1- Glacial Spike
This will currently be a dead talent just due to a lack of support. The icicles talents are useful for it, but they also heavily empower icy propulsion as a playstyle because icicles proc icy propulsion. There is no second capstone that you can take that works well with Glacial Spike, the most viable one Thermal Void is a much weaker version of itself because you are forced into taking Icy Propulsion which will have little effect with Glacial Spike.
2 - Icy Veins Capstones
The capstones below Icy Veins funnel the icy propulsion playstyle and do not allow another choice. I’d like to rectify that by changing their function. This would involve removing Snap Freeze altogether (very weak talent) and rolling Improved Icy Veins and Thermal Void into baseline Icy Veins. Lets be real, Icy Veins isnt a cooldown without Thermal Void. To add new capstones, we will make Icy Propulsion one capstone, keep the Slick Ice choice node, and add a new talent that replaces Icy Veins. We’ll call it Ice form. Ice Form: Replaces Icy Veins but halves the duration, cooldown, and haste gained from the spell. Icy Propulsion does not affect this ability. During Ice Form you generate X icicles a second (or frostbolt generates additional icicles).
The purpose of this is to give Glacial Spike a viable secondary capstone as well as an alternative playstyle to Icy Propulsion by not making it a mandatory talent.
3 - Icy Propulsion
Make it effected by aoe spells once again and give Icy Veins an icd on dropping a rune of power of 30s. Or you can just change rune of power back to a 2 charge system and just have our main cooldown automatically drop a rune of power. Either would solve the reason why this is nerfed without actually hurting the gameplay playstyle. Having to play around Icy Propulsion in aoe allows for shatter to be a very important mechanic as well as increases the fluidity of the busy rotation.
4 -Ice lance and frostbolt being superbuffed by passive talents
On our current talent tree Ice Lance is passively buffed by 105%. And frostbolt by 40%. Approaching the spec in this way prevents choices in the single target rotation and makes any additional abilities we take much weaker comparatively. Comet storm and ray of frost can not hold a candle to the sustained damage of slick ice frostbolts and spamming ice lances.
This causes a major problem in particular with Arctic Piercing which has anti-synergy with Glacial Spike but is near required to take it as you need Bone Chilling (one of 2 talents that buffs Glacial Spikes damage). With only a 6s duration and Glacial Spike having a 3s cast you will be unable to keep this buff up for any significant period of time without a ridiculous amount of luck. This talent is a boring maintenance buff that you can hardly effect and just causes undue rng in dps.
5 - Ray of Frost
This is a cool looking ability that has always lacked functionality in frosts kit. The talent was dead for a reason. I’d like to expand on its functionality to make it a fun and viable option. To do this we will swap Ray of Frost and Splitting Ice’s location in the tree. There will then be 1 or 2 nodes that branch off of Ray of Frost to improve its capabilities.
Ray of Frost should baseline be included in Splitting Ice. New Node Frozen Ground- Casting Ray of Frost on a target with winter’s chill radiates the debuff to the nearest 8 enemies. (this will allow us to shatter an aoe spell, like perhaps cone of cold from snowstorm). New Node Frost Prism- if Ray of Frost hits a target inside Blizzard it will chain to up to 8 additional targets.
6- Deep Freeze
Just add it somewhere instead of a passive node that increases ice lance damage. Can be used as a single target nuke in raid, cc in m+ or pvp.
When I make builds for my shaman, pretty much every build I make plays very differently from the others and is good at different things. I want the same thing for my Mage.
Every frost mage build I’ve made has been a hodgepodge of what looks like will be the best talents with the biggest damage increases. I’m not making decisions about how I want to play my character. I’m just solving a math problem.
Frost Mages are good at a few different things, and the tree should help us lean into those things in ways that change the way we play. If I want lean into a priority/funnel damage role, the tree should support a distinct playstyle based around that. If I want to lean into 2-target cleave, that build should play differently.
Glacial Spike has its own playstyle, but it doesn’t do anything unique that frostbolt/IL spam can’t do. Again, it’s just a math problem. If Glacial Spike is mathematically better, it will be played. If it’s not, it won’t be. Fix this by giving it a specific role to fill that a boilerplate FB/IL build can’t.
Give Glacial Spike supporting talents that make it amazing at funneling. It works thematically, and it ensures GS always has a place even when it’s not the best raw single target dps.
Something along these lines as a talent following Glacial Spike:
Each time Blizzard deals damage, there’s an X% chance to grant an icicle.
Each time Blizzard deals damage, there’s an X% chance to make the next Glacial Spike consume no icicles and deal damage as if you have 5 icicles.
I would kill to bring a glacial spike funnel build into a fortified HOA and obliterate those shards while my warlock and hunter pad overall, and go into key that follows it with a completely different build with a different playstyle and strengths. As it stands, I would use the same build for both. It feels like a missed opportunity.
They should add ray of frost as a talent to upgrage the elemental. Like it uses it when we use icy viens or something. Let it up its dps enough to be worth taking.
On that note, removing the requirement that [Icy Veins] must be active for it to function would also go a long way to make this talent not feel bad. It’d still have its issues with uptime, but it wouldn’t ultra punish the player.
They could then maintain the ST restriction and it would be ok.
On that note, removing the requirement that [Icy Veins] must be active for it to function would also go a long way to make this talent not feel bad. It’d still have its issues with uptime, but it wouldn’t ultra punish the player.
They could then maintain the ST restriction and it would be ok.
I’d personally like to just remove it entirely. Being balanced around 100% uptime is terrible.
My biggest complaint with mage in keys right now is how dependent we are on long fights and/or chainpulling.
Arcane Mages completely break if their main target dies too soon.
Frost Mages break if the Warlock blows cooldowns and you end a fight with 20 seconds left on IV.
SKB and Cold Front stacks fall off any time there’s any amount of travel time between pulls
SKB and Cold Front stacks fall off any time a pull ends too quickly
SKB and Cold Front stacks fall off any time someone needs a res
SKB and Cold Front stacks fall off any time your tank is slow
SKB and Cold Front stacks fall off any time you’re in anything below a fortified +20
SKB stacks fall off any time you get chosen by mechanics at the wrong moment
SKB stacks fall off any time you get an unforced hot streak at the wrong moment.
I was looking through some old abilities/glyphs/set bonuses/azerite traits/legendaries/etc. the other day. One of the things I noticed was a bunch of passives like Icy Propulsion that were much more limited in scope. For example, the Tier 20 Frost 4pc and Whiteout Azerite Trait lowered Frozen Orb’s cooldown with Brain Freeze and Ice Lance, respectively.
I wonder if having various smaller CDR abilities sprinkled throughout the tree could make more sense than just forcing us to take two points in IP.
If they’re too powerful, then we’d feel obligated to chase those abilities all over the tree, but if that ends up being the case, it’s more of a tuning/tree layout problem.
You are absolutely right. Glacial spike does not mesh well with the icy propulsion playstyle that seems mandatory for Frost to even remotely attempt to be competitive .
A shattered glacial spike should give 6 seconds of cdr as opposed to 1 to account for each icicle.
I do like that a glacial spike build will reward you for using fingers of frost unlike in BFA, but is flash freeze enough for glacial spike to compete? I guess we’ll see.
Ray of frost should award 5 icicles as well as well as 2 FoF and should gain benefit from splitting ice. Right now it’s a dps loss in every situation. My only thought as to why it still exists is to be a finisher in arena for players that are running out of line of sight.
Also seems a bit concerning that you have to spend 10 points to maximize the usage of icy veins. One skill needing that big of an investment is a bit wild.
Ray of frost is a move that is way too binary. It needs to be scrapped or immensely redesigned. If its damage is buffed into relevance then it is mandatory. Otherwise it is worthless.
I’d rather it just be scrapped. Replace it with frostfire bolt and a talent afterwards that causes chill effects to have a chance to make ffb instant, just like the old way FFB and bf worked.
I’m still unsure of the best path forward for changing Icy Propulsion though. I do believe either way it must work at all times and not just while IV is active. Currently it’s just far too punishing in downtime when it requires IV to be active and causes balancing issues where near permanent uptime is required to remain competitive which leads to Frost feeling awful to play when IV is not up.
I feel with the increased Icicles generation talents and how Icicles contribute towards IP, that this will push Icicles talents and TV to become essentially a mandatory capstone in all circumstances. This isn’t great design to provide flexibility in how the spec plays. I would like to see Icy Propulsion only affect Frostbolt, IL, Flurry, and GS - with increased reduction for GS given the longer cast time.
If a spec’s major cd needs to be up near 100% of the time for the spec to remain moderately competitive, then it’s not achieving what a cd is meant to achieve. Players should press their major cd and feel good that they’re going to do more dps; not be in a constant state of stress of losing the uptime due to the knowledge they’ll suck without it active.
Couldnt agree more. The playstyle in legion was fun because it took a bit of cheese to get there and was unintended. Now frost is balanced around it being up at all times… its awful.
My suggestion is to remove all cdr and give IV a 15% dmg buff like deathborne currently gives or just merge deathborne/IV together w/o the cast time.
I am glad I am not the only one who is disappointed by lack of new ideas. Breaking down the functions of flurry and icy veins into multiple talent points is an awful idea. By the way, can someone with access to the mage feedback thread in alpha forum repost the content there please? So many good ideas are spread around that I am worried that devs won’t be able to see any of it because it is not in the “right” place.
Clearly, this tree only takes away power we used to have and offers nothing in return. This tree also, still, only has us go one direction which is into IV.
Glacial Spike and Ray of Frost have absolutely no playtime, because nothing contributes to their power in any way whatsoever, and they’re mathematically the worst choices you could make over IV.
A good way to combat this, is to have IV on the complete left, and Glacial Spike on the complete right. Once you’re done with the top 8 points, it’ll section off into whether you’re going to be buffing your Ice Lances for IV (left side), or having your Icicles be used in a different method and saved for your Glacial Spike, (right side). This finally gives two completely different styles of gameplay. Ray of Frost can be toward the middle, if you were to mesh both left and right. Although, this talent should just be deleted.
Something like this. Have the goalposts on opposite sides, and have the spells actually make sense and contribute towards the capstones they’re attached to. Shouldn’t be this difficult, but somehow Blizzard believes this was a version we’d love to see, and I fail to figure out how and why this tree even made it out of circulation.
I’m seeing a lot of people complaining over Ray of Frost. It’s really just a tuning issue. If they boosted the damage significantly (in PvE) and say made it accumulate Icicles, or made it such that you can cast Ice Lance while channeling, it could be fine.
If there is one elephant in the room it’s not Ray of Frost, it’s the Lonely Winter vs Water Elemental node. Who in their right mind would pick Water Elemental over 25% dmg increase to Ice Lance and Frostbolt? Not me.
