They said they will not be expanding the current selection of spells. Which means your Fire/Frost Mastery stack gains will primarily be through frostfire bolt and the passive procs associated with it.
In hero talents you take every node and thats not a choice node, so its required either way being specced into frostfire.
Honestly, this sounds good. Like really good, mostly passives, but itās the good kind of passives.
But please put meteor in a better position.
Disorients and even Knockbacks have 45s DRs. So It might not be as impactful, because shorter cooldowns desync DRs.
When your entire class has an obsolete design where each spec revolves around a spell school rather than a role or identity, any attempt to join two of the specs with a theme will inevitably lead to cross-school gameplay.
I wouldnāt expect Sunfury and Spellslinger to be purists regarding schools either.
That being said, Frostfire looks neat. Itās simple and has some interesting interactions.
Excepting is a valid word.
You also have different option as talent tree for frost mage. You arent forced to play frostfire.
Yes it is.
āSentecesā is not a valid word however. In a post about proofreading. The irony.
This tree looks decent, but still has some issues to work with. Many of them were posted by earlier posters, so Iāll post some others as a feedback to each separate talent with possible solutions suggested.
Frostfire Mastery: Your damaging Fire spells generate 1 stack of Fire Mastery and Frost spells generate 1 stack of Frost Mastery. Fire Mastery increases your Haste by 1% and Frost Mastery increases your Mastery by 1% for 12 seconds, stacking up to 8 times each. Adding stacks does not refresh duration.
Decent idea, but it is diminished because both specs are not encouraged to cast other school spells much and even when they do - it is mostly for CC / utility, not for damage. Frost has Fire spells of Fire Blast (which has a CD and does very low damage, barely more than non-shattered Ice Lance), Blast Wave (used mainly for distancing or casts interrupting), Dragonās Breath (used mainly for disruption or CC chains) and Ring of Fire (PVP only). Fire has Frost spells of Frost Nova (mainly used for CC), Ice Nova (can be used for damage, but mostly for CC), Cone of Cold (used mostly for slows) and thatās it - other spells are defensive and donāt do damage. As such, pretty much the only way to reliably get opposite school Mastery stacks outside of major CDs would be Frostfire Bolt spam, which can be quite punishing in some situations, especially PVP, where kicks would lock you out of both schools.
Suggestion: Add more incentive to use offensive options of opposite school to both specs. For Frost - Fire Blast should deal more damage, have lower CD and maybe even have charges too. For Fire - Ice Nova should have more value (since it at least provides shatter for Frost, for Fire it doesnāt do that), so that it is rewarding enough to use.
Choice Node: Imbued Warding & Meltdown
- Imbued Warding: Blazing Barrier also casts an Ice Barrier at 25% effectiveness for Fire. Ice Barrier also casts a Blazing Barrier at 25% effectiveness for Frost. This also affects your Mass Barrier.
- Meltdown: You melt slightly out of your Ice Block and Ice Cold, allowing you to move slowly during Ice Block and increasing your movement speed over time. Ice Block and Ice Cold trigger a Blast Wave when they end.
First option is quite good, just donāt forget to remove the Blazing Barrierās PVP nerf that is does not need anymore and I think Blazing Barrierās secondary effect needs a look - it is much weaker that shields of 2 other specs. To address that, for example, Blazing Barrier could also reduce physical damage taken like in earlier expansions - it is both thematical and in line with Prismatic Barrierās effects.
Second option is more controversial. Many PVE players already play Ice Cold, so possibility to move (faster) is not appealing much for them. Players that play Ice Block are not likely to get much value from that either. Blast Wave when they end is both too low effect for their cooldown and can be even harmful, especially in environments with diminishing returns for CC like PVP.
Suggestions:
Frostfire Bolt: Launches a bolt of Frostfire at the enemy, dealing Frostfire damage, slowing movement speed by 50%, and causing additional Frostfire damage over 8 seconds. Frostfire Bolt generates a stack of both Fire Mastery and Frost Mastery. Replaces Frostbolt for Frost and Fireball for Fire. 2 second cast time.
It is good that this spell returns, but if you want it to replace the main spammable spell, it needs a lot of synergies and be rewarding enough for risking two schools lockout in PVP.
Suggestions:
Choice Node: Elemental Affinity & Flame & Frost
- Elemental Affinity: The cooldown of Frost spells is reduced by 10% for Fire. The cooldown of Fire spells is reduced by 30% for Frost.
- Flame and Frost: Cauterize resets the cooldown of your Frost spells with a base cooldown shorter than 4 minutes when it activates for Fire. Cold Snap additionally resets the cooldown of your Fire spells.
First option is decent, but not balanced between two specs - Frost gets bigger percentage on more useful spells and Fire gets lower percentage and on less useful spells, at least from CC / utility perspective. Consider making their percentages more in line.
Second option is not a good design - it is the tying of offense / utility to usage of defensives and that is not good - Overflowing Energy first iteration lesson should not be forgotten. Second option should just be entirely replaced or potentially attached to Combustion / Icy Veins instead of Cauterize / Cold Snap.
Isothermic Core: Comet Storm now also calls down a Meteor at 100% effectiveness onto your targetās location. Meteor now also calls down a Comet Storm at 150% effectiveness onto your target location.
Good talent, but their arrival time should be brought in line for specifically this talent. For example, if you use Comet Storm into Ice Nova, Meteor should arrive in the middle of comet sequence and not with its usual delay, since because of that it might fall when Ice Nova is already broken by damage or expired, which would lead to countersynergy.
Choice Node: Severe Temperatures & Thermal Conditioning
Severe Temperatures: Casting Frost or Fire spells increases the damage of your next Frostfire Bolt by 6%, stacking up to 5 times.
Thermal Conditioning: Frostfire Boltās cast time is reduced by 10%.
Decent choice node, but Thermal Conditioning needs a buff. The math is simple - first option on average provides 18% dps boost to Frostfire Bolt and second option provides just 10% and does not synergize with some other nodes like Frostfire Empowerment.
Frostfire Infusion: Your Frost and Fire spells have a chance to trigger an additional bolt of Frostfire , dealing Frostfire damage. This effect generates Frostfire Mastery when activated.
Decent proc effect, no suggestions here.
Excess Frost: Reaching maximum stacks of Frost Mastery causes your next Phoenix Flames (Fire) / Flurry (Frost) to also cast Ice Nova at 200% effectiveness. When you consume Excess Frost, the cooldown of Meteor (Fire) / Comet Storm (Frost) is reduced by 5 seconds.
Decent idea, but can have some implications. First - like posters above mentioned, proc AoE root can have issues in some Mythic+ affixes, so general Mageās talent tree should also get an optional upgrade node for Ice Nova that makes it deal significally more damage, but no longer root - it helps making Ice Nova more appealing for Fire specifically, for all 3 specs against bosses (who are immune to roots) and allows to address mentioned issue. Second - for Frost specifically this Ice Nova should trigger after first Flurry hit deals damage to allow it be shattered from Winterās Chill, but not absorb Winterās Chill stacks from last Flurry hit to prevent possible countersynergy.
Frostfire Empowerment: Your Frost and Fire spells have a chance to activate Frostfire Empowerment , causing your next Frostfire Bolt to always critically strike, explode for 80% of its damage to nearby enemies, and be instant cast.
Quite good idea, but there are nuances. First - Fire already has Combustion and Frost has Shatter to provide crits, so it would be better if this proc would just increase damage of Frostfire Bolt by X% instead of providing guaranteed crit. Second - its cleave damage should not hit targets affected by breakable CC to avoid countersynergy and same treatment should be applied to Splitting Ice too.
Excess Fire: Reaching maximum stacks of Fire Mastery causes your next Fire Blast (Fire) / Ice Lance (Frost) to apply Living Bomb at 150% effectiveness. When this Living Bomb explodes, reduce the cooldown of Phoenix Flames by 10 seconds (Fire) / gain Brain Freeze (Frost).
Decent idea, but Living Bomb is just undertuned, especially at low target count, so it would not provide much value. It should be replaced with other spell trigger, for example Pyroblast that would deal X% increased damage and explode for Y% of its damage to nearby enemies (except enemies affected by breakable CC). Additionally, 10 seconds CD reduction for Phoenix Flames is much weaker than Brain Freeze and should be buffed - either to refund a whole charge of Phoenix Flames or 1-2 charges of Fire Blast.
Flash Freezeburn : Frostfire Empowerment grants you maximum benefit of Frostfire Mastery and refreshes its duration. Activating Combustion or Icy Veins grants you Frostfire Empowerment .
Good and powerful capstone, but can have different value for 2 specs, since Fire activates Combustion much more frequently than Frost activates Icy Veins. As such, maybe Frost should get 2 Frostfire Empowerment stacks on Icy Veins activation to compensate.
Edited after seeing the interview.
Seems generally okay. Frostfire Mastery and by extension off-spec Excess element is going to rely heavily on proc rate of both Frostfire Empowerment and Infusion. If tuned at a point where you can reliably proc this without thought or cancelauras on our end, in both AoE and ST, the general idea is mostly fine. I think people are focusing too much on the spells that get procced instead of the CDR and BF effects.
8 Frostfire procs in 12 seconds is asking a lot of Frost unless Infusion is proccing like every damage event.
Frostfire Empowerment is also questionable in terms of actual effect itself, as AoE burst of a filler spell is generally **** all for damage, assuming it inherits the coeffs of Fireball/Frostbolt for each spec. If itās actually a buffed version, do keep in mind that Frost just got out of a stupid situation where Frostbolt was pushing spells out of rotation. Using it as a driver for a full Mastery stack is nice, but be careful.
Severe Temperatures in particular feels fairly inferior to Thermal Conditioning in almost all situations? We are talking about a filler spell, here.
I think Elemental Affinity/Flame & Frost node is problematic for a couple of reasons. The rhyming nature of how you build Mage spells necessitates Cold Snap == Cauterize, which isā¦ not great. Additionally from a practical standpoint, 30% CDR on DB/BW vs 10% CDR on Mass Barrier/Ice Floes/Ice Block or Cold/Novas/Cone is not a great set. I would like to see this be a choice node of either Frost utility cooldowns or Fire utility cooldowns, as both have some decent use cases, where tying them to the big defensive cooldowns is just shy of asinine.
(Mass Barrier globally being Frost school is also stupid, for purposes of this talent node.)
(Praying for a Barrier graphic update pass, because Ice+Blazing looks like hot garbage at the moment via Mass Barrier sharing.)
Imbued Warding is sick, and I hope to see similar in Sunfury/Spellslinger. Meltdown on the other hand feels nigh useless in comparison.
And related to Excess Frost, I would like to see Sanguine suppress both slows and roots while mobs are in it. Iād like to stop being a liability on Sanguine weeks, if the affix persists into TWW. Random Ice Novas are going to piss a lot of people off, more so than the GS root thatās fairly controllable.
Decent tree overall. Need to see rppm rates and some minor tweaks to a few talents. Looking forward to Spellslinger preview!
Obviously weāll be able to provide better feedback once we feel the proc rate of Frostfire Empowerment, have a better grasp on how the organic stacking of Frostfire Mastery plays out, and how frequently both proc at the same time. So it could be good or it could be a nightmare, so we wonāt know until we can play test to give accurate feedback.
Feedback from Frost perspective:
Initial feedback though is that now we have even more buffs that we need to track. Given Frost already overflows with procs, having to track even more buffs to make sure we donāt munch BF through Excess Fire or waste CmS cdr through Excess Frost really does worry me. Also will be a big feels bad moment if Frostfire Empowerment commonly procs after we organically reach 8 stacks of Frostfire Mastery.
Since the 10.1.5 re-work, Frost has turned into a spec that requires a very specific order of spells to be cast to maximise dps, so having random Frostfire Empowerment procs may cause disruptions to the flow of the spec and likely cause wasted Winterās Chill and/or munching of BF/FoF. I hope this isnāt the case but there will be a lot going on and a lot to monitor, which may feel overwhelming to maximise output.
Specific talents:
Frostfire Infusion: What exactly does this mean by our āspells will trigger an additional bolt of Frostfireā? Does this mean that the next time we cast FFB itāll duplicate and fire a second bolt? Does it mean our spells will cast an automatic FFB? I donāt think this talent is worded in a way that makes it clear as to what is actually intended here, to me at least.
Meltdown/Elemental Affinity/Flame & Frost: They all come across as weak, depending on the content, and in many cases like raid where they may provide no benefit at all.
Excess Fire: The Living Bomb is still super weak, so need to bump that up to like 400% if it is to provide any real meaningful benefit.
Excess Frost: Can the auto Ice Nova not consume Winterās Chill please.
Standard Frost tree:
A pass needs to be done on Fractured Frost and Cold Front. By the time TWW comes out these dead talents will have been out for two years untouched. Dead and problematic talents cannot remain. Depending on the proc rate of Frostfire Empowerment, it may lead to Fractured Frost being played in AoE which just feels revolting. Please remove and/or rework Fractured Frost and Cold Front entirely.
Similarly, please do a pass on Snowstorm and Deep Shatter. Both talents also dead from the 10.1.5 rework.
Overall, I like the concept. Frostfire also looks pretty op in AoE so hopefully Spellslinger will be a competitive AoE option for Frost too.
Ice Nova should hit either before impact, or on bolt 1, so consuming WC should be irrelevant in almost all scenarios, but yeah I would like Ice Nova to get the Frost Nova/CmS/Orb/Blizzard AoE WC treatment of non-consumption.
Again I donāt think the Living Bomb is the point of the talent so much as the BF proc on a controlled timer. You can watch the LB debuff and know exactly when you have BF, allowing you to drop a charge beforehand. The LB damage itself feels almost irrelevant unless they want to make it a good talent pick for Fireās actual spec tree. Ice Nova would likely be in the same boat (for AoE) if not for the sqrt target reduction not actually working since DF. 200% Ice Nova is going to be Lance-tier strong on the primary target as-is, and should probably get that reduction working.
Iām at least glad theyāre passives. The excessive button bloat this expansion with the new (failed and horribly designed and implemented) talent system has me playing less and less toons than I used to and barely enjoying the ones I do.
Used to be an altoholic but DF killed that desire due to button bloat and overly convoluted rotations ā¦ so, well done?
That was a stated goal when they announced the hero talents.
They wanted to enhance what you were already doing.
And it seems that Mage is true to that statement while some other trees seem to have lost sight of this goal.
Some people got way too excited about these talent being potentially game changers.
Blizz never claimed they were gonna be. 
I tired to pull up the interview and its not even in english!!!
Go past the first minuteā¦
Frostfire Bolt has always been my favorite spell. Best Visual and best sound effect. Iām hoping they bring it back the same way it used to be.
That said, the tree is a bit boring. Doesnāt really do a whole lot to any other spells except for Frostfire Bolt. Iād like to see more interaction with the entire kit.
An additional suggestion to add more flavour to the Frostfire spec.
There can be a choice node with other AoE focused talents to add more Frostfire boosts to some existing AoE spells (to match single-target flavour in Frostfire Bolt).
For Frost, that can be Frozen Orb - it could turn into Frostfire Orb and deal additional X% damage as Fire damage. Many people miss Frostfire Orb from earlier expansions and a visual of swirling vortex of fire and ice could be astonishing.
For Fire that could be Flamestrike - it could also deal X% additional damage as Frost damage and maybe get a stronger snare. I think explosions of blue fire would both be matching for the spec and visually appealing. If needed, it could also change color of Flame Patch for visual compatibility.
While this is kind of a dream come true to me (Iāve been trying to make it work since Wrath), we need some serious adjustments here, many of which have already been mentioned.
My PoV will be from a frost mage, since I think itās thematically the best base for a FFB spec.
Before anything else, a āpureā option should exist for those who like to be tied to their spec. Hereās hoping the other hero options fulfill that niche.
Other than that, a FFB spec should be based on, or at the very least inspired by the concept of thermal shock, and thatās simply not happening here.
Either decreasing the targetās temperature to setup a huge chunk of fire damage or the other way around, heating then cooling, making the target vulnerable.
FFB would be the āneutralā nuke on that thermal setting.
But letās talk about what we actually have here.
First of all, the Frostfire Mastery.
It not refreshing (other than random procs and CD usage) makes it just another Incanterās Flow, as some poster said in the Gen. Discussion topic, and that kinda sucks.
Of course, that all depends on the Flash Freezeburn and Frostfire Infusion proc chance, but Iād rather have the talents reworked to be more consistent. Itās fine for it to be a ramp up, but a ramp up with steep resets suck, just like IF did.
As for Excess Fire, as many said, Living Bomb sucks. It needs a hefty buff for frost and a rework for fire for this talent to be good.
Meltdown is uselessly DoA. No one sane would pick this over extra shielding. Itās as useless as Ice Cold.
As for Flame and Frost: Ever since the mage rework, it feels like youāre trying to push Cold Snap more and more to an offensive, when it has always been a defensive, since resetting IB is itās main function and strength. As long as itās the only way to reset IB, Iāll never be taking it as an offensive, so Elemental Affinity is the only choice here.
Isothermic Core is very nice.
All that said, even if youāre not going to rework it for the thermal shock concept Iāve mentioned, Iād rather have FFB replace Flurry and Phoenix Fire instead of the main nuke.
It keeps each specās flavor better than just removing the main filler altogether.
And as mentioned above, Frostfire damage should be expanded to more than the main nuke.
Frostfire Orb would be cool, Blizzard calling down a Flamestrike would be a nice addition to Isothermic Core as well.
Another idea: Frostfire Bolt could even be reworked to be a hard casted, hard hitting nuke, and the hero spec could be tweaked to add fire/frost spells back to the mage, but it would dilute the original spec (fire or frost).
Finally, PvP implications: FFB locking out both schools is really bad. It wouldnāt be as bad if we could have arcane blast/missiles back baseline, but I fear some players would QQ about further button bloat (and here I am, still missing AB, AM, Scorch as Frostā¦).
The GM edited my post.
Iāve never heard anyone use that word before lol. Usually people just use except. Makes me think the UK team is handling the development of expansion for like the 10th time in a row.