Deep Freeze, skill expression, and comp variety

Classes Mage
1

With a new expansion on the horizon, I’d like to once again discuss Deep Freeze in hopes of it being considered to return.

Deep Freeze was an incredible tool in the Frost Mage kit with a high level of skill expression. The playmaking potential it gave the Mage enabled variety in gameplay, variety in available comps, and a level of lethality on par with most other specs. The absence of Deep Freeze, as well as the spec’s general design, have been problematic in PvP for years.

Since the Legion rework, and prior to Dragonflight, Frost has had a number of issues which limits the viability of the spec in PvP:

  • Most of its aggressive CC - Deep Freeze, Improved Counterspell, Frostjaw - was removed, leaving roots, snares, and Polymorph. Instead, the spec was given more roots and snares, despite being already being strong in these categories.
  • Having no stuns removes much of the lethality of the spec, as stuns are most of what leads to kills in PvP.
  • It wasn’t capable of significant burst damage outside of Glacial Spike, and instead did its damage over a longer period of time relative to most other specs.
  • Dealing similar amounts of damage to other specs required a significant amount of casting.

These are all not things you want to see from a spec in modern PvP. While it was certainly good at points during this time period, it was typically only good in specific scenarios.

In Dragonflight, additional tools were given to the spec which have a positive impact on its skill expression, most notably:

  • Dragon’s Breath
  • Blast Wave
  • Displacement
  • Greater Invisibility

Frost also had some of its damage-dealing issues alleviated:

  • It can deal significant on-demand burst with Ray of Frost.
  • A large amount of damage can be dealt without casting.

While these changes have alleviated some of the issues Frost has faced since its Legion rework, other issues still remain. The overall design of the spec forces the it to play almost exclusively passively, as aggressive action would typically lead to less progress towards a win than simply remaining passive. It seems the new tools given to us in Dragonflight have enabled some aggressive comps to make a comeback (I have seen Frost/Feral and Frost/Rogue played with success high on the ladder), but these more aggressive comps still have a reliance on the Mage’s partner to set most things up for them. Additionally, these new tools are available to all specs. That is, the strength of these comps have less to do with what Frost brings and more to do with what Mage brings.

With that said, the comp Frost almost always plays to success is Mage/Warlock, where its anti-movement control and damage profile pair very well with a Warlock who’s also playing non-aggressively. Unfortunately, this is typically the best (and sometimes only) comp Frost has access to with any amount of viability. Again, the Dragonflight changes have helped, but there’s still little reason to play Frost in Mage comps instead of whatever the best Mage spec is at the time.

Frost’s lack of self-contained offensive utility leads to less options in regular gameplay, which leads to less comp variety, which inevitably makes the spec less interesting and less fun than it otherwise could be in PvP.

Realistically, Frost will not receive any sort of rework on behalf of PvP, and it’s certainly not reasonable to expect one. However, re-introducing Deep Freeze on its own, a staple ability of aggressive Frost Mage gameplay, should be straightforward enough to not have an impact outside of PvP. The stun would open up opportunities for the Mage to create kill windows without relying explicitly on either their partner’s setup or for passive gameplay to eventually create such windows.

Since the most recent rework, dealing damage as Frost is fairly fun, but I still have no real interest in picking it up again seeing that it’s still stuck in the same uninteresting gameplay loop that it’s had since Legion launched. What really feels missing from the spec is the lethality it once had. It needs its principle stun back.

In an attempt to introduce Deep Freeze with as little impact to the rest of the game as possible, I recommend putting it into the Frost talent tree as a choice node with Frostbite. It keeps with the idea of that talent node being an “additional CC option” without requiring any sort of rework to the rest of the tree. As an added bonus, it gives Frost another choice node in the talent tree, since it only has one. Alternatively, it could be added as a PvP talent, either as a new talent or as a replacement to Snowdrift.

2 Likes
2

I agree with most of that, though unlikely that Blizzard would allow Frost to have both Deep Freeze and Snowdrift accessible simultaneously.
Possible solutions:

  1. Have them as a choice node in Frost tree (maybe even instead of Frostbite, that makes it a fair trade as it trades 1 CC option for a choice of other).
  2. Make the suggested choice node between Deep Freeze and Frostbite, but additionally make DF share cooldown with Snowdrift. That both preserves current option to take Snowdrift and Frostbite for people who would want that and gives option to trade them both for Deep Freeze, which seems like a reasonable trade-off.
3

As much as I loved Deep Freeze back in the day, I actually dread if they add yet another spell that I need to keybind just to play Frost.

4

There’s several classes with access to multiple stuns, but I do see the concern with Frost specifically having it.

A choice node between Snowdrift and Deep Freeze, as a replacement for Frostbite, is an interesting idea. I’ve never really like Frostbite, and it isn’t particularly healthy for gameplay, so there’s no opposition from me for just removing it in favor of stuns. Having Snowdrift in PvE could be interesting, too, despite the melee-range component.

This seems reasonable too.

As much as I’m in favor of not simplifying classes, I’m actually kind of with you on this one. I’m not sure where I’d bind it yet. I don’t think it’s reason enough not to re-introduce Deep Freeze, but new Frost spells introduced in WoD and Legion, which have stuck around ever since, mostly felt a bit out of place with how Frost used to work.

In WoD, it seemed like the introduction of Comet Storm and Ice Nova was a way to re-introduce the short burst windows Frost was quite good at via Frostbolt + Ice Lance Shatter combos. The thing is, they could’ve just… kept the Shatter combos, which was not only more satisfying to set up, but could happen more frequently.

In Legion, I wasn’t really a fan of Ray of Frost (though I don’t mind the current version so much), but admittedly Glacial Spike is a cool use of the Icicle mechanic. Still, I never liked Icicles that much, both visually and because it always felt like an excuse for Frostbolt to deal less damage. Plus, Glacial hitting as hard as it does effectively guarantees that the old Frostbolt + Ice Lance Shatter combo will never hit hard again.

Nowadays, with the WoD changes and most of the Legion changes still in the game (everything but Ebonbolt iirc), we’re in a situation where technically every spell does something unique, but none of them feel particularly good to press. We’re long separated from the days of big Shatter combos, and instead the only big single hit is from Glacial Spike, which requires a lot of setup. There’s so many unique damaging abilities with short-to-long CDs, plus CDR, that it ends up just feeling kind of spammy despite having so many unique things to do.

I don’t really know what the solution is, honestly. I think Frost is too far down the Legion redesign path to try to backtrack without unpopular decisions being made. Still, I think Deep Freeze is necessary to round out the spec.

2 Likes
5

Snowdrift is a sorry excuse for a stun, a bad compromise for Frost players asking for the return of Deep Freeze all these years. I doubt many would miss it if given the option to have Deep Freeze back instead.

1 Like
6

Exactly this nobody would want snowdrift if deep freeze was an option (in pvp at least idk about pve) I feel that we lost A LOT all those years ago with the pruning and whatnot and that feel of a shatter mage is just kinda gone…