I get it and it makes sense for a Hero Talent Specialization. But if you’re not bringing back FrostFire Bolt then just spare us. We don’t want to see lame run-of-the-mill passives for hero talents. We want spells. Big. Flashy. Meaningful Spells.
3 Likes
Boom! Nailed it!
I want an Arcane Meteor Shower, or Flaming Orb Barrage, or Scorching Nether Tempest. Or something entirely new that combines the two magic arms we are merging with the hero talents.
1 Like
I’d love for Frostfire Bolt to replace Fireball and Frost Bolt to add a bit of control or damage over time.
Not to imply that there shouldn’t be passives at all—obviously that is ridiculous. I just hope not ever single Hero Talent is a passive. At a minimum I would hope and anticipate that Frostfire bolt returns plus an additional Frostfire themed ability (e.g., Rain of Frostfire).
I can imagine Frostfire bolt coming back and simply being a merged Fireball and Frostbolt. Something that easily would replace Frostbolt and Fireball from our action bar. That would be a heroic talent indeed. Point of course being here that if these are Heroic talents then they need to feel and look Heroic.
1 Like
This. And it applies to all the hero specs, not just Frostfire. There’s no point in just replacing both Fireball and Frostbolt with FFB, because that’s just a visual change or adding a small slow to Fireball. It needs to feel like a whole new spell and be meaningful to use.
3 Likes
Isn’t that exactly what FFB was the first time around?
I hear what you’re saying but I guess I’m tempering my expectations. I’m expecting mostly passives that modify our existing spells somehow. Yes I hope it does so in flashy ways, but I’m not holding my breath for a major paradigm shift at this point in the game’s life.
And for something like Frostfire Bolt, it’s probably going to be what it always was: push a button and hurl a colored ball of damage at something. I mean, I hope it’s a pretty ball, but it’s still just a ball.
In WOW Classic it currently deals Frostfire damage and slows the target by 40%. If I recall, the earliest iteration of this spell when it was first introduced did apply a fire DOT debuff in addition to aforementioned items above but I could be wrong about that.
From memory that was certainly the case in Cata where it was essentially a replacement for Fireball, but in WotLK it worked a little differently. Because of how the talents worked, it did a bit of double-dipping into both hit rating and frost talents so it hit harder than Fireball and you needed less hit rating but you did a bit less damage with Pyro and had lower crit rating (no focus magic either).
The FFB build was better for sustained AoE (higher damage with Blizzard) or 10m content and the 1st half of the expansion for 25m. With the talents today though that’s not really an option, because you can’t dip into Frost to change things. I’d prefer if the new FFB changed things a little, with gameplay somewhere between current Fire and current Frost.
Since Frostfire is shared for Fire and Frost Mages, if any ability would be replaced by Frostfire Bolt, that would likely be Frostbolt (since it is shared, while Fireball is Fire exclusive).
If so, they’d better just increase damage and add damage over time without nerfing snare value (like it was in some expansions).
Maybe even better would be if Frostfire Bolt were a separate ability with CD that hits like a truck, so that it would not be just a Frostbolt reskin like mentioned above. After all, if Frostbolt would be replaced by it, risking getting kicked on both Fire and Frost schools while using your spammable filler in PVP might be nasty…
Yeah sounds vaguely familiar. I don’t miss screwing around with hit rating, I will tell you that for nothing.
Well if the Hero talents are set up the way everyone expects, Frostfire will be available to both Frost and Fire mages. We don’t know exactly how that will play out, but I guess it’s reasonable to think each school will pick up a few elements of the other. Again, I’m not really expecting huge rotational changes for either spec, meaning a Fire mage with Frostfire will still primarily be a Fire mage. A Frost mage will still be a Frost mage. But hopefully it throws a few fun wrinkles of the other school in for both builds.
Not to be dramatic but I really, REALLY, hope that things like that are not taken into consideration AT ALL when it comes to designing these new talents. Maybe it’s because I don’t PvP but in all my time playing WoW getting screwed out of fun things as a PvE player because of concerns related solely to PvP has been my biggest source of consternation. I am not discounting these concerns, they’re valid for most part, but these are two completely separate game modes and players who exclusively participate in one or the other shouldn’t be punished because of developer refusal to balance the two modes separately and instead just nerf or completely remove things for both.
They can simply take into account both modes when designing hero trees. In this particular case, the compromise solution is to simply introduce Frostfire Bolt as a separate ability (either spammable or CD based). This way, PVE players can simply use it without concerns and PVP players can use either Frostbolt of Frostfire Bolt depending on the situation.