Frost Warding
Description:
Increases the armor and resistances given by your frost armor and ice armor spells and gives your frost ward a chance to reflect frost spells and effects while active
Ranks:
Rank 1- Armor increased by 15% and 10% chance to reflect spells
Rank 2- Armor increased by 30% and 20% chance to reflect spells
Usefulness:

Commentary:
You will only want to take this if you will be using ice armor a lot. There is a PVP strategy that combines this with arcane fortitude and prismatic cloak to mitigate as much damage as possible which is sometimes useful in PVP. You might think that molten armor is more useful in PVP because of the increased DPS and chance to avoid bing hit with a crit. But ice armor is still useful against melee by slowing their attack and movement speed when they hit.

Improved Frostbolt
Description:
Reduces the casting time of your frostbolt
Ranks:
Rank 1- .1 second cast time reduction
Rank 2- .2 second cast time reduction
Rank 3- .3 second cast time reduction
Rank 4- .4 second cast time reduction
Rank 5- .5 second cast time reduction
Usefulness:

Commentary:
If you are going to be focusing on frost damage, frostbolt will be your primary source of DPS so you should definitely take this just as you would take improved fireball in the fire tree.

Elemental Precision
Description:
Reduces the mana cost and chance targets resist your frost and fire spells by a percentage
Ranks:
Rank 1- 1% reduction
Rank 2- 2% reduction
Rank 3- 3% reduction
Usefulness:

Commentary:

This is a talent that is not only useful to frost mages. While they will gain a larger benefit because frost spells have a binary resist, it is useful to fire builds as well. Since it is first tier you should try to put three points in this regaurdless of build.

Ice Shards
Description:
Increases the critical strike damage bonus of your frost critical strikes.
Ranks:
Rank 1- 20% increased damage
Rank 2- 40% increased damage
Rank 3- 60% increased damage
Rank 4- 80% increased damage
Rank 5- 100% increased damage
Usefulness:

Commentary:

Much of your frost damage will be based off of critical strikes from shatter, so you will want to take this to improve your DPS. Instead of a crit dealing 150% of its normal damage, a crit will deal 200% of its normal damage.

Frostbite
Description:
Gives your chill effects a chance to freeze the target in place for five seconds
Ranks:
Rank 1- 5% chance to freeze
Rank 2- 10% chance to freeze
Rank 3- 15% chance to freeze
Usefulness:

Commentary:
This is a core talent of most PVP and solo PVE frost builds. In PVP it can keep a player from reaching you, or running away, giving you time to launch another attack. Its true strength appears when combined with the shatter talent for extra crit. Unfortunately it is useless against mobs that are immune to freeze effects, which includes most raid and instance bosses. So you won't be able to use it to increase your DPS there.

Improved Frost Nova
Description:
Reduces the cooldown of your frost nova
Ranks:
Rank 1- Cool down reduced by 2 seconds
Rank 2- Cool down reduced by 4 seconds
Usefulness:

Commentary:

You will definitely want this if you find you need to freeze enemies in place very often. Like frostbite, this talent is somewhat wasted in raid and instances, but is very good for PVP and soloing. The reduction is still rather small but since it is a prerequisite for Shatter you have no choice but to take it.

Permafrost
Description:
Increases the duration of your chill effects and reduces the targets speed by an additional percentage.
Ranks:
Rank 1- Chill effects lengthened by 1 second, speed reduced by 4%
Rank 2- Chill effects lengthened by 2 second, speed reduced by 7%
Rank 3- Chill effects lengthened by 3 second, speed reduced by 10%
Usefulness:

Commentary:
This will help keep enemies from reaching you quicker, and give you a chance for frostbite to proc. If you are going for a frostbite/shatter build this will help you a lot.

Piercing Ice
Description:
Increases all frost damage done by a percentage
Ranks:
Rank 1- Damage increased by 2%
Rank 2- Damage increased by 4%
Rank 3- Damage increased by 6%
Usefulness:

Commentary:
This is like firepower in the fire tree, except it is much lower. If you are going to be dealing primarily frost damage you should take it. If you are an elementist that mixes fire and frost attacks you still might consider taking it.

Icy Veins
Description:
Hastens your spellcasting, reducing cast time of all spells by 20% and prevents you from losing casting time when casting any frost spell. Lasts 20 Seconds.
Ranks:
Usefulness:

Commentary:
This is a replacement for Ice Block when it was made a trainable talent. All in all it is a very nice talent, especially for when you need to burst a target down. It's greatest strength is its spell haste effect and the fact that it increases all spell casting time, not just frost spells. The chance to avoid interruption is also very good since frost spells have no protection against knockback like arcane or fire spells. This is obviously best used in PVP, when an enemy is pounding on you and you can't escape. But it's also good when being pounded on in PVE.

Cold Snap
Description:
When activated, finishes the cooldown on all of your frost spells.
Ranks:
One Rank
Usefulness:

Commentary:
There are so many uses for this talent. I find its greatest strength is letting me take on much tougher challenges by letting me use two water elementals or ice barriers one after another. You can also use it to restore your frost nova if you need to root an enemy, or cone of cold if you have frozen several targets and want to shatter them.

Improved Blizzard
Description:
Adds a chill effect to your blizzard spell which lowers the targets movement speed for 1.5 seconds
Ranks:
Rank 1- Movement speed reduced 35%
Rank 2- Movement speed reduced by 50%
Rank 3- Movement speed reduced by 65%
Usefulness:

Commentary:

If you intend to do any type of frost AOE grinding this is a requirement. Unless you have a tank, blizzard is a pretty useless spell because the enemies will all run straight for you and leave the area. The chill effect lets you keep them in the damage zone longer and has a chance of triggering frostbite. It can sometimes help your teammates in PVE by slowing them from running out of range. And it is very nice in PVP if you can force a large group of opponents through a bottleneck like a bridge or tunnel.

Arctic Reach
Description:
Increases the range of your frostbolt and blizzard spells and the radius of your frost nova and cone of cold.
Ranks:
Rank 1- 10% increased range
Rank 2- 20% increased range
Usefulness:

Commentary:
Frost is about controlling your enemy and preventing them from getting close to do damage. This lets you attack from afar and lets you take on more targets at once.

Frost Channeling
Description:
Reduces the mana cost and threat of your frost spells
Ranks:
Rank 1- 5% reduction of mana, 4% reduction of threat
Rank 2- 10% reduction of mana, 7% reduction of threat
Rank 3- 15% reduction of mana, 10% reduction of threat
Usefulness:

Commentary:
This is a requirement for any serious PVE activities because of the reduced threat alone. Otherwise you will have to back off on your DPS to avoid pulling aggro. The mana reduction is also nice, but you will only notice it over a long period of time.

Shatter
Description:
Increases the critical strike chance of all frost spells against frozen targets
Ranks:
Rank 1- 10% increased critical strike
Rank 2- 20% increased critical strike
Rank 3- 30% increased critical strike
Rank 4- 40% increased critical strike
Rank 5- 50% increased critical strike
Usefulness:

Commentary:
This is one of the strongest talents in the entire tree. Almost all builds will be based around it in one way or another. It is often combined with frost nova or your water elemental's AOE freeze attack to deal large controlled amounts of damage. Since PVE bosses are immune to freeze it is wasted in most organized PVE activities. But it is excellent for bursting down an opponent in PVP, or soloing in PVE.

Frozen Core
Description:
Reduces all frost and fire damage taken
Ranks:
Rank 1- 2% damage reduction
Rank 2- 4% damage reduction
Rank 3- 6% damage reduction
Usefulness:

Commentary:

The theory behind this talent is good, but its aplication is so bad there is no reason to take it. It only applies to two schools of magic that we can already make ourselves immune to with ward spells. There are also other damage reduction talents in the frost tree like Ice barrier that do a much better job.

Ice Block
Description:
Your become encased in Ice, protecting you from all attacks for ten seconds. While blocked, you can not cast spells or move. Causes hypothermia, preventing you from recasting ice block for 30 seconds
Ranks:
One Rank.
Usefulness:

Commentary:
A very strong ability that you will definitely want. It is excellent for avoiding focus fire attacks in PVP and will wipe away any debuffs you have on you as well. It is less useful in PVE, but it can protect you if you pull aggro and give your tank a chance to regain control.

Improved Cone of Cold
Description:
Increases the damage of you cone of cold spell
Ranks:
Rank 1- 15% increased damage
Rank 2- 25% increased damage
Rank 3- 35% increased damage
Usefulness:

Commentary:

Cone of cold is primarily used in either PVP to snare your opponent, or to deal a large amount of AOE damage when you have shattered a group of enemies with frost nova. In these two instances it is worth getting at least one or two points of this talent if you need a filler, but if you don't use it that often or only use it for its damage, you probably shouldn't bother.

Ice Floes
Description:
Reduces the cooldown of your cone of cold, cold snap, ice barrier and ice block spells
Ranks:
Rank 1- Cooldowns reduced by 10%
Rank 2- Cooldowns reduced by 20%
Usefulness:

Commentary:

In PVP, cooldowns can mean the difference between victory and defeat. The short cool downs of cone of cold and cold snap will be best used in hectic battles. While ice block and cold snap will only be apparent over a long period of time. Since Cold snap can remove all your cooldowns anyway, reducing its own cool down will let you use all of them sooner.

Winter's Chill
Description:
Your frost spells have a chance of applying the winters chill debuff, increasing the chance a frost spell will crit by 2% for 15 seconds. Stacks five times
Ranks:
Rank 1- 20% chance to apply winter's chill
Rank 2- 40% chance to apply winter's chill
Rank 3- 60% chance to apply winter's chill
Rank 4- 80% chance to apply winter's chill
Rank 5- 100% chance to apply winter's chill
Usefulness:

Commentary:

The longer you go in a fight, the more useful this talent will become. It will provide some helpful synergy with other frost mages, especially in a raid environment. In solo and PVP play it is still useful though slightly less powerful since you will usually kill targets before it reaches its full effect. It will give your shatter spell a little extra crit though which is never bad.

Ice Barrier
Description:
Shields you and absorbs a set amount of damage, boosted by spell power. While the shield holds, spells will not be interrupted.
Ranks:
Rank 1- Absorbs 454 damage
Rank 2- Absorbs 568 damage
Rank 3- Absorbs 699 damage
Rank 4- Absorbs 842 damage
Rank 5- Absorbs 951 damage
Rank 6- Absorbs 1075 damage
Usefulness:

Commentary:
Its no secret that mages are one of the squishiest classes in the game. This ability gives us a blessed amount of survivability that we are sorely lacking. It won't hold for very long against a focused attack, but it can be just enough when you are about to die and need to run away or finish one last cast.

Arctic Winds
Description:
Increases all frost damage you cause by a percentage and reduces the chance the melee and ranged attacks will hit you by a percentage
Ranks:
Rank 1- 1% extra damage and 1% extra chance to be missed
Rank 2- 2% extra damage and 2% extra chance to be missed
Rank 3- 3% extra damage and 3% extra chance to be missed
Rank 4- 4% extra damage and 4% extra chance to be missed
Rank 5- 5% extra damage and 5% extra chance to be missed
Usefulness:

Commentary:
Extra damage is always nice, but the extra avoidance chance is only really useful in PVP. If you are a good frost mage, you will rarely ever be hit by an enemy in PVE.

Empowered Frostbolt
Description:
Your frostbolt gains an additional bonus of your spell damage and an additional chance to strike.
Ranks:
Rank 1- 2% extra spell damage and 1% extra crit chance
Rank 2- 4% extra spell damage and 2% extra crit chance
Rank 3- 6% extra spell damage and 3% extra crit chance
Rank 4- 8% extra spell damage and 4% extra crit chance
Rank 5- 10% extra spell damage and 5% extra crit chance
Usefulness:

Commentary:
This is somewhat better than empowered fireball in my opinion since it gives you nearly as big a damage bonus and extra crit to boot. Depending on your play style this may great, as in the case of raids, or good, as in the case of PVP.

Summon Water Elemental
Description:
Summons a water elemental to fight for the caster for 45 seconds
Ranks:
One rank.
Usefulness:

Commentary:
This little sucker is one of the best spells a mage can get. If you work with it you can cause great burst damage by using its freeze abilities with your shatter talent. Or you can just pull it out for some extra DPS. My favorite use is having it be a temporary tank when facing monsters in an enclosed area and I can't get very far away.