I see so many fire mages but I like the idea of Frost more. Looking at wowhead guides it seems like a lot to grasp (I’ve only mained healers). How hard is this for as newer dps player? I just wanted to play something easy outside of the recommended BM Hunter, that’s just not for me.
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Really? I have only seen other frost mages so far the whole time I’ve leveled from 10->70 and doing tons of 5-mans. Granted I haven’t done any raiding yet on my frost mage, but are fire mages really more common?
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Frost is the easiest one to get down in my opinion. You have to learn shatter combos and then its just practice and muscle memory.
Gearing wise you need to stat for mastery and crit until 33.34% for shatter cap (all spells against frozen targets will crit) and then maintain the cap while continuing to build mastery and then haste.
Shatter cap isn’t (and hasn’t been for a while) relevant any more. You start to get diminishing returns from around 25%. That’s not to say that Crit is useless past that (to 33%) but other stats will get you more.
I’d say that for a new player, the guides would be daunting for Frost. There’s a lot going on since the “rework”, particularly around the priority system and the half-dozen ‘cast this, unless X, Y or Z are happening, in which case do B before G then do your normal rotation, unless talented into J’.
Really, it all comes down to practice. Mages are currently one of the harder classes to play well, and certainly not a 3-button face-masher like Ret, BM or some other specs. For a player brand new to the class, I’d say that potentially Fire or Arcane would be easier to learn initially, even if Frost is a bit more forgiving.
Depending on the content you intend to do, just simplify your rotation etc. Start with a talent build that uses mostly passives and don’t worry about things like Dragon’s Breath or Blast Wave for now. As you get used to that rotation, add in a new active ability like Comet Storm or Glacial Spike, and work out how it fits with the Shatter mechanic. Keep going with that, and eventually you’ll have no problems. I’d highly recommend getting a good weakaura as well, as keeping track of icicles and Flurry charges will be useful (some good ones will flash when GS can be cast too).
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It’s not that easy anymore. Manather has a good guide on YT. I’d start there.
All 3 specs have their own bit of complexity after the rework. Frost used to be very easy, fast paced and fun to play. It’s a clunky, bloated, busy mess after the rework.
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The frost mage changes actually pushed me to try arcane.
While I agree frost needed “something” beyond Ice Lance spam, the additions of GS and CS (and RoF in raids) have just made Frost way too clunky for me to enjoy.
GS, imo, worked better when we only had one charge of Winter’s Chill. Now the weaving of an Ice Lance, GS, and RoF to consume the 2 charges was not enjoyable to me and clunky.
Comet Storm on it’s own I don’t mind but the whole “be in melee range to reset CS/Orb/Blizzard” … hateful. I play ranged classes cause I want to PLAY AT RANGE. This propensity to now push ranged players into melee (screw you Beloralos trinket) made keys HIGHLY unenjoyable and I figured if it was going to push me into melee range I might as well play arcane again.
Frost needed more but the rework gave it more than it needed for me to find it enjoyable.
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I’d agree that it’s a little bloated, but it honestly doesn’t feel clunky at all really, especially when compared to Fire and Arcane which are clunkier than Lord Clunkington of Clunkington manor. The AoE burst/opener is smooth as butter and feels a bit like a solo in guitar hero. ST, yes sometimes it can be a bit irksome to try and manoeuver around having GS, CmS and Ray all come up at once but it’s not really that bad.
As for being less fun, that’s entirely subjective but I think most players are much happier with how the spec plays now than they were when it was just spamming IL and fishing for BF procs.
I absolutely agree that it still need a proper rework. What we got in 10.1.5 was just a fix to the abomination that was the talent trees and talent balance at launch. Really all the rework was, was shifting a few talents around and buffing others. We got like 3 new abilities, and at least one of those literally doesn’t work for ST.
I know Blizzard will see it as a success, but the number of threads that complain about the trees across all classes (beyond just “new thing is scary and I hate change”), and the fact that so close to the end of the expansion there are still massive problems, is proof enough that they failed. Given how much effort they put into the class/spec trees, I still think they could have gotten a much better result from just reworking the cata-style trees.
I’ve said it before, and I’ll it another 100 times - all Mage specs need to be broken down and rebuilt from the ground up without rehashing old spells, abilities or borrowed power.
I’ve been very vocal that I consider the new talent system, a showcase for this expansion, a huge fail. Other than a few classes that got a proper rework to theirs, most are a hot mess (at least the classes I play).
We shouldn’t have to play a whole expansion as Beta testing for talents. Constant cycle of change which they made even worse by tying tier sets to talents.
I thought the talents would present optional playstyles but we’re still as pigeon holed into talents as we were when we had a choice of 3 per line. More utility and actives leading to massive button bloat. Still a fair number of talents no one uses ever cause they’re poorly designed, don’t work with the kit, etc.
Dragonflight has been my least favorite expansion to date (and I thought I wouldn’t dislike anything more than Shadowlands).
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Hah… i was saying mostly the same thing, except instead of Shadowlands it was WoD (because i really really hated that expansion)
The sad truth to talent systems is they’re always going to be few optional choices. Plus one of the worst things with the new trees I think is how they basically put every class’ toolkit as talent options.
Don’t even need to do that anymore. It’s not that big of a deal
Really? Crazy. Guess WoWhead is a terrible place for info these days. Another indication that its too complicated if even the guides are wrong.
Fire and arcane are the rarest specs. Fire probably a bit rarer. Frost is simple to play with the tier bonus and is easy in m+. If you wanna play something play it. Also the best leveling spec.
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Shatter cap isn’t required, but I find the closer I am to it the higher I sim. The rule is to always sim yourself.
Personally I still find Frost rather easy. 
— Although that’s in comparison to Fire & particularly Arcane. 
That being said, compared to how Frost use-to be: Yeah I can see how it could be viewed as a bit more of a busy ‘mess’ after the rework … Especially the BC & Wrath days, lol
However Frost still feels pretty lax in comparison to other specs, and especially other classes.