Start of Aoe Farming

I'm guessing that mainly because of the short notice of last night's raid, we didn't have enough to go in and take on Kael. We were short a few healers, and I didn't really feel like pugging them, so we had a group head off to ZA while I went and did more achievement exploring. I ended up in EPL hanging out with Kurt (who's a minor celebrity on our realm forums, but I'm sure he doesn't know me). Then since I was there decided that I should go do some Necrotic Rune collecting.

Now, in case you hadn't heard or I neglected to mention it, Leiandra is now full frost. That's right, all 61 points dumped into the frost tree. I'm enjoying the spec. I'll probably use it to level, but just not 100% sure after that. (It's kind of important to the point of my story.)

After putzing around and capturing the towers in EPL, the attack there was over, so I headed down to the Burning Steppes. I started Frostbolting the undead and 1-by-1 killing them off. Then I remembered what spec I now am. I'm the king of Aoe farming spec. There is none that can kill more faster than a frost mage. I'm sure the other people around hated me for doing it, but here's some of the things that I did to get 22 Necrotic Runes in a very short amount of time. (I'm not saying this is the best way to do it, it's just what seemed to work for me.)

• I start off by casting Ice Barrier and then wait almost the full 24 seconds of the cooldown (Cold as Ice) before running in to collect the mobs.
• With 2/2 in Shattered Barrier, I can sit in the middle of the mobs to help gather them up nice and tight and then intentionally let them destroy my Ice Barrier and freeze them into place.
• Cast Ice Barrier again as I'm running away from them to get in position to start Blizzard.
• Of note: I have 3/3 in Improved Blizzard, 5/5 Chilled to the Bone, and 2/2 Arctic Reach, so I can hit them from much further and then the 75% reduction (or is it 65% x 10% = 71.5%?) in speed means it takes them forever to get to me.
• Not to mention that if they do get to me, I have another Shattered Barrier, a Frost Nova, and the Freeze from my Water Elemental. And if things really go bad, I have a Cold Snap to reset all my cooldowns anyway.
• Blizzard in itself has become an extremely damaging spell in that it can now crit, and coupled with Ice Shards, Shatter, and Winter's Chill, it's going to do some major damage.

Damage. Control. Survivability. Yeah... why wouldn't you Aoe kill melee mobs?