11.1 Frost Mage Feedback Thread

In Development Undermine(d) PTR Discussion
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Hello all! This post is dedicated to feedback about Frost Mages in Undermine(d) - about announced changes, unaddressed issues and so on.

Feedback about already announced changes:

  • I had mixed feelings about change to Freezing Winds, but thinking more a bit made me understand that this change might have more negative consequences than players and developers think. The issue is that Frost Mage unlike Arcane and Fire does not have decent spammable Frost AoE ability to use (like Arcane Explosion for Arcane and Flamestrike for Fire) and accordingly after you use your cooldown based damage abilities and Coldest Snap CD reset in AoE fight - what then? Spam Arcane Explosion that does negligible damage and has no synergy with Frost? Spam non-shattered Ice Lances for pitiful damage? Use single-target abilities in AoE situation? Freezing Winds providing Fingers of Frost procs covered that niche via giving FoF boosted Ice Lance as a semi-spammable AoE ability to use during Frozen Orb (which in AoE situations is active almost all the time) and with their removal there is simply no more such ability for Frost. And buff to damage / duration and radius of Blizzard would not compensate that enough.
    Solution: Return Freezing Winds, but make them a choice node with new planned option - Blizzard dealing X% increased damage, having Y% increased radius and duration and Frozen Orb dealing Z% increased damage to enemies in Blizzard. That seems like a good compromise - players who rely on Freezing Winds FoF procs for spammable AoE spell can continue using that and players who don’t like Freezing Winds can use the alternative. That would also give Frost Mages its first choice node in tree (more about that issue later).
  • Frost Frostfire is taking a massive hit as well. Tying Excess Fire and Excess Frost to Comet Storm makes it happpen every 25 seconds on average (30 sec base CD - 5 from Excess Frost) opposed to around every 14 seconds currently. Damage increase to Ice Nova and Frostfire Burst was not enough to compensate for that and lowered amount of Brain Freeze procs from Excess Fire and CD reduction effects for Comet Storm itself from Excess Frost was not compensated either. Frostfire Frost needs additional buffs to compensate for all the mentioned changes.
  • Nerfs to Frost Spellslinger are odd, since they already are often inferior to Frost Frostfire. They need buffs, not nerfs.
  • Ring of Fire PVP talent change is odd, especially for Frost. Why as a Frost (or even any Mage spec) would you ever want to spend a PVP talent slot to sacrifice Ring of Frost with much longer crowd control duration and shatter capabilities from its control effect just to get a shorter duration CC, but with minor damage over time attached? Usually PVP talent slots should provide still some form of boost to justify being taken, not sidegrade or even a straight downgrade. It is now severely undertuned and needs a buff or another redesign.

Unaddressed issues:

  • Frost Mage is still pretty much the only Mage spec (if not the only spec in general) that has to pick between utility and throughput via choice node between Ice Nova and Ring of Frost. Since Ice Nova is a rotational spell for them that is used to deal damage and provide shatter for other spells - it should not require any utility sacrifices to take and its talent point cost should be enough as a price.
    Suggestion: Split Ice Nova and Ring of Frost and make Ring of Frost a choice node with Mass Polymorph instead. New choice node would be much more fitting (between two long duration AoE crowd control effects that can break on damage and have different pros / cons) and would still keep number of crowd control spells available to Mages in general tree simultaneously on similar to current level.
  • Frost still as a ranged spec has to play in melee range to properly utilize Frozen Orb placement (prevent it from being stopped by random aggroed mob or place it where it should be). That is not a good design and not much of a skill expression, it is simply an annoying obstacle to overcome for no particular reason. If it is kept to make Frost Mages “more skilled” - why then Ravager for Warriors and Entropic Rift for Voidweaver Priests chase enemies and most AoE abilities of other classes can be placed directly if having no such mechanic would make these classes “more skilled” too? It is simply an outdated mechanic for Frozen Orb that should be addressed and solution already exists in game in form of Concentrated Cooless PVP talent, so would not need much additional implementation.
    Suggestion: Create a choice node below Freezing Winds node to the right of Coldest Snap node that would be a choice between Concentrated Coolness and Drifting Coolness and accessible from Freezing Winds node:
    Concentrated Coolness - similar effect to existing PVP talent. Will be useful for cases if pack is mostly stationary and allow to drop Frozen Orb right where it is needed.
    Drifting Coolness - Frozen Orb travels to and starts slowed movement from location chosen by player (instead of first enemy hit) and additionally explodes when it expires, dealing X% of Spell Power Frost damage to enemies still within its area. Will be useful if pack is often moving like chasing the tank (for tanks that kite to survive better) as would allow to pick initial point for Frozen Orb slowed travelling to adjust to that behaviour.
    Such choice node would allow Frost Mages to adjust / improve placement of their Frozen Orb (at the cost of talent point, so with a tradeoff) and would even provide a variety of choices to their AoE profile - player can pick either of these options or keep existing Frozen Orb placement pattern via not taking this talent and taking something else, so players would be able to pick a fitting option for them and that would also help Frost’s build variety.
  • Frost tree still has zero choice nodes, providing pretty much no build diversity. It is also among the most outdated trees with having overpriced talents (like Wintertide and Subzero), undertuned talent options (like Splintering Ray) and very limited amount of paths (especially in the middle of tree). Its talent tree should be looked at to address these issues.
    Suggestions:
  1. Add more choice nodes in the tree. In addition to AoE focused choice nodes suggested above there could be also a single-target focused choice node (for example between Glacial Spike and passive damage boost to Frost(fire) Bolt and Ice Lance allowing to play any of these playstyles and remain competitive) and even utility choice node (like between Frostbite and some other CC / utility effect for people who don’t want to rely on RNG nature of Frostbite).
  2. Reduce Wintertide to 1 point cost with current effect. 2 point cost is both overpriced and makes its tree path not balanced in point cost with Permafrost Lances path.
  3. Reduce Subzero to 1 point cost with current effect and add additional effect - it could also provide damage bonus against semi-frozen enemies (Winter’s Chill, Fingers of Frost etc), but with reduced effect. Such changes would make it much more generally useful and competitive and still keep it actual freezes focused since that condition would still provide biggest bonus.
  4. Buff Splintering Ray to 40% damage to additional targets (which would be in line with Arcane Barrage for Arcane) to make it more competitive and if that would not be enough - make it also reduce cooldown of Ray of Frost to 45 seconds (which would allow to better align it with Coldest Snap windows).
  5. Add more paths in middle section of the tree. For example - Everlasting Frost and Frostbite could path to talents directly below them, Deep Shatter and Splintering Cold could directly lead to row 9 talents (as that would be compensated by their 2 point investment cost) and so on.
  • Fractured Frost branch also has several unaddressed issues - it promotes spamming Frost(fire) Bolt while ignoring most other spells and procs, it lacks support for cleaved spells which cannot be shattered against multiple crowd control immune enemies like council boss fights (where you cannot provide AoE shatter capabiltiies for them with freeze effects) and it can sometimes provide too much value against 1 enemy forcing Frostbolt spam to provide competitive single-target damage output when its niche is clearly supposed to be 3+ target cleave. These issues could be looked at too.
    Suggestions:
  1. Tune value of Fractured Frost / Death’s Chill to not exceed other single-target focused talents in third part of tree. That would allow to make it more optional and people who don’t want to spam Frostbolts should be able to take some other third gate dedicated talents and remain competitive in single-target damage output.
  2. Add Flurry to list of cleaved by Fractured Frost spells and list of spells that stack Death’s Chill. That would make it both provide better value during Fractured Frost / Death’s Chill phase and provide means to shatter cleaved Frost(fire) Bolts against crowd control immune enemies. If needed for balance - cleaved to secondary targets Flurries could provide only 1 stack of Winter’s Chill to them to limit shatter capabilities for cleaved Frost(fire) Bolts.
  3. Make Fractured Frost also increase effect of Splitting Ice from 1 to 2 additional targets while it is active. That would allow to include Splitting Ice affected Ice Lance and Glacial Spike into 3 target focused rotation of Fractured Frost, give usage for Fingers of Frost procs in it and if that would be needed for balance could be compensated with reducing their cleave value while Fractured Frost is active. For better synergies Ice Lance and Glacial Spike could be added to list of spells that stack Death’s Chill too.
  4. To additionally improve Glacial Spike synergies with Fractured Frost - consider making it affected by and stack Slick Ice stacks, so that using it would not be a loss to their generation and it would get similar bonuses to Frostbolt.
  • Frost Mages still have several PVP talents that are undertuned / underused and could be looked at. These include:
    Ice Form - provides too niche bonus compared to generally useful Icy Veins that it replaces and is dispellable, so can be easily negated by enemy team that usually has at least 1 dispeller involved. Could be tweaked to make it more reliable and generally useful.
    Suggestion: Make it increase all Frost damage instead of Frostbolt’s damage only (if needed - reduce bonus value to compensate) and make it undispellable, but remove stun immunity to compensate. Such changes should make it more balanced, more generally useful and a fitting option for 1 min cooldown based comps.
    Icy Feet - provide too niche bonus that can also be easily negated - immune to snares Mage can still be crowd controlled with other types of control effects negating this bonus entirely. Extending this bonus to more crowd control types could make it too powerful, so instead it could be just redesigned to cover other niche.
    Suggestion: Revert it to Chilled to the Bone PVP talent (freezes that expire deal damage to target with increased damage if dispelled) and just make it affect all Mage’s freeze effects and deal meaningful damage. That would turn it into a good option against dispel / root removal heavy classes and comps and would make it more generally useful.
    Improved Mass Invisibility - requires too large cost to take (both PVP talent slot and sacrificing other imporant defensive in general talent tree) for quite low effect. Could be boosted with that in mind to make it more competitive with other PVP talents.
    Suggestion: Make it usable even without Mass Invisibility taken in general tree, but increase cooldown / lower duration of PVP version to compensate and make it reach current values of PVP version if Mass Invisibility is taken in general tree. That would allow to both play it with appropriate cost (just PVP talent slot) and still be able to scale it to current values if needed via taking Mass Invisibility in general talent tree.

Remaining bugs / oversights:

  • Water Elemental’s pet bar is reset to default settings each time you relog. That prevents players from reliably customizing it (like turning off auto-use of Water Jet or changing its abilities binds) and should be addressed.
  • Arcane Intellect affected by Inspired Intellect is removed from Mage when Arcane Intellect is used on other player. Likely should not be so.
  • Fire Blast’s cooldown is not affected by Frostfire Frost’s Elemental Affinity talent. It is also in a strange position where as a cooldown based ability it does less damage than spammable non-shattered Ice Lance for Frost. Please fix its cooldown reduction issue and buff its damage for Frost / Arcane only (like you did with aura buff to Cone of Cold for Frost).

If you have additional feedback about Frost Mages changes or issues, you can post it in the comments below. Thank you for reading!

Links to feedback post(s) about other Mage specializations:
Arcane Mage - 11.1 Arcane Mage Feedback Thread
Fire Mage - 11.1 Fire Mage Feedback Thread

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* Alter Time is now affected by healing reduction effects, such as dampening.

WHAT? This is why I play dampen and choose mage, lmfao. What? Disgusting.

Why even choose a particular class, if they are just going to screw it? I am just going to go play classic, lmao. Cya guys LOL.

Not even sure if its worth playing WoW these days. On a game with 3-4 million subscribers, a “mage” feedback thread should have 500 views in 10 minutes, not under 50 views lol.

They have too many classes, features, etc. to keep it popular and balanced. It’s a casual fest.

If you make the game too easy, no one will play it. They need to appeal to hardcore gamers. Why they stopped this is beyond me. Ghostcrawler was right; you need the most challenging content as well as the most easy content easily accessible in the open world. Why we have to organize 20 players for the hardest content, which is not even the hardest for you as a person; just the organizing of everyone is beyond me. Like, in a group of 20, you are limited by the skill and knowledge of those other 20 people. I am done with this casual fest.

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I think the concept of freezing winds is great, very interested in how itl shake out.

I very much wish we could stop trying to make deaths chill good. The only reason people played that kind of play style in shadow lands was it was the only way to not troll and play frost, and people likes the skele skin. Nowadays it doesn’t have that skele skin/flavor and with the development of hero trees do we think trying to make frostbolt modifier talents fun rather than leaning into ray (tuning) , glacial (please bring the DF explosion set bonus as a talent) or even leaning into something else then making it a frostbolt turret ? I hope that’s not the case, as weaving the other spells and buildup is what makes the spec fun for me. Icelances/ comet storm/ray/glacial are the core things that make it fun for me!

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Excess Fire and Frost Changes

  • Excess Fire now triggers when you cast Meteor or Comet Storm (was reach max stacks of Fire Mastery).
  • Excess Frost now triggers when you consume Excess Fire (was reach max stacks of Frost Mastery) and may stack up to twice. Excess Frost now casts Ice Nova at 200% effectiveness (was 125%).

Frostyownz’s notes: I just logged into PTR and Excess Fire and Frost are not any better, you still have to cast Ice Lance to get it to explode, and Ice Nova still comes out when you Flurry. Which means you are not saving any /cancelaura binds to stop it from cleaving in 2s. ‘Meteor’ dot is still going to be burning on the ground for 8 seconds.

The main concern is it this change still does not promote a control style of ‘Rated Arena’. It might make it so we do not need a WA to track excess fire, but, that is about it. Excess frost/fire has felt horrible as a control class this whole expansion. I need to be able to do damage without worrying about Meteor+Comet breaking polymorph. Especially in 2s at higher ratings - players are often stacked where one almost always needs to be Polymorphed. Comet+meteor are often our only options for high burst - instant damage. It is also our highest hitting instant cast burst in the game for frost, I think? I have not played all expansion, because of the sickness that spreads in modern WoW with 2v2 balance. :purple_heart: No harm meant towards those trying to balance the game or enjoy playing it currently! I simply do not and have cancelled my subscription to reflect it.

I need to stress how important it is to re-Polymorph with 1 second left on Polymorph if your polymorph cast timer is 1 second. Breaking 1 polymorph at 2400 MMR is an auto L pretty much at higher dampening levels, if you are playing a control comp such as Frost Mage Rogue or Frost mage+Healer.

Here is a small example of Re-CC at higher MMR, it is not a perfect example, I just picked the first VoD on my mage. I climbed to 2400mmr with a different rDruid the week after, after I fixed my bars a bit:

We have Frostbite conflicting with Blastwave and Blizzard now lasting 12 seconds, which is really bad, like when we have a Devastation Evoker puling its healer into to break polymorph out of harms way at higher ratings, which screws up PolyDR timers. Forcing switch to the Disc Priest. Druid had other plans and did not see the DRs change/screw up. I do not think the Developers even listen to feedback from anywhere. Not the forums, not streams, nothing.

Perfect Re-CC is so important to not dying, but also scoring kills. The fact my orb breaks the 2nd poly on the priest when the dev pulled him away from saftey, forced me to go priest at the end of the clip, but my druid had other plans, so I accomodated and went dev with him. So yea, orb+blizzard technically need to be fixed too. You can actually hear something knock on my desk when the orb breaks it. I was 100% upset about this iirc and gave my desk a little kick. Increasing Blizzard Duration is not going to help. Sorry the Autism does not show my expression well lol.

Anothernote on the clip: To re-iterate, my rDruid wanted to go Devestation at the end, but the correct move was to go Disc Priest here if you look at Poly DRs. I also could have supernova’d the dev a few times to stop Disinigrate, which you see me spamming at the begginning of the game, but it does not hit the spellqueue. I tried to fix my spellqueue issues the last week of DF, it kind of worked, however, they patched anything and everything about a control play style and it just does not matter anymore that much.

Anyways, without perfect RE-CC, you can’t carry 2k players to 2200 or have any sort of skill effect the outcome of the game. In the vod you will see re-polymorphs on the priest here with 1.2 seconds left on them and I repoly with a 1.2 second cast timer. A common occurance at high rating. When Frostfire Mastery is effecting our cast timers, it creates a very sticky situation for the highest rated Frost mage games. Every game at high rating needs at least some minimal amount of perfect CC. Actually triple polys are arguably required to score the kill nearly every game as well. A lot of my vods I was playing ORC or Dark Iron or some version of the spec that I spam Ice Lance+splitting ice and stack mastery+damage, because it was better for a lot of Dragon Flight. Those vods will have terrible game play and CC examples, where you can see no skill in the players gameplay and the CC examples will be very sloppy.

Some other notes to add: Frostfire Mastery does give a ranging amount of haste, which typically does not create problems, but it is a pet peave of mind when trying to have perfect cross-CC; the difference between 1.2 second polymorph and 1.3 second polymorph can make or break a game, allow the monk to sneak in a caccoon or whatever at higher ratings. For this reason, Frostfire Mastery is a very horrible option for control classes in PvP. There are actually 0 pure ‘control classes’ in TWW, when in DF it was much higher. Which I am very upset about and has caused me to not push rating and just theory craft instead of play the game.

How it relates to excess fire/frost - it would be nice to not have Comet+Meteor+Frostfire Burst/Empowerment/Frost Bomb/etc have some intelligence about them, so they do not break Polymorphs. They are coming from the highest IQ class in the game after all. So why should their abilities behave worse mechanics than a warrior with fear, able to blade storm or take a couple of my frostbolts without breaking?

Anyways, back to Excess Frost:
Having Excess Frost’s root work instead of being ignored in PvP would be huge! I get it might create too much damage in PvE but for PvP it could be so nice!

It is nearly nearly impossible in modern era to guarante Comet Storm lands on your target and every expansion it gets worse! The only way you can guarantee this, is coincidentally using it at the same time as frostbite. With freedoms, dispels and game sound, I am lucky to have comet do 50% of its expected damage value during the entirity of the game. Unless they are locked down by a rogue or other mechanics. Players at higher ratings just side step the meteor+comet. Almost every player stack movement enchants these days too. Heh.

Barrier Changes

  • Ice Barrier – If the barrier is fully absorbed, enemies within 10 yards suffer massive Frost damage and are slowed by 70% for 4 seconds.
  • Blazing Barrier – Reflects 100% of damage absorbed.

Frostyownz Notes: Having Ice Barrier cleave and break polymorphs is a bad idea. This also is forcing Frost Fire playstyle previoius talked about. Which is all anyone is playing now days.

Reflecting 100% of damage is also insane and can be abused against hunters opening with rapidfire rotation or mages using ice floes and Ray of Frosting another mage or someone with the barrier. Though it is a good counter for those situations.

I am hoping the reflecting is for the mage only and not tied to mass barrier as well. Most people do not have cancelaura barrier macros for mass barrier. I do have /cancel barriers including Powerword: shield for facing pesky Arcane Mages. The skill of your average 2k players, do not allow for this to happen. Though, I reallly do not think the change is good however you look at it. WoW PvP is suppose to be simple and not introduce tons of binds every single expansion!

Note: I have about 10 new binds this expansion because of all the changes. Every expansion it gets worse and worse! Though I do think the talent will only be taken against Hunters, and possibly counter mages who ray behind pillars. Regular barrier is generally way better in dampening 2s, and if not, all 2v2 games, which is what I usually play.

Spellslinger

  • Consuming Fingers of Frost or Winter’s Chill now generates a Splinter (was Winter’s Chill).
  • Splintering Orbs now generates 5 Splinters for Frost Mages (was 6).
  • Frost Splinter damage reduced by 10%.
  • Splinterstorm damage reduced by 10%.
  • Embedded Frost Splinter damage reduced by 10%.

Frostyownz Notes: I do like that lances no longer consume Winter’s Chill. I am not sure why they are nerfing Spellslinger. It is the only pure frost solution, not poluted by frostfire animations, random cleaving, changing of cast timers, etc. Also, giving us an incentive to consume Fingers of Frost is really bad. Promoting instant casting is generally a bad idea in PvP as there is not much for counterplay, which we saw in wrath dropping orb, stacking mastery and spamming 10 ice lances. I do not know why we are bringing this play style back? I have been complaining about it ever since they started re-introducing this playstyle and making mastery effective again. I provide a solution for the Fingers in my next post.

Frost Mage Changes

  • Freezing Winds has been redesigned – Now causes Frozen Orb to deal 15% more damage to units affected by your Blizzard.
  • Blizzard damage increased by 100%.
  • Blizzard increased to a 12 yard radius (was 8 yards).
  • Blizzard duration increased to 12 seconds (was 8 seconds).
  • Ice Lances empowered by Fingers of Frost no longer consume Winter’s Chill.

Frostyownz Notes: The blizzard and orb damage are nice. Might make a Cold Front build viable. Out of all the feedback I gave on beta, they did not take 1 suggestion. So I have no hope here either. For instance, subzero should be against frozen targets, not just frozen and rooted. Plus so much more, which I will not even elaborate on or touch on here; sadless they deleted it.


Here it is, if they mind to take a peep, ignore the tier ratings, those are performance ratings as the mage trees were in spring/summer 2024, not ratings of what will or will not make the game better or worse via mechanics and/or playstyle:

Frost Mage PvPers Feedback.

I want to start by saying, I have over 20,000 hours of /played on Frost Mage in 2v2 arena mostly. I am going to start from the top of the Mage tree on the left side and then work on the Frost Tree on the right side. Then touch on Hero talents, PvP talents, Frost Mastery and Frostbolt vs Ice Lance Damage.

Mage Tree

Cryo-Freeze:
Should not be 50% in PvP. It should remain 80%.
Reabsorption: Should not be nerfed by 2% per mirror. On live, its hardly even good enough for any frost mage to take in PvP. Some of us do take it, it actually needs a buff.

Ring of Frost and Ice Nova:
Should not share the same tier. Ring of Frost is a prerequisite for PvP. Spellslinger mages will not be able to shatter Comet Storm and Frostfire mages with Isothermic Core will not be able to shatter Comet Storm+Meteor without a random Ice Nova proc. Also, Ice nova, Ring of Frost and DB are perquisites for frost mage PvP.

Mass Polymorph:
 Make it a choice node with Ice Nova. I heard about this one on a stream. Great idea.

Arcane Warding or Incantation of Swiftness:
Consider making it 1 point, so remove curse is not required to get. Make sure to mirror the tree on the other side too. So that only 1 talent point is used for winter's protection or tempest barrier.

Diverted Energy and Accumulative Shielding: Does not work with Mass Barrier.

Barrier Diffusion: Getting Blazing Barrier dispelled should reduce both Ice Barrier's and Mass Barrier's cooldown. Having 0 seconds come off Ice Barrier cooldown from Blazing Barrier being dispelled, is horribly underpowered for PvP. Consider making it effect Ice Barrier's cooldown from all barriers that are dispelled.

Dragons Breath & Super Nova:
If we cannot have Ice Nova and Ring. Then, consider placing Super Nova somewhere else, as with current Frostbolt damage, Dragon's Breath or some type of CC helper, is a prerequisite for PvP. You also can’t do @arena123 with Supernova, but you can do /focus arena1 /cast [@focus] Supernova at that focus. You can arena123, with Ice Nova, Supernova should function the same. Again, Ice nova, Ring of Frost and DB are perquisites for Frost Mage PvP.

Tome of Rhonin & Tome of Antonidas:
Please switch their places. All PvP mages are already taking Energized Barriers. Which unlocks the tier below. Not all mages are taking Improved Frost Nova or Tome of Rhonin. Switching the Tome's places, allows us to get Frigid Winds, while still having points for Temporal Velocity etc.

Time Manipulation and Diverted Energy:
Good old swap-o-roo here. i.e. Swap their positions in the tree. Keeping on the time theme with Alter Time but also on the Barrier theme with Accumulative Shielding. Makes sense and is better for Frost PvP.



Frost Tree:

Comet storm:
Not available if you are taking Ring of Frost. Currently taking Ice Nova and not Ring of Frost, is really bad. But, I have to, because Comet Storm's damage on the move is invaluable when weaving Polymorphs and getting trained. Comet Storm hits almost 100% harder than Ice Lance and has delayed burst, making it great, the healers do not know if they should trinket or not because the spell comes down delayed. Just wish it did not cleave and break Polymorphs.

Death's Chill:
Keep it 2% per stack or consider making it: Death's Chill affects Frostbolt only, all the time, not just Icy veins is not active, like Ice Form bug currently does. The stacks can carry over into Icy Veins too. That way you can get 15 stacks before you start your go with Icy Veins+Slick Ice. Leaning into the word "Death's" and "Chill" meaning you are less alive not having Icy Veins - you are in a moment of chilling. Not sending your lively go.

Ray of Frost:
Should be competitve with Ice Lance spam build. I do not even take Ray with Death's Chill build in 2s, but am now considering it. As Ray just got buffed 20% and Death's Chill nerfed to the ground. What the hell blizzard? In-actuality its only a 11% Ray Buff, as I play Frostbolt build and will have those Death's Chills stacks anyways.

Glacial Spike:
Should be competitive with Ice Lance spam build.

Frostbolt:
Should be competitive with Ice Lance spam build.

Slick ice: Should switch positions with freezing rain. Makes since because there are supporting Frostbolt talents all around freezing rain. Some people do not want to take Thermal Void, as they sometimes rarely spam ice lance for the extra 0.5 seconds.

Frostbite:
Some mages do not like playing Frostbite as Healer+Frost. We can't use supernova or blastwave when it procs. Yet you have made Frostbite required to get Ray of Frost because it is not logical to get Splitting Ice just to get Ray of Frost as Splitting Ice breaks too much CC. Taking Subzero without Frostbite also makes almost 0 sense. Frost Mages who want to play Ice Ward and no Frostbite should never take Splitting Ice. Those types of mages usually want maximum control. Considering switching Chain Reaction and Splitting Ice positions or Hailstones and Splitting Ice.

Splitting Ice, Chain reaction and Hailstones:
Their positions are horrible for non cleaving mages who do not want to run Frostbite. Considering moving them around in someway like described earlier.

Splitting Ice:
Should not break Polymorphs or CC'd targets. Fractured Frost does not, why does splitting ice?

Splintering Cold:
Possibly, make this 1 point.


Frostfire

Isothermic Core:
Comet should not place a meteor. Meteor leaves a patch on the ground, causing polymorphs and other CC to potentially track into meteor.

Excess Frost:
Flurry should not cast an ice nova. This will be breaking polymorphs and blinds like mad!

Frostfire Empowerment:
Frostfire bolt should not explode on damage. Again, this will break polymorphs.

Excess Fire:
Ice lance should not spread living bomb. Same exact points, again.

Frostfire Bolt:
Use to not effected by Slick Ice, PvP modifiers, and some other things. Does less damage than Frostbolt in PvP. As far as Frostfire goes, getting locked on both frost and fire is really bad; we will not be able to dragons breath without cold snapping.



Spellslinger

Seems fine for Frost PvP. Shifting power does not send out shards to break polymorphs, but some splinters do break other things, Blinds, Ring of Frost, etc and other things. The problems I have with it are losing 6% haste+mastery that Frostfire has. As well as double barrier(needed for dispel protection). Frostbolt should do 25% more damage than Ice Lance as spellslinger, Lance can be nerfed 25%. Consider reducing Frostbolt cast time and/or a 6% haste+verse buff and not letting it break CC at all. Also Frostbolt due to the PvP scaling has a really high spell power co-effecient. It's like 7:1 in against a player in PvP. It almost forces me to go human because of this and run double dps trinket. Consider doing something here about this.

Here are some dispel protection ideas:
Old Look Again:
"Your displacement has 50% longer range and duration.".

New Look Again:
"Your displacement has 50% longer range and duration. Your shimmer reduces displacement cooldown by 2.5 seconds, and buffs all current wearing shields by 7.5%.".

Old Reactive Barrier:
"Your Ice Barrier can absorb up to 50% more damage based on your missing Health. Max effectiveness when under 50% health".

New Reactive Barrier:
"Your Ice Barrier can absorb up to 50% more damage based on your missing Health. Max effectiveness when under 50% health. When your barrier is dispelled, refresh arcane intellect and gain a 3% tempest barrier".



PvP Talents

Frostbomb:
Currently does about the same damage as Frostbolt critical strikes, unless you use it at the end of your Death's Chill Ramp, then it may do about 10-20% more, but its very rare and too hard to manage in PvP. Just as using Ray of Frost at the end of Death's Chills ramp is too hard to time to make Ray worth taking right now. Ray of Frost damage in PvP is severely undertuned. Frostbomb is a prerequisite but also breaks polymorphs and screws up Sub+Frost go's. Secret Technique on the Sub tree has this problem as well.

Ice Form:
Should be about 10 seconds longer and/or effect more than just Frostbolt damage. Death's Chill lasts outside of Ice Form when Ice Form is selected.

Ice Wall:
Consider binding its rotation to the mouse after first click. Having to turn your character and not see its exact placement is a very bad design.

If I drop 17% verse for 17% mastery. I gain roughly 20% Ray and Ice Lance damage, but I lose 50k/damage per Frostbolt at level 70. Also, 20%+ Ray damage is still not enough to bring it up to speed with Frostbolt spam with Death's Chill. This makes mastery worthless for Frostbolt build. As it should be. Mastery should not be a pvp stat frost mages take. We should reward the player for casting not spamming an instant like Ice Lance. Also, Frostbolt (spellslinger) should hit for a minimum of 25% more than Ice Lance after 15 stacks, not 25% less or equal to. Maybe I am missing something? Like generating more Spellslinger shards with Frozen orb, and you need to play Cold Front in PvP? Not entirely bad but, calling down an orb will break CC. Not sure what route they are trying to go here? Let me know. Dragonflight was so good for Frost PvP, they started buffing Ice Lance and everything went to poo.


Mage Category Grade Letter Scores A to F

Mage Tree: F
Barrier Diffusion, Tomes, Dragons Breath, Super Nova, Reabsorption, Time Manipulation, Diverted Energy and Cryo-Freeze could all be better.

Frost Tree: C-
Talents look decent, but their positioning are bad!

Frostfire Tree: F -
Cleaving mainly is horrible for Organized PvP.

Spellslinger Tree: C+
Only because Spellslinger Frost has a chance to work. Though some of the shards still break Polymorphs!!! Frostfire is required for double barrier dispel protection and it provides up to 6% haste+mastery. Make Spellslinger provide 6% haste+verse or 6% haste and 1250 intellect.

PvP Tree: C-
Frostbomb breaking Polymorph is horrible! Would be a B+ just with that change. Ice form is too short on duration to get 5 Frostbolts+re-polys off to make it worth it. Needs to be 27 seconds minimum. With DK changes like 4 second Polymorphs, sometimes I will pop icy veins and maybe only get 2 Frostbolts off, due to double Grip, shorter CC etc. As I have been playing Frost PvP since Jan 2006. I have 1200 days /played or even more on Frost Mage. I specialize in Frost and nothing else!

Most Rank 1 Frost Mages believe in rewarding hard casted damage like Ray+Glacial+Frostbomb or even just pure Frostbolt build. It’s a personal preferences really. Let use choose, do not force us to play Ice Lance spam. We should be able to pick Frostbolt or Ray+Glacial or Ice Lance or combos.

Frost mage viability:

 S tier but only for Ice Lance spam Frostfire build. We will have to see how it plays out in actual rated games.
5

My 11.1 Frost Mage PvP Feedback

General

  • Splitting Ice and Chain Reaction locations swapped.
  • Tome of Antonidas and Tome of Ronin locations swapped.
  • Ice block now heals 25% for all mages. 75% total with cryo freeze.
  • Subzero no longer requires the target to be rooted.
  • Fingers of Frost can now be consumed by your Frostbolts and treats Frostbolts to the target(s) as if the target(s) were frozen.

    • You can read about my reasoning why for these in beta feedback thread—that your team deleted or moved to archives!

    And these too… Spellslinger still suffers from not having dispel protection, especially when facing Frostfire mages and other classes that we cannot purge due to costing 20-25% mana to execute our spellsteal.

    Spellslinger

      New Talent: "Controlling Technics" is a passive choice node shared with "Controlled Instincts".
      Controlling Technics: Alter Time is no longer affected by dampening. Polymorph now lasts 30% longer. Frozen Orbs summoned by Coldfront, Glacial Assault, Splitting Ice, Frostbomb, Ice Nova, and Comet Storm no longer cleave and break crowd control effects except when used on the main target. Frostbolt damage increased 10%. Polymorphs, blinds, and fears used on targets with Frost Bomb applied; remove Frost Bomb from those targets.

      Spellslinger also suffers from Flurry procs in 11.0.7 as compared to Frostfire, though with the blizzard+orb changes, it might open up a coldfront/orb blizzard build in arena with more flurry procs coming from splinters. The only thing I do not like about this is that it promotes the same aoe playstyle that Frostfire has. At least Spellslinger animations are not bunk, but yeah, pretty lame, they are forcing us to play some type of AoE/cleave/instant cast build this entire expansion so far. What?

      A note on Frostfire: Spamming Ice Lance, as Frostfire is super overpowered in a 1v1 against Spellslinger in 11.0.7. Not only do they get double barriers, but some mages can beat Gladiators 1v1 who are not Frostfire by just spamming Ice Lances and refreshing their Double Barriers. Forcing ‘Mastery’ as the main secondary stat once we obtain sufficient verse/haste in PvP as Frost Mage should be a war crime! So should dynamic random procc’ing haste values from Time Anomaly and Frostfire Mastery.

    Notes to Activision Blizzard: I am mostly joking about the controlled instincts part, but because spellslinger has 1% representation in 2v2 or less, something big like this needs to be done soon! The reason to not change Alter Time is because it is the only tool we have in deep 2v2 dampening games against comps like BM Hunter+Healer. If you can live 10 minutes against BM Hunter as Rogue+Frost Mage or Healer+Frost Mage, you should deserve to win as the Frost Mage team and not be screwed by the only mechanic they have to get a lucky win, deep into dampening: Alter Time.

    Frostfire:

    Notes to Activision Blizzard: I do not really want to talk Frostfire because it feels like they will never make it the non-cleaving spec. They want to keep it true with the 0/20/31 elemental spec from vanilla. If you want to talk Frostfire, it needs some non-cleaving passives. The main Frostfire Mastery should add haste and verse or even primary stat as a passive. Currently it is a rolling haste and mastery buff. The haste part effects your cast timers, making perfect Re-CC difficult. I also don't really want to talk about the spec itself; I have major Frostfire disdain. Please get rid of all the red/orange spells as Frostfire, and I might be more willing to play it. I am not a fan of seeing orange and red on my screen as a Frost Mage. It's really gross and quite disgusting, actually.

    General:

    Notes to Acivision Blizzard: Not a mage-specific change, but the Nerubian Embelishment should give mainstat of x amount and not secondary stat. With the 6% haste from Frostfire mastery, 2% from Nerubian Embelishments, and Time Anomaly procs, you create an environment that is very hard to produce perfect Re-CC timers with without watching or tracking the procs when you get them. We can only dream Activision Blizzard is smart enough to take some of these suggestions.

    Thanks for reading,
    -Frostyownz

    PS: If there was only 1 spell you were to change out of all of these suggestions, it would have to be the “Controlling Technics” change/recommendation. It is a far cry from help too; the game suffers from so much more, especially when playing with other classes. But it helps for at least some classes to balance it out and have others we can play with.

    Currently, every player with 2000 CR or less cleaves in 2v2. Unless you are playing with 2200 to Gladiator-rated players, you will be facing a nightmare as a control class. It was 100% better for us in Dragon Flight than it is now. I really hope that changes, and if not, I do not think I will be getting much 2v2 play from this expansion. Despite paying for it every month just to log in and test some theory crafting builds and ideas I have. It’s really a bummer what they have done to WoW PvP this expansion, especially rated 2v2.

6

I corrected typos. Man, I think someone else edited my post because some of the stuff in there did not sound like me at all. Which was super strange. I said ‘which could open up a Cold Front play style’, and I checked a week later, and it says ‘could open up a Subzero playstyle’, which made absolutely no sense and is very strange!

It sounded like a person was purposely sabotaging my post! That could explain why they do not listen to my advice if someone on the inside is editing posts in the off hours and I am too lazy to go back and proof it? Wow.

There were also other parts edited that did not sound like me; I will check the edits later, but I doubt they would be logged, it did not sound like a mage posted it all or even had any knowledge about the game. Super weird. Like what? Lol.

7

I also want to add that about 1 in 25 games, I will find a script abuser who instantly kicks Ray of Frost or Feign Death’s it. So, if they are not going to combat scripters, then Ray of Frost is another ability that needs to go and be pruned from the game.

8

Which sucks because I submitted the feedback to blizzard when I cancelled my subscription and now they are going to think I am an idiot.

It is weird because I usually don’t login at EU times…. But happened to that day and my post was all different than I originally posted… think they got a mouse in the house to keep the game imbalanced and if they do, they need to start paying R1s $100-$500/hr once a week to consult with them to get it balanced and stop reading the forums and using them as official “feedback”. Looks like a bunch of uneducated players here, without doubt, especially when our posts are being edited…. Whether or not someone in my house did that or there is a trojan on my computer is another question or they can make edits internally without showing the edits! Sheesh! It’s maddening!

I don’t have time to proof 5000 words of feedback I’ve already proofed several times just to login and see that it’s all been changed when I wasn’t even there!

100% a competing game company on the inside doing this to kill the game and leave it perma imbalanced.

9

I also want to point out that Yolo blocking at 2400 MMR, at least for me, does not exist anymore like it used to in DF 11.0. Well, maybe it does if you play Frostfire, idk?

All I know is they removed the Choker of Shielding (which I played in s3/s4 in 2s with rDruid) and other embelishments from DF, but the base game is still close to the same as it was in DF. Our Frostbolt also used to scale 12 damage to 1 intellect with 5x slick Ice and 15x Death’s Chill during Icy Veins. Now it scales 6 damage to 1 intellect in TWW. The scaling is so bad that if you did not have the 200k damage proc from the intellect weapon enchant, the verse proc weapon enchant actually adds more damage to Frostbolt than intellect. Who woulda thought? Can we get back our old DF balacing team, please? It feels like there are some savages editing posts or purposely making the game bad, and I hate it! Or they let go of their top-paid talent?

It was likely even higher than 6 Frostbolt damage to 1 intellect in DF before 11.0 with just 5x Slick Ice. Now Frostbolt does less than 6 damage per 1 intellect with 5x Slick Ice. So Death’s Chill Spellslinger Frostbolt spec is pretty worthless in 2s because 1 player is almost always CC’d in 2s. Fractured Frost does not break CC, and it should never break CC. So that is working as intended, but Frostfire needing 3 extra binds just for cancelaura macros and Spellslinger not being viable does not seem to be working as intended to me!

I actually can’t make sense of this expansion at all. It makes no logical sense for a “competitive PvP environment” unless you are a BM hunter or a class that loves to cleave/mongo everyone. Which I simply cannot support, ever. I do not even support Frostfire right now. It’s gross. I’m stuck on theory crafting to find something that works. Nothing will though, not when every class in the game pretty much cleaves, spams instants, and the numerous other Spellslinger and Frostfire issues described in my posts above. TWW is worse than CATA was atm.

10

I agree, fractured frost could be merged with other spells! You know why? The main reason is Frostbolts slung from Fractured Frost never breaks CC! So it is inherent that any spells that come from Fractured Frost would also not break CC.

This is a better solution than making Ice Nova and Mass Poly a choice node. However, I am out of binds to even have Ring of Frost or accommodate for the DB+Ring playstyle. They really need to reduce buttons. Between all the specs and versions of Frost—from snow drift to ring of fire to other specs of mage—I am out of buttons without changing my mouse! And I hate the other mouse that has extra buttons. It’s not good for precise mouse movement and control of the game because its not an FPS/MMO/Moba mouse but more of a graphic design mouse with 2 scroll wheels (MX Master 3s). Somehow we need to bring back deadzones and other min maxing that we see with Classic with fewer binds and the ability to bind the S key to dead zone and max range cone of colds+novas. We just do not get that in current meta and are forced to use graphic design mice to compensate for the keybind problems and/or unbind S and use it for our abilities instead.

Correct, and you have to be in melee range to DB+Ring, and I much prefer the 45 yards on displace from spellslinger and just damp than moving in for a DB+Ring. DB+Ring is a flawed playstyle imho.

I can see your point in PvE too with Orb. Heh.

Correct.

We can also swap the positions of Freezing Rain and Slick Ice. If we are taking Frostbolt complimenting talents, then why do we have an Orb talent to open up those talents? I think I described this in my Beta feedback iirc.

I would really hate the Snowdrift+Ice Form+Comet+Ray playstyle; this would open up, so it would have to be tuned properly so that Frostbolt is on par with the damage Ice Form+Comet+Ray would do.

I am for making it back to 33 seconds like it was, but making it give 3x as many stacks to Death’s Chill and keeping Death’s Chill and Ice Form Frostbolt coupling only. I am in love with Frostbolt builds and have played them since Jan 2006. Though I don’t know what to do about the dispel, having Ice Form dispelable would force mages to play Frostfire even more, as if they do not play it enough already. It has great dispel protection with double barrier, but I hate the spec with a passion; it has too many negatives about it for competitive PvP at the highest levels, such as cleave breaks, dynamic cast timers, and the right number of flurry procs compared to Spellslinger (which gets none). No way should we be forced to pick a meta Hero talent that completely ruins certain ‘control’ play styles. I have been out of commission. this whole damn expansion and will be until we get extreme changes to the Hero talents. Hero talents are giving me borrowed-powered vibes on a much more extreme level!

Alter sometimes bugs out when you /afk arena and you have to relog.
There are some other spells like this too, but I forget which.
I think Orb has a bug like this and having it macro’d, then unspeccing concentrated coolness, but I forget how it operates. I macro’d /cast [@cursor] Frozen Orb, and it does not seem to reproduce the bug anymore.

Good to know, thank you. This is bad if Fireblast is not being reduced by Elemental Affinity. How did this much oversight happen? I remember in DF, sometimes Fireblast would not kill certain shaman totems like gronding after they buffed their health by 50%, so you would have Fireblast and non-proc Ice Lance both or waste a flurry on them :/.

I would say my main reason for not switching Frostfire in 11.1 is because it still cleaves worse than Spellslinger without cancelaura macros, and I love the 45-yard displacement range. I am out of keybinds to manage cancelaura Excess Frost, Excess Fire, and Frostfire Empowerment. I am super surprised; even in 11.1 the developers still are not budging on stopping things from cleaving, nor are they trying to reduce button bloat. Spellslinger pairs well with Supernova and feels so amazing for dampening in 2s double DPS but it lacks in damage. So why are they nerfing its damage? I don’t know. When it comes to getting drinks and prolonging the game, the displace range and larger barrier with a Resto Druid as a partner for dispel protection are so nice. I wish they could just merge all the trees into 1 hero tree, or let us select both hero trees in the next expansion. Spellslinger Frostfire Frost Mage, how bunk does that sound?

11

Speaking of the Water Elemental, sometimes mine spawn with no mana so Freeze doesn’t work … Why does it even have a mana bar to begin with? No one is going mana burn/drain something that lasts for like 25 secs.

12

Also adding:
Swap locations of Cryo-Freeze and Quick Witted
Swap locations of Slow and Diverted Energy - to keep continuity and mirror look.

This will allow some mages to not get Quick Witted and put another point in Winter’s Protection.

13

Testing a few things last night, and I have a lot of concerns with how new frost mage may play. Some of it is regarding the tier set, the other is Blizzard.

In regards to the tier set, it does not interact with frostbolt talents and has minimal visual. I had hoped it would interact with Deaths Chill or Cold Front for speeding up ramp, but for now it’s a very weak proc in single target, mildly better in AOE. It is a dissapointing set compared to the other Mages.

For gameplay, Blizzard is absurdly strong to the point where as SS you may cast it on CD in single target, especially if freezing winds orb damage becomes relevant. Blizzard isn’t a great looking spell, has a long cast time, and like all other ground targeted effects if stuff moves out of it you lose a lot of damage.

I understand wanting it to be less obtrusive, so I appreciate the size and duration increase, but I really think it should not be the focal point of the spec.

I also don’t like the pathing now for coldest snap. Freezing winds (unless blizzard talents are used in single target which again is bad in my opinion) is useless in most raids. Coldest snap was great for burst aoe when you didn’t need to put down a blizzard, such as Rashanan adds. Now, freezing winds is a 1 point tax to get there.

TLDR; Tier is boring and does not interact, blizzard is way too strong and may have single target uses which is not okay.

14

I agree that Frost Mage tier set is very meh - it is pretty much a random damage proc with minimal to no interactions with the tree and if it was moved to a trinket I doubt people would notice much difference. At the very least it should get more interactivity with Frost Mage tree.

Freezing Winds change seems to me not thought out too. It removes main “spammable AoE ability” for Frost in form of Fingers of Frost without providing an alternative and after you use cooldown based abilities (Comet Storm / Ice Nova / Cone of Cold reset etc) you pretty much are left with spamming Arcane Explosion (bad damage, melee range, no synergy for Frost) or non-shattered Splitting Ice Lance (bad damage, no synergies) or even single-target damage abilties like Flurry just to fill the gap with minimal damage output. The supposed compensation in form of buff to Blizzard is not good enough both because it does not compensate enough and because of issues that you mentioned like making Blizzard too strong against 1 enemy and other issues like weird duration to cooldown ratio (it now lasts 12 seconds but cooldown is still 8 that can be quite confusing for many players and require another weakaura / cooldown to track since its expiration is no longer matching the cooldown) etc. I think they should partially revert that change and instead create a choice node between old Freezing Winds and new effect that would combine bigger damage and area for Blizzard and Frozen Orb dealing additional damage to enemies in Blizzard - such way would both provide at least some diversity for Frost builds that they currently don’t have (0 choice nodes) and would provide fitting options for both people who like Freezing Winds and people who don’t.

15

After testing how frost mage felt in the PTR last night it’s really clear there are major issues right now. Spellslinger felt so clunky, having empowered Frost Lances not consume Winter’s Chill meant more often than not Winter’s Chill was falling off before I had fully consumed it due to it’s short duration, even at 40% haste, I had to either waste icicles burning through my empowered lances to consume it with unempowered lances, waste Winter’s Chill stacks letting them fall off by continuing a normal rotation, or overcap further on Fingers of Frost by using Frostbolt/Glacial spike to consume Winter’s Chill, and this all is assuming that I got no Frozen Orb resets, which then also incentivizes casting Blizzard, spending an additional 2 GCDs.

Frost as a spec is about resource management, avoiding overcapping on Icicles, Fingers of Frost, and Brain Freezes, while making sure you still have enough charges of Flurry to not have your rotation stall out and end up spamming Frostbolt, so being pretty much forced to waste resources feels so bad.

The empowered Frost Lance changes also makes tracking Winter’s Chill much more tedious during a fight, if I’m setting up my Shatter combo and either Glacial Spike or Frostbolt proc an unexpected Fingers of Frost that dosn’t consume a Winter’s Chill then I go into my next Shatter combo, Flurry will be hitting the enemy and reapplying Winter’s Chill before fully consuming the prior Winter’s Chill stacks, before those changes, I could reliably keep track of my stacks and know when I need to cast flurry again without needing to pay additional attention to exactly how many procs I got over the duration of the combo, which allowed me to better plan the alignment of things like Comet Storm, Glacial Spike, and Ray of Frost without wasting resources, while that feels way less reliable now. The entire flow of the rotation feels interrupted. I really hope these changes don’t go through

16

I also have concerns over tracking winters chill. Although I appreciate them trying to not munch fingers of frost, I worry that now we’ll only cast flurry for GS to ensure the shatter. Since FoF IL now also generate splinters I think flurry is now very far down on the priority which feels bad as frost, and timing out winters chill feels pretty bad.

The solution would be to make winters chill duration longer (preferably indefinite) but that may also lead to degenerate gameplay as well.

17

Another note:

Please make sure Frostfire Empowerment (80% Burst), Shifting Power, Excess Frost (200% Ice Nova), Excess Fire (156.25% of Spellpower Frostfire Burst), and Glacial Assault do not break Polymorph with the Polymorph breaks on damage threshold changes. You also need to make sure they do not break when chained—i.e., Frostfire Empowerment into a Flurry, which Procs 200% Ice Nova and Frostfire Empowerment (80% cleave) at the same time. Though doing this would require basically making Polymorph a stun, which it should not be. As I believe players should still be able to purposely stand in orb. Just not punish the mage player for not having enough keybindings to cancel cleaving auras, that did not exist in DF. Considering looking at my Spellslinger ‘Controlled Technics’ suggestion for an easy solution, this also would boost representation of Spellslinger in 2s. Though Spellslinger still needs dispel protection and possibly +damage, unless Orb+blizzard build becomes more viable than Frostfire in 11.1 which I suspect it won’t, as Spellslinger has no dispel protection and Frost Mastery already increases Orb, Comet, etc damage by about 9% at max stacks. You also are nerfing splinter damage, which I do not understand at the moment in PvP as I have not tested Spellslinger Orb+Blizzard build on the PTR 11.1.

What really needs to be done in PvP is buff Frostfire Bolt damage by 5-10% and remove all cleaving from the tree. Just for the cleaving part. You also need to remove + ‘Haste’ and + ‘Mastery’ from Frostfire Mastery, stacking Frost Mastery and Fire Mastery. I have said this before: ‘Mastery’ is a terrible fix for lack of damage in PvP and a terrible stat to showcase Frost Mage skill level. Also, dynamic haste values from talents or passives like ‘Time Anomaly’ and ‘Frostfire Mastery’ make perfect Re-CC at the highest levels horribly complicated to execute. Perfect Re-CC is absolutely necessary at the highest levels of 2v2 PvP. It is one reason I main’d void elf in all of DF in 2s, no spell pushback. Just experimenting with races and build theorycrafting these days, as 2v2 rogue+mage or healer+mage has been completely unmanagable or enjoyable this entire expansion.

Consider consulting with your R1 counterparts before making changes. We have Vultz, Pmakewow, Venurki, Aeghis, and Xaryu, etc. You need to consult at least 5 for each spec, as some of them have different opinions. All you have to do is message them on stream or send a DM. Many of them are not keybind-capped because they do not play Spellslinger with Supernova123 and Ice Nova123 like I do. Though I suspect they would play Spellslinger in 2s, if it was viable for Frost. The Supernova 123 and Ice Nova 123 are a personal preference with the “Look Again” talent for dampening. I am not a rank 1 player; I prefer to spend a whole expansion theory crafting before I settle on my talents and try to push rating. Which sucks for me because I did not finess my playstyle until the last week of the expansion, then you guys released the expansion and fixed everything, though I did push 2400 MMR in 2s and would have pushed R1 2s. If I could have gotten more games in.

Consider making Look Again 60+ yards and not 50 yards, or at least let us choose which shimmer we are displacing back from. Sometimes I will double shimmer and want to displacement back to my original shimmer, not the 2nd shimmer. I already bind 2 shimmers, 1 for spamming that will only trigger once and 1 for regular shimmer that I can rapidly press to shimmer twice. You could easily do a /cast shimmer[tether:displacement] macro that way its tethered to that macro that tethers the shimmer spell. If no [tether:displacement] is made, then shimmer will function normally. That way we can tether a shimmer further away and displacement back for better drinks. More skill in this than having to bind/cancelura Excess Frost macros—something that should already be done inheritedly through polymorph intelligence in the first place.

Shifting Power’s and Glacial Assault’s damage are worthless in PvP, and sometimes you just cannot use Shifting Power when players are stacked. It is really rough. I would be okay with a compromise, like if all the ticks do not break poly but the last tick of Shifting Power, though I think it needs to be all the ticks of Shifting Power and Glacial Assault both not breaking Polymorph.

TLDR: Spellslinger needs 2v2 tuning; possibly +damage and dispel protection tuning. Also, many abilities will still be worthless in PvP even with the breaks on small amounts of damage threshold because 1 Polymorph break in 2s at high CR will cost you the game nearly every time for control comps like Sub Rogue+Frost Mage.

18
  • Developers’ notes: Our updates for Frostfire Mage are focused on reducing the incentive to track auras and to make the talents more connected and conducive with each other.

I also want to reiterate that in PvP tracking Excess Frost, Exccess Fire and Frostfire Empowerment was never the problem. It was about not having enough keybindings to have /cancelauras for Excess Frost, Excess Fire, and Frostfire Empowerment so that they do not cleave polymorphs when the players are stacked.

Why are we nerfing Spellslinger Shard damage when Spellslinger is literally 1% of representation in 2s and its the only option that does not cleave much. There is no need for /cancelaura macros as Spellslinger. It’s gross ‘Activision’ Blizzard. Wake up, your game is not a button-mashing arcade game, which you have been so accustomed to making for the last 46 years.

I am binding capped at over 100 keybinds. Please fix this so I can play other variations of Frost. It’s disgsuting.

Regards,
Frostyownz

19

I realized this might hurt PvE, and I do not even do PvE. So I am not sure what you can do without drawing more connecting lines?

I just do not like that ‘Chain Reaction’ is locked behind ‘Subzero’ and ‘Splintering Cold’. The only solution I can think of, which I think someone else suggested, is merging ‘Splitting Ice’ and ‘Fractured Frost’ and then putting ‘Chain Reaction’ where ‘Splitting Ice’ was. While maintaining that ‘Fractured Frost’ does not break CC. But then you would have an empty space where ‘Chain Reaction’ was. I don’t know how you guys got yourselves into this mess. Lol.

20

Feedback about latest changes on PTR:

  • Reducing Wintertide to 1 point cost and moving it to a more optional position is a good change.
  • Longer duration for Winter’s Chill is a good change too and would help to use all shatters needed for it (including long cast time Glacial Spike and Ray of Frost) more reliably.
  • Change to generation of Fingers of Frost from Frozen Orb is odd. So you have read that removal of Freezing Winds greatly increases the risk of Frost Mages not having anything worthwhile to press in AoE situation after using cooldown based abilities like Comet Storm and Ice Nova and Coldest Snap reset and be required to use either Arcane Explosion (bad and no synergy with Frost) or non-shattered Splitting Ice Lance (very weak) or even single-target abilities (wrong) as fillers between cooldown based abilities / Blizzard / Frozen Orb and your decision was… to nerf Fingers of Frost generation even more making this situation worse? Please address this issue and buff generation of Fingers of Frost back (even if you wanted to reduce it you went way overboard). Or even better - make old Freezing Winds a choice node with current Freezing Winds with some power increase to Ice Lance attached and let players pick between number of procs and bigger power of Ice Lance, so that each player can pick the option that is more fitting for them. Cryopathy also should be addressed - its 10 stacks requirement with so scarce Fingers of Frost generation is too much and should be reduced to 5 (with full current value, simply with lower number of stacks needed for it to provide more reliable stacking).
  • Blizzard change is odd as well. With the nerf it does less dps than 11.0.7 Blizzard and enemies often would not stay in it even for 8 seconds let alone 12, so as a result you overnerfed it too. Please at least reduce its duration back to 8 seconds, so that dps from it is higher, does not require enemies to stay within its area for longer and its duration would again align with cooldown.
  • Now that you reduced number of Ice Lance procs Ice Nova requiring to sacrifice Ring of Frost is even more not justified - since you now need to use more freeze shatters to activate Ice Lance frozen conditions in AoE situations necessity to sacrifice important utility spell Ring of Frost for one of them is even more unfair. Please make Ring of Frost a choice node with Mass Polymorph instead - that would address this issue without increasing number of CC abilities available to Mages simultaneously and via providing a choice node between two AoE long duration crowd control abilties that can break on damage, share diminishing returns and have different pros and cons, so would also make much more sense.
  • Splintering Ray is still very undertuned and needs a buff.