It’s very lackluster in PVE, and it’s virtually unplayable in anything except 3’s. That statement requires some nuance, though, as in 3’s you’re only a CC bot and VERY rarely get to contribute to damage.
Frostbolt’s cast time is obnoxiously long and has negligible damage for arbitrary reasons. Nearly every caster gets far more benefit from lengthy casts right now. Icicle damage is hilarious - 5 Icicles is less damage than a Moonfire + Sunfire tick, despite requiring exponentially more time to generate. Icelance when using a pet does pathetic damage. With the talents we’re intended to choose, BF/FoF rarely proc, and again we run into the issue of Frostbolt taking half a year to cast.
Barrier is terrible, but I suspect the Legendary will fix it to some degree. That said, most classes are equipped with formidable defensives AND get to equip an offensive Legendary. Frost’s best ST Legendary is designed to be used with the half-year long spell, so… Yeah.
To say Frost isn’t “that bad” is being in denial. It’s actually that bad.
5 Likes
Same for me, im going back to the better game FF14 tbh. classes are more in line with each other and you can freely switch between all of them. WoW ruined itself with stupid droprate and the huge disparity between specs and classes in general. WoW balance team needs to be reworked tbh
2 Likes
I don’t mind Frost being lower down, but it does bother me that classes that are out-performing it received buffs while it didn’t.
It’s also super annoying that the covenant system and legendary system sort of soft lock you into a spec. I can switch to Fire, but I won’t be out performing my Frost Mage who has two legendaries crafted, and is in Venthyr - at least for a couple of weeks. I don’t mind the soft lock, as long as the answer isn’t “just play fire” when you express concerns about frost performance.
2 Likes
I’ve been able to suffer the slog for Frost for the majority of the last 16 years, mostly just grinning and bearing it. But I cannot anymore. My 181 mage gets deleted the moment I get looked at in any content - be it world, m/+, raid doesnt matter. I don’t even go near the maw or torghast as I’ve been countless hours trying to survive it and without joy. I know I’m not the best geared, I have sh*t luck when it comes to drops… but I should at least be able to survive in the world without constant death (you can only CC, Nova so often before youre out of options)
I believe I will be joining the same boat, and finally stopping my sub with Blizzard after all these years (first time I will not have a sub, feels weird)… I just have no expectations they will be making any necessary changes anytime soon and i refuse to keep beating my head against the wall in hopes something will happen (you know, definition of insanity).
Maybe I’ll return if I read something changes, but I’m not holding my breath. Eh, whatever, not like anyone from Bliz cares, nor reads these forums anyway 
3 Likes
I don’t know HOW it happened, but I feel worse playing a mage in Shadowlands than I did in BfA (and I felt pretty bad maining a mage in BfA till Fire became competitive).
Really terrible feeling seeing hybrid classes doing so well when best mages have is Fire at mid-pack.
2 Likes
We were all bamboozled by wowhead/icy veins/whoever else. I guess I’m really getting my information from the wrong places, lesson learned. Not sure what I’m going to do, I already have 2 frost leggos, I could craft a fire one this week but I really really really dont want to switch covenants. I hate how locked into specs we are this expac.
8 Likes
I knew frost was never going to be a raid spec… Fire never seems to stay irrelevant for very long if at all. I’m just over here sticking with Arcane and not worrying about it… 
1 Like
Yeah I was laughing over that.
Wowhead before Nathria came out: Frost mage will be awesome!
Wowhead after Nathria came out: Um … don’t play frost.
4 Likes
Icy Veins still got Frost mages top 5 even after their update after the nerfs…
Looks bad.
2 Likes
If Icy Veins doesn’t believe in Frost Mage, then who will? It’s like a parent believing in their child who is the worst on the team, I guess.
“Arcane has been performing a bit under par so we’re giving it a flat 3% overall increase. Frost is fine according to Icy Veins and Wowhead so we’re going to leave it untouched until 10.0 when we’ll hear it’s doing well and nerf it 4 times before launch of the new expansion, Cataclysm 2.0. The exciting news is our ‘B team’ has been sort-of-hard-at-work on it so you know it’ll be… good-ish.”
Yes. It’s is as bad as it looks under the hood. Right now I’m only sticking to 3-4 M+ because anything higher than 5 my DPS dips into 1.8-2k DPS range. Literally I can watch in Raid I start out as 4 then once the fight get past second 10 I’m not struggling to stay above the tanks…btw this is all in 187 gear.
Sounds like a you problem.