Been that way since the launch of TBC so nothing new.
Having seen at least the Icicle change, it’s only the visuals that no longer show up out of combat, which is what I remember another post asking for, and you still get full icicles pretty quickly, especially if you have a lot of haste.
Duration on Glacial Spike is odd. If you remove the buff or let it lapse, it changes the spellbook icon back to Frost/Frostfire Bolt. However, since you’re always at 5 Icicles(tried to even end combat with no icicles) it brings the Glacial Spike buff back changing the icon back to said spell. Not sure how that clarity is going.
Hard to make any criticisms on Ray since I don’t play with it.
My two-cents on changes that should happen:
- Glacial Spike and Comet Storm decouple.
- Bring back Icy Veins as it was in TWW, complete with Ele and give the Ele if you chose it the Water Jet version as long as it lasts. (Gods, they fixed the issue with the Elemental in TWW when they completely removed it)
This actually makes the changes on the PTR make more sense… considering its a giant nerf. The fact that they aren’t tuning Frost at all on the 17th means they likely haven’t heard us at all and the changes are going through.
2 Likes
I’ve been playing this game since release. No one at blizzard reads the forums. I wouldn’t get your hopes up. They’re gonna brick frost
2 Likes
Blizzard these are garbage changes. Removing a Ray of Frost charge, removes agency from all types of content, even world content like Prey. Currently you can hold back a Ray of Frost charge and wait to be ambushed. Without the second Ray of Frost charge, Frost Mages are limp wet noodles with a single charge on cooldown. Add to that that Glacial spike doese not regenerate quickly out of combat, we are left to throw snowballs. This is the worst idea ever!!!
2 Likes
Couldn’t agree more. Removal of the second Ray of Frost charge kills agency in the spec. Makes the spec feel terrible if anything like knockbacks or interrupts our ROF, we are screwed in world content, delves, raids for 60 secs. We overcap on shatter stacks even more now. No choice now when to use ROF. Use on cooldown and pray you dont have a knockback / interrupt.
4 Likes
Exectalty. Bizzard you gave us a spec, we grinded out the levels, geared up the toon and now you make major mechanic changes that change HOW the class plays and feels??? Come on, you just ripped agency from the player base. Don’t think this is what Bizz is advertising as a mission statement. Someone in the dev team needs to be fired.
8 Likes
This is where I’m also baffled, Blizzard has been priding itself on listening to the community and player feedback and the mage community is pleading not to go ahead with these changes.
7 Likes
Season 1 finally starts tomorrow, and I’m pretty sure I’m already done with Midnight.
Typical Blizz, just wait until the expansion is about to start to destroy my class.
Glad I wasted the $ for early access.
4 Likes
So one way that I would kind of accept this ROF change is to Give “Glaciate “ a .20 CDR on ROF instead of .10 … Would at the best make it feel like a shorter Cooldown to wait for cause it needs something like this for sure if it set in stone… and Leave GS as is. What is the big deal about letting us have GS as an opener? It does NOT affect much once the gameplay loop is happening in combat… I am so baffled to why they would do this 
can we have a Blue post…PLEASE?? We all put time in this spec to play it, to have its reasoning to play it broke in half and crushed. common Blizz, seriously common…
Oh… And as the above poster said. I paid for early access to DECIDE what I wanted to play in Advance… PAID! and I chose Unholy dk, Arcane mage and frost mage, or ele Shaman. Turns out Ele shaman feels so dull to play even if it is “ok” damage wise to play ok.. so nope.. and the 2 specs i Chose you gutted 2 days before S1.. Really getto Blizz Devs, Feels really bad.
2 Likes
In all honesty it feels like someone who doesn’t play Frost mage heard a couple complaints from a few new players about being confused on something, had some weird personal hills-to-die-on of their own regarding class design, and then shoved it all down the throats of Frost players without any regard to the 99.9% of people who play the spec, spend hours and hours on this class/spec, and shell out cash each month to play it. It’s asinine to the extreme.
Hopefully with how much focus this is getting, Blizz will at least notice that these changes are WILDLY unpopular. Now, whether they do anything about it, I don’t know. I sure hope so. Otherwise, my choices are going to be reroll, or unsub. And, I’m getting real tired of rerolling from Blizz kneecapping classes that worked perfectly fine. Real tired, boss.
6 Likes
I dont even wana play the new content now tbh my hype has been killed I was having so much fun…
3 Likes
Yes, Arcane in TWW S1. They were in their crusade to eliminate double dipping and moved a bunch of stuff around and kept at it until the last patch.
2 Likes
How am I reading all these comments about how Frost is now more fun…
This is the problem with spec overhauls. You alienate the players who loved it and now create a new community for it, who will then be alienated if you change it back, and then we’re all losers.
6 Likes
The only two changes that needed to be made were to decouple frostbolt/frostfire bolt from glacial spike so we could choose when to use it (and that alone would have taken care of the spellbook issue), and decouple ray of frost from comet storm so again, we could choose which to use and not be forced to use a minute long cooldown to then be able to use another cooldown.
None of these changes is a net positive. They’re literally trying to reinvent the wheel here instead of just making a couple minor changes that would allow for more player choice in how they play the spec instead of it being on rails.
4 Likes
Please keep Ray of Frost’s second charge.
5 Likes
I have one foot out the door on the class after this news.
If these changes go through I’m dropping it instantly.
I’ve never posted on these forums before - horrible horrible changes. The logic of ‘feel like more of a moment’ doesn’t even hold because literally its just going to be a spell used on cd, at least with 2 charges you can save one for that ‘moment’.
4 Likes
HOORAY… We all complained and Blizzard finally listened! The 12.0.5 PTR notes just came out for this week:
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Developers’ notes: After some internal testing and feedback from the community, we’re opting to revert our planned changes for Ray of Frost.
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The 12.0.5 Hand of Frost changes have been reverted – Rank 4 of Hand of Frost will once again grant 2 charges of Ray of Frost.
5 Likes
Congrats to all the frosties!
Now if only they’d do something about Fire and Arcane… 
9 Likes