Frost RDPS
Frost Staff Build
The frost staff is one of the most devastating casters for being able to deal damage to multiple opponents, escalating the damage of each spell. Holding great control and survivability with the E and W spells on this build it also helps you control the fight, and setup your team for damage or protect your team from the opposing team’s damage. If a high mobility caster with huge group damage potential sounds exciting to you, then this build might be one you want to check.
The frost staff Q spells have 0 second cooldowns. This means your damage is merely limited by your cast time. As such this build holds passive reductions to cast time, and active reductions to cast time. It is important that you time your cast speed boosting abilities at key moments to deal damage with your team to overwhelm your opponents. The frost staff works best with a strong group pierce on your team, such as a carving sword, or cursed staff using “Armor Piercer”. The frost staffs are also very energy hungry, so keep your energy saving buffs up when you need to cast a lot of spells.
Ice Shard: With Frost Staffs we often say QPS (Q casts per second) instead of DPS (Damage per second). It is rumored that frost mains have to replace the Q key on their keyboard every 2 weeks due to wear. I know that’s a meme but it exists for a reason. If you are not Q casting on frost, you are not doing damage. As a frost you are expected to be relentlessly hammering this key with your cursor over as many opponents as possible. Your Robe and Cape boost your cast speed and damage, just make sure you follow the steps below to preserve your energy pool.
Frost Nova: A low cooldown blink, which is actually a brief iframe capable of blocking instant burst damage. It is also a freeze, disabling enemies and rooting them in place from the point the caster blinks from. Because it is a freeze it also interrupts any casting. Although risky it is possible to use this with your boots, blinking in with your boots onto a channeling opponent, before using your cleric sandals to retreat back to a safe position. Mostly however, use it to keep yourself safe, and continuously casting Q’s.
Freezing Wind: Shoots out a cone of frost on the ground in front of you, slowing enemies on it before rooting them in place. This spell is amazing for keeping pushing opponents at bay, or preventing them from escaping. It combines in a great way with your Ice Shard spamming holding opponents in place for easy landing of damage. It can be great to carpet a choke with the spell to prevent them from pushing directly and buying your team precious time to recover.
Equipment abilities
Royal Cowl
The Royal Cowl takes all energy costs for the next 15 seconds down to 0, nothing, absolutely free. This is absolutely needed when your morgana cape activates to cover the high energy costs of the high cast speed available. It is also only a 15 second cooldown, so you should be using this almost every time it is off cooldown to maximize your available energy, and to give your energy time to recover whilst still allowing you to keep dealing damage.
Scholar Robe
The scholar robe reduces cast times by 50% and energy costs by 70%. It is important to activate this when you really want to lay down damage at those key moments where your team is pushing damage together. Not only does it massively increase your DPS and make “Ice Shard” much easier to hit with it landing quicker, but it also keeps your energy sustained making sure that you aren’t emptying your energy pool by spamming your Q spell.
Cleric sandals
With you already holding one low cooldown blink on your W spell “Frost Nova”, adding another on your boots makes you both incredibly mobile, and very hard to lock down. Instantly blinking to a new location means there is little to now interruption to your casting. The blink is an iframe (invulnerability frame), so a well timed blink will protect you from burst damage if timed well.
Morgana Cape
This Cape increases your cast speeds by 50% for 8 seconds. The great part is that it activates when you use your E spell
Tome of spells
The Tome of Spells is the perfect offhand for a 1H frost staff to boost dps. It reduces cast times allowing you to spam your Q spell more, but also adds more maximum energy and even adds a little energy regeneration boost. This offhand is a must for RDPS frost staffs that have the offhand slot open.
Passives
Aggression on all pieces of cloth to boots your damage. With your offhand and food boosting your cast speed, you shouldn’t need any cast speed passives, however if using 2 handed frost weapons such as the permafrost, you may want to boost your cast speed with helmet and boot passives.
Pork Omelette
As previously mentioned the only limitation on your DPS with your Q casting is your cast speed, the omelette reduces cast times, boosting your DPS. It also reduces your cooldowns, allowing your other spells such as your energy sustain, and defensive spells to be up more often.
Resistance Potion
The resistance potion is an important defensive to cover you at times of focus, and buy your healer the time to pick you up. Remember, that there can be cases to use this aggressively, to allow you to push the enemy diving your backline back and pressure them into retreat, with the increased defense protecting you whilst you do it, possibly buying your team the time they need to recover before returning for heals.
Strengths
- Amazing AOE damage
- Great mobility
- Good control
Counters
- Silences (to prevent you from casting)
- Purges (to remove your cast speed / mana sustain buffs)