilities.
Your primary attack spell is Frostbolt, you’ll be using that whenever another Cooldown or proc isn’t available. When Fingers of Frost is up use Deep Freeze, and if Brain Freeze is also active use Frostfire Bolt.
AoE Rotation
Cooldowns
The most important aspect of managing your cooldowns as a damage dealer is making certain to use them whenever they’re avaliable. Don’t be afraid to use them during any fight, even against trash mobs, as the higher the uptime you have with them, the greater your overall damage will be so long as you aren’t using them when a fight is about to end.
The only time to hold off on using your cooldowns is when you’ll be unable to attack the boss due to fight mechanics, such as during Morchok’s Black Blood of the Earth ability or when Hagara is about to cast Water Shield and become immune to all damage.
Melee DPS will have to watch out for this more than ranged, as they are far more vulnerable to situations where an encounter requires constant movement or the boss is utilizing some form of AoE attack that makes fighting in melee range impossible.
Intellect > Spell Hit Cap (17%) > Critical (33.33%) > Haste > Mastery
Intellect:
Intellect is your primary stat as a Frost Mage, increasing your maximum mana and the damage of your spells
(17%) Spell Hit:
Hit rating decreases the chance for your spells to miss, and once you reach 17% your spells will no longer miss on bosses, avoiding unnecessary loss of DPS and wasted casting time/mana.
Critical Strike:
Critical Rating increases the chance of your spells critically hitting a target. Frost Mages will want to emphasize critical strike rating up to the soft-cap of 33.33%, whereupon critical rating ceases to be the most effective stat to stack.
Haste:
Haste rating decreases cast time and increases the speed at which DoTs deal damage.
Mastery – Frostburn:
Frost Mage Mastery increases the damage of all spells cast on frozen targets.
Reforging
When reforging gear, it’s important that you look to reforge from your least effective stat into the most effective for whatever gear goal you are currently aiming for. See our stat priority list for more information.
Spell Hit Cap (17%) > Critical > Haste > Mastery
First check that you have 17% spell hit. If not, reforge the weakest stat on any gear lacking hit rating into hit until you reach 17%. Once you’ve reached the hit cap, the next most effective stat to reforge for is critical rating up to the soft cap of 33.33%.
Finally, after reaching the critical soft cap, begin reforging for haste.
Gems
- Red – Brilliant Inferno Ruby
- Blue – Veiled Demonseye
- Yellow – Reckless Ember Topaz – Potent Ember Topaz
- Meta – Burning Shadowspirit Diamond
Unless a socket bonus offers intellect, it’s more effective to gem for pure intellect and ignore the bonus.
Enchantments
- Main Hand/Two-Handed: Power Torrent
- Off-Hand: Superior Intellect
- Helm: Arcanum of Hyjal
- Shoulders: Greater Inscription of Charged lodestone
- Cloak: Enchant Cloak – Greater Intellect
- Chest: Enchant Chest – Peerless Stats
- Bracers: Enchant Bracer – Mighty Intellect
- Gloves: Enchant Gloves – Greater Mastery
- Belt: Ebonsteel Belt Buckle
- Leggings: Powerful Enchanted Spellthread
- Boots: Enchant Boots – Lavawalker
Our class guides for whichever class you’re playing:
Death Knights – Druid – Hunter – Mage – Paladin
Priest – Rogue – Shaman – Warlock – Warrior
The GotWarcraft Gold Guide
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