Icicles is such a cool idea but its useless, there is no point to generate them and spend them, they are now just a passive thing nobody cares about.
They’ve really always been a passive thing no one cares about since their implementation late mop except for BFA when glacial spike was the strongest build and even then they weren’t something you’d do more than count to five and spend em.
They should be moved being some passive and Frost mage mastery should return to bonus damage to frozen targets. Frost has ways to freeze targets in pve now and everyone’s damage is high enough that frost hitting harder won’t be an issue.
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icicle is irrelevant until it accidentally breaks a cc…
I think icicles and splitting ice should be more intelligent so that they don’t target cc’ed targets, but instead add the damage to the correct target.
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icicles shouldn’t target the non agro’d mobs that are out of agro range of the tank but close enough for splitting ice to go “oh look i can hit that guy too!”
This would be so lazy and bad.
I see it happening in the near future.
Just change mastery back to increased damage against frozen targets, blizzard and Orb. Then we might actually equip items with it on. So glad I have 0 mastery.
It would be in line with the rest of masteries as far as complexity goes and, unlike icicles which makes mastery a stat that is useful in exactly one scenario, it would make mastery a useful stat.
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I have spoken.
Blizzard despises complexity and has opted for less fun, dumbed down mechanics for roughly a decade. If Shadowlands breaks from the prior expansions trend, great. But you are regrettably 100% correct.
The one key difference is most other masteries come with an upkeep tax for a passive damage bonus across the board. It would be more like “Shattering a spell applies Bone Chilling, which increases Frost damage to the target by X%” as far as effect and complexity. But then we get to complain the same that “We effectively can’t Shatter multi-target!” (All while one guy goes on a tangent about Cone of Cold into Frozen Orb sims possibly performing okayish) … and the cycle continues. At least we’re engaging! Right?
From a perspective a bit further back, “The Moment” for Frost is in the Shatter. That damage should already be big BASELINE. Amplifying that via additional variable statistics is discouraged. Instead, the moment should be translated to the building action.
In more concrete terms, Frostbolts make your Ice Lance presses more forceful from the Icicle spam. Instead, Ice Lance should make your next n Frostbolts or Flurry bolts gain p% damage. Also, it can increase the proc rate of Brain Freeze slightly (e.g. Enhancement Shaman mastery).
This creates a second burst window in the kit and normalizes damage (and if you’re playing for burst–ie PvP–you would stack Haste and Vers anyways for more and bigger procs, thank to the natural high crit from Shatter). If your burst is too high from crit, mastery, and vers all amplifying your “moment”, your class is nerfed into obsolescence for PvE.
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For clarity, this would be a fixed gain from the Ice Lance damage. So in this example–sample–15% of the Ice Lance would give +1500 icicles following behind the next 2 Frostbolts or Flurry bolts (stacking up to 2 times, or a total of 4 uses).
If there is a concern regarding limitation on AoE, it can also be a simple adjustment to have Blizzard and Frozen Orb pulses also apply the damage, fracturing the Icicle into splinters, and evenly dividing damage by number of targets hit.
This would be a much more interesting but more subtle change, and adds some curious burst and setup options to the Frost kit outside of spamming Ice Lance.
My random frost idea for icicles is each time you generate all 5 icicles they automatically combine into a glacial spike and it sits there floating over your head. You can fling the glacial spike any time you use a brain freeze proc.
Another idea I had was making the splitting ice effect baseline for your icicles, and have them able to chain/split uncapped.
I second this idea. This is actually good. Gives you a way to build up burst that requires effort and is not instantly granted but usable on demand to help burst down a target like mages are suppose to do. Good idea.
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That extra damage on Icelance for the 5 I have stored sure is “useless”.
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it is tho it litteraly does not damage, it should just be a passive if you think its ok if its a mastery it should be way more, or just make the mastery make so that you hit harder vs frozen targets.