New bug: Controlled Instincts is proccing for Frost from Arcane’s Orb debuff.
That said, can we get Controlled Instincts stuck on Frozen Orb as well, both for thematics and so we have a duration that isn’t reverse haste scaled?
2 Likes
Another build and still nothing to address the problem with Frosts new talent Deaths Chill. This talent is very problematic in a number of ways.
First the talent works against hero talents. As to build the stacks up you will have to spam frost bolt. Which means you will actively be ignoring all other abilities and talents including the hero talents, No brain freezes, No Ice lances, nothing. This mind you is also not interesting gameplay as you will simply be spamming frost bolt for roughly 25 seconds before doing anything else to finish the damage boost.
Second the tier pieces also work against this as they are simply increases to your ice lance damage.
Third if this is the intended idea for the talent, its poorly introduced. Nothing tells the player that they should actively avoid using their rotation and if they arn’t nothing suggests that they should do their rotation either. This is just awful in a design sense because now you are forcing your player to look outside of the game to figure out how to do their rotation instead of things that should be understandable within the game itself.
Ultimately you have a talent that will either A never get used because it works against frosts entire kit, especially the hero talents. Or B its gonna be so marginal in the damage boost because you only get it from filler that it will feel worthless. This has been mentioned multiple times before but as each patch comes out and nothing is address it becomes worrisome that all the feedback is being ignored for frost. And we will see something like 2-3 months after the game is live a change that finally fixes something that was brought up back in alpha.
3 Likes
Here is feedback about Frost Mages and Frostfire hero spec in latest build after testing.
Frost changes feedback:
- Adding Permafrost Lances to Frost tree was a good move - they synergize very well with rest of toolkit. However, now that AoE path to Icy Veins consists of only 1 point talents, single-target path (Lonely Winter + Wintertide) is more expensive and makes you spend an additional talent point compared to AoE builds.
Suggestion: Reduce Wintertide to 1 point investment (with full current value). That would make it better match the effect (which was already nerfed for Frostbolt and is quite niche for Ice Lance) and make ST and AoE paths to Icy Veins point investment balanced. - New tier set is quite good - it is simple yet effective, provides value in both ST and AoE situations and it does address AoE scaling issue mentioned in my Frost feedback post above. Consider adding 4 set bonus as a Frost tree talent in following seasons (when current tier set will be redundant).
Frost tree main unaddressed issues:
- Ice Nova as a choice node with Ring of Frost feels very bad, as it forces Frost Mages to pick between their rotational ability that is used for additional AoE shatters and their main utility spell.
Suggestion: Split them and either make Ring of Frost replace one of barely used Frost Nova talents below their node or if you still want Mage CC nerfed for some reason - make it a choice node with Mass Polymorph, which would make much more sense, as their niches and use cases are similar with some different pros and cons. - Fractured Frost aka Deathborne talents still lack ways to shatter cleaved Frost(fire) Bolts against CC immune targets that cannot be frozen and lack synergy with Flurry.
Suggestion: Make Fractured Frost also affect and cleave Flurry - that would solve both these issues simultaneously. In addition Flurry could also be included to trigger Death’s Chill to avoid countersynergy with it. - Deathborne builds countersynergize with both Icy Veins extension talents (that trigger only from Ice Lance and Glacial Spike both of which might be not even used during Deathborne phase) and new tier set (since Fingers of Frost procs provide no value for Frost(fire) Bolt and might be not even used during Deathborne phase).
Suggestions:
- Make Fractured Frost additionally cause Frost(fire) Bolt to consume Fingers of Frost procs only while Icy Veins is active to increase its damage by X%.
- Make 2 tier set bonus also affect buffed by Fractured Frost Frost(fire) Bolts.
- Make 4 tier set bonus also trigger from Frost(fire) Bolts that consumed Fingers of Frost.
- Add buffed by Fractured Frost Frost(fire) Bolts to the list of spells that extend Icy Veins via Thermal Void.
- To avoid countersynergies with Excess Fire for Frostfire - Excess Fire could also be triggered by buffed by Fractured Frost Frost(fire) Bolts.
Such changes can make Deathborne builds more competitive, but still should not lead to no-Ice Lance playstyle, as uptime of Deathborne phase would be limited and outside of it Ice Lance should still have higher priority than Frost(fire) Bolt for consuming shatters.
- There are still several undertuned and overpriced talents in Frost tree that are rarely to never picked and should be addressed. These involve Deep Shatter (should become 1 point investment with full current effect), Subzero (should become 1 point investment with full current effect and provide some value against CC immune enemies too, for example make Glacial Spike and Ice Nova apply 1 stack of Winter’s Chill to such enemies for the duration of their immuned root), Splintering Cold (should become 1 point investment talent and also include Icicles generated by Ice Lance) and Splintering Ray (should be significally buffed or redesigned).
Frostfire changes feedback:
- Duration increase of Mastery stacks to 14 seconds is decent - it makes stacking opposite school Mastery before timer expires easier and increases uptime of maximum stacks stat bonus.
- Buff to Frostfire Infusion proc rate definitely helps with stacking Masteries too. However, there is still one unaddressed issue with stacking opposite school Masteries and that is Fire Blast. It still is the only pure damage Fire spell for Frost Mages in PVE and it is severely undertuned - damage done is barely more than a non-shattered Ice Lance and it is likely a dps loss to use despite providing a stack of Fire Mastery.
Suggestion: Significally buff Fire Blast for Frost and Arcane specs or at the very least for Frostfire (Frost) Mages. That would both match the theme of Frostfire Mages actually utilizing both Fire and Frost spells effectively and help with stacking Fire Mastery, since Fire Blast’s CD can be aligned with each Mastery cycle.
Frostfire main unaddressed issues:
- Blazing Barrier applied by Imbued Warding and Meltdown is nerfed by 25% in PVP. Since it is provided by a separate hero talent and other defensive hero talents are not nerfed in PVP, it should not be the case.
- Frostfire Bolt still did not inherit Frostbolt’s PVP modifier, making it both deal less damage in PVP than Frostbolt and also lock 2 schools when interrupted instead of 1, so just strictly worse. That should not be the case for a hero talent that is supposed to upgrade existing spell.
Suggestion: Make it inherit Frostbolt’s PVP modifier and additionally buff its damage in PVP to account and compensate for double school lockout there (to make risking getting locked on 2 schools when trying to cast it worthwhile). - Elemental Affinity for Frost is supposed to affect only Fire spells, but currently also affects many Frost spells - Ice Nova, Frost Nova, Cone of Cold, Ice Floes etc.
- Frostfire Empowerment is supposed to increase damage done by Frostfire Bolt by 100% and make it cleave for 80% of damage according to tooltip, but instead makes it guaranteed to crit and cleave for 100% damage. That both makes its effect confusing and actual effect lose synergy with shatters and Combustion, so actual effect should be brought in line with tooltip. Also when stacked to 2 its buff tooltip states that it would cleave for 200% of damage (when actually still 100%) and should be fixed.
- Excess Fire Living Bomb was already not powerful enough for Frost and is even more after the general nerf to its damage. Its value should be buffed.
- Flashfreeze Burn states that Frostfire Empowerment buff provides maximum stacks of Frostfire Mastery and refreshes their duration, but that is done by using its Frostfire Bolt and not via just getting its buff. This tooltip should be clarified to avoid confusion.
2 Likes
New MAJOR BUG appeared with the latest build:
- Meteorites from Sunfury hero tree are not granting any Cooldown Reduction on Fire Blasts or Arcane Orb charges.
2 Likes
Frost Mage
- Frost is suffering from a lack of choice in its talent tree. Too many talent points are incredibly niche (Death’s Chill, Fractured Frost, Cold Front, Frostbite, Subzero, Deep Shatter) to the point they are essentially dead, especially with the tier effect as it is. On top of the fact that the only choice node we have is very undertuned and that we have the lowest number of unique talents in the game.
- Ice Nova being a choice node with Ring of Frost is incredibly damaging to Frost only, since ring has historically been a very valuable cc tool in m+ strategies and ice nova is a core rotational spell for frost. The effects also arent remotely similar, the only commonality is they’re both frost spells.
I want to echo Kuni’s statements here, our TA IV proc feels very underwhelming, and thats something the water elemental could fix. Giving us a dmg boost in our cd like Arcane and Fire (with UI) get from TA. Having added access to Freeze in AOE would also feel great.
TA granting Frostfire Empowerment feels very good, and is the only synergy Frostfire has with the proc, where Spellslinger still generates double splinters. Would really like TA giving the proc to stay.
4 set issues
I also want to highlight a very real possibility that we take Fractured Frost and Cold Front in ST just to generate more orbs, which is degenerate, and something that arose in the DF beta as a prominent build as well.
- New 4 set is nice for damage, if a bit boring given there is nothing to play around. It would pair nicely as a choice node with the DF S3 2 set, which also solves the issue of GS desperately needing a capstone. Its been around for 8 years, a talent after it to spice it up would be nice.
- Would be great if the 4 set procced off any frozen ice lance, FoF only seems a bit weak so far. Would also make it more compatible with spellslinger.
5 Likes
Bugs (Arcane Tested only)
- Splintering Orb (Spellslinger) is currently only firing 2 Splinters (not 4 like the tooltip says)
- Magi’s Spark (Arcane Spec tree) echo damage (the 100% echo from Arcane Blast, Missiles and Barrage) is currently not working, only the explosion works
- Splinterstorm is triggering w/ only 2 splinters, as shown here:
https://imgur.com/gallery/splinterstorm-bug-BxvmOiJ - Aether Attunement is applying when not talented
- Aether Attunement is refreshing sometimes after being consumed
Arcane Spec Tree Changes
I honestly didn’t expect Arcane to get this many changes (and reportedly we have more coming according to the dev notes?) Thanks for looking at our spec, I appreciate it 
Magi's Spark Buffs and Choice Node w/ Nether Munitions
- Feedback: I think this is going to favor Magi’s Spark over Nether Munitions given that the damage of Magi’s Spark and its Arcane Blast/Missiles/Barrage echoes would occur during the Touch of the Magi window, as opposed to Nether Munitions happening after Touch blows up. Given the explosion now doing a lot more (which it should, it was kind of underwhelming before), I think this might be the default pick for AoE due to the explosion, and the default pick for ST due to the echoes, but I guess we’ll see. Overall good change.
- One thought I had was to make the Echo damage of Arcane Blast, Missiles and Barrage instead be stored in the Explosion itself and add to its damage. In single target, this would change anything, but in AoE it wouldn’t feel as bad casting Arcane Blast and Missiles since that damage would get cleaved to other mobs around.
Leydrinker
- Feedback: First things first: it looks like the change is actually 60% (not 50%; confirmed in testing) and the proc chance is ~20% (not 15%). Secondly, this talent is now a whole lot more powerful, accounting for roughly 3-5% of your damage in ST and likely more in AoE (but can’t test this accurately because M+ is down).
- One of the problems with this talent is how random it is. Obviously, you want to have this synergize with Arcane Harmony-empowered Arcane Barrages, but it’s so random that you can’t always get it to proc at the right time. I do wish there was a way to guarantee the proc rather than it being RNG. Given that you generally want to spend your Arcane Harmony-empowered Arcane Barrages during Touch of the Magi, I was wondering if you’d be willing to consider changing this talent to the following:
- Leydrinker (Current Version): Consuming Nether Precision has a 20% chance to make your next Arcane Blast or Arcane Barrage echo, repeating its damage at 60% effectiveness to the primary target and up to four nearby enemies.
- Leydrinker (Suggested Change): Activating your Touch of the Magi causes your next Arcane Barrage to echo, repeating its damage at XXX% effectiveness to the primary target and up to four nearby enemies.
- Tuning for the echo damage would have to be determined based on testing (if implemented) given that you would get this proc less often than current, but you would almost always get it on the spell you want. I would also allow this to apply to Arcane Barrage rather than Arcane Blast just to solidify the synergy with Arcane Harmony and not risk consuming this with Arcane Blast (similar to Burden of Power’s problem for Sunfury)
Arcane Harmony and Sunfury Changes
- Feedback: Nothing was changed for this talent, but Sunfury’s Spellfire Orb was changed significantly, which reduced the synergy Sunfury had with this talent. I personally think Arcane Harmony fits thematically a lot more with Sunfury than Spellslinger given the Hero talent feels like an explosive version of Arcane that throws a smaller number of high-power spells (like Arcane Barrage w/ Arcane Harmony). This was further reinforced by Burden of Power and Sunfury Execution further empowering Arcane Barrage (stacking w/ Arcane Harmony). With the change to how the orbs are generated, I would recommend the some version of following changes to Arcane Harmony just to maintain this synergy:
- Arcane Harmony (Current Version): Each time Arcane Missiles hits an enemy, the damage of your next Arcane Barrage is increased by 5%. This effect stacks up to 20 times. (Max = +100% damage)
- Arcane Harmony (Suggested Change): Each time Arcane Missiles hits an enemy, it generates 1 stack of Arcane Harmony. Each time Arcane Blast hits an enemy, it generates 4 stacks of Arcane Harmony. Each stack increases the damage of your next Arcane Barrage by 5%. This effect stacks up to 20 times. (Max = +100% damage)
- The above change is meant to allow Arcane Blast to also interact with Arcane Harmony given how Sunfury might end up in a situation where it may want to Arcane Blast without using Arcane Missiles during it’s cooldown window just to stack Mana Cascade and get another Burden of Power proc to spend on Arcane Barrage.
Chrono-Shift, Improved Arcane Missiles, Crackling Energy and "New Talents"
- Feedback: I think the above comment is great and welcome. The only concern I have is that we are pretty tight on points. There are many who have complained about the fact that Chrono-Shift isn’t able to be picked, that Improved Arcane Missiles and Crackling Energy feel like obligate talents for DPS w/ little gameplay to offer. My only suggestion would be for you to consider making some of these baseline (especially Chrono-shift please I beg you) and replace those talent spots with whatever you’re cooking up. I would hate for you to create something cool that just isn’t able to be picked because it competes with superior DPS talent nodes.
Arcane Missiles and Clipping
- Feedback: With the most recent changes, we are heavily incentivized to clip Arcane Missiles again. This is because Nether Precision’s Arcane Splinters can now send off Arcane Orbs off-GCD, Eureka was nerfed (+ 25% AM damage → +10%), Illuminated thoughts was nerfed (+5% AM damage → +0%) and Spellfire Spheres now generate stacks based on Arcane Blast or Barrage usage. I personally don’t like this since it feels like you’re just mashing your Arcane Blast button during Missiles to interrupt it, and one of the successes of Arcane’s rework was to have Arcane Missiles feel more impactful to press rather than relying on Nether Precision procs. I would recommend a talent that reduces the channel time of Arcane Missiles to the same time as the GCD (1.5 second base) just so that we can put an end to this debate. If the DPS increase is too much, you can just nerf the damage of Arcane Missiles, but I don’t like having to interrupt this spell. It feels wrong.
Spellslinger Arcane
Splintering Orbs and Spellfrost Teachings
- Feedback: Aside from the previously discussed bug where Splintering Orbs is only applying 2 Splinters rather than 4 (like the above change mentioned), these changes are phenomenal. No negative feedback to give here. Great job
Sunfury Arcane
Lessons in Debilitation
- Feedback: I actually appreciate this because I fear I was going to be forced into playing Fire w/ Unstable Inferno just to get some extra CC in M+ (regardless of damage or spec preference), similar to why VDH was incredible in M+ w/ it’s double sigils.
Burden of Power and Mana Cascade
- Feedback: This feels a lot more consistent than the previous iteration w/ Clearcasting, but it runs into the problem I previously discussed with Arcane Harmony. Hopefully this can be addressed because ti would be such a shame if you can’t run Arcane Harmony w/ Sunfury.
Glorious Incandescence
- Feedback: This further reinforces the synergy with Arcane Harmony given that you get all your Arcane Charges back after you Barrage, but it runs into the issue that you won’t have Arcane Harmony stacks to begin with because you’re going to be busy casting Arcane Blast or Barrage to get your Burden of Power proc. We already have a Barrage-spamming hero tree w/ Spellslinger, I don’t think you should focus on this for Sunfury. I think Sunfury would be better served with a few hard-hitting Arcane Barrages.
1 Like
Another CRITICAL bug on Arcane/Spellslinger specialization:
- Splinterstorm is triggering off every 4 instead of 8 splinters.
Some more mage problems:
Fire
- Flamestrike casting at cursor is a deterrent from playing flamestrike
- Moving/jumping constantly to cancel unintended hardcast pyroblasts is very annoying. Might as well make pyrobalst only usable with hot streak and sun king’s
- Crits registering with a delay based on spell travel time incentivizes playing in closer range
- Crits are so abundant that Enhanced Pyrotechnics is not necessary. Heating up is often achieved easily with phoenix flames while fireball is becoming useless.
- Phoenix flames, while a generator, with all modifiers does more damage than pyroblast. This messes with fire’s intended priority system. You are asked to spend hot streaks, but the abundance of hot streaks forces you to lower pyro damage, making it more boring. To compensate, you make unleashed inferno, and then occasional big hits like phoenix flames with its capstone. So far it’s still fun, but the problem is already there. You should definitely consider a charge-based hot streak spender
- Living bomb ignite still bugged
- Still talents that reward you for casting pyros over flamestrike but would be useful in AOE
Frost
- First and 2nd gate of the spec are extremely rigid. Minimal choice for any spec.
- AOE is extremely bloated and unintuitive. Orb/blizzard is a self-contained mechanic that has nothing to do with frost’s mechanic of shattering.
- Glacial was fun and making shattered lances generate icicles helped a lot. However, still a negative feedback where more lances should be good, but more lances = less frostbolts = less flurries = bad for glacial spike. The number of contradicting mechanics in frost is a little nuts
- Way too many procs. Having 2 FoF and 2 flurries with brain freeze so often is a bit silly.
Add to that instant frostfire bolts or frozen orb resets (while orb can also give you more FoF). All of this with rather obscure priority system isn’t great - The original 2nd gate talent that buffed cone of cold is still there, but it definitely contradicts coldest snap in its purpose.
Arcane
- Mana is irrelevant to decision-making, other than pressuring you to press either evocation or arcane surge eventually. You also know that the spec is not balanced around pressing arcane blast with less than 4 arcane charges more than 5 times in a fight
- Arcane charges are irrelevant. You only play with having 0 or 4. 1-3 charges is extremely rare and something you actively try to avoid.
- Single target payoff is arcane balst - a mana spender. AOE payoff is barrage, while explosion is something you’d avoid if possible. You realized there was a contradiction there and so changed how clearcasting is granted. That was a great change, but the arcane barrage issue still remains. What does it do in single target? Is it damage, or is it mana conserve? Taking talents altogether, the answer is “sort of both”
- I’m not sure why you are reinforcing barrage → touch of the magi sequence with magi’s spark talent. It’s very awkward, but maybe that’s too subjective
- Shooting random arcane orbs as spellslinger arcane feels like playing an ARPG character that has a random proc equipped that doesn’t really do much with the rest of the build.
- Arcane orb was a small aoe burst enabler before. It had its flaws, mainly the travel time, but you could stand it when it’s infrequent. Now, a lot of AOE burst is arcane barrage + arcane orb (whether you actually cast it, or proc it). But barrage having no cooldown, and orb having travel time, makes gameplay during high haste and at long rage is very awkward. Even generally, when you press arcane barrage, you need to react to whether an orb was launched or not to correctly use the next GCD
I’m sure some of these you guys are fine with, and those that are absolutely a problem will not be addressed in TWW, but worth pointing them out still
2 Likes
Fire Mage Bug
Hyperthermia has procced for me while inside Combustion
1 Like
I really dislike the frost spec tree at the moment. The moves away from glacial spike, the desire to seemingly make frostbolt more important, the lack of meaningful choice between AoE and ST, the fact that we never take Cold Front and yet it remains a capstone, and the number of talents that we never change whatsoever. Frost being one of the easier specs is not an excuse for low tree customization. I really hope there’s a shift in design philosophy soon. The Hero Talent trees for frost are fantastic, but the frost spec tree itself needs jesus.
2 Likes
Frost Feedback - v3
Thank you for removing Snowstorm and for introducing Permafrost Lances, this is a great talent that fits in well with the spec and is a step in the right direction of addressing anti-synergistic and/or dead talents.
Variety and choice, again
From this recent build across all specs, Frost is still lowest in terms of total unique talents including choice node options (now tied with Survival) and total talent points overall. As Survival just had an entire rework and multiple spells became baseline, they would likely have overall more choice than Frost given that Frost is locked into such a large amount of talents to make base spells functional.
If talents such as Brain Freeze, Shatter, and Fingers of Frost are not going to be made baseline, then Frost needs multiple new choice nodes to offer options for varied gameplay. Currently the primary talent builds in Beta are almost identical for both AoE and ST, where only 3 talents are being varied. This does not meet any goals of build variety and falls extremely far behind specs like Fire which has immense variety in talent choice and builds. Please introduce more choice for Frost.
In all of these cases, Fractured Frost and Cold Front are still not looking to being taken due to the multiple problems previously raised about this talents in this thread, but even if they were tuned high they would be problematic to the health of the spec by encouraging degenerate Frostbolt spam. Frost currently only has 1 AoE designed capstone talent (Coldest Snap) that is worthy of taking. Please completely revise Fractured Frost and Cold Front to be less problematic and more beneficial in cases.
If Winter’s Chill’s duration could be extended to last an extra couple of seconds that would be a great quality of life improvement. Particularly when needing to shatter Ray of Frost into WC where WC will usually expire before RoF has finished channelling which causes the last 1-2 ticket of RoF to not benefit from WC.
4 Likes
Some additional feedback about Frost Mage and Frostfire after more testing.
Frost feedback:
- Even though stated goal for tier set change was to make it more aligned for both hero specializations, new tier 4 set bonus still benefits Spellslinger more. The reason for that is Frigid Pulse being activated only by Fingers of Frost procs - Spellslinger gets much bigger amount of them than Frostfire from its Frozen Orb resets. There is a way to address that.
Suggestion: Make Frigid Pulse trigger from all Ice Lances that hit frozen or semi-frozen (Winter’s Chill, Fingers of Frost etc) target. That would bring amount of triggers for both hero specs more in line, as Spellslinger has Frozen Orb resets and Winter’s Chill from Splinterstorms and Frostfire has additional Brain Freeze procs from Excess Fire instead. If that would be needed, adjust pulse damage to compensate. - Snowstorm was removed and AoE scaling issue against 3+ targets was addressed by the 4 tier set bonus, but other issues mentioned in this post remain. Please take a look at them as well.
Frostfire feedback (including from Fire POV):
- Fire has similar issue with Elemental Affinity as Frost - it affects both Fire and Frost spells when supposed to affect only opposite school spells.
- Frostfire Bolt on its own is still a dps loss for Fire compared to Fireball - it has faster cast time, but lower damage and the result is still being a dps loss. That should not be the case for an “upgrade talent”.
- Duration increase for Frostfire Mastery and proc chance increase for Frostfire infusion are nice, but there are other unaddressed issues like mechanics, bugs and visibility of procs. They were mentioned in this and this posts and could be looked at.
1 Like
Frost Feedback - Hero Trees – again
After doing some delves at different difficulties, heroic dungeons, and dummy testing here’s some feedback about the gameplay and flow of the Hero trees and how they interact with the Frost spec tree.
Spellslinger
Spellslinger Bugs
There are still situations where Splinterstorm is triggering without having 8 Splinters present. It has been difficult to replicate but it is making accurate testing more challenging and needs to be fixed.
Issues for easier content
In encounters where enemies die quickly, or before you can stack 8 Splinters to trigger Splinterstorm, Spellslinger feels like a very non-existent spec with nothing happening. This was particularly a prevalent feeling in Delves for the trash which is the majority of it (so this would also apply to any solo play). But also in dungeons where enemies died quickly or when Splinters across across targets but then they die too quickly which wastes the Splinters entirely. This may cause Spellslinger to fall into a pit where at certain lower difficulty levels where things die quick enough that the spec fails to actually function because it’s slower or not possible to get Splinterstorm to trigger.
Outside of Icy Veins, Spellslinger doesn’t have a lot going on at all and unless Spellfrost Teachings is proccing rapidly then there’s actually no noticeable gameplay change from base Frost and the Hero tree feels very non-existent.
During Icy Veins – some Spellslinger numbers
When Icy Veins is up and there is no mechanics downtime Spellslinger starts to become rapid fire and it’s causing an overloaded gameplay where we have such an incredibly high uptime on procs and debuffs. This is leading to a situation that is heavily impacting the value of many talents.
Over testing a large number of IV windows with a different ST builds (w/GS and no/GS), these are the current average casts and buff % uptime during IV:
| Average | Count | Buff % uptime |
|---|---|---|
| Ice Lance | 23.44 casts | N/A |
| Frozen Orb | 4.56 casts | N/A |
| Frostbolt | 1.44 casts | N/A |
| Winter’s Chill | 107.22 | 70.76% |
| Finger’s of Frost | 32.89 | 66.13% |
| Brain Freeze | 3 | 50.67% |
What this is resulting in:
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Getting on average 4 - 5.5 times more Winter’s Chill procs than the amount of Ice Lances that are able to be cast.
-
A crazy high up-time on Winter’s Chill, which is causing Flurry to not be needed at all, so the only Brain Freeze being generated are from Water Elemental.
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Sitting on Brain Freeze procs because there’s no value in casting Flurry, leading to high uptime on BF despite so few procs being generated because the only procs are from Water Elemental.
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Nearly no Frostbolts being cast at all during an IV window.
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Drowning in FoF procs from Freezing Winds and leading to just an IL spamfest.
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The more that Spellfrost Teachings procs the more fun this Hero tree feels, but this just fuels the loop even more. If Spellfrost Teachings was nerfed even more then it would just kill off any fun that Spellslinger had entirely.
Back to Deathborne and health of talents:
Given the above results, this leads to a number of implications for the Deathborne playstyle of Death’s Chill, Slick Ice, Fractured Frost, and Cold Front:
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Slick Ice and Death’s Chill are providing extremely low value and often no value for Spellslinger in ST because Frostbolt is almost never cast.
-
The lack of casting Frostbolt is even more prevalent in AoE, where the already full AoE rotation is leading to zero Frostbolts being cast in the majority of IV windows.
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With no Frostbolts being used during IV, the following talents are providing such often no value where they’d be considered dead talents: Slick Ice, Death’s Chill, Fractured Frost.
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With Frostbolt and Flurry almost never being cast during IV, that means Cold Front as a capstone is providing zero value during our major cooldown and any stacks that exist going into IV are likely to fall off during IV, wasting any effort we previously had building CF stacks prior. A capstone talent should always provide value, inside and outside our major cooldown.
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With Slick Ice, Death’s Chill, Fractured Frost, and Cold Front providing next to no value during IV for Spellslinger, this is causing significantly restricted talent options for Frost. Niche talents like Frostbite and Subzero cannot be taken for raid/dungeon bosses, leading to even fewer options.
-
With already the lowest number of total unique talents, the lowest number of choice nodes, and lowest total overall talent points, and 19-20 mandatory talents to make the spec function, there are essentially no options for build variety and choice. The ST and AoE builds are almost identical with only 2-3 talents difference, and players may be forced to talent into talents like Slick Ice and Death’s Chill despite them providing extremely low, or zero, value because there just isn’t anything else to talent into that can provide some sort of value. For players who want to opt for a non-GS playstyle there’s even fewer options useful for spend those talent points in. This is seriously critical and needs to be addressed.
Frostfire
Frostfire Bugs
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Frostfire Bolt still does not contribute to Bone Chilling.
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Hard to replicate but I found that if I’m in the middle of casting Frostfire Bolt and Frostfire Empowerment procs then it will automatically consume the proc when I finish casting FFB. It probably shouldn’t consume the proc in this case and only consume it when we use it for an instant cast.
General Frostfire feedback
The increase in duration of Fire Mastery and Frost Mastery is nice. There were issues in prior builds where Fire Mastery would have a higher chance of dropping off before reaching 8 stacks and that was frustrating, so it’s slightly improved now. Need to keep an eye on this though.
Excess Frost
It’s quite easy to get Excess Frost; however, actually proccing the Excess Frost Ice Nova is more tedious than expected. In ST often Flurry is on cooldown where we have no charges, so we’re unable to trigger this. It’s quite common to reach 8 stacks of Frost Mastery again before even able to trigger the initial Ice Nova because Flurry is still on cd. This is then munching the initial Excess Frost proc, wasting it.
Too often in AoE situations we don’t even need to cast Flurry at all, so it’s encouraging us to cast Flurry when we wouldn’t normally need to.
To maximise shattering, the standard rotation has always been Frost(fire)bolt > Flurry > shatter 2x IL (or shatter whatever). But when we have the Excess Frost buff and also have a Frostfire Empowerment buff, we have to solo cast the Flurry to trigger Excess Frost before being able to use Frostfire Empowerment to gain Excess Frost again, otherwise the initial Excess Frost buff gets munched. This is particularly disruptive to the rotation and flow of the spec and not intuitive at all.
Potential solutions:
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Making the Excess Frost and Excess Fire buffs stack would help, particularly when we get Frostfire Empowerment procs more rapidly.
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To address Excess Frost and Flurry’s more rarity, either Frostfire needs to generate more Flurries or Excess Frost needs to not trigger off Flurry at all.
Trying to min-max Excess Frost and Excess Fire
Currently, trying to ensure that every Excess Frost and Excess Fire buff is used and not munched is quite cognitively challenging, more so in AoE than ST. It requires heavy buff tracking and more future play planning to anticipate your rotation in advance, rather than Frost’s history reactionary playstyle to procs as they happen. In doing this, I am finding that it encourages me to sit and hold Frostfire Empowerment procs until the time is right (either to not much Excess Frost/Fire procs or maximise Fire/Frost Mastery duration) and ensure Excess Frost and Excess Fire is used by sometimes casting IL without FoF/WC, or solo cast Flurry, or cast Flurry into WC. It’s a very disruptive playstyle to how Frost has historically played and I really hope it’s not tuned to play this way because it is just incredibly unfun and cognitively draining.
During Icy Veins – Some Frostfire numbers
Frostfire Frost plays very similarly to base Frost during IV. From testing a large number of IV windows in AoE and different ST builds (w/GS and no/GS), here are the averages that I got during an IV window:
| AoE | Count |
|---|---|
| Frostfire Bolt | 3.2 casts |
| Frostfire Empowerment | 3.6 procs |
| Death’s Chill (w/FracFrost cleaving 3) | 9.75 stacks |
| ST (w/GS and non-GS builds) | Count |
|---|---|
| Frostfire Bolt | 9.42 casts |
| Frostfire Empowerment | 2.83 procs |
| Death’s Chill | 9.21 stacks |
Similarly to Spellslinger, Frostfire is rarely casting Frostfire Bolt during the IV window in the AoE rotation. The majority of the casts of FFB are the insta-Frostfire Empowerment procs. Frostfire benefits somewhat a little more from Death’s Chill than Spellslinger, because of Fractured Frost and Frostfire Empowerment it is able to get a few stacks of Death’s Chill. However, these stacks only occur if FFE procs so the build up of these stacks is slow and not consistent, meaning the overall value is much less.
It is the ST Frostfire rotation that is benefitting the most from Death’s Chill out of every build and both Hero specs. As there are less WC than Spellslinger, there are more opportunities to cast FFB. Noting that when talented into GS, the overall FFB cast during IV is slightly lower.
This is also showing that the vast majority of Frost builds are not benefitting from Death’s Chill, Slick Ice, and Fractured Frost, and even though Frostfire is mildly getting some value it is quite minor overall. This is even more evidence that these talents need to be revised and removed for talents that provide meaningful gameplay to Frost.
General Frost – again
- Bug: Time Anomaly is not proccing Brain Freeze at all.
Implications of Permafrost Lances on talent point investment
With the introduction of Permafrost Lances, and Ice Caller now being placed underneath it, this means we are now investing 1 additional talent point into tier 2 of the talent tree than we did before.
Due to so many critically mandatory talents for AoE to play smoothly, and the need to spend an additional talent point to get to Ice Caller, this is now 1 less talent point that we have to spend in tier 3 for AoE builds.
In prior beta builds, when building for AoE we used to be able to have just enough talents to pick up 3 capstones. Now we only have enough for 2 capstones. This is now pushing access to undesirable capstones like Death’s Chill and Cold Front even further out of reach for AoE builds and even harder for players to justify picking up, as in doing so would be sacrificing either a significant dps gain or QoL improvement from another talent. This loss of this extra talent point is further restricting AoE build diversity and variety, so again another call that Fractured Frost, Cold Front, and Slick Ice, and Death’s Chill need significant revisions to be desirable capstone talents that are not problematic for the health of the spec’s gameplay.
7 Likes
Lingering critical bugs in the Sunfury tree:
- Mana Cascade stacks are acting erraticaly and expiring prematurely for a while after exiting Combustion.
- Meteorites cast by Glorious Incandescence are not providing any cooldown reduction.
- Hyperthermia granted by Memory of Al’ar ignores Combustions extended by Sun King’s Blessing and procs while said combustion is still active.
EDIT:
Latest build re-introduced a old design flaw in the Hyperthermia talent from the Fire spec tree which allows it to proc while any combustion is active. Please fix this and all of the above, ty xoxo
3 Likes
After seeing Astarael’s analysis post - maybe there really should be a redesign to mentioned there capstone talents. However, since there are definitely people who enjoyed Deathborne playstyle from Shadowlands, this redesign could be a compromise one that still keeps some of its mechanics active.
Here is a possible one based on Warlock’s Havoc / Bane of Havoc mechanics (could be something else if Blizzard would come up with better idea but just to give food for thought):
Fractured Frost - While Icy Veins is active, your Frostbolts and Flurries hit 2 additional targets nearby for X% of their damage and Ice Lances, Icicles and Glacial Spikes hit 1 additional nearby target for Y% of their damage. Stacks with additional projectiles from Splitting Ice (to 3 targets totally).
Comment: Altered this talent to also involve usual Frost’s rotational abilities other than Frostbolt. That would allow to keep most synergies with other talents in Frost tree and just turn it into 3 target cleave phase, but since it is quite a powerful effect additional projectiles likely should hit for less than 100% of damage, hence the X%.
Cold Front - Generating X Icicles causes your next Frostbolt or Ice Lance to call down a Frozen Orb towards your target.
Comment: Made several mechanical changes here to make it more compatible with remaining Frost talents. Changing Frozen Orb generation from spell casts to Icicles generated still keeps generation from Frostbolt and Flurry, but also makes Glacial Spike builds and Ice Lance contribute to it too and opens synergies with talents like Splintering Cold. Tying the proc to next cast of Frostbolt (single-target or 3 target cleave situations) or Ice Lance (AoE situations) allows to get a bit of control over it and launch Frozen Orb when and where it is needed instead of potentially missing its position or aggroing unintended enemies by current uncontrolled launch.
Slick Ice - while Icy Veins is active, casting Frostbolt, Ice Lance, Flurry and Glacial Spike increases its Haste bonus by X%, up to Y%.
Comment: A small redesign to make Slick Ice compatible with non-Frostbolt main rotational abilities. Since Haste is a powerful boost, damage bonus should likely be removed from this talent. Haste bonus cap both allows to keep power of this talent in line and avoid requiring some optimization patterns where you would spam as many instant / low cast time spells as possible to stack as big bonus as possible and avoid long cast times like Glacial Spike and Ray of Frost.
Death’s Chill - stacking bonus from Slick Ice now also increases your Frost damage done by X% per stack, up to Y%.
Comment: This will allow to keep all the synergies and limitations created in Slick Ice, but also add additional damage boost bonus to them.
As a result:
- Fractured Frost and Cold Front provide viable 3 target talent cleave branch that does not contradict existing rotations (as it affects all main rotational abilities) and synergize with each other - Fractured Frost makes generated by Cold Front’s Frozen Orb Fingers of Frost hit up to 3 enemies and Cold Front’s Frozen Orb provides additional ST / AoE damage from Orb itself and additional Ice Lance procs to be cleaved to up to 3 targets.
- Slick Ice and Death’s Chill now synergize with all main rotational abilities for Frost and provide stronger major CD phase, but with limitations to both avoid stacking optimization strategies of using as many instant cast or short cast spells to get as big bonus as possible with avoiding long cast / channel spells and to keep its total power boost in line.
2 Likes
Arcane Talent Tree Feedback pt. 3
It is great to see that work on Arcane is still active. Even though the development states that more is coming next week, it is unclear what the additions or removals will be. Nevertheless, I will give feedback as the tree is right now.
Utility Nodes: One of the main things is that Arcane still has several utility talents all over the tree. These nodes are still bad design because they can never compete with any talent in any Gate you place them in unless required for pathing. It is still the case that every utility node has to be made baseline, required, or removed.
Presence of Mind: It is great to see that Wizined Wit has been removed. However, it is still the case that Presence of Mind, in a vacuum, is not strong enough to compete against any other node in Gate 2 because it is a utility spell, not a throughput spell. However, it will now, similarly to Dragonflight, always be picked because it is a required node to get to Siphon Storm. Presence of Mind is dependent on Siphon Storm tuning, and the Siphon Storm/Evocation nodes will always have a talent point tax in the form of Presence of Mind. It would be great if Presence of Mind was changed to be better as a standalone talent.
Impetus: If the intention is that the left-most column should be nodes that are always picked, then Impetus is the odd one out. I consider both Arcane Familiar and Presence of Mind core and flavourful spells for Arcane. Impetus is not.
Crackling Energy/Improved Arcane Missiles: These nodes still have the same issue. They are boring and mandatory, and put a heavy node tax on Gate 2. The existence of these nodes makes it impossible to pick situationally interesting nodes such as Arcane Tempo, Energized Familiar, Mana Adept, Chrono Shift, Surging Urge, etc.
There are too many boring nodes that are also mandatory for pathing and power. I hope that the alluded-to changes that are coming will address this.
Arcing Cleave: The placement of this node is still worrying. I think it would make much more sense if Arcing Cleave and Eureka swapped positions such that the only path to Orb Barrage becomes:
- Arcing Cleave → Resonance → Charged Orb → Orb Barrage
This path makes perfect sense for two reasons:
- If you want to make an Orb Barrage build, you also want every node that precedes it to enable it.
- If you want to make a mixed build between single target and AoE/cleave, then it is ordered such that you can pick exactly how much you want of each profile.
Unsorted Comments:
- Aether Attunment is still not increasing the damage of Arcane Missiles on any target.
- When playing as Arcane Spellslinger it appears to be spawning too many Arcane Splinters. Furthermore, after some time in combat, Splinterstorm will periodically begin procing regardless of how many active splinters there are. This bug causes an overflow of Clearcasting and skews testing.
5 Likes
Can we remove Siphon storm in the Arcane tree please and maybe move it to Time anomaly in the Class tree. Instead of Time anomaly granting Arcane surge, make it grant siphon storm by a chance. Siphon storm is a must pick boring talent that no one likes, especially having to use your mana regen ability at the start of a burst window is just backwards and lackluster.
2 Likes
Happy to see some of the feedback for Arcane being addressed. Here’s some more feedback based on the new build
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The change to having meteors drop from barrage instead of Orb is great; however, it’s hard to discern whether Arcane Barrage proc glow is telling me that meteorites will rain from the sky, or if it’s from the tier set. It would be great if there was some sort of visual cue of which was which. Weak auras will solve this otherwise, but we shouldn’t rely on that.
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Generating spheres with blasts and barrages is much preferred over clearcasting. However, it still feels slow to generate compared to fire. I’m not sure if it actually is slower, or if it’s just the more involved nature of generating and spending hot streaks makes the time fly better than spamming arcane blast, but regardless it feels pretty bad during the opener. This also seems like something that will be much slower in an AoE scenario. Maybe instead of tying it to certain spells, tying it to mana spent may make more sense? Or just add Arcane Explosion to the list of abilities? Or just make it every 6 casts of anything? All I can say is that sphere generation still feels faster and more natural for fire than arcane.
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As I said in my previous post - would love Time Anomaly, Inspired Intellect and Shifting Power to be removed, and it would be great to add Cauterize as a replaced capstone.
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Arcane Tree still feels very cluttered with little wiggle room. Way too many nodes that are flat damage increases that will either be picked or not picked based on tuning, with 0 difference in changes to playstyle or situation.
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Reiterating from my initial feedback that Arcane Soul feels bad as a payoff. The clearcasting is nice, but I think an extra payoff beyond that would make this feel better. There could be a neat synergy with Arcane Harmony by having Arcane Soul not consume the buff, for example.
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Spellslinger Spellfrost Teachings change to have shards shoot out an orb rather than eliminate it’s CD sounds neat, but I am not sure I love it. The only situation using orb is useful is for generating charges, but you want to plan generating charges. Having it randomly shoot off means you won’t actually get to spend the charges first. Having it reset the CD means you can at least barrage and then orb (assuming AoE, that’d be not very beneficial in ST). Maybe it’d be better if it shot out an Arcane Barrage instead?
2 Likes
Fire Mage
Supernova should not be a choice node with Dragon’s Breath.
Sunfury
Lessons in Debilitation
You forgot to add something back to Lessons in Debilitation. I get that you felt having a CC as part of it was too powerful, but then to leave the talent devoid of anything else beyond the Spellsteal mechanic is not quite enough to carry the point. I can’t foresee a situation where I would now take this over Gravity Lapse.
Ignite the Future
The uptime on this doesn’t seem worth the point. I’d prefer to see something like: “Generating a Spellfire Sphere while your Phoenix is active grants a charge of Fire Blast” or something, or perhaps a charge of Hot Streak!
5 Likes
Sunfury Fire AoE & Flamestrike
Addressing game feel of Pyroblast in ST versus Flamestrike in AoE for Sunfury.
TLDR; consider making Flamestrike targetable, buffing Flamestrike and/or providing better synergy (like with Living Bomb), and swapping the talents Pyromaniac & Hyperthermia with From the Ashes & Phoenix Reborn (for Sunfury’s benefit)
So far everything for Fire seems pretty stellar, bang-up job. Players can now drill down to the finer points (aka get nitpicky).
With that, Flamestrike needs some love if you want it to be the preferred choice for Fire in AoE. Sunfury Fire’s ST build is great. The synergy Pyroblast has with other talents is great. But Flamestrike AoE is lacking. Which is sad for such an iconic and classic spell.
- Consider making Flamestrike targetable
- The fun of the ST build, and its cousins (Cleave and/or Ignite builds), is the pace of play. Being able to go through your abilities quickly and somewhat rhythmically is a satisfying loop.
- Flamestrike throws that off. Having to think about cursor location takes away from pace of play. I think the use of a target reticle is great for large AoE abilities with a cooldown, but not so much when it’s an ability you’d like to spam.
- If it needs to have prio damage to fit the idea of a targetable spell, with reduced damage to nearby targets, then that would fit with Fire’s m.o. in M+. But anything to make it targetable would be awesome.
- Consider providing more synergy for Flamestrike within the tree.
- Right now it’s only real interaction is with Phoenix Flames buffing the next two by 20% through Majesty of the Phoenix. It does reduce the cast time, but inside Combustion you’re not hard casting, and outside of Combustion you might hard cast one and instant cast the other, so that could work for SKB but not much else.
- Whereas Pyroblast can increase Ignite damage with Controlled Destruction, call down a Meteor with Firefall, and provide CDR & damage buff to Phoenix Flames through From the Ashes & Phoenix Reborn. These are all awesome and rewarding in ST/Cleave/Ignite AoE. You’ll notice the impacts these talents have and feel them in your gameplay.
- Same can’t be said for the talents impacting Flamestrike. The two other talents are a choice node for more direct damage // ground effect for more damage, and buffing Flamestrike’s ignite damage. The only way you’ll feel these talents is typically negatively: if you pick Flame Patch and the tank moves the pack out of the effect, that’ll feel bad. The others are just flat damage. So currently there are no uniquely rewarding interactions with Flamestrike.
- There’s a clear lean into Living Bomb for AoE, which is cool. I think if you gave Flamestrike some interaction with Living Bomb, like creating, buffing, being buffed by, or some other fun interaction then that would be big push for Flamestrike in AoE. Or find an unbroken way to tie it in with meteor.
- How does it all relate to Sunfury? Hyperthermia! Consider changing Hyperthermia’s position in the talent tree.
- Hyperthermia feels like a core part of Sunfury and Unleashed Inferno. It’s even outright named and provided by a Sunfury talent. It helps with resource preservation, provides more CDR for Combustion through Kindling, and helps bridge the gap between Combustions. It has the added benefit of contributing to From the Ashes & Phoenix Reborn, AND Lit Fuse by generating and consuming Hot Streaks. All in all a super fun talent with numerous rewards in ST.
- It can still provide all those things in AoE, with the exception of From the Ashes & Phoenix Reborn. However, with the previous stated lean into Living Bomb, you cannot currently take the AoE focused talents Explosivo & Blast Zone and still be able to pickup Hyperthermia. A simple shuffling of the talents solves this (switch the Hyperthermia talents with the Phoenix Flames talents).
- To compare to Frostfire: Meteor is a core component of its gameplay (named by two Frostfire talents) and it can be picked up and combined with any capstone, allowing them to mix and match the ability for ST or AoE.
- I’d argue that Hyperthermia is equally as important for Sunfury, yet the same build diversity just isn’t attainable. If the design of the tree is to have essential/core skills down the middle, ST favoring capstones left, and AoE favoring capstones right, then the Phoenix Flames capstones would be more fitting on the far left since the capstone is related to “direct damage” and Hyperthermia feels more core Fire than the PF talents, which are new additions from the tier set.
If Fire AoE in TWW meant buffed Flamestrikes that synergized with Living Bomb (or something fun), being able to proc Hyperthermia while still benefiting from Blast Zone (for Sunfury’s sake), AND that Flamestrike was targetable? Yuge.
3 Likes