Blizzards & criticals

[LochnarITB]

Ideal conditions are not required for Frostbolt to outclass Arcane Missiles.
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You make this statement but then go on to describe ideal conditions, not perfect but ideal. Perfect would be the monster standing in place and letting you kill it from range. Ideal is what you have set up. Only on the slower approach monsters will you get 3-4 unstuttered casts of frostbolt if the monster is not frozen (approaches are often made without having a freeze proc). The faster ones, even with reach, will be on you somewhere in the third cast. At that point you can choose to make the next cast or pause to frost nova at its reach and cast frostbolts again. If the bad guy does get to you before you frost nova, with the time it takes to back a couple steps so you're out of melee range, it will break in time for it to stutter you at the end of the second cast. You are now in melee until frost nova cools down so arcane missiles start flying and fireblasts and coc's are popped when available.

It is much easier to achieve ideal fights if you are out hunting random bad guys lower in level. However, if you are questing, you tend to be fighting monsters close to your level and in busier areas. Linked pulls often happen. Adds frequently mess with your fights. While true of fire and arcane as well, frost seems to be the most reliant on things going right and all talents working in sync.

Of course, this all comes from me playing my frost/arcane setup to cap and a lower level fire mage as well as observing other fire and arcane mages. It could just be that I suck but that's OK because I still have fun playing with my frost mage when I can find good solo content I haven't already done or the rare good group for questing or instances.