Frost Changes for 12.0.5

Classes Mage
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Edit VII : I have stopped playing, subscribed until December due to my own poor decisions. Vote with your money and your time. I have not played in a month. This is not an acceptable change and we need to hold them accountable.

**Edit V: They are still dumpstering glacial spike folks. Sad days when they come after frost mage under the guise of ‘well people can’t find an ability’ even though they want to nerf us… All the while classes like UnhDK and Aug evoker exist.
**
Edit VI: Just did my first M+ of the patch. Did not enjoy frost mage at all, that nerf to glacial spike feels so remarkably bad. That combined with fact that the vast majority of our agency has been removed in the ‘mage pruning of 2026’. Like I couldn’t even really help with the Xalatath affix this week (Ascendance; disrupting the void spheres that spawn on the ground). Whereas a well placed blastwave did the job before.

Really just not a fan of where mages are. Pretty done with the game as a whole because of it.

  • Frost

    • Developers’ notes: We’re making some cosmetic and clarity-related changes to Glacial Spike so that players can easily find Frostbolt in their spellbooks. We’re also adjusting the 4th rank for Hand of Frost to help make Ray of Frost feel like more of a moment and help ease the decision point on its best use-case while we also look to distribute the power of the 2nd charge elsewhere. We’ll be monitoring the throughput impact of these changes and make adjustments as necessary.

    • Icicles has been updated – No longer generates rapidly out of combat.

    • Glacial Spike now has a duration of 60 seconds (was unlimited).

    • Apex Talent: Hand of Frost (Rank 4) – No longer grants an additional charge of Ray of Frost. Now causes Ray of Frost to generate 8 Hands of Frost over its duration (was 4). Ray of Frost damage increased by 30% (was 25%).

Do not make these changes. The class / spec is fine as is. It finally feels smooth and playable in PVE content. These changes would completely brick the spec.

The ray of frost charge being dropped is genuine garbage, the charge is what makes the ability itself viable.

Nerfing glacial spike because people can’t find frost bolt is wild to me. Just apply the frost bolt label to it… That can’t be hard to do.

Frost has not been viable or engaging / fun to play in PVE for expansions. LEAVE IT ALONE!

Edit: Looks like everyone has agreed so far, hopefully Blizzard listens to the feedback and these changes do not make it to live.

Edit II: I am going to go as far to say that, if these changes go through… That is enough of a fundamental change to the product that a refund should be available. I am tired of going in to patches and expansions all starry-eyed thinking ‘they get it this time’ just for them to crap all over my favourite class a month in to the content. Enough is enough.

Edit III: I would also like to see both charges of fingers of frost be consumed if you have two charges at once. Having 20 shatter stacks, mind freeze and two FoF charges at once is just spamming ice lance for 15s straight. Conusume both FoF at the same time and just give me the damage.

Edit IV: It looks like we won a portion of the battle, they’re still nerfing Glacial’s recharge pretty hard.

91 Likes
State of Mage - Pretty Done With WoW
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Yeah, this change to Ray of Frost, removing the second charge, is going to absolutely kill the spec. Blizzard, please don’t do this.

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Bricking glacial spike because players couldnt find frostbolt in their spellbook. Its so over

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I don’t understand what the changes to Glacial Spike means.

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“This spec is playing really smoothly and consistently. The gameplay loop feels good. Let’s fix that.”

– Blizzard probably

This is honestly a ridiculous change. Hand of frost in my last M0 tour was 2% of my damage. TWO. Buffing ray by 30% and adding some extra hands does not even come close to removing the additional charge. The additional charge felt like a solid end tier apex talent. Hand of frost sucks. It does basically nothing. And all this means is Ray of Frost will waste shatter stack build up upon use since the cap is 20.

This is a quality of life downgrade for no reason. If Blizzard thinks frost is outperforming, just reduce our damage by 3% or something. Don’t degrade the quality of life for the spec. Like jfc who comes up with this garbage? >.>

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It means you no longer get to open with Glacial Spike anymore because charges dont generate out of combat.

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And that will be absolutely painful for frost, because frostbolts literally feel like we’re standing still twiddling our thumbs.

I’m all for a slight damage reduction, but frost is actually fun to play right now (I was surprised, I hated it at first). Blizzard, PLEASE don’t make these changes.

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none of these changes were wanted blizzard.

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The Glacial Spike change is egregiously bad. Like, horribly so. Why does it need to be changed just so players can find Frostbolt? Why can’t icicles charge out of combat? Why a limited Glacial Spike duration? It felt good to actually have Glacial Spike at least be able to used as an opener, but it feels like this is just neutering it to only ever be a slight buff to damage every so often. Plus, if Glacial Spike only lasts 60 seconds, there’s a chance you’ll not be able to use it if things die too fast. I really like that spell, and that would just kind of be bad…

Clarity can be improved without completely bricking the spell. Why not just have the name in the spell book just be something like “Frostbolt / Glacial Spike”?

EDIT: Actually, this is even WORSE for Frostfire Frost, which has a lot of power put into Glacial Spike. This will only put it even further behind Spellslinger Frost. Who even thought for a second this change was a good idea?

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Can’t wait to be overcapped on shatter stacks even more with this change! Sixteen total stacks of shatter now from this one spell. How about we monitor the fact that our main dps cooldown looks like a spell out of 2004? Or the fact that a 4s channel is an insane length to cast in modern wow let alone a for a spec that does not prioritize haste.

Also RIP to glacial spike feeling great to level up and do open world content with.

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We’re also adjusting the 4th rank for Hand of Frost to help make Ray of Frost feel like more of a moment and help ease the decision point on its best use-case while we also look to distribute the power of the 2nd charge elsewhere. We’ll be monitoring the throughput impact of these changes and make adjustments as necessary.

Icicles has been updated – No longer generates rapidly out of combat.

  • This makes sense for M+, and outdoor content. This becomes an issue in raid, where we want to open with GS, but now, we either need a 60 second pull timer, or just not open with GS

Apex Talent: Hand of Frost (Rank 4) – No longer grants an additional charge of Ray of Frost. Now causes Ray of Frost to generate 8 Hands of Frost over its duration (was 4). Ray of Frost damage increased by 30% (was 25%).

- This is the big hit.  In SS, splinters help with reducing orb cd.  With 1 charge, we lose that cd reduction.  Also, if you have your ray gets cancelled, you're now  just screwed, with no way to recover.  This is bad design.  FF gets hit even worse, as they're  ow losing their second CMS cast.  They're already simming less than SS, and this just makes it so much worse.

Please reconsider the ray change at least, or give us a way to cast while moving. It’s not a good change, in any of our eyes.

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Yeah this Ray of Frost change needs to get reverted. The 2nd charge is what makes it feel so great and less reliant on perfect CD management feels great, especially when a lot of other specs are just waiting to do big burst every 2 minutes with their CD. This flatter profile feels nice.

I’ve seen some comments saying we won’t have GS out of combat - we will. It just won’t charge extra fast. So 1 charge every 5 seconds (4 sec with talent) means every 25 seconds we get it. The duration change doesn’t make much sense to me. I will say it did seem a bit OP to get the super fast charges between pulls in dungeons to have what is probably a lot more GS than intended. Going to suck for open world content and delves though.

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What a joke. I saw another post about this, and the OP was fuming. I can see why now after seeing this. A measly 5% won’t replace an entire RoF. Furthermore, this spell didn’t even do much damage, it only freezed, and granted us 2 FoF.

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They couldn’t have picked worse things to change. Both were what made the spec both flow and fun.

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Let’s close the Mage discord over this. Let us unite against this injustice dealt to us by the very makers of this game. We should use the old glacial spike system as well. It was iconic frost mage gameplay.

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Please do not make these changes. Have two charges of ray makes things so much smoother and leaves opportunity for banking a charge for important phases, adds etc. One charge just means we have to send it on cooldown. Ray does not feel amazing to use and no matter how much you want a “moment” this change wont do that. Honestly moments are overrated I dont wanna feel awesome every two minutes I want to feel like Im contributing and having fun the whole time.

As for GS just put it back on its own button. If people cant figure out where frostbolt is in their spellbook then thats poor communication on how those two spells work on your end.

Please dont ruin this spec, this is the first time in forever that frost feels viable

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Logging in to the forums for the first time since Legion to echo the sentiment here; these changes are very, very ill-advised. The first change to glacial spike implies that it’s merely a cosmetic change to help confused players (and address frustration over players who hate the ugly icicles over their heads) but this means glacial spike is not up for the start of a fight, removing a lot of our burst. The second change to ray of frost would be a very significant dps loss to the spec yes, but what’s worse is that it would make the spec much less dynamic and remove some of its very appreciated skill expression. Mages don’t need less skill expression, if anything they need more, and allowing me to position my ray of frost casts (to generate hands which increase spell damage) for burst windows is some fun brain stuff to do during otherwise boring content.

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I switch to Frost after playing Fire since Wrath and I finally feel good about playing a mage again, and they screw with Frost. I really wish to Elune we could hear from the devs about their logic, because this makes no gd sense.

Having a second RoF was great for long boss fights. Essential, even.

But screwing with Glacial Spike, too? That’s just pathetic.

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These are literally some of the most tone deaf changes I have seen to mage in a long time. You had ALL of BETA to remove the second charge if Ray and you choose at the .5 start of the expansion? These changes make zero sense and make the PLAYSTYLE for frost suck.

Also did you consider what these changes do to FF??

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And what’s worse is that there are no fire fixes.

Let’s recap:

  • Fire is changed to be Combustion-dependent with a lack of flow between Combustions. Fire feels like garbage.
  • Switch to Frost which (from my PoV) feels great, I’m #1 or #2 in DPS in heroic and Mythics.
  • Now they screw with Frost, changing the very things about Frost that make the rotation feel good.
  • And on top of it, no changes to Fire.

So how’s Arcane?

5 Likes