They have been the bottom-most DPS for the entire game. This is unacceptable for any spec in a live service game.
The frost runes are the weakest runes and the least utilized.
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Fingers of Frost: Chill effect has a 15% chance for 2 spell casts to act as if the target was frozen for 15 sec. I thought this would be good once Shatter was online but other casters can consistently hit harder with non-crits. Frostbolt is hitting for 240 after a 2.5-sec cast, 500-600 crit. In the current state of the game, you are lucky to get two off uninterrupted. This needs to have the chance doubled at least. You are better off with 15% crit on Burnout, the fire rune.
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The waist rune slot doesn’t have an option for frost mage. Spellfrost does less damage than Frostbolt. Frostfire has a longer cast time and has 5 more damage in the top end. You cannot use Hot Streak. So missile barrage it is.
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For the leg slot, you take Living Flame. It does an insane amount of DPS for one GCD. Mass Regen is nice situationally. Arcane Surge is funny but the worst of all one-shots in the game (of which there are many). Icy Veins, the frost rune, is once again the worst and least-used rune in the slot. 20% spell haste and immunity to pushback is nice but going from a 3-second cast to a 2.4-second cast isn’t nearly as strong as other options.
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For the foot slot, you have an option, Spell power for 50% bonus crit damage which stacks with icy shards (yay your crits do as much as other casters’ non-crits), or brain freeze which admittedly is a very fun rune, but gimmicky. Chrono Preservation is also a pretty viable pick for PvP and is a nice heal.
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The Hand slot has a similar issue to the leg slot. Living Bomb is too good not to take unless you are trying to one-shot with Arcane. Playing against decent players you will never get off Arcane Blast without PoM. Rewind time is too unreliable and TTK is too high, the value is extremely low. I had hoped for Ice Lance to become stronger in this phase with runes but it is still incredibly weak. Even as a frost mage, you should take Living Bomb.
Historically Frost Mages have been among the best PvP specs in the game. In Sod, they are incredibly weak compared to all other casters. While arcane and fire are fun in PvE, they also are the easiest to kill targets in the entire game with the addition of many mobility and burst runes.
A few arguments are that they are good at farming, which has nothing to do with PvP, and that they have CC. Rogues have as much or more CC and can kill you in a Cheap Shot + Kidney. Elemental Shaman, Boomies, Shadow Priest, and Warlocks are all blasting people for over 1k with their normal abilities. It’s time to buff Mage.