The Mage is a specialised caster with two different specialisations themed around Flame and Frost. The Flame mage focuses on spamming their abilities to get critical strikes that detonate the flame bomb skill, while Frost offers lower consistent DPS with significant spike windows using their water-to-ice-themed skills.

The good news is that the mage can deal a lot of damage regardless of the specialisation chosen. However, they can be very gear-dependent, especially Flame mages. With that in mind, we’re running a Frost Mage build in Tarisland for players seeking simple DPS rotation while levelling, alongside an easy-to-perform and constant-damage dealer with massive burst windows for satisfying big-screen damage. It’s an extremely strong class for both PvP and Raiding and ranks very high on our Tarisland tier list.

Tarisland Frost Mage build

In summary, the Frost mage uses a builder-spender rotation, starting with their first skill “Water Bomb”. Water Bomb generates water energy, which is your main class resource. When you hit 30 water energy, you can use your second skill, “Ice Spikeweed”, which deals damage and gives you 30 Ice energy. This Ice Energy can then be used on your third spell called “Icicle Storm”, which is the class’s strongest core rotation skill. The more Ice energy you use to cast the skill, the stronger the Iceicle Storm damage will be. Icicle Storm is the skill we’re looking to buff as much as possible, so we will be running an Iceicle Storm build over an Arctic Icicle build.

From there, you have your other skills. The fourth skill, “Water Spirit”, is a cooldown skill that deals very high damage and gives you water energy over 3 seconds. This is a fast way of bursting down a mob and filling your core mechanic faster. Meanwhile, the fifth skill is a cast-time AOE. It slows and deals moderate damage. It’s decent for an AOE but serves well for AOE fights in PvP. You can combo it with your Ice Shock (ultimate skill) to ensure your full AOE hits as many targets as possible.

As for your big cooldown skills, you have your sixth skill, “Ice Increase”. This skill boosts your damage and combo rating for 8 seconds. Meanwhile, your Inscribed skill makes Water Bomb gain increased Water Energy for better stockpiling of your resource for huge burst windows.

This summarises the Frost Mage skills in Tarisland and what to expect from them.

Rotation

The core rotation of the Frost mage in Tarisland is fairly simple:

1. Cast Water Spirit on cooldown.
2. Spam Water Bomb until you reach the water energy cap.
3. Press Ice Spikeweed three times.
4. Consume all Ice energy with Icicle Storm.

In terms of how you use Ice Increase, you should use it whenever it’s off cooldown and when you can safely stand and spam your abilities against bosses. This skill provides a flat damage and combo increase. Due to how the class works, you want to combo Water Bomb for more energy, which means faster conversion into Spikeweed and Icicle Storm. This allows for a full rotation of increased damage for your three main skills.

As for the Inscribed Stone skill, use it after completing a full rotation and spending all water and ice shards. This is designed for executing a fast burst rotation of your three skills. If Water Spirit comes off cooldown while you’re using your ultimate, save it for the next rotation. When you’re still getting stats, press Water Spirit when you’re around 30 Water energy to get to the cap in three seconds. With better cooldown and Water Spirit talents, this can be done at the start of the rotation instead. Keep an eye on your cooldowns and talents as you approach endgame gear to better place your Water Spirit spell in the rotation. It’s very gear-dependent, unfortunately.

Lastly, this rotation will be slightly modified with certain mid-to-end game talents you unlock. Make sure to read any notes we leave on the talents to get a better idea of how the class plays at the endgame with the right talents and stat checks.

Frost Mage talents

Due to the nature of how Frost Mage’s damage is spread through its skills, we naturally funnel your damage into Spikeweed and Icicle Storm. Once you get lots of Combo, you’ll find that you press Water Bomb much less than in the early game, so it makes more sense to focus on those two skills the most. Be advised if you want a shorter filler-spender rotation, the Arctic Icicle build is better, however, you work on less ice energy and your damage ceiling is not as high. We figured we’d mention this before we go any further.

• Frost Expertise x3 – All skills that consume Ice Energy deal 20% more DMG.
• Crystal x3 – When Ice Spikeweed converts Ice Energy so it reaches its 30/60/90 damage modifiers, the DMG of the next Direct Damage Skill is increased by 18% – basically, you ramp the damage of your next two Spikeweeds into a full burst Icicle Storm for maximum damage from a fully capped water energy meter.
• Ice Knot x3 – Each time Ice Spikeweed hits an enemy, the DMG dealt by this skill increases by 21% for 7.5 seconds. Again, more burst in your Ice Spikeweed spam when at full Water energy.
• Frost Mastery x3 – Increase Combo rate by 3%. This should help you tick into the 20% Combo by this stage of the talent build for your active talents.
• Element Cluster x2 – Every time Water Bomb is cast, the next Water Spirit will deal 2% more DMG, up to 20 stacks.
• Ice Spikeweed+ x3 – Increases Ice Spikeweed’s damage by 60% based on water energy consumption.
• Frostbite x3 – 100% chance to gain 9 Ice Energy when your Ice Spikeweed lands a combo. When you reach a high combo stat, you can use Ice Spikeweed to fish for combo hits when you’re around 75 Energy. There’s some luck involved with procs but it is higher DPS when it works out than spamming an extra 2-3 Water Bombs.
• Icicle Storm+ x3 – When you cast Water Spirit, it has a 100% chance to make your next Icicle Storm deal additional icicle DMG within the next 6 seconds. Use Water Spirit when you’ve got 30 water energy, as Water Spirit restores about 45 energy over 3 seconds. That’s enough time to fill the rest of your meter with Water Bomb.
• Ice Increase+ x2 – Ice Increase lasts 2 seconds longer and while it is active your Combo rate and Combo DMG are increased by 2%.
• Rapid Freeze x3 – Your Combo DMG is increased. For every 30 water energy you gain, there is a chance of increasing your ATK for 8 seconds.
• Water Spirit+ x3 – Water Spirit damage increases and grants more water energy. Again, press this button after completing one full Ice Energy shard to get the most from this button’s water energy restoration.

You should now have two points spare for your build. Feel free to improve your AOE skill or add points to Water Bomb, depending on whether you need more AOE or single-target damage for the content you’re playing. You can potentially take Frosty Chilly if your Combo rate is poor as high Combo typically grants quite a lot of extra energy over long fights.

Stat priority

The Frost Mage’s core stats for the full Icicle Storm build we run are as follows:

• Combo
• Cooldown
• Intelligence
• Hit
• Omni
• Crit
• Everything else

Combo is the class’s main stat. You will be able to combo damage all your skills for even more burst, alongside more Water Bombs for more energy. In addition, with the Water Force Core Passive, you get more water energy when you combo, and you heavily reduce the cooldown of Ice Increase when your filler spell combos. The higher the combo, the more you get to give yourself higher combo and more damage for sustained periods of fights. Not to mention there are talents that award more combo damage to your other spells, making it an extremely important stat to grab. Aim for 50% to satisfy the core talent. More is better once you meet your basic cooldown and omni requirements.

Cooldown has synergy with your Water Companion Core Passive. Water Spirit grants more water energy per cooldown percentage plus 30. The more cooldown you get, the shorter you make the Water Spirit spell by 2-6 seconds, based on cooldown stat. Aim for 26% cooldown, as that will greatly help your Water Spirit spam, while also being massive for Ice Increase and its combo cooldown reduction. When your cooldown is high enough, you will likely press Water Spirit at the start of your rotation spam because it can nearly give you full water energy from a high cooldown stat, plus its base stat.

The Omni skill has synergy with your Bitter Cold Core Passive. However, this build functions with a full ice energy cap for maximum Icicle Storm burst. You won’t benefit much from this stat until your Combo is extremely high. When you get it high, try to reach 11.4% when you have over 60% Combo from gear and inscribed stone to get faster ice energy. It’s also handy if you can’t stack your full ice meter for Icicle Storm, such as bosses that move around a lot or transition hop a lot. It’s also decent for smaller packs. But that’s about it. If you end up running Arctic Icicle build, Omni is much better as that spell performs better on less Ice Energy than your Icicle Storm.

Intellect is a flat ATK power increase, which is beneficial for all skills. Crit is nice to have for some big hits with your Icicle Storms and Spikeweed burst damage. Everything else is either useless or passive stat growth to make you more tanky or increase the damage by a very tiny amount.

Hit is handy for the raid or dungeon content you’re tackling. Make sure to load the instance menu for dungeons and raids and click the attribute button to check the Hit needed to land all your attacks against the bosses in there. That will tell you the hit cap you need for the content you’re tackling. You often don’t need a lot, but it is worthy noting it.