I just have to say this because I don’t find it talked about really anywhere online.
Frost Spec has always been my most favorite of the three (Arcane is a close second), and the current rotation is just plain stale. You sit there waiting for RNG to hopefully give you Brain Freeze or Fingers of Frost procs, while you spam Frostbolt…
I absolutely dislike the fact that so much of our damage is funneled into using Ice Lance. Like everything from our best talent choices to legendaries. It’s so boring that you just literally smack one key over and over again.
I typically always choose Ebonbolt which helps combat the RNG issue, and also Glacial Spike because I like the builder/spender “feel” more than all-out Ice Lance spam.
The problem with my above statement is that the ideal DPS build pretty much forces you into Ice Lance spam builds. Like the Thermal Void talent which extends Icy Veins with each Fingers of Frost/Ice Lance cast for example.
While talents like Glacial Spike are considered terrible or even “worse than not choosing a talent at all in the row” according to the Icy-Veins WoW guide website because Glacial Spike is so undertuned.
Also, getting a Brain Freeze proc to cast Flurry seems so pointless when you know you’ll waste the two Shatters it provides by casting Flurry, since you’re constantly using Ice Lance/Fingers of Frost procs instead.
I hope the point I’m trying to make is somehow clear. Kind of curious to see if I’m alone in this thought process or not since I don’t see many people talking about this.
Mage is my ultimate favorite class for the lore and fantasy so it just sucks to see my favorite spec in this state…
It’s a tough tightrope to walk. If you look at BFA for example, IV was the weakest 3 minute in the game, and that’s when the gameplay was almost exactly reversed - in bfa we would ignore ice lance procs in favor of firing off more frostbolts to generate enough icicles to get more glacials into the target.
Generally speaking I think that both playstyles are, on their own, pretty boring. But if you were able to choose between the two build depending on the situation, it would certainly be more interesting.
It doesn’t feel too RNG to me with freezing winds and/or MoT during those windows since you know the procs are happening and when.
Outside of those windows, I still prefer proc based play over strictly builder spender play because it keeps the rotation dynamic. Imagine an assassination rogue without Blindside or a Marksman Hunter without lock and load. Completely static and predictable. Gross.
Frost suffers a bit despite it’s dynamic proc play because there is no builder/spender underplay to fall back on outside of the proc windows, to the point where not getting a proc can feel really stale.
I really think this is something that could be fixed with a baseline glacial spike and some slight tuning to it’s damage / icy propulsion and thermal void lack-of interaction. But since icy propulsion is borrowed power, the situation may solve itself in time.
Frostbolt feels like it belongs in a builder-spender toolkit to me and not in an RNG proc toolkit I guess? The fact that two of our spells (Ice Lance and Flurry) are wet noodle damage without procs is very frustrating for me. Even Hunter’s Arcane Shot is decent damage un-procced. I find myself so frustrated when a mob will have 3% health left and I have no procs to finish it off because my damage is just wimpy, so I have to stand there and Frostbolt for a second… it just messes up the flow.
I would love Glacial Spike to be baseline somehow. But I think they should remove the Icicles requirement, and just let us have it as a 30-45 second cooldown nuke or something to that effect.
Only thing I hate about Frost is the sound of spells… or lack there of. Very quiet and just feels like I’m not doing much. Although it’s ice… what do you expect.
But no, feel like the spec is good, loving it as my alt to Shadow Priest. Has enough in it to keep me “busy”. Especially with the necrolord spell.
The proc based spec idea is cool. And it happens so often that it doesn’t feel stupidly RNG except for the super rare 6-7 bolt FINALLY A DAMN proc…
I don’t want the wrong impression to be made with my post. While I do personally like the idea of building and spending over RNG/Proc gameplay. That is not the focus of my post.
The real focus is about how spammy and boring it feels to blast Ice Lance all the time. Which the best talents and Legendaries expect you to do.
Right! I think talents should offer you viable choices when it comes to actually substantially changing our gameplay style. Thermal Void has very little obvious interaction with our gameplay and just feels like a small quality of life buff. I feel like that talent could have easily been a Conduit.
And certainly it’s all subjective. Some people might think this is the best iteration of Frost Mage to date. As for myself, and I just feel like spamming one button, i.e. Ice Lance, is very fundamentally dull design.
The best part about spamming Ice Lance is when it’s paired with the Splitting Ice talent to cleave/AoE, which of course now means you’re forced into using that talent, and I find that unfortunate.
I’m hoping someone at Blizzard sees my post and understands where I’m coming from. We need to offer more interactive gameplay altering talent choices, and maybe put the less interactive choices like Thermal Void into a Conduit style system for example.
I like Frost but it needs a few redesigns imo. Icy Veins and the mastery should be redesigned and the proc munching should be fixed.
I also suggest baking Freezing Winds (the legendary) into Frozen Orb and giving us Concentrated Coolness (PvP talent) and Splitting Ice baseline. Lonely Winter should also be baseline and act exactly like how Lone Wolf does for Marksman.
But these can realistically only happen, if they happen, on the next expansion.
Yes! I also have thought how good it would be to turn Lonely Winter into a “Lone Wolf” style spell, freeing up a talent slot. While Blizzard is at it, they should give non-Demonology Warlocks and possibly Unholy Death Knights this passive “Lone Wolf” option as well.
I have to mention also the Frost Mage talent -Chain Reaction- which if I recall correctly was ripped right out of the Azerite Gear system, and it’s currently the “best dps choice”. It’s just another example of a talent that could be more interesting.
I agree that we won’t see any big gameplay class changes I’m sure until 10.0. But I love putting the suggestions out there in writing <3
Affliction and Destruction had (I don’t know if they still do but it’s undertuned) the option to do that with Grimoire of Sacrifice. I don’t know if that’d work for UDKs though because so many of their spells and their overall toolkit is dependent on the pet.
Oops It’s been a while. I miss Legion! Also, I don’t play Unholy Death Knight so I didn’t realize they were so dependent on the pet, apologies lol!
Whenever I have played Warlock I would select the Grimoire of Sacrifice talent, only to feel bad for using it because it’s literally never been worth taking. It needs the “Lone Wolf” treatment for sure.
Frost Mages currently have so many Fingers of Frost procs going off all the time that Brain Freeze becomes irrelevant in the rotation.
For example, you’re casting Frostbolt, and you get a Brain Freeze proc, then you’re about to cast Flurry. Well, you JUST got 2 Fingers of Frost procs, so now you’re forced to try and make sure you cast all of those Ice Lance procs before you do the Flurry, which is just sitting there now, and perhaps Brain Freeze has now procced 3 more times in the time it took to cast off all of your Ice Lances to spend your Fingers of Frost procs.
Casting a procced Ice Lance while the target has Winter’s Chill on it from Flurry, is a waste basically. And that was my point. I don’t like how it’s so spammy that everything starts to overlap.
If you’re casting Frostbolt and proc a BF during the cast, the correct thing to do is Frostbolt > Flurry > IL x 2
Brain Freeze wont proc 3 more times if you’re ever not casting Frostbolt and are just using FoF-IL, since the only things that can proc Brain Freeze are Frostbolt, Edonbolt (which nobody uses because it doesn’t work with Propulsion), and Mirrors of Torment (which can be easily tracked and at soonest procs once per 6 seconds).
It’s an absolute munch on ST, a partial munch on 2t cleave, since the FoF-IL can Shatter on cleave, but Flurry only hits 1 target. On more than 2 targets, you can actually expend the Flurry, swap targets, expend the FoF-IL, then targetlasttarget to expend Winter’s Chill.
The spec is balanced around factoring in the munches btw.
I do in fact believe we are playing the same game! Thanks for asking
I really couldn’t be bothered to focus on this one single issue as I’ve highlighted many others problems with the spec already. Procs eating each other for me even one time is too many, and feels bad in the rotation. I personally don’t enjoy the way our procs work and I find the gameplay involving certain forced talent choices too strict. And forced “best dps” talents are way too abundant in this expansion in my opinion with how legendaries and conduits interact with the toolkit.
Compared to many of the other DPS specs in the game Frost Mage has become a button masher where the rotation is Ice Lance x20. It’s brain dead gameplay and I don’t enjoy it in its current iteration. I suppose we’ll leave it at -it’s subjective-.
Icicles are boring and need to do more than just automatically get sent out when built up. We should have stuff baseline that we can use icicles to empower. Blizzard trying to hard to avoid combo point builder spender, and we end up with the OG mage caster build being super skimmed down and boring.
Also look at our abilities, we have 1 page worth of frost abilities. Not enough. Also frost talents and under tuned abilities force frost mages to go full frost bolt builds
