I finally leveled my frost mage to 70 and along the way I picked up the Splitting Ice talent. A lot of classes have talents like this that make a single target ability hit one or more additional targets. The problem is what the game decides targets are.
Like with this Splitting Ice talent, the second Ice Lance and Icicles/Glacial Spike now hits CC’d targets and non-hostile targets and I swear even critters. Very annoying to sheep one mob and attack the one next to it only to have Splitting Ice target the sheeped mob too. Shouldn’t talents like this at least take CC into account?
I get that there has to be a cutoff. You can’t have AoE spells that somehow just ignore the one CC’d mob in the pack. But talents like this that make a one target ability hit only one or two other targets, maybe they should take CC into account? Maybe? Or at least prioritize non CC’d mobs?
I dunno, what do you think? Should talents that make single target abilities hit one or two other targets automatically not hit player CC’d targets? Or should players just not use the now splitting abilities when trying to avoid breaking CC, even if those abilities are a core part of the rotation (like in my mage’s case, to avoid breaking CC I’d have to stop using both Ice Lance and Icicles/Glacial Spike, which kinda just leaves Frostbolting and a Ray of Frost, if off cooldown (and also not talented to hit additional targets)).
Honestly though, my mage is the only time I’ve found these splitting talents to be annoying. So, maybe they’re fine as is. It could just be that it’s so much more noticeable on my mage because the splitting is happening with a core rotation ability. It could also be that I totally suck at mage (very likely. It’s my last played class) and somehow better mage players can just avoid hitting their sheeped targets.
In the end I just stopped using that talent. Felt like it was more trouble than it’s worth solo, and I didn’t want to be the mage hitting their own sheep in groups.
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If you sheep one target and attack the one next to it, what option does your splitting ice have outside of the one you’re attacking and the sheeped one?
I get what you mean, but generally speaking they can’t really do much because you’ll run into situations like this.
I’m pretty sure abilities like this won’t hit anything you’re not actively in combat with. My guardian Druid has a similar talent for his Moonfire and it doesn’t hit things I’m not in combat with. It just applies 1 moonfire to my one single target.
If your splitting ice talent also splits the damage then that becomes an issue if there’s a mob that can be hit but the game is actively choosing not to hit it.
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Splitting ice will absolutely hit stuff you aren’t in combat with, including neutral mobs. I actively avoid taking the talent most of the time due to the aggravation it causes. You don’t know how many neutral mobs Blizzard has sprinkled though out the game until you used splitting ice.
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Right? Plus, it targets the target closest to your target. So, you can have a situation where you sheep one mob and attack the other and Splitting Ice hits both. THEN, if one runs toward you and there’s a neutral mob closer to your target it’ll hit the neutral mob instead of the mob it hit preciously. Grats, now you’re fighting three mobs when you wanted just one.
Oh, but that’s not all! If you’re kiting these three mobs and another neutral mob wanders along (usually flies by) and gets closer to your target than the other two you’re in combat in, grats! you’re now fighting four mobs!
This happened to me many times. Set up a fight against one mob and by the end, due to Splitting Ice, I was in a fight with like five mobs and I either survived half dead or Invis’d out of there and had to start over.
Definitely not how Splitting Ice works, currently at least, but it shows that these kinds of talents can be a bit smarter with targeting.
Not hitting anything at all. Like it used to. This wasn’t an issue in the past.
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Seems to be. I never had this issue with Convoke before. Now I do.
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TBQH, Splitting Ice should be a toggle.
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On the bright side, splitting ice probably 1 shots whatever mob you’re dealing with or pretty close to it.
I don’t find myself in many scenarios where the problems described come up. The most frustrating thing about Frost is how its detrimental to play in Sanguine keys because you’ll slow or freeze mobs on spaghetti sauce. And things usually die too fast for your AoE to look powerful.
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I guess it kinda is since you can just change your talents before each pull. Oof.