Going to comment on PvP, we feel the same, well, at least we should, but many of us have become ok with the fact that blizzard is allowing/forcing us to play Mastery when every single PvP’er who has ever played Frost Mage knows that skillcap scales linearly with haste, not mastery. Oh well. You can stack mastery and spam Ice Lances like you could in Cata to obtain high cr, but it won’t show much correlation to skill, which is exactly what mastery does to Frost Mage. Mastery kills the haste to skill, linear skill-curve.
But yeah, Mastery is dead, or should be, and we should not force it in game modes like PvP. Selecting Glacial Spike now instead of Frostbolt build because we hate instant casting Ice Lances is going to force us to play Frostfire Frost even more. I love the piss out of the “Look again” Displacement range in 2v2, and Frostfire does not get that. We should not be killing Spellslinger Frostbolt; its already a subpar spec in 2s.
Big Sigh. Big Mad. I am not 100% against killing Frostbolt build in favor of Glacial Spike, though its going to suck in 2s, because Frostbolt build does not require us to get precog as much as Glacial Spike would. Which is going to nerf the survivability for us dampeners by a lot. Against DK, Warlock, DH, and other specs that have multiple cast stops, precog is nice. Many times as Rogue + Frost Mage in 2v2, precog is not even worth it because both players, or at least the players with cast stops on the other team, are always CC’d.
Not sure what to think about this. Not a complete fan of killing Frostbolt damage by 10%; really would like to see a damage buff to Frostbolt in PvP, especially for the Spellslinger variation, not the other way around, i.e., a Frostbolt nerf and Glacial Spike buff. I would prefer to play spellslinger in PvP, not Frostfire. “Look again” is too strong, and forcing orange, red, and yellow animations as a Frost mage feels super hacky.
However, to do this, we need to increase Spellslinger dispel protection and single target output and stop forcing cleaving variations with Frozen Orb procs, etc. Hard thing to balance. Not sure what these developers will do. Because of the positions of talents in the new Frost Mage tree in 11.1, having freedom to spec becomes very difficult. You need to allocate a certain amount to certain abilities just to get to the next tier, so it will become a thing of only having 1 build that works. Which I am okay with, as long as it’s not Glacial Spike for the most part, or if it is Glacial Spike, at least have a dampening version of it. They need to give everyone 1 build per spec that fits all in PvP and not allow us to change talents, in my honest opinion, but that is for another discussion really. That way its more balanced and organized at the highest levels of AWC. Though playing Glacial Spike 100% forces playing Frostfire(+mastery), big sadge. Which is already the case in most games.
I would like to see some Spellslinger or pure Frostbolt buffs like dispel protection for Spellslinger and single target damage buff to Spellslinger Frost, so it is the goto spec in 2v2, but now with DKs having perma double grip on cooldown and many other classes having increased ability to gap close and stop hardcasting, it makes it very hard for Frostbolt or Glacial Spike variations to work. Unless Glacial Spike takes out 66-75% of their health on a crit and Frosbolt 45% without significant ramp up, like they were in Mop and Wrath, respectively. At least do it against those classes that have multiple Frostbolt/Glacial Spike stops. I doubt we will receive any of the changes I am requesting, as they are already nerfing Splinters by 10% on PTR. Oh well.
Like I said, that will also be hard because of the way the tree is positioned now and how you have to spend talents to get to other tiers. It is kind of icky at the moment.
Forcing Frostfire as Frost still does not fix the need to have /cancelaura Excess Frost, /cancelaura Excess Fire, and /cancelaura Frostfire Empowerment macros. I fear I will never be able to play AWC control style in 2s this expansion. I am bind-capped and we desperately need a button debloat. I am not going to suffer through 2000 games changing my binds to play this game, like many Rank 1s already have to make room for cancelaura binds. Luckily for many rank 1s, they picked up the game when it already had 100s of binds, so they did a setup that allowed them to have ample room for more spells. Playing since classic, I have no room for new binds without changing what I am accustomed to. I think the game is in End of Life at this point. Usually, I am at 1500 games played and in the top 5 ladder as Frost Mage this deep into the season because I play with everybody. Since TWW, I can’t even play properly without typing /afk. It is very sad what they have done and are doing. I think these developers have absolutely no concept of PvP and how their changes relate to the different game modes (2s, BGs, 3s, SS, etc.).