Pretty much, everything being centered on FoF shouldn’t be the thing anymore with Brain Freeze/Winter’s Chill. We can now potentially shatter everything, which is what the frost identify was from classic. Not saying FoF should be removed, just need to shift the focus to more BF/WC. That expands what we can do with other spells, even if it is a frostbolt centric rotation, as long as it is a more niche or lower DPS option. We still get the satisfaction of those Ice Lance crits off Winter’s Chill, while not getting into situations where we’re spamming Ice Lance.
Winter’s Chill being a self buff rather than a debuff on the enemy would be a huge QoL increase for frost.
So many times WC’s debuff can be wasted on dying mobs and you’re sitting there waiting on a flurry refresh or frozen orb reset…
1 Like
It’s great to see frostfire getting specific adjustments, however frost will most likely need an aura buff to its kit in .5
These adjustments also don’t address the mastery scaling issue that frost has with frostfire, since a large part of what’s been buffed here in not on the mastery at all.
A base spec aura buff for .5 and addressing mastery concerns (just add those spells to mastery at this point) should put frost in a great spot for this patch
1 Like
I agree, these changes are a step in right direction, but more are needed. Aside from changing Frost’s Mastery to also affect Ice Nova, Frost Bomb, Cone of Cold, Meteor, Frostfire Burst and Frostfire Infusion to make it scale Frostfire and Frost in general better these include:
- Split Ice Nova with Ring of Frost and make Ring of Frost choice node with Mass Polymorph instead. Ice Nova is a rotational spell for Frost and should not require any utility sacrifices to take and choice node between two AoE long duration incapacitate spells with different pros and cons makes much more sense.
- Reduce Wintertide to 1 point investment with full current effect. Single-target focused builds should not be required to spend an excess talent point on weak / niche effect (compared to its 1 point cost AoE focused alternative Icecaller) simply to access Icy Veins.
- Buff Splintering Ray and consider making it also reduce cooldown of Ray of Frost to 45 seconds. Such change would both make it more competitive with other third gate talents and allow to better align AoE Ray of Frost with other AoE focused periods.
- Buff base damage of Frostfire Bolt for Frost, for example to the level of Fire version. It as an “upgrade talent” does only 3-4% more direct damage than Frostbolt in PVE and less damage in PVP than Frostbolt.
All these changes don’t change Frost mechanics much and can be done even in .5 patch.