These Frost Mage changes look awful. Their single target damage is being absolutely gutted. Changing Frozen Winds is a terrible decision, by removing that option to generate Fingers of Frost, it pushes a reliance on Frostbolt to generate procs which is already the worst feeling part of Frost’s kit, Coldest Snap is also locked behind Frozen Winds so we are pretty much going to be forced to take it in Mythic+. You’re taking away a talent that adds new and interesting functionality to the kit, and instead giving a lackluster damage boost that is only applicable in AoE scenarios, on the second to last row of talents especially, that feels incredibly lackluster. The changes to Fingers of Frost generating a splinter just dosn’t sound impactful, it just slows down our whole rotation making us end up spamming 4 Ice Lances to get through 2 Fingers of Frosts and 2 Winter’s Chills before going back to spamming Frostbolt to generate procs again which dosn’t feel good especially compared to cycling through our abilities to generate them as we currently do, plus, considering how short the duration on Winter’s Chill is, when using things like Ray of Frost, we are going to have to start consuming Winter’s Chill stacks with Frostbolt to prevent them from falling off, which also feels awful. You’re taking a talent that currently has both single target and AoE usage, and ruining any single target viability, making it less incentivizing to cast Frozen Orb, and less interesting when it’s cooldown refreshes. The buffs to Blizzard aren’t useful either, we aren’t lacking in AoE damage and casting Blizzard is not, and will not be a “compelling option” because it lacks any interaction with our hero talents. Doubling it’s damage doesn’t do much considering how low it is currently, the best purpose it serves is lowering Frozen Orb’s cooldown, and it serves no purpose in single target whatsoever. Lowering the number of splinters Frozen Orb generates I can understand, but means that we will see even less Frozen Orb resets, which ends up lowering our rotations momentum a lot by reducing the total number of shatterstorms, we get and thus Brain Freeze procs, and also reduces our access to Fingers of Frost, which is supposed to make up for those lost splinters. Not to mentioned on top of all of that, all splinter related damage is nerfed by 10%.
The dev note claims the Freezing Wind changes were because it was “impacting our ability to increase access to Frozen Orb or put more power into Fingers of Frost.” So they decided to nerf access to Frozen Orb by reducing the splinters it generates, and also reduce access to Fingers of Frost, to instead making frost more reliant on spamming Frostbolt fishing for procs, which is the worst feeling part of their kit.
All that is on top of a Tier Set bonus that is awful, both other Mage specs get damage bonuses, Arcane getting a 8% damage bonus for 12 seconds guaranteed every 45 seconds, with random procs granting both the damage buff, and their most important procs for their rotation, while fire gets their Combustion, their big 2 minute cooldown, reduced by 3 seconds every proc, plus a 15% damage bonus for 7 seconds, which is doubled to a 30% damage bonus for 14 seconds when casting Combustion. Meanwhile Frost shoots a Frostbolt Volley at their target, and “up to 8 additional targets” so in single target they shoot one extra Frostbolt? And thats it? Seriously? Their lowest damage spell aside from Blizzard? Beyond that, if that random Frostbolt Volley can consume Winter’s Chill stacks, it is going to screw up the ability to set up properly and align with things like Comet Storm for their actual hard hitting spells like Ray of Frost and Glacial Spike.
I seriously hope these changes do not go through, they ruin the playstyle of Frost Mage and ruin what makes it fun.