A big problem that Fingers of Frost has is that it’s just the same effect, albeit a weaker one, as Brain Freeze. What if it affected Ice Lance in a completely different manner, in a way that acknowledges Brain Freeze is the big proc for Frost?
If it were reworked to increase Ice Lance’s damage to frozen targets by x4 instead of x3, it wouldn’t be a munched proc, but a stacked proc. And Ice Lance would have some variance in it’s damage, since it’s always cast to crit. If Fingers of Frost procs half as often as Brain Freeze, then that’s essentially how Fingers of Frost would behave, a “crit” for Ice Lance.
Also, this would help Icicles. By only releasing Icicles into Brain Freeze, they’ll crit much more often.
If you have high mastery, then going over 5 casts of Frostbolt without a Flurry essentially gives Frostbolt a “double-strike” with the auto-release. Then you Flurry out six critical Icicles after the long wait between Flurry, Ice Lance, Ice Lance.
You don’t stop fishing for the Brain Freeze proc at any point, you just might get harder hitting Ice Lances if you proc Fingers of Frost first.
This is one workaround, but it probably wont happen because of how much Frost can cleave as it is.
It might be better if FoF was Ice Lance x 3 + a fixed amount instead of x 4.
FoFs on ST while it is affected by Winter’s Chill is an absolute munch as it is, but on cleave it’s a partial munch and on AoE it can be bypassed by the player. I think they want to keep this concept, as annoying as the ST munch is.
For most mages, FoF procs more often than BF. Frostbolt has a built-in bad luck protection that will force it to generate an FoF on your 8th Frostbolt if the previous 7 don’t yield one. It has no built in mechanism for protection for Brain Freeze procs.
Ah I didn’t know this. That kind of built in forgiveness (after a recurring 15% chance stacked over 100% fails) is great. However, that will clear all of your Icicles, and maybe only launching 1 or 2 Icicles into Brain Freeze instead of 5 or 6 is what brings the perception (and damage) of Icicles down so low.
Even more now, do I think Fingers of Frost should simply Improve your next Ice Lance, without triggering it’s cast.
Honestly, Ice Lance is doing too much as it is. The proper fix might be to BF since it’s stepping on FoF’s territory. Perhaps changing Winter’s Chill to only effect non-instant spells? If cast times become an issue, it’ll allow for a longer duration without issue and prevent munching. If you insist on having the combo be do-able, perhaps having it effect one of each.
Technically speaking, Shatter combo’s vs immune target’s haven’t been a thing since Cataclysm when they changed FoF to only effect IL and FFB with BF.
Also,
where does it say this? Google is showing no results, can’t find that information on class guides, and unless it was mentioned in the Mage Discord half-hazardly, this is not even remotely the case. You can easily go 15+ Frostbolts, and yes even using BF’s procs, without getting a single FoF. Other than not seeing it anywayer, I just tested that theory on live and no 8th spell proc sometimes.
As is the deal for so many spec, this was never announced by Blizz, but deduced by the mage theorycrafters. Their proof is the lack of the opposite, ie: feel free to find literally any log of a Frost mage (of the thousands) where this doesn’t happen, and you wont. All Frost mage sims will also factor in this BLP, and it’s easier to rely on thousands of logs that support this theory vs anecdotal claims to the contrary with no proof.
The issue is Icicles are currently not even worth min/maxing. The best Frost profiles run 8% Mastery only (so, just the base) and do more damage than any other amount of Mastery.
Sorry as I do need to make a correction here, the BLP is as follows: it’s for both BF or FoF, the counter resets once you get at least 1 of these procs via Frostbolt. Apologies for any confusion. Count is still 8 though.
