Experiences so far? I made the QA mistake of getting this week’s cloak upgrade before doing any testing. Overall damage has increased by ~15%, if I had to eyeball it, but unsure how much of that is the new cloak proc and how much is the new balance changes.
Didnt frost just get a flat 5% damage increase? So mathematically, the final dps increase should be no more than 5%.
Didnt frost just get a flat 5% damage increase? So mathematically, the final dps increase should be no more than 5%.
Yes and no. The buff will increase the % a bit more than 5% because of the way spell power scaling works and how primary stats work, although it won’t be anything close to 15% damage increase.
Overall damage has increased by ~15%,
He isn’t very good at math.
Frost is still the go to for low end pve and mythic + and still gets outshined by fire in pretty much every aspect of the game and high end play.
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Can you quit responding to every thread about frost with “play fire?” This topic is about how frost mages are experiencing the new buff, so share your first hand experience playing it before and after the buff or go away.
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so share your first hand experience playing it before and after the buff or go away.
Frost is still the go to for low end pve and mythic +
My expierince is that frost is still the go to for low end pve and mythic + and that it still gets outshined by fire in pretty much every aspect of the game and high end play.
Can you quit responding to every thread about frost with “play fire?”
I never said anywhere to play fire. Try re-reading.
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Sort of, but not really. Break points on different content types will have different effects on overall damage. Raid fights will probably have the most proportional scaling, but something like m+ you also have to consider things like pull size, time between pulls versus cds, etc. More pure damage means larger or faster pulls, which means real damage output scaling greater than 5% in the case of the orb build. Same concept as fire doing more damage in higher keys, because of increased mob health and more combusts on trash. Even on fights like Vex, with the recently nerfed add health, how quickly the packs go down and how quickly you get her into p3 will affect your overall dps in different ways.
OP, in the same boat as you, our group goes cloak upgrades right after reset and that was 12, which is a huge int proc.
What I did notice last night running keys is that my GS is going over 450k, seen a couple peek at 500k and those were with a second target. However that is for sure my cloak proc’ing during those windows. Last week without either, best I would see was 370k range.
I would not be surprised if that cloak proc is 10% when it lines up with GS(s). Nor would I shocked same for Fire if it lined up with combust window.
One can pray that 9.0 finally removes 75 tier, long past time RoP was removed as it limits mages due to exploiting it’s power in short windows (every spell has to consider how it would be abused with RoP) . For example, fire would be hot garbage currently without that crutch.
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I can somewhat feel the buff. Definitely went up a good couple K in raids, and mobs don’t feel as painful to deal with in the world. Still not enough though to put Frost up any real rank.
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The buff has been nice (have only been noil) but still doesnt feel enough to keep me as Noil. Looking into orb build (but I cant get PI +WO for nothing) and the TV build. Noil feels so slow although the 650-700k crits are nice.
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Are you all GS builds? The cloak dps increase is consistent for me, though I use FOrb which has a flatter damage profile. 25% uptime is pretty much 25% uptime, and whether it lines up with full burst or not is a relatively minor consideration. Honestly, it feels like I’m doing more damage than I should, and I was wondering if anyone else is feeling that way.
I havnt had much time to check this out but I run TV and LW like legion days and I’m doing pretty decent for DPS. I’m usually consistent 55k ST but my burst goes up to 120k during opening. I’m not a fan of the play style of GS. My Ice lance crits for around 100k.
Ha. My IL crits for 150-200k after Tuesday, but my sustained ST dps isn’t significantly higher than yours… I see you’re running t3 infinite stars. 
Gotta love RNG on drops accounting for such a major portion of our dps.
There are a number of reasons why this isn’t the case. One is that not all dmg from a frost mage comes from their spells. Some percentage is from essences and corruption effects. I also don’t know how the 5% buff impacts Azerite traits, as some traits affect frost abilities, some are stat procs, and some are also unique sources of dmg.
To answer the question, I also forgot to do a sim comparison pre- and post-buff, and I got my rank 12 cloak as quick as possible. But my raiding log shows that my avg DPS on the first six bosses of Ny Heroic jumped from 49k on Sunday (pre-buff) to 56k on Tuesday (post-buff) with the only difference being the cloak and the buff. Which, if I did the math right, is just over a 14% increase. I stick to the NoIL build.
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I sympathize with your Tier 3 Infinite Stars envy.
Sucks that the best I have is Tier 3 Void Tendril. And it adds less than half the DPS of Tier 2 Infinite Stars at the same ilevel. And Tier 2 Infinite Stars also costs less Corruption.
The only Infinite Stars piece I’ve ever gotten is Tier 1 on an ilevel 420 boots. Total junk. GRRRRRRRRRRRRR!!! 
Yay, I guess? The devs not forgetting the spec exists is something, but I miss the individual ability adjustments rather than handing out +5% aura buffs.
I would have given away my Infinite Stars pieces if I’d had the option to do so. I think one was rank 2, but it never had time to ramp up enough to feel worthwhile while soloing. The rank 3 Twilight Devastation got disenchanted. I won’t run more corruption than I can fully negate via cloak+essence. My WQ +8% leech boots have been the only corruption so far that made me sit up and take note rather than immediately considering banking, cleansing, or disenchanting.
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That’s what they do though. The ignore the core mechanic issues and just apply a flat buff regardless of how much feedback they’re given. The adjusted ice lance based on what? Their adjustment still makes them sub par and not useable in the standard rotation.
Probably pat themselves on the back thinking “job well done.”
Some specs have been God tier all expansion and they leave them alone. Fire would have been equally bad to play had it not been for lucid dreams and Hyperthread bracers.
It’s laughable at this point.
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Lucid minor is still borked so it doesn’t f*ing matter really. I know they did something to it because now I get the icicles if the LD procs happen after I already naturally generate one, but have the mismatch and doesn’t actually give an icicle if I proc LD before that. So its still borked. Its still a 3 to 4% loss for me to run Lucid Dreams minor if it doesn’t work right, so in a way it washes away some of this ham fisted 2nd grade balancing math.
TBH, I think I made more dps gain dropping infinite stars and piling mastery corruptions back on. At least for M+. I have to roll the dice on single target raid and hope my Rank2 Inf Stars makes it close to simmed dmg.
I’ve actually noticed the Lucid Dreams animation issue only happens when you’re out of combat and gain an icicle through any other means other than casting an offensive spell (buffing yourself, using shimmer, etc.)
Just looked at the warcraft log standings and frost mages are now in the middle of the charts instead of bottom so we are doing better damage now.
Only on Mythic raid with very low parses. Still in the bottom part of Heroic raid and M+.
Majority of mages will still play Fire like they did for a while now.
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