Can we stop making all the burst instant cast? Why not have a buff you can activate (or Proc ) that makes the next cast of frostfire do more dmg and 100% crit without it also being instant??
I feel like there is way to much instant no counterable burst in the game.
I think bringing back the concept of frostfire magic is fantastic. It was one of my favorite things to have when I started playing back in the day, and thise brainfreeze procs sending out a mixed-magic attack felt awesome.
Reading through the tree a bit, I hope it isnāt disruptive to rotations it feels clunky, but overall if any of the two schools should be mixed by some kind of prestigious practitioner, itās Frost & Fire.
I agree but they are just trying to stay true to their mage definition on character creation screen lol. It says uses āinstant castsā loooool. I feel like they need to update those definitions so they can make the game more competitive in PvP and not be so rigidly defined to mage doing most of its damage with instant casts. I hate that my damage is instant cast, I rather be casting something and rewarded for it. Seems like a flawed definition of mage.
Yeah, even past the first minute, that interview was very difficult for me to understand.
I hate when people say this because what would you rather, that they add a bunch of things to track, make your rotation more complicated ? Look at the oracle treeā¦ disaster
Itās pretty rare outside of formal context, to be fair.
Finally someone who wasnāt going to be mean to me.
Youāre looking at this purely from a PvP perspective, which is fine, but you need to take your blinders off and realize that PvE is also a thing in this game and by far the more popular of the two game modes.
Also, it seems to me that your chief concern relates to spell school lockouts which is admittedly a problem (much more so in PvP than PvE) but the solution isnāt to not have a spell like Frostfire Bolt which will lock you out of two schools, itās to scrap the ridiculous spell school lockout system that has no place in a modern day game.
Well, Iām more mad about living bomb being applied to the target when Ice lancing. That would be abused so much in PvP, the player who has living bomb would just stand on his healer and break the polymorph. Also the frostfire bolt exploding on impact is bad design too. We already have frostbomb, comet and icenova breaking polymorphs. This is not good. Admittedly frost bomb breaks polymorphs a lot more than comet and ice nova. Though adding 2-3 more spells(living bomb, frostfire bolt and meteor) that will be breaking polymorph is a recipe for disaster. Looks like that talent that spreads living bomb is required too! Or maybe not? Do we get 11 or 10 talent points? Maybe we can skip it? Either way, Big yikes! Maybe we just wonāt cast ice lance like the current Frostbolt PvP build does and is capable of doing? I am super okay with not casting Ice Lance, as I believe frost mage should be built around Frostbolt damage only, not instants like Ice Lance.
Hopefully spellslinger will provide 8% haste and some non cleaving talents? Can we get a blue to comment on this? Please!!!??
On another note, Iāve only played Frost since Vanilla. Hard stuck duelist every season because I prioritize playing with friends and low CR players. Though Iām happy Frost is in a better state than it was in BFA and season 1 2 and 3 of Shadowlands. It is more fun and arguably a lot better than season 4 of shadowlands too. When necrolord was pumping.
I do think we put too much emphasis on arena experience. Like you can be a duelist while playing with 1500 rated people. Only gladiators and rank 1s can do this or duelists who choose to queue with these types of people only. Which is myself. I do think they need to release a Solo rated 2s mode because of this. Where it always groups you with synergistic players. For mage that would be grouping with healing priest, rdruid and sub rogue. The teams would not need to be shuffled that way either. 1 game is all you need. If better people are on the other side, you just need to re-q and roll the dice. Though it becomes more and more unlikely this happens as the season matures because if they are better; they would be playing at higher MMR anyways. People cleave too hard in the solo shuffle 3s for frost mage to work as its intended. Frost mage should not play splitting ice ever. Forcing us to play splitting ice is the only reason frost performs so well in solo shuffle. Though it just feels bad cleaving and mongloiding in Solo Shuffle. As it would in other game modes(rated 2s/3s) if we get more damage spreading talents like these hero talents show.
I have another, very minor criticism about the tree: the name.
Frostfire seems very basic, and far too literal, and saying āFrostfire Fire Mageā and āFrostfire Frost Mageā out loud sounds very weird. Only problem is, Iām not coming up with names that are much betterā¦
āElementalistā immediately comes to mind, but that steps on shaman toes a little bit. āFusionā also comes to mind, but doesnāt seem very mage-esque to me.
I donāt know. Open to ideas for sure.
CryoPyro for sure lol, only problem is if you are frost, you are not casting pyro, but I guess pyro does mean fire.
Ironic, because some of these talents have very significant effects on the rotation, positive effects.
That guy just doesnāt know wtf heās talking about. Itās mostly passives, but itās very good passives. To just handwave these talents away as if they are āirrelevantā and ādo nothingā just tells me that that person has no idea just how significant these are.
I am also very happy that they are seemingly refusing to listen to people who complain about cdr and other similar mechanics.
If the game was left in those peopleās hand everything would be about burst windows with hardly anything in between. They would see things like legacy of the sun king removed because āthatās sustain damageā Or really anything that makes the gameplay more interesting.
So i am very happy to see that blizzard is paying little attention to the woes of people who donāt want mechanics that make the game more enjoyable because it could mean that they lose 5% of their damage due to downtime or some other bs reasons they wanna come up with. Have these people ever considered that the game first and foremost should be fun? Rather than a math simulator? Probably not.
When they made gwd a flat cdr on infernal/darkglare etc, that made the spec less enjoyable for me, if they were to remove deepening shadow completely from sub, i would straight up not play it anymore. If kindling, blessing were removed from fire i would refuse to play it.
The cdr on meteor/storm is awesome, the double proc is awesome, although the phoenix flames 10 sec cdr is pretty worthless, compared to the brain freeze proc.
Right now, this talent tree tends to favor frost over fire, so they should do something about it.
I would also like to request (if itās not the case already) that you make the Frost Mastery and Fire Mastery buffs unable to be canceled, just to avoid degenerate Starlord-esque behavior. 
Thermal.
Coldflame.
Heatweaver.
Does it have to be a single word, made up or not?
(Temperature) Flow Master.
I didnāt do that.
I quoted the part where he says those are just passives.
Then I merely pointed out that their stated goal was to enhance what we were already doing and that the mage tree was doing exactly that as opposed to other trees that were revealed.
I canāt tell if it is or isnāt good, the only thing I can say is that from what Iāve seen, this is the hero talent tree that best represents what they announced initially.
As opposed to Lightsmith or Oracle where it seems like they asked " Humm, what part of those specs gameplay should we enhance? "
And then went for their "complexity and frustrating mechanics gameplayā.
When I read the changes to PI putting three different buffs on players I had another āthis game is getting too complicated and gameplay is getting too involved for me to play anymoreā moment.
Iām 50 yo ā¦ the new talent system has already created massive button bloat and made specs incredibly busy and mentally demanding to play. I donāt want brain dead specs but adding a bunch of damage modifiers, utility, etc to the rotations has absolutely drained me and made me shelve a bunch of my toons (altoholic no more).
I know Iām probably the minority but when Hero talents were announced I immediately cringed expecting them to contribute more to button bloat and complexity to the rotations.
Seeing Frostfire as solely passives you play around was a relief (even if I probably will stick with Arcane).
Iām a fan of Thermomancer.
Or Thermomancy, depending on how they want to reference it. Either way, plays to temperature manipulation without picking a particular side, which is exactly what Frostfire is.
I mean - I get what youāre saying, but the term āFrostfireā specifically is very iconic. I donāt see the difference between saying, āIām an Elementalist Fire Mageā and āIām a Frostfire Fire Mage.ā Itās still redundant. Youāre either a Fire Mage or a Frost Mage specializing in Frostfire.
Itās like saying āDark Rangerā is too generic. It doesnāt have to exactly telegraph what youāre doing - the point of the Hero Spec is that they are based on iconic archetypes. Frostfire has the recognition that none of the other suggestions do.
EDIT: In fact, Iād go so far as to say things like Thermomancer or Cryomancer or Elementalist are even more generic than Frostfire. Those can exist in any other fantasy setting. Frostfire Bolt is an iconic World of Warcraft mage spell. Itās very specific to the fantasy of the game.
DKs have one called Rider of the Apocalypse. Anything goes, pretty much.
Iāll break this down one Talent at a time for good feedback.
Before I do that, I love the idea of frostfire.
Frostfire Mastery: This looks cool and unique. It reminds me of the new final fantasy game where I have to swap between fire and frost. The problem with it in wow that Iām worried about is complicating rotations to maximize it. Having to use Ice nova, Frost nova on bosses (not the spells intention) or having to use Iceblock(Ice Cold) as an offensive spell. If this happens, it will be awful to play.
Imbuing Warding/Meltdown: Imbuing warding is awesome. No complaints. Fantastic talent. Meltdown however looks like a Pvp talent. If thatās itās intention great talent. If not itās awful. There arenāt many times I see anyone use this. I would suggest either extending Ice Cold/IceBlock or reducing its CD. If you want to keep it, then add a different trigger, like applying a regular Ice Barrier/Blazing Barrier because we are using it as an emergency button with big dam in M+ and Raid.
Frostfire Bolt: I like that it replaces frostbolt or fireball. No complaints.
Elemental Affinity/Flame and Frost I like this talent overall. Cauterize resets Iceblock/Ice cold, and basically gives us a cold snap. and cold snap for frost resets Dragons breath for an extra interrupt. No complaints.
Isothermic Core Amazing talent. Passive talents are great.
Severe Temperatures/Thermal Conditoning These are decent talents, Iām not sure about dam increase on FFB. In this current tier and rotation. Fire spec is about spamming pyros, and FB which means we would overcap on stacks, and Frost you would average 3-4 stacks. The only 2 situation I see us maximizing this is FFB-Flurry-IL-IL-Flurry-GS. That would give us 5 stacks, which we always donāt do in our rotation or, FFB-flurry-IL-ROF-IL-GS. Our opener which changes based on how many icicles we create. Iām not really sure how to fix this one. will brainstorm.
Frostfire Infusion How good this talent ends up depends on proc rate. If the proc rate is high enough, then the severe temperatures talent is much more useful. if it doesnāt have a good proc rate, than itās probably useless.
Excess Frost Horrible horrible horrible talent. This isnāt every useful in raid or M+. for pvp prob good. In Raid if we have adds that we can use to maximize this we run into the problem of freezing them in place and the tanks canāt gather them. no control over this is bad, and holding dps cds to try to control it, is even worst. In M+ noone will take mages during Sanguine week. Freezing adds in sanguine is awful. I would change them to different talents. This is up for debate, but off the top of my head, it should proc frozen orb at 200% effectiveness. That way it will gives both specs more aoe to play around with without the possibility of messing with tanks, and affixes.
Frostfire Empowerment I like the talent. I can see it complicating fire rotation, but overall its probably a good talent depending on proc rate.
Excess Fire I like the frost version of this, but Iām not sure how I feel about the fire version. Fireblast is key to our rotation with pyro, it would be wierd to hold for an AOE situation. IL is different because we can plan around it better with icicles. You probably donāt want to double down on a single spell, but I like if PF would apply the Living bomb and decrease the CD on a fireblast by 2 secs, that would probably be better, but I would have to play the spec to know for sure.
The final ability is fine. Nothing great but nothing horrible.
Honorable Mentions I think it would be cool if you used Excess fire and Frost to incorporate Ice form or Frost bomb as passive way to bring soem pvp talents to pve for frost and Greater pyro instant cast or glass cannon. that would be cool.
Conclusion This is only an early look. I would need to play the spec to give more on it. I appreciate anyone opinion who thinks we should add other spells that would be fun to mess around with, and may alter this feedback if someone presents a good idea. Thank you for reading.
Very Respectfully,
Rocket Ron
Fire/Frost Mage