Here is feedback post about Frost Mage and its hero talent trees after more testing.
Frost Mage feedback
Compared to War Within this new version feels more intuitive and simple - you build stacks of Freezing, shatter them with Ice Lance / Comet Storm, use Ray of Frost / Frozen Orb / Blizzard to increase throughput and play a bit of management with Ray of Frost cooldown reduction for Flurry / Frozen Orb and Icicle / Fingers of Frost generation if specced into. However, new version of Frost has several significant issues, design flaws and several undertuned / mismatched talents in the tree and bugs that all should be addressed.
AoE issues
Two main issues with AoE for new Frost Mage iteration is target cap inconsistency (where different abilities and even synergizing effects have different target caps) and unreliable cleave from Ice Lance (which triggers only on Freezing enemies when AoE Freezing application is RNG based and unreliable, so you can get moments when you cannot cleave with Ice Lance against pack and need to use Arcane Explosion as spammable AoE filler which is counterintuitive for a Frost Mage). Now in more details about specific cases for these issues with suggestions how to fix them.
Cone of Frost: Is odd to affect only 5 targets with Freezing stacks when Ice Nova itself can affect 8+ targets and most other AoE effects for Frost Mages affect 6 targets (like Glacial Spike explosion and Splintering Ray). Their target caps should be brought more in line.
Suggestion: Increase number of targets that get Freezing stacks from Cone of Frost from 5 to either 6 (matching most other AoE effects) or 8 (matching soft target cap for Ice Nova).
Fractured Frost: affecting only enemies with Freezing stacks makes Ice Lance cleave too unreliable and affecting only 2 additional targets with it makes many synergizing effects like Cone of Frost or Freezing stacks from 8+ target capped Frozen Orb and Blizzard require additional and unneeded target swapping to shatter stacks on different enemies that can get them. That leads to unintuitive gameplay / too much target swapping (for AoE shattering) and too high reliance on RNG (for Ice Lance cleaving) gameplay and should be addressed.
Suggestion: Increase number of additional targets from Fractured Frost from 2 to 5 (so 6 totally matching number of targets affected by most AoE spells and suggested number of targets that get Freezing stacks from Cone of Frost), make cleave damage affect even targets without Freezing stacks and if needed reduce cleave damage to compensate for all that. Such changes would allow to use Ice Lance for both cleave damage and AoE freeze shattering much more reliably and consistently with other Frost Mage’s AoE effects.
Splintering Ray: requiring both additional talent point and sacrificing single-target damage of Ray to even make Frost’s “major cooldown” deal any AoE damage and Freezing application is not good, especially since for comparison Arcane gets AoE damage attached to Arcane Surge for free and without any tradeoffs. Frost should be brought in line.
Suggestion: Merge either Splintering Ray or Frigid Focus into base effect of Ray of Frost and keep the other as optional upgrade for Ray of Frost (just like Arcane has baseline Arcane Surge and can optionally upgrade it with Mana Bomb).
Design flaws
New Frost Mage has too many effects with different use cases that override or require using other X spell first to be enabled (with prime examples being both Comet Storm and Glacial Spike). Comet Storm is a big AoE damage spell that can be used for bursting the pack or synergizing with Ice Nova… but you can’t use it till you channel long cast of Ray of Frost (which does not even have any AoE damage without a specific upgrade) making its usage unintuitive / unnecessary delayed in PVE and easily disruptible with crowd control and interrupts in PVP. Glacial Spike with Frostfire tree upgrades can cleave and deal decent AoE damage… but you can’t really hold it for a pack or adds appearing in several seconds since it replaces your main spammable ability and you are pretty much forced to spend it immediately to even continue dealing damage to main target. Both these abilities have cases when their current override is more harmful than useful and that should be addressed.
Suggestions: 1 - Decouple Comet Storm from Ray of Frost and return it back to separate active ability with X seconds cooldown. That would address most issues with it - you would again be able to use it when and where it is needed and decently synergize it with Ice Nova for AoE shattering. For additional QoL it could also receive a similar choice node to Blizzard and have a choice between target centered Comet Storm and selected area Comet Storm allowing players to pick the preferred option.
2 - Make current version of Glacial Spike (which overrides Frost(fire) Bolt) a choice node with Glacial Spike as separate ability with similar trigger condition and effect to overriding version. That would allow players who want more control for when and where to use it to have such an option and players who don’t want additional button to continue using the overriding version.
Mobility and disruptability issues
Since Frost’s new major cooldown is a stationary and long cast time channel that has many effects attached to full / successful channeling and Frost did not receive any forms of mobility / cast protection for it yet (despite being promised to get Ice Floes again) that can cause issues in both PVE (where any forced movement / knockback / one shot mechanic escaping with Shimmer on cooldown can break this channel and disable both its potential damage and additional effects attached to full channeling) and in PVP (where any enemy can press one of their multiple crowd control and interrupt effects and your major cooldown and its potential additional effects are gone which can be compared to insta-dispelling Combustion from Fire Mages in Shadowlands when it was dispellable). These issues can be very harmful for Frost Mages in both PVE and PVP and should be addressed.
Suggestions: 1 - Return Ice Floes as choice node with Shimmer to general talent tree. That is a much better choice node than current Shimmer vs shorter cooldown of Blink and since Shimmer was nerfed it would also be much more competitive than in War Within. Being positioned in general tree it can also help Fire Mages with Pyroclasm casts and Arcane Mages with Arcane Surge / Arcane Pulse casts.
2 - Either provide a form of Aura Mastery effect for Frost Mages via a PVP talent or return Deep Freeze ranged stun to Frost Mage tree or PVP talents. Either of these effects can help to secure cast of Ray of Frost while enemies would still have counterplay opportunities too (Aura Mastery cast of Ray can still be disabled with full crowd control effects and Deep Freeze stun can still be trinketed out of or prevented via removing / dispelling the freeze effect needed to activate Deep Freeze).
Undertuned or too niche talents
New Frost tree contains several talents that either have undertuned or odd effect or bad position in the tree or just serve as talent point tax. These talents should be looked at and addressed and include:
Icy Hand - requires talent point investment just to get basic functionality of Fingers of Frost stacking back (which is baseline in War Within). Serves as just a talent point tax and should be addressed.
Suggestion: Make it also increase chance for Fingers of Frost to occur by X% in addition to current effect. Such change would make it also provide at least some throughput value.
Improved / Deep Shatter - with all the nerfs to Shatter damage and lack of other crit chance supporting nodes in the tree their effect is now too low and should be boosted.
Everlasting Frost - getting 1 Fingers of Frost stack per 1 minute is too low increase to throughput and can make this talent not picked much in PVE. Should be buffed to at least 2 stacks of FoF to address that.
Freezing Winds - with nerf while having more reasonable effect (no longer quadrupling base value) is still unreliable and now as third gate talent provides less value than first gate talent Frostbite. Could be improved with all that in mind.
Suggestion: Make it also cause Blizzard to apply guaranteed 1 stack of Freezing with first hit to all affected targets. That would both make its effect much more reliable (you can start cleaving with Ice Lance or Fingers of Frost immediately after using Blizzard) and more powerful compared to Frostbite.
Comet Storm - being gated as capstone after 3 talent point investment can make it too hardly accessible, especially for Frostfire that literally needs it. Consider moving it to a more reachable position somewhere higher in the tree.
Undertuned or too niche PVP talents
Frost Mage has several PVP talents that are either no longer valuable / usable or have too niche effect and should be addressed.
Ice Form - not usable since Icy Veins is gone and its effect is now undertuned, since its buff to Frost(fire) Bolt damage does not matter much as it is a filler and cannot shatter. It is also too easily counterable with dispels as unlike most other cooldowns it does not have dispel protection / immunity and can be easily negated. Should be tweaked with all that in mind.
Suggestion: Make it no longer require Icy Veins (to become usable at all in beta), make it increase all Frost and Fire (for compatibility with Frostfire hero tree) damage done instead of Frost(fire) Bolt damage with according value, make it undispellable too and remove its stun immunity to compensate. Such tweaks would make this PVP talent much more reliable and generally useful while removing its main balancing issue (lengthy stun immunity).
Concentrated Coolness: With Frozen Orb having baseline chasing effect this PVP talent with its stationary positioning is now more harmful than useful (even more so in PVP where enemies would just run out of it). It should receive something additional to make it viable and competitive like bigger damage bonus to Frozen Orb and increasing its area to compensate for it being stationary.
Icy Feet - is too niche (affects only 2 abilities when Frost Mages have much more abilities that apply it) and too easy to negate (snare immune Mage can still be affected by all other forms of crowd control effects to entirely negate this benefit). Should be boosted with that in mind.
Suggestion: Make it trigger from removing / dispelling any freeze effect applied by Mage and make it also provide root immunity (to make it more consistent and generally useful).
Ring of Fire - after nerfs in War Within is worse than Ring of Frost that it replaces - has shorter duration of both Ring and its crowd control effect and its damage is too negligible, so currently it is not worth the PVP talent cost. Should be buffed to be more competitive - have same Ring duration as Ring of Frost and similar to it 6 seconds control duration which would also make it deal more damage over it. That would allow to use it as a more offensive and different diminishing returns version of Ring of Frost and provide both niche and more competitiveness for it.
Bugs
Several noticed bugs with Frost Mage tree and effects:
- Improved Flurry’s additional projectile is not affected by Splitting Ice (hits only 1 target).
- Crystalline Refraction generates only 1 stack of Fingers of Frost instead of 2. Might be due to period of FoF stacks generation not being affected by Haste (which shortens channel time).
- Frost Nova and Snowdrift cooldowns are not affected by Time Manipulation (while both of them are crowd control spells too).
- Cold Snap does not reset cooldown of Ice Cold (bug) and Ice Nova (it should since Ice Nova replaces Cone of Cold).
Frostfire Mage (Frost) feedback
While still having impressive visuals compared to several additional “icicles” of Spellslinger this tree can still use work to make it more compatible with new Frost design - more synergies with new mechanics like Freezing, more procs / synergizing effects and likewise. Here is feedback about some specific talents:
Elemental Affinity - now affects only Dragon’s Breath making its effect very inferior to Frostfire Fire version (which reduces cooldown of multiple Frost spells). That should be addressed via (re)adding more Fire spells to general tree with several suggestions provided in a later post with Mage general tree feedback (as this post is already large enough).
Flame And Frost - has same issue and also Ice Cold does not reset cooldown of Dragon’s Breath and should be fixed.
Thermal Conditioning - does not affect cast time of Glacial Spike and it should (for consistency) since Glacial Spike replaces Frostfire Bolt currently.
Dualcasting Adept - increased critical damage for Meteor and Pyroblast does not provide much value since new Frost tree does not have any crit synergies anymore outside of Shatter. Consider replacing this effect with making Pyroblast and Glacial Spike apply 1 additional stack of Freezing each, which would be much more synergizing with new Frost tree.
Heat Sink - while new dual element visual for Flurry is cool its effect is not that high (as Flurry itself contributes not that much and mainly to 1-2 target situations) especially compared to Frostfire Fire analogue that gets much bigger throughput increase from it. Consider improving this talent for Frostfire Frost to match.
Suggestion: Consider making it also affect Frozen Orb or Blizzard with similar damage bonus, damage type conversion and Frostfire visual. Affecting one of these abilities would make it also meaningfully contribute to AoE damage increase (which it currently does not) and visual of swirling vortex of ice and fire (for Frostfire Orb) or rain of fire and ice (for Frostfire Blizzard) would be also quite impressive. Such change would also provide procs of Frostfire Empowerment in AoE situations (where neither Frostfire Bolt nor Frostfire Flurry are used much) and help address this issue as well.
Frostfire Empowerment - is currently bugged for Frostfire Bolt and explosion triggers only on main target. Should affect surrounding enemies.
Frostfire Infusion - is likely bugged and provides 5% multiplicative increase to chance of Brain Freeze (1.25%) instead of additive (5%). Likely should be fixed and maybe even buffed to be impactful enough compared to stuff like Spellslinger’s Polished Focus.
Frost Spellslinger feedback
While visually not as impressive as Frostfire this tree provides reliable and impactful throughput increase, so is fine for people who want to play “pure” Frost spec. However, this tree still has several mechanical issues and undertuned talents that should be addressed. Here is feedback about several specific talents:
Splintering Orbs - Splinters from Frozen Orb still fly all over the place and target random enemies some of which might not have needed to be targeted. Please fix this behaviour and make Splinters launch into according targets that were damaged by Frozen Orb.
Shifting Shards - you get Brain Freeze much less frequently than every 4 casts of Waterbolt (which provide similar 2 Splinters on average), so is undertuned compared to its alternative and should be buffed.
Look Again - Image created by the talent immediately dies when you take any damage and does not provide much value even if it is alive. That is due to Images themselves becoming too barely usef… niche and should be addressed in general tree (with suggestions being provided in a later post with general tree feedback), but also for Spellslinger specifically this talent could just do something additional on top of creating an Image to justify taking it over Slippery Slinging. For example, it could also provide a short duration movement speed boost after using Blink akin to Temporal Velocity in War Within and provide more frequent, but lower movement speed boost compared to bigger, but also less frequent boost from Slippery Slinging.
Reactive Barrier - was overnerfed and provides too low defensive value now. Its max effect threshold and value should be buffed again (for example to 30-35% each).
Signature Spell - is bugged and does not provide any additional Splinters from Glacial Spike.
This sums up my feedback about Frost Mages and their hero trees in Midnight for now. Thank you for reading!