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:
- 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).
- 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.
- 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.
- 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).
- 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:
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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!