Frost Proc Tax is Unconstitutional

Classes Mage
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The frost mage is the only class spec I’m aware of that is structured such that it’s procs are cannibalized automatically and impossible to use.

When a mage gets a brain freeze proc and activates an instant cast flurry–the flurry debuffs the target with 2 stacks of shatter/winter’s chill (depending on which tooltip you read)–that’s the opportunity for a geared frost mage to toss two 20K damage ice lances in the space of 1 gcd

But, if you’ve got a frost orb out, or you’re maxing your dps by precasting frostbolt and then flurrying right after so the first flurry bb races past the frostbolt in flight and debuffs the target with 2 frozen stacks, so your frostbolt connects while the frozen debuff is up so it auto-crits (if you have 33.3% crit)–and then the next bb resets the frozen debuff back to 2 stacks… and you pepper the target with 2 icelances, or if you’re the perfect range and you can get one icelance to the target before the last flurry bb, you can get auto crits on 1 frostbolt and 3 icelances.

Here’s the proc tax though: if your precasted frostbolt, or a simultaneous frozen orb procs fingers of frost (and I’m necrolord, so when I go zombie and start spamming triple frostbolts this always happens) once you get the target debuffed with frozen from the flurry, your fingers of frost procs are all wasted because that frozen debuff lasts only a few seconds and you pretty much have no choice but to cast icelance with while youve got the target debuffed with frozen and it eats both the fingers of frost proc and the frozen debuff.

So one icelance consumes both the proc and the debuff–so the mage mechanics make it so you don’t get the proc–it’s taxed by the mage mechanics. If that’s the way it is for all the other classes then oh well I guess. But if it’s not, then I think blizz should make a change.

This is a flavor of the same issue that Blizzard fixed where comet storm was eating the frozen debuff too, so they’ve taken action in the past.

The easy fix: make an ice lance that consumes both a fingers proc and a frozen debuff, hit for double frozen target damage. easy peasy.

2 Likes
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This is my post btw, this isn’t the word of Gawd lol.

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I wish they took inspiration from previous tiers or trinkets. I like the WoD HFC tier and Manoroth trinket.

Make 2pc allow you to hold four fingers of frost charges

Make 4pc empower ice lance damage if cast after a frost bolt. (Trinket buff).

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Welcome to Frost and the land of proc munching. It’s been an issue for quite a while now, or at least since they introduced Flurry. The simplest solution I have seen on these forums is just to have Flurry buff FoF procs as well.

Flurry with no FoF would function as it currently does with 2 stacks of WC. If however you have a FoF proc and use BF-Flurry, it buffs the FoF and enables it to deal double damage. That way you lose literally nothing.

That said, I’d rather see them re-work Frost to move it away from RNG procs. Maybe keep one or the other but not both.

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It’s genuinely laughable that this broken part of the core frost rotation has been ignored for 3 expansions now and Bliz is just all “shrug” about it.

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