Despite having a lot of “bad mouth words” for these changes I’ll try to remain constructive.
Dear Blizzard developers - with patches of expansion you are supposed to make specs better, not take existing mechanics and just make them worse.
If people have issues with finding Frostbolt because of Glacial Spike the solution is not to nerf its Icicles generation and duration. Proper solution is to provide option to separate Glacial Spike and Frostbolt so that both people with such issues can separate them and multitude of people that want to have control when and where to use Glacial Spike would have an option to do so. If that is implemented as a choice node between current version that overrides Frost(fire) Bolt and new version that would have same effect, trigger condition and values, but would just be a separate ability like in War Within that would not even affect people that like current override - they can continue using it and people that don’t like current override or want more control over Glacial Spike can use the separate ability version. That would also solve this spellbook issue simultaneously - people that have such issue would have an option to just turn Glacial Spike into a separate spell.
Ray of Frost in first major patch was supposed to be upgraded with possibility to move while channeling (via its own upgrade talent or Ice Floes), NOT making it even more susceptible to interrupts / disruptions in both PVE and PVP via removing second charge. It is more than that - it also removes second charge of Comet Storm (+ Meteor for Frostfire) and makes Frostfire fall even more behind Spellslinger. Instead of contributing to “meaningful choices” you are just making Ray worse instead of improving it (and mobility option for Ray was promised since the beginning of alpha / beta). This is just not right for patch that is supposed to improve the spec design.
Solutions:
Revert both these changes.
Provide option for mobile casting for Ray of Frost via either one of its upgrade talents or returning Ice Floes.
Provide choice node between Glacial Spike overriding Frostbolt version and Glacial Spike as separate ability with similar trigger effect, values and synergies.
Finally separate Comet Storm with Ray of Frost and return them to being separate abilities. Current situation where nerfing Ray also nerfs Comet Storm / Frostfire is yet ANOTHER reason to have them separated and there were already reasons like clunky and unnecessary delay for Comet Storm (when Fire can pop its Meteor / Comet Storm when and where needed), necessity to waste Ray to use CS even if you did not really want to / situation is not fitting for it and very high risk of being disrupted in PVP. Please just separate them both for gameplay improvements and having less headaches with Ray / CS tuning as they would be able to be tuned separately and to proper level.
Pretty out of touch changes, Frost was surprisingly ok minus some needed polishing.
Glacial spike changes something they forced on us is now also punishing us, because people couldn’t find frostbolt due to blizzard’s own error which is hilarious. Could’ve just separated the two looooong time ago.
The removal of the 2nd charge from ray of frost and not addressing how basically any sort of displacement interrupts it, can even be a 1cm knockback that is to quote blizzard your “moment” cast gone because our burst damage is now channeled.
Pretty much what I said. If these changes go through Frost is bricked.
I don’t know what is wrong with the mage designer at Blizzard, but they stumbled on gold with this frost rework… Making changes to it while most people enjoy it is just ridiculous.
I also agree that changing glacial spike specifically because people can’t find frost bolt is stupid, all you have to do is apply the ‘frost bolt’ tag to Glacial so it comes up in a search.
I would prefer this anyway, it’s not always optimal to cast Glacial, let’s say mobs are at 100k HP and glacial procs, you have to throw it out and basically waste it… I opt to just spam ice lance until the mob is dead, even with no freezing stacks.. better than throwing glacial out for no reason.
I would MUCH rather decide when I cast glacial rather than it not give me a choice.
Agree with the sentiment here: bad changes. I particularly hate the removal of the second charge of Ray of Frost. Having two charges is what makes this ability interesting due to the flexibility this adds in when to use it.
I have a crazy solution to the issue of not being able to find Frostbolt: make Frostbolt and Glacial Spike separate buttons. Might be hard to imagine a world where that exists, but I think it’s an elegant solution. As an added bonus, this would allow you to see the recharge time on Glacial Spike at any given moment so you’d know when it will next be available, AND it would give you the flexibility to use it when you want to rather than as soon as it’s available. Hm…
Honestly, most people here have played the game for 20+ years like me, that would be better than some guy who got his degree and never touched a game like this ever.
That is what is needed; Glacial Spike decoupled (and comet storm too, please!). I also really miss shattering my frost spells (from roots and winter’s flurry).
That’s a bummer, was really enjoying how frost played even ignoring the currently competitive damage. Why are they messing with mechanics and rotation flow? Arcane and fire feel pretty clunky to me, was planning on maining frost. Ah well, will keep working on alts to see what’s fun I guess.
This change is looking terrible. Frost can get quickly overwhelmed with resources when a bunch of things proc. Being able to dump resources, and then ROF gives us flexibility to not feel like we have too many things to cast in too few GCD’s when things proc at the wrong time. The flexibility is huge in M+ when we want to get proper AOE usage out of this, and it will suck in raid to have a very long channeled ability that you are going to have to use at a specific time when there might be a mechanic going on. After gutting arcane and offering no proper fix in the 05 patch notes, it seems like somebody is hell bent on ruining mage. Please don’t do this.
on me.