Blood Council is one for me, Keep the orbs up in the air, whilst frost has enough procs that you dont loose as much ramp up time as other classes when switching targets.

I like it in Valithria too, because supressors are freezeable, but not stunable, and its just more chilled out spec, helps the healers.

Ah. I haven't done those fights yet - nice to know.

I have an easier time kiting blood beasts with Arcane. If you want to do any good damage as Frost, you'll have to glyph Frostbolt and you won't have most of the talents improving your snares, so you end up using cone of cold and frost nova, both close-range spells available to any specs.

Arcane? Just a talent point gives you Slow, a pretty damn reliable snare with regular spell range.

Frost is not good for PvE? Probably a higher percentage of us rolled frost to level up 1-80 so how could that statement be true. Arcane and Fire are perfect for Wrath which relies so much on high burst damage causing Frost's sustained damage debuffs to be less appreciated. Lets not kid anyone there is no choices of what spec you raid in if you want a raid spot.

Here is hoping that Frost shines in Cataclysm.

- First, having to balance a spec against both PvE and PvP has got to be incredibly hard. Trading off survivability for damage in PvP makes end game PvE uses for a spec less desirable. Blizz just needs to recognize this and declare frost a PvP tree.
- Second, the second mastery bonus is great for PvP. That 50k Deep Freeze crit you're dreaming of is just the thing you need to kill most people instantly. For PvE, it's a straight dps increase, but then again they all are...
- Third, i've been in raids with frost mages. Even when their gear score is equal to mine (and i know, gear score isn't everything), they do significantly lower dps (i'm arcane...). This is for one of two reasons - either frost really does suck in PvE that badly, or all the good mages have already switched away from frost and they just suck that badly.

@Beli

while I do admit that blizz should declare some specs only viable in PvP*coughunholydkscough*, it wouldnt be in keeping with their "bring the player not the class or spec" ideal.

A simple fix for the problem is make EACH and EVERY spell/ability/talent have TWO separate effects, one in PvE and one in PvP, and balance them accordingly.

Example: Frostbolt Rank 1: does 10-15 damage, 1.5 second cast time
Effect 1(PvE): Causes your target to be slowed by 50% or if said target is already under a frostbolt slow debuff, boosts frostbolts damage 200%.
Effect 2(PvP): applies a stacking debuff causing your target to be slowed by 30%, stacks 4 times, and at 4 stacks freezes the target in place for 6 seconds.

Example: Fireball Rank1: does 12-18 damage, 1.5 second cast time
Effect 1(PvE): Applies a stacking Damage Over Time debuff dealing 10% of the initial damage over 4 seconds, stacks 10 times.
Effect 2(PvP): Has a chance equal to your critical hit chance of knocking the enemy back 10 yards.

Example: Arcane Missiles Rank 1: does 20-25 damage per hit, 3 seconds channel time, 3 missiles
Effect 1(PvE): Missile Crits increase the length of channel time by 1 second and number of Missiles fired by 1, up to 5 additional missiles.
Effect 2(PvP): Scoring two Missile crit in a row causes you to fire a similar spell, dealing equal damage to both the crits combined and slowing your target 50%.



See where I am going with this? true those are just examples, but if blizz DID redesign spells like that, many of the balancing problems they have would pretty much vanish.

"I have an easier time kiting blood beasts with Arcane. If you want to do any good damage as Frost, you'll have to glyph Frostbolt and you won't have most of the talents improving your snares, so you end up using cone of cold and frost nova"

Agreed, gotta glyph Frostbolt to even pretend to DPS so...you'd mostly use brain freeze procs. Save one when beasts are coming soon, use that for initial aggro. Spec some increased snare duration and the procs should be enough to keep snare up. If not switch to frostfire casts as woven in. Deep Freeze if things are going very badly.

It's a lot of work when as you said could just Slow and blast them quickly to get back to the boss. Bonus, it means not groaning when a frozen beast attacks your elemental.