The point of this is to post my findings and get feedback from anyone who can relate or can help me understand what I’m missing from the basic Frost mage single target playstyle.
Maybe it’s because I’m used to Fire and Arcane, but I’m learning Frost and I’m stumped by the clunky rotation.
As I understand it, the basic rotation is Frostbolt until Fingers of Frost > Ice Lance, or until Brain Freeze > Flurry > Ice Lance twice. I understand it, but I don’t get it: it’s like the designers couldn’t determine which way procs should go and the rotation suffers from a lack of momentum and satisfying chaining of abilities.
The first issue is that it’s jarring to have a global cooldown between every action. With Fire, the basic single target rotation starts slow until heating up procs. Then Fire Blast/Pyro comes and goes smoothly. During Combustion, abilities can go much faster and feel even more effective. It feels quick, responsive and impactful.
With Arcane the single target “rotation” starts slow – really it’s just Arcane Blast until 4 arcane charges, then Arcane Blasts feel much faster, much more powerful and satisfying. And during an Arcane Power window, the abilities feel fast, powerful and smooth.
With Frost, there’s a global cooldown between each ability regardless. Abilities proc and you never get the feeling that there’s a release to the build up – it’s about as satisfying as spamming Fireball with no heating up procs or spamming Arcane Blast and getting no arcane charges.
Frost’s “power window” (unsure of the technical term) is Icy Veins 20 sec 30% haste buff, which would be more adequately titled “‘I’m sorry,’ - the designers”. Instead of adding a cool, powerful, compelling dynamic to the rotation (as referenced above: Fire’s Combust everything crits for smooth, fast, bigger damage, or Arcane Power’s mana dump for smooth, fast, bigger damage) it is as though Icy Veins sole purpose is to bandaid some haste on the basic rotation to make it bearable for a little while.
Unless you’re looking directly at your abilities or animations, the lack of impactful sound effects/visuals in the regular rotation doesn’t seem to give enough feedback (from my perspective) to let the player know that the procs and resulting proc’d abilities are enhanced and performing as they should or even better than normal. Regardless of procs, playing this spec makes me feel as though I’m making my opponents cold, wet and uncomfortable. The sound effects could have been recorded from snow gently falling off a roof and piling slightly on a back patio in a peaceful neighborhood, or tapping small icicles from a gutter and admiring how they fall into the snow where they are forever ignored. Like my damage.
It’s possible my struggle with this is due to lack of immediate feedback from abilities as half the rotation is spamming during GCD – which consequently results in other procs during GCD and wasting a Fingers of Frost proc because you were spamming Flurry during a Brain Freeze proc. Procs can overlap and a Fingers of Frost proc uses up a Winter’s Chill proc and vice versa, making the player feel like procs are going to waste.
This is somewhat addressed in Icy Veins’ section on Frost Mage Rotation, under Proc Management, describing the situation as “unfortunate,” which is the first time I’ve read a guide in memory that has more or less resolved itself to disappointment in design.
So, that’s my take.
My question to the frost mages here is to ask you to share what you find satisfying about the spec and how you make it comfortable and effective for yourself. I’m here to learn and I’m committed to getting better, but it feels like I’m missing something. Thanks in advance.
Edit: I’m sorry for the large block of text and rambly nature of my writing. I’ve attempted a few times to consolidate the ideas into something easier to read, and too much caffeine is making that difficult.