One of the biggest new features introduced inWorld of Warcraft: Dragonflightis a revamped talent system with more choices than ever before. Like many other specs, Frost Mages were given a bunch of new toys alongside many old talents redesigned from the ground up especially for Dragonflight.
This time around, players get access to not one but two talent trees and a grand total of 61 points to spend across both of them at max level. This makes customizing your build a bit more complicated than before, but it also makes the process more fun and rewarding,
What’s New With Talents In WoW: Dragonflight?
In addition to having two separate talent trees – one for your class and one for your spec – you’ll notice that a lot of important spells and abilities have been turned into talents. Some notable examples include Blizzard, Cold Snap, and Icy Veins, among others. This means you now have to spend talent points to get most of your core spells, however, the new system also allows you to skip a lot of them if you really want to.
In an effort to prevent new players from becoming overwhelmed by the new talent trees, the developers implemented a “Starter Build” option. This build is exactly what it sounds like and gives you most of the talents you’ll need to start off your adventures on the Dragon Isles on the right foot. But although the Frost Mage Starter Build is overall pretty solid, we took it upon ourselves to try to make it a little better. You can find our alternative all-purpose Frost Mage build down below, complete with helpful tips and suggestions.
Dragonflight Mage Class Talent Build
The first half of the class talent build is going to be pretty similar across all specs since it contains a lot of spells that are invaluable to every Mage. But for the second half, you do want to stick to Frost-specific talents, at least for the most part. For instance, as aFire Mageyou’ll definitely want to grab Meteor, but as a Frost Mage you can safely skip it in favor of Shifting Power.
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Row 1:The only talent found on the first row isIce Barrierand it gets unlocked by default.
Row 2:The second row contains three talents:Ice Block,Overflowing Energy, andInvisibility. All three are very useful for Frost Mages so don’t skip any of them.
Row 3:Starting with the third row you’ll need to be pickier when it comes to choosing talents. For this build, we’re only taking the two iconic Mage spells –Remove CurseandSpellsteal– along with the defensive passiveTempest Barrier Rank 2. Everything else can be skipped.
Row 4:This next row is pretty straightforward. Although somewhat situational,Mirror ImageandAlter Timeare fantastic spells, so we’re going to take them both. And sinceRune of Poweris almost mandatory for any Mage build, we’re grabbing that as well and skipping Incanter’s Flow.
Row 5:The fifth row features a lot of interesting options, but we’re only going to grab a few of them in the interest of saving up talent points for later. Namely, we’re going withCryo-Freeze Rank 2,Quick Witted, andDiverted Energy Rank 2. you’re able to keep Cryo-Freeze at Rank 1 and get either Mass Polymorph, Slow, or Master of Time if you’re going for a more utility-focused build. But for us, the massive healing you get from Cryo-Freeze Rank 2 is just too good to pass up.
Row 6:Starting with this row, we’re mainly sticking to the left side of the tree since that’s where most of the Frost-specific talents can be found.Ring of FrostandIce Novawill complement the rest of our kit really nicely, and we’re also going to grabShimmer. Ice Flows would certainly be more thematic for a Frost Mage but unfortunately, the talent just isn’t very useful.
Row 7:Next up you’ll want to getImprovedFrost Nova,Energized Barriers, and the two flat buffs:Tome of RhoninandTome of Antonidas. If you went with Cryo-Freeze Rank 1 before, you can dump that extra point into Rigid Ice if you want to make Frost Nova even better.
Row 8:Temporal Velocity would be nice to have in PVP but for this particular build we’re skipping it and going with justFrigid Winds Rank 2andFlow of Time Rank 2.
Row 9:Most of the talents here are pretty good but since we’re running out of points, we’ll stick to only gettingIce WardandGreater Invisibility. This way we can use our remaining points to get three talents from the last row.
Row 10:The first two choices are self-explanatory. A Shadowlands ability likeShifting Powerseems a bit out of place in Dragonflight but hey, it’s a good AoE spell that reduces our cooldowns, so you’ll definitely want to grab it.Freezing Coldis another great talent that gives Cone of Cold some much-needed utility. And then for the last talent we’re going withTemporal Warp,but Time Anomaly is also good so feel free to grab whichever one you like best.
Dragonflight Frost Mage Raid and Mythic+ Talent Build
Frost is arguably the weakest of the three Mage specs at the moment, but that shouldn’t discourage you from playing it. Frost Mages are great for leveling and have good AoE potential along with some powerful single-target spells. Just like the Starter Build, this alternative build gives you a little bit of everything but offers a more high-risk, high-reward type of playstyle.
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Row 1:Similar to the other tree, the first row has a single talent that gets unlocked automatically. In this case, it’sIce Lance.
Row 2:On the second row you haveFrozen Orb,Blizzard, andFingers of Frost. You’ll want to grab all three. It would have been nice to have the option to skip Blizzard for single-target builds, but you need it to unlock Cold Snap further down the three.
Row 3:The third row doesn’t give us many options either, so we’re going to take bothFlurryandShatter. Not only are they indispensable to any Frost Mage, but they’re also mandatory to unlock most of the talents on the next row.
Row 4:Here we’re going to take everything except Frostbite.Brain Freezeis an important passive whileEverlasting Frostmakes our Frozen Orbs stronger. We’re takingPiercing Coldmainly for theGlacial Spikebuff since we won’t be using a lot of Frostbolts with this build. And thenCold Snapis a spell that can get you out of a lot of jams so you definitely won’t want to skip it.
Row 5:Next up we’re grabbingPerpetual Winterfor that extra charge of Flurry andBone Chillingfor a little bit of additional damage.Lonely Winteris a no-brainer for getting that DPS up but if you’re using this build for leveling you may want to consider grabbing the Water Elemental instead. Especially at low levels.
Row 6:On this row, you’ll want to go forFlash Freezeand Rank 2 ofGlacial Assault, Wintertide, andSubzero. You can skip Glacial Assault and spend one of those extra points on Frozen Touch instead if you don’t want to grab Comet Storm on the next row.
Row 7:The only talent we’re grabbing from this row isIcy Veins. A lot of Mages will no doubt be upset about having to play around Icy Veins for yet another expansion, but I’m afraid the talent tree basically forces us to get it.
Row 8:There are a lot of good talents on this row and we’re going to grab most of them. We’re starting off withComet StormandRay of Frost, two excellent spells, and then we’re also getting two passives:Icy PropulsionandSplitting Ice. Icy Propulsion isn’t great, but you need it to unlock a bunch of better talents on the next row. Unfortunately, that’s a bit of a pattern on the current version of the Frost Mage tree.
Row 9:For this build, we’re focusing on the right side of the tree so we’re only gettingChain ReactionandHailstones Rank 2. However, if you skipped Glacial Assault and Comet Storm earlier you now have a couple of extra points you can spend on Snap Freeze and then Freezing Winds on the next row.
Row 10:And finally on the last row we’re grabbingThermal VoidandGlacial Spike. Glacial Spike is an awesome spell that hits like a truck, but it changes the Frost Mages’ playstyle a little by preventing Ice Lance from launching Icicles. Go ahead and skip Glacial Spike if you like the traditional Ice Lance better.
If you’re looking to get into some PVP action you can use the new UI to enable War Mode and grab pick your PVP talents. For this particular build, we recommend going with any combination ofIce Form, Ice Wall,Snowdrift,Frost Bomb, andNetherwind Armordepending on your playstyle.
Stay tuned for more WoW Dragonflight content in the days and weeks to come. In the meantime, make sure to also check outWotLK Classic Directoryfor more guides just like this one.
