I want to show you what I believe is the best talents and runes combination for dungeon farms in WoW Classic Season of Discovery Phase 2. There is an interesting interaction that may surprise you! Don't forget to bring enough WoW SOD Gold with you, and I'm sure that you will like this build.
For talents, I am going Frost, and the key talents and runes are Permafrost, Improved Blizzard, and Shatter. But for runes, I am going Living Bomb, Living Flame, and Fingers of Frost. I know it’s strange to not run Regeneration, but just stick with me.
Talents & Runes
Permafrost when combined with Improved Blizzard, gives your Blizzards an insanely slow. The chill effect from Improved Blizzard will proc Fingers of Frost, and each tick of damage has a chance to proc it. For Fingers of Frost, it give your chill effects a 15% chance to grant you Fingers of Frost, which treats your next 2 spell casts as if they were frozen.
This is where the talent Shatter comes into play. Shatter increases the Critical Strike Chance of all your spells against Frozen targets by 10%. So, when Fingers of Frost is active, all your spells have a 10% increased Critical Strike Chance, not just Frost spells.
Now casting Blizzard, Living Flame, and Living Bomb will not consume a charge of Fingers of Frost. However, the explosion from Living Bomb will. This gives your explosions a 10% increased Critical Strike Chance.
Phase 2 Talents
If we look into the future for Phase 2, beyond this is what our talent build will be. We will have 5 points into Shatter, which will increase our Living Bomb explosions' crit chance by 50%. Mages have always been able to farm without healing. Ice Barrier and Ice Block will be more than enough to keep us alive. At Level 40, this build is pretty mana-intensive.
I expect this build will be king. I know almost all Mage farming use Regeneration now, but I am able to farm the Stockades just fine without it.
How To Pull
This is the general breakdown of my pull. I dance until I get all the mobs stacked and as close as possible. Then, I begin to cast Living Bombs. I usually cast anywhere from 5 to 6 Living Bombs, then Living Flame. After cast Living Flame, I want to make sure the mobs take the longest route to me as possible. I’ll step off the wall to make the mobs run towards me.
I’ll then step onto the wall and immediately cast Blizzard. If timed right, you’ll be able to get a full channeled Blizzard off with all the Living Bombs exploding during its duration. If you are lucky with Fingers of Frost procs, it’ll do insane damage. After that, you can swap to the other wall, giving the mobs time to catch while restacking Living Bombs.
I know that you want to send out 4 to 5 new Living Bombs and then Blizzard again, just like the first time. You can often finish them with Fire Nova into explosion spam, with Improved Blizzard keeping all the mobs super tight and slowed. You’re not only maximizing Living Bomb damage but Living Flame. When perfectly executed, the pulls are much bigger, and clear faster than do with Regeneration.
Gear
You can use this build from Level 25 to Level 40, and you will still clear Stockades fast and efficiently. While I do not think this will always be the go-to build for open world farms, this is a powerful alternative that I’ll be definitely using for boosting in Phase 2.
I highly recommend you to practice it now, just in case it will be the dominant.
