Since Frost has been the worst DPS spec in the game for the entire life of SoD (Currently under ALL tanks and doing similar DPS to a resto druid) I’ve been curious why and trying to find any hidden potential.
Today, I’ve discovered a bug with Frostbite and Fingers of Frost procing and overriding each other almost exclusively.
When FoF procs you will ALWAYS proc a frostbite with the Frostbolt. This wastes 50% of your FoF Proc which is already weak in the first place. This also makes Frostbite only value the root and not any shatter value since FoF is proc’d and it doesn’t increase your crit further. This is a double-dip bug that reduces the value of every ability involved.
If you chain proc (procing Frostbite while a unit is already frostbitten) it will proc FoF and will consume the FoF charge midflight. It will grant you two charges and one of the charges dissipates on contact with the frostbitten target rather than expending a charge from your previous FoF, resulting in you only getting the benefit of 3 FoFs instead of 4 as you should.
The Spellpower scaling is non existant for frostlance you get about .15 damage per 1 spell power based on my tests. This is the lowest damage ability in the entire game. It competes with living bomb and arcane blast, two of your best runes in SoD.
Icy Veins can increase your damage by 15%~ assuming you are allowed to constantly free-cast for 20 seconds, which will never happen in PvP (If you did this with Fire or Arcane you could kill 3 or 4 people free-casting) giving you 4-5 extra 250 damage frostbolts over 20 seconds. Or you can press Living Flame and do 2000+ damage with a single GCD over the same 20 seconds. (more damage than a perfect scenario with Icy Veins).
Frost has never been worse and the data proves it, Devs please give some attention to THE WORST PERFORMING DPS SPEC IN THE GAME FOR THE ENTIRE DURATION OF THE GAME.
No, you can proc them independently from each other in wrath and they don’t consume your second set of FoF procs if it procs again midflight. They are sharing the same internal proc rate and spend rate in SoD forcing you to frost bolt or waste FoF procs on Frostbitten targets from Frostbolt Frostbite procs.
I might be explaining it poorly but this does not feel like Wrath.
Yes, exactly. Frost is insanely weak and has been the entire length of SoD. They currently have lower DPS than every single tank and two of the healers. I am trying to find out why the Devs won’t adjust any of their runes when they have been DEAD LAST since early P1.
That is not how it works in wrath. If your target is frozen when you cast Frost Bolt with Fingers of Frost up - it consumes the FoF cast.
Heck, that’s even how it works right now in Retail. Freeze is a target based debuff, FoF is a player-based buff.
I think you’d go a lot further in your ‘data’ provided if you actually provided any. No logs, no screenshots, no WCL, no damage meters, no clips/vods… You didn’t provide any actual evidence.
It’s also difficult to take serious when Fire mage is parsing the highest in the entire game across the current raid content on a consistent basis - while being the most desired group-based class for dungeon farming period… and can boost/solo farm/aoe grind free money.
Please remember Mage is a class. Frost is a spec. You are playing the strongest class in the game atm, and complaining that you’re weak because of your choices. It’s like a 31 point Prot warrior crying because Arms does more damage.
Because of Shatter. If the target is frozen, (Which FoF simulates) I get an extra 50% crit chance.
I’ve been toying around with a frost build to see how high I can get my DPS as frost. It involves going 10 points into fire for the Ignite talent, and 21 points into frost for the Shatter Talent.
It’s basically Frostfire Spam. FoF procs off of frostfire. Frostfire crits, which triggers ignite. Brainfreeze gives me insta-cast frostfire bolts. Ivy Veins gives me more frostfire bolts.
However, by doing this Icelance becomes obsolete. So I just swap that out for Living Bomb for AoE fights.
Frost has always been an aoe farming and pvp spec. The only reason frost was used is because MC mobs are immune to fire. The second you have non fire mobs to hit what does every mage in the game do? Specs fire.
If they refuse to give us a good frost spec/build then the least they could do is fix the frost runes so we can at the very least have a not bugged trash spec…
You aren’t understanding what I am saying, let me actually compile the data and format it for easy consumption. FoF and Frostbite are procing at the same time, every time, and if the target is frost bitten and you proc the frostbite/FoF proc it consumes the wrong FoF proc from the second set instead of the first set of FoF procs.
1.) I never said I had conclusive evidence ready for review, not sure why you are assuming that when I said I was gathering data. You don’t gather data and format it for review until you are done gathering data.
2.) Fire mage is great. Frost is the worst in the game. I am not sure why you think its okay to force every mage to play fire and leave Frost as a dead spec. Guess how much “group dungeon farming” you do at 40? You can spend your time grinding gold for “free money”? Please explain how its free when you spend your time grinding for it? Questing is similar gold per hour as AoE Farming and hunters are outfarming mages this phase with their new runes being able to solo SM: Cath and Ulda. Even if this wasnt true, Fire and Arcane are AoE Farming faster and more efficiently than frost with the new runes.
3.) I play Fire/ Arcane in PvE because you are actively griefing if you play frost. I don’t know why you think its great game design to leave a spec incredibly underpowered because I can just never play the spec. I could also just re-roll an Elemental Shaman. This doesn’t fix Frost. Doing less damage than EVERY TANK SPEC and some healers is good balance to you as a DPS spec? Why do you have a personal interest in making sure Frost stays bad?
You seem incredibly willfully ignorant on this topic and choose to not even try to think objectively.
That definitely sounds like a bugged interaction. FoF gives 2 stacks after a cast that chills completes. It definitely should not consume a stack on proc.
In all likelihood, you aren’t even benefiting from the consumed FoF in the aforementioned scenario.
Also, it makes FoF procs pointless because they are already frozen by frostbite. This isn’t a sometimes occurrence, this is EVERY SINGLE TIME. If a target is not frostbitten, and it Procs FoF procs as well making it not only useless but forcing your Ice Lance to spend your FoF while not increasing the crit chance or damage because they are already frozen forces you to Frostbolt or waste the proc entirely.
Xaryu actually talked about this on stream and said it is not working properly and basically makes fingers of frost 100% useless and demonstrated as well.
This is literally the exact spec I was planning on doing with my mage alt at 40. Hopefully things get fixed/buffed to make it a little more competitive.
With just 10 more points I can go deeper into the Frost tree while still getting the Ignite Talent in Fire. So I’m hoping that at level 50 it will finally be Frosts time to shine.
“Once we have 5/5 shatter, Ice Barrier, etc Frost is finally going to come online! Ice lance will be good with ice shards and shatter! FoF will be worth taking!”
Nope its dogspit, bugged, ignored, doing less damage than all the tanks and some healers. Please Blizzard.
The only frost spec I foresee being used in classic is a fire hybrid spec that uses frostfire bolt and CoC exclusively.
Ice lance is just so bad that it isn’t even worth pressing under optimal conditions and as you mentioned, it scales poorly. I haven’t tested it much because it’s so bad, but I would guess it’s either .15 scaling or it’s ~.42 like other instant spells, but the SP doesn’t benefit from 3x frozen damage.
I had high hopes for a full frost hybrid build that uses spellfrost bolt with rewind + regen, but I am not going to hold my breath
Ya it’s pretty lame that for a Frost mage, it’s objectively better to pick Living Flame over Icy Veins and Living Bomb of Ice Lance, and it’s not even close in both PvE and PvP.
I guess fun got detected from people who liked the spec, so it got removed. Such is life.
