At least in pvp?
One thing that I can enjoy about enhancement pvp is that its pretty difficult to run from. Like you can constantly reapply frostbrand weapon on a druid regardless of how many times they shapeshift or if it gets dispelled
but if you frostshock a target and they dispell or shapeshift, do you not have a slow at your disposal for 6 seconds??
edit: I guess there’s icestrike now
It absolutely is unfortunately, consider comparisons like a Monk’s Disable. 15 energy to apply a 50% slow for 15s, refreshed on melee hits and roots previously slowed targets. Or a Warlocks curse of exhaustion that only a few classes can remove. Or simply a Rogue’s Crippling Poison which functioned the same way as Frostbrand.
Granted, Druids are difficult to snare in general, but no CD auto apply snares are kind of the exception. Only paladins and maybe Death Knights are a little worse off than shamans I think.
yeah, by comparison, significantly worse
Not really a great direct comparison.
Frostbrand’s a 3s snare, Frost Shock is 6. Frostbrand’s significantly more costly than Frost Shock, so spamming it to continue snaring is pretty awful. It can also technically fall off because of DW’s inherent miss chance, if you don’t have a melee swing to press and miss your whites, which is absolutely hilarious.
Enhance has had more issues sticking to targets since Legion than before it, lol.
Heck, took em ages to make Frostbrand snare on cast, even.
Also, enhance literally had both of these effects in MoP and WoD. Not sure why it can’t again.
Also frost shock is currently 40 yards on the beta, which is massive for kiting and catching.
Frost Shock Pros/Cons.
Pros:
Does more damage than frostbrand, and has better interaction with out toolkit with Hailstorm.
Has a cooldown which is lower (via haste) than the duration of the actual slow.
Can be used immediately vs having to press Rockbiter once/perform 4 consecutive melees/2 WF procs.
Longer duration = realistic ability to kite/makes you harder to kite.
Cons:
Does not have Frostbrand’s interaction with Crash Lightning, but arguably this interaction using Flametongue as an example would have dealt far less damage than reworked Hailstorm.
Can not be “spammed”/does not have a free reapplication mechanic.
Is susceptible to shapeshift (which the majority of slows are), and arguably dispel as well, but has a shorter cooldown compared to dispel lessening this issue. One can also argue that if a healer is wasting dispel solely for Frost Shock they’re easily leaving themselves open to CC lockdowns.
Frostbrand’s Pros/Cons:
Pros:
Cons:
Did very low damage both on initial hit and on every auto.
3 sec duration slow meant that most classes could easily out kite you by just staying barely out of melee range.
Was terrible for slowing targets that were a good distance away from you as the majority of classes have slow durations that last longer than yours.
Was terrible for kiting enemies as every other GCD would have to be used to cast the spell, enter ghostwolf which left you with roughly 1sec of duration left based on haste reducing GCD time, exit ghostwolf to reapply eventually running out of Maelstrom.
TL;DR Frost Shock from SLs and Frostbrand from Legion should have just been smashed together in the first place. Countless threads asked for an increase to the slow duration if only on initial application, so it wasn’t so painfully easy to kite us. If you just kept Flame Shock as its own mechanic and replaced everything “Frost Shock” with “Frostbrand” no one would honestly complain.
Also ironically the major limiting factor of both these things the major generator of Frostbrand’s cons is. drumroll
Ghost wolf! Why? Because its an outdated ability purposely gimped as stated by Blizzard because they don’t want the ability to reflect in anyway Shapeshifting for Druids.
It’s major feature is that you can’t use anything while in it, and you move at run speed while slowed. Also it can be dispelled which is apart of the “purposely gimped to not be like shapeshift” aspect. Ghost Wolf is a backwards slap to WoW’s design in its entirety.
A. Restricts the player’s ability to actually play.
B. Punishes the playerbase as a whole by being tied to good passive DR/Healing, but being easily dispelled/refer to reason A.
Other things that restrict player ability are generally immunity mechanics that prevent them from taking any further sources of damage. Such as Ice Block/Turtle Shell this makes these abilities useful for both survival, and for PvE to cheese mechanics. Ghost Wolf you just sit around and do nothing waiting for the for second duration it takes to get 20% DR.
I’m confused with your assessment.
you can spam frostbrand/rockbiter at range
its not great, but at least you can keep the target slowed.
I really liked this when chasing down people. You cannot chase down someone with frostshock if they can remove/dispell it
Frostbrand WAS A IMBUE for a long time. WHERE IS IT BLIZZARD. GIVE ME BACK MY IMBUES AND MAKE WINDFURY GREAT AGAIN
at 20, yes
anybody that can kite off your frost shocks at 40 was gonna kite off your frost brands and make it past 20 as well
e: i should be clear, i don’t think one is significantly worse than the other, but i also don’t think either has been particularly great at giving enhance good uptime, and enh has struggled more with it in legion/bfa than it did prior.
also there’s no reason enh can’t have both like it did in the past, just make flametongue snare on autos who cares lol
I wish Frostbiter came back as an imbue. It was pretty much our PvP imbue.
The solution was to simply unprune frostbrand weapon imbue and allow it to be placed either on the main hand or offhand.
This completely sidesteps any worry about legion/bfas trash version, by having it always up via auto attacks.
It also feeds into rpg choice of
Well IIRC we were also supposed to get Frostbrand back as an imbue with frost shock…I do not know why they did not do that. But I think Bubblies is right about the only reason we have flametounge back.
Ahhhh the old days of having Frostbrand, Frozen Power AND Frost Shock…
And yet somehow people defend this current kit like its OK, really tho!?
I think some of us are starting to get stockholm syndrome at this point 
i know it’s like shaman’s motif to have “thing but worse” but rogues don’t have to give up deadly or lethal to get crippling
i don’t see why frostbrand/flametongue can’t be the same way
We should definitely have a frostbrand imbue. You’d take frostbrand for pvp and flametongue for pve
yep, totally agree here.
Man, I was on the horn blasting for Enh frozen power for pvp since day 1 but blizzard dropped the ball
For pvp, the lack of frostbrand imbue, and searing Totem are going to have massive ramifications for piano shaman playstyle.
We no longer can stick easily to anyone and we no longer have pressure when kiting other melee (searing flames and totem).
It’s rough time for pvp, not just because of low survivability.