Is there a reason why Ice Block will sometimes fail to work? On my mage, I’ve had it fail several times, resulting in me getting killed by some raid mechanics. I don’t have it in any sort of cancelaura macro or anything - all I have is the spell on the spell bar. Is there some sort of delay between when you use it and when it activates, or is there some hidden damage cap on it?
Casting Ice block a second time will cancel it. If you got happy fingers and double tap the action button, you screw yourself by instantly cancelling it.
#showtooltip
/cancelaura [mod] Ice block
/cast !Ice Block
The ! before Ice block prevents cancelling it with a second cast. Now to cancel it, you need to hold down a modifier key (alt, ctrl, or shift – whatever isn’t keybound to something else).
So a while ago I think Ice Block used to be off GCD (not sure how long ago, but I definitely remember it being more reliable to cast). I could be wrong on that, but it is definitely on GCD now - so if you cast an instant cast spell then try to spam the button, it may not trigger in time because you are on GCD.
There is also a debuff you get for 30 seconds that prevents it if you try to use it twice using Cold Snap. I had to use a very visible weakaura to help myself stop calling out soaks when I had Hypothermia.
And on the PvP-side of things, getting Frost-locked will lock out Ice Block for that duration.
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I feel like the above poster has hit the nail on the head.
Iceblock used to be off the GCD, I still sometimes die myself because I forget that and try to pull off a last minute Iceblock only to slam the ability in vain. Why it’s on the GCD I don’t know, it has no offensive worth and having it on the GCD only serves to make it clunky and unintuitive. You used to be able to try and eek out as much as you could prior to blocking and bait abilities with a last minute block, but now that’s a lot less smooth thanks to the GCD essentially working against what Iceblock is meant for in the first place. If you played a Mage previously I’d think this could be it.
Otherwise it might be Hypothermia if you’re trying to Iceblock multiple times in quick succession.