Going to cross post this in each ptr thread, while the main thread is in the mage forums since its more directly related to in-development
Frost Redesign
Goals - streamline shatter mechanics so its easier for everyone to understand, remove the option for degenerate gameplay, provide a niche for frost to be played in raid encounters.
Issues
- lack of niche
- overly complex shattering - (fof, winters chill, freezes) all used in different situations, effect different things, and function differently
- uninspired tier sets
- hero talents creating unintuitive gameplay
- resource bloat or drought for hero talents (FF has 80% more flurries over 5 mins than SS)
Niche
- Arcane - Funnel/Execute/Burst
- Fire - Execute/Low target cleave
- Frost - 2t
Since DF, Frost is not special in its 2t capabilities, its often a mediocrely good spec there, and 2t fights are becoming gimmicky. Look at Silken Court for instance, frost was beaten by a lot of other specs due to the damage amp and the limited time the bosses were together, both very common in 2t fights these days.
Options:
Spread Cleave via Blizzard only - it can be exactly the same as it is now, with all talent functionalities intact, have cast time, freezing rain etc - just make it function like starfall and increase its cooldown to match the current duration.
Cap Frozen Orb cdr so you can only get x per second
Gives us room for more abilities in our AOE rotation - Splintering Ray anyone? (its still a bad talent)
Take the above and also:
Splitting Ice always hits a 2nd target, when blizzard is active it hits up to 4 effected by your blizzard at reduced damage. Look at Outlaw blade flurry for instance: Splitting Ice does full damage to 2nd target, scales down to 33% per for each additional target in blizzard. While blizzard is active splitting ice does 20% less damage – see below.
This preserves 2t strength without blizzard up, and when accessing spread cleave you lose value relative to melee classes if mobs are close, still strong though.
Core issues to be resolved:
Inescapable AOE loss compared to other specs due to Frozen orb - make it as fast as arcane orb and apply a dot (same effect, can still shatter etc) – or make it follow a target. I prefer the dot fix, as it will do its full damage to all targets you hit with it once guaranteed. Just have the dot stack with separate durations, thats been done many times before.
Mastery - commit to adding new effects to it or just make it shattered spells do more damage, because everything not on mastery currently is on shatter. Ridiculous its a dead stat for frostfire 1 yr+ into expac because someone didn’t want to whitelist the effects onto the same scaling as cms for mastery.
Frostbolt - no one likes spamming it over our core rotation, yeet the frostbolt talents and prevent it from shattering.
Flurry recharge mechanic - Brainfreeze functions poorly, and the damage increase sometimes causes unintuitive flurry usage, which is not good. Reduce base cooldown to 20s, have its cd scale with haste, and have brainfreeze give 50% of a charge not 100%.
Shatter redesign
Remove winters chill
Make FoF effect all spells except Frostbolt, Flurry, Blizzard, and Frozen Orb (IE can shatter GS and CMS against multiple targets just by using them to consume FoF).
Flurry provides 2 fof now, auto shatters itself. Max FoF cap at 4.
- What does this solve?
FoF works against all targets, so GS would auto shatter against 2t with just FoF. Solves ranged issues which were entirely due to travel time shenanigans with winters chill. Simplifies shattering immensely. Currently we have the issue of being to close to a target causing our precast to not shatter, and too far it lands after flurry. Additionally if we are too far we dont generate icicles from Hailstones. FoF being on cast and effecting our spells aside from ice lance solves all three of these issues.
Hero Talents
- Frostfire
Frostfire Empowerment only gives Excess Fire (reduces the ridiculous amount of Excess Frost we currently get)
If flurry change in the core issues section is done, then excess fire can kinda stay as is. If not: change excess fire to a flat 10s cdr on flurry. Both these changes will prevent the flurry dumping while ignoring WC. Alternatively the above changes to flurry providing fof make it fine to use twice in a row.
Add all the damn effects to mastery.
- Spellslinger
I dont like the orb resets when we have to manually cast them, due to it overwriting the cdr when we have 2 other cdr mechanics. Make it auto cast with an orb improvement from above. Make splinters scale 1-1 with mastery like arcane rather than .75-1
Other things I’d like to see
Coldest Snap doesnt reset orb (too many orb reset mechanics - blizzard, coldest snap, spellfrost teachings, need 5 orbs out for it to be as strong as 2 were in Shadowlands).
Glacial Spike replaces frostbolt at 5 icicles rather than being a separate button (it already has delayed spellqueuing, this prevents us from holding for flurry and removes a button).