Frost has not had a meaningful update in over 2 years in pvp. It has been completely neglected. It was decent s1 of BFA. It’s good in 3s if you play on a high level but its ability to carry isn’t as strong as fire, and its ability to duel is absolutely nill. I don’t think blizzard realizes just how bad frost is because several community members still back up frost with the argument that, oh its still #1 in arena tournaments. It still wins. That might not even have anything to do with frost and is probably related to the players you are playing with or the comp you are playing and too many factors to count. Frost alone is horrible. Frost is nothing without other people in its current state; we are quite literally a trashcan. I watch tons of 2700+ streams and you almost never see a frost mage queuing despite its performance in arena tourny’s. It just is not fun, and its just not balanced, and its too cookie cutter to the point where classes like fire that sudo burst outclass and outdemand it.
For sure I’m not arguing against updating frost. Just saying the reason I think frost is ignored. Shadow had people with a platform to raise hell. Frost doesn’t.
Frost’s talents are inflexible, its mastery is beyond boring AND is terrible since it doesn’t effect one of our most important spells, its builds are only close because of how ineffectual our talents are, and we got nothing unique to us this expansion. Meanwhile, fire and arcane continue to get changes made and while they did have their problems, so does frost but frost’s problems aren’t being addressed meanwhile arcane and fire get coddled.
Frost has been the same since legion and legion was a MINOR tweak of wod. Frost has had nearly the same exact talents for 6 years.
Bone chilling is also a shameful talent. Do 5% more damage oh wow so exciting.
While I 100% agree with you about frost’s issues, I don’t think you do yourself any favors with statements like the above. Frost has been, at absolute worst, mediocre for several expansions. Arcane has been for a good portion of said expansions quite bad. It and it’s community have been almost completely ignored for the better part of about 7-8 years.
“Coddled” is not a word that in any way shape or form applies to arcane mages in the history of WOW.
Arcane has been a mess for multiple expansions. Even Legion only got good towards the end. Coddled is the last word I’d use.
Honestly not sure what the point of comments like these is. Did we forget that different people have different preferences? There are so many specs that have passive talents, especially at level 15. A 5% increase to spell damage is actually a very great level 15 talent and has incredible scaling potential, especially considering its interaction with higher tier talents like Glacial Spike.
I’d argue that Frost’s talents are actually quite flexible. It can have an entirely passive talent tree or one where each talent tier adds a new spell to your bars. How many other specs have this option? Even Fire and Arcane don’t have this option.
Now, of course, for optimal play in any scenario you’ll be forced into certain talents, but this is pretty much universally true for every single spec in the game so it’s not like Frost is the only spec forced into a pigeon hole. In fact Frost retains flexibility on the 2nd and 5th talent tiers regardless of what you’re doing, and on the 4th talent tier, assuming you run NoIL, Edonbolt and Frozen Touch are dead even in performance and it’s entirely up to personal choice.
Change wise arcane saw quite a lot. Its like if you’re in a desert and some dude gets a couple drops of water, it looks like they just got to slake their thirst. They didn’t but you’re in a desert, a couple drops of water is a ton of water. A couple changes is a ton of changes relatively and a lot of the dead arcane talents were removed.
A 5% increase to spell damage is actually a very great level 15 talent and has incredible scaling potential
Its not that this is bad, its that its boring. It doesn’t change anything up on how you play, it just makes you deal 5% more damage. Its the ambien of talents, effective but what its effective at is putting you to sleep.
Do tell? Given prismatic crystal and ignored in WOD until 2 broken trinkets in HFC. Totally fubared from WOD incarnation to be God-awful for the beginning of Legion (quickening nightmare), then ignored until Antorus where one legiondary made our aoe good. Then said aoe gutted without a word for BFA and ignored the entire expansion save a couple of +6%, +8% buffs that moved us from bottom 3 to like bottom 8 or something. Then nothing until now. If you consider that “seeing a lot,” more power to you, but it’s simply not true. And again, we’re not disagreeing with you about Frost, just saying your commentary on arcane is factually inaccurate.
When exactly did we see these changes? Legion? Because I know You aren’t talking about BFA, oh wait we did get changed then! We had the best aspects of our spec pruned and the GCD impact the CD our spec essentially revolves around.
Now, I’m not saying that Frost doesn’t have its issues, because it does. The builds are degenerate and I personally find them clunky. However, Frost’s performance rarely has suffered Antorus - Present Day, while the same cannot be said for Arcane in comparison.
1-6 Top (Best-25%) | 7-12 (26-50%) | 13-18 (51-75%) | 19-24 (76%-Worst)
H Antorus
Arcane: 17
Frost: 8
Worse than over 50%
Better than over 50%
M Antorus
Arcane: 18
Frost: 5
Worse than 75%
Better than over 75%
H Uldir
Arcane: 17
Frost: 9
Worse than over 50%
Better than over 50%
M Uldir
Arcane: 20
Frost: 1
Worse than over 75%
Best Spec
H BoD
Arcane: 16
Frost: 9
Worse than over 50%
Better than over 50%
M BoD
Arcane: 16
Frost: 7
Worse than over 50%
Better than 50%
H CoS
Arcane: 24
Frost: 8
Worst Spec
Better than over 50%
M CoS
Arcane: Not Listed (24)
Frost: 23
Worst Spec
Worse than over 75%
H EP
Arcane: 15
Frost: 17
Worse than over 50%
Worse than over 50%
M EP
Arcane: 12
Frost: 19
Better than 50%
Worse than over 75%
H Nya
Arcane: 9
Frost: 2
Better than over 50%
Better than over 75%
M Nya
Arcane: 13
Frost: 7
Worse than over 50%
Better than 50%
Best Spec: #1
A-0 F-1
Better than or over 75% (top 1/4)
A-0 F-2
Better than or over 50%: (top 1/2)
A-3 F-6
Worse than or over 50%: (bottom 1/2)
A-6 F-1
Worse than or over 75%: (bottom 3/4)
A-2 F-2
Worst Spec: #24
A-2 F-0
To sum it all up:
Arcane has never been the top spec (#1) H/M Antorus-Nya’lotha. Frost has been the top spec (#1) H/M Antorus-Nya’lotha once.
Arcane has never ranked significantly above average (specs 2-6). Frost has been significantly above average 2 times (this is not counting the time it was the top spec).
Arcane has been average or above average (specs 7-12) only 3 times, while Frost doubles that at 6.
Arcane has been below average (specs 13-18) a staggering 6 times, while Frost only 1 time.
Arcane has been significantly below average (specs 19-23) 2 times, along with Frost 2 times as well.
Arcane has been the worst spec (#24) twice, while Frost has never been the worst spec H/M Antorus-Nya’lotha.
And let‘s not even go into the reason for Fire getting attention. It only performed well thanks to the fluke of a single piece of gear and interactions with BFA systems (the spec was behind both Arcane and Frost in BoD, nearing the bottom—I think closer to 18-20?).
Frost also excels for the most part in M+. Arcane does not (yes it can perform okay, it is viable, but there is a lot of judgment from the community about playing Arcane in keys, and Arcane comes with some limitations and hindrance).
In terms of PvP I don’t do much of it, so I don’t feel as comfortable speaking on it. However, I’m guessing you don’t see much Arcane at higher ratings. If you are interrupted you are locked out of everything (so I can’t poly if AB is kicked and vice-versa, Frost and Fire do not have these issues). Arcane might have more mobility, but it cannot provide significant damage on the move. Moreover, Frost provides strong capability with snares that Arcane does not (aside from slow).
In general, Frost may feel antiquated, but in terms of performance, the playstyle doesn’t suggest that it struggles in content. The same cannot be said for Arcane. To put it more simply:
Decent-High Performance + Feels Bad/Antiquated Style /=/ Primary Attention
Bad-Mediocre Performance + Feels Bad/Antiquated Style = Needs Primary Attention
The original changes for SL had Arcane in an even worse position with GCD and Prep Abilities being out of control. I’m willing to bet that given Arcane’s already less than stellar performance, that they had to work on those issues for the spec to be viable.
Again your complaints are just nitpicking about problems you’re facing, but this doesn’t make them true. It also doesn’t warrant calling the talent “shameful”.
Personally, I find the talent interesting because to me not having my Water Ele out is boring and I love changing its glyphs every now and then given the plethora of glyph options out there.
Likewise, someone else might find playing without the elemental more interesting and possibly easier, especially if they’re new the spec and can’t get a good grasp on best times to use Freeze or proper positioning of the elemental.
Why should it change anything about how to play, though? Please elaborate. Ice Nova and Lonely Winter already do this. Why should all three talents in the tier change up how you play? That leaves us with no variety at all. See what I’m doing there? It’s called nitpicking. Just complaining about an inconvenience I’m having.
I wish i could like that more often. If there is one mage spec that deserved the attention it got it’s arcane no question.
The changes were desperately needed tbh.
Now i really wish that frost mages get looked at, because everybody should enjoy their spec. but please… just look at arcanes history and you will agree that it was time to make changes.
Hotgarbage brought the receipts.
Water Ele out is boring
There is a huge canyon between talent that is only +%5 damage and lonely winter. What other class has a talent that is JUST increases damage by 5%. Not that the talent works out as a 5% dps increase but a talent that ONLY increases by 5%. To say that this is interesting is just lying it isn’t subjective.
When exactly did we see these changes?
Arcane is getting quite a lot of changes in shadowlands.
And your point? It’s been years, like close to a decade for arcane to get much of anything. Still no cleave, still no baseline orb, etc. But yes, keep going on about how frost is getting screwed because you find one talent boring… 
Average those changes out over 3 expansions for a proper comparison.
Its not one talent where frost has issues and it isn’t frost versus arcane. I don’t know why you are so fragile that you think someone pointing to the simple work done on one spec with loads of issues and then saying “this spec also has loads of issues, can it have some simple changes as that one” is some egregious thing and has you so shook.
As to what my point was, blizzard has shown they are willing to work on trouble talents and I would like that to extend to a spec which has been largely unchanged for nearing 6 years.
Lol brother, it’s neither me nor any of the other mages here that are fragile; you’re the one who brought up arcane (and fire) and said they were “coddled.” You’re the one who’s making up factually inaccurate posts about arcane getting multiple changes over the years. You’re the one who keeps repeatedly saying “frost talents are uninteresting.” You’re the one who made it frost vs arcane. Again, and read this carefully, no one is saying frost talents are interesting. But, as Hotgarbage pointed out when he/she destroyed your arcane nonsense, your spec has been near the top over the past few years and generally mid-pack even when it wasn’t the best. Arcane has been at or near the bottom third for ages.
You coming on here and lamenting that “zomg this talent is boring” and crying about arcane mages to actual arcane mages who have been given the shaft for raid after raid, expansion after expansion isn’t going to win you points or sympathy. Yes, frost has issues. But no where near what arcane does. Given the choice between “uninteresting” and “really bad,” we’ll take uninteresting. Now move on.
Well, it looks like they’re taking the IL builds a different route – glacial spike builds will be specifically two-target, while IL builds will be AoE-oriented. The IL shatter, increased blizzard and orb damage, etc… all supposed to be replacements for packed ice. IL may be the way to go in keys, if the build is tuned properly.
8-10 years with bad, unexplained changes and almost no blue posts at all… and they finally get a modicum of attention and that’s “how it looks?” Your viewpoint is… skewed to say the least.
Lol Quickening and it’s removal.
Mostly bad ones.
Steps in the right direction but nothing indicating arcane will be anywhere close to where frost is now.
Could’ve fooled us.
Because it’s been terribad for most of the last 2 expansions and only “good” in HFC because of 2 broken trinkets. And the irony of you here at 392 IL crying about frost having boring talents and calling out Preach is not lost.
Frost isn’t bad, it’s not been “bad” (outside of that one crappy 2 boss raid between BFDA and EP) in years. This statement categorically proves you have zero idea what you’re talking about.
For PvP , 1v1 frost is horrible. Frost also only works at higher levels in 3s, not sure much 2v2. Frost is in a desperate need of fixing in PvP. I suggest blizzard reaches out to some veteran players(xaryu, graycen, ziqo), they probably have the best ideas how to fix frost for PvP. I’m content with frost’s placement in PvE.
Way to try and take me out of context. This is in regards to why I initially posted which was to the question, why did shadow get changes but mage not. The answer being there are people with clout who raised word that shadow needed changes.
Frost isn’t bad, it’s not been “bad” (outside of that one crappy 2 boss raid between BFDA and EP) in years. This statement categorically proves you have zero idea what you’re talking about.
I’m not speaking strictly about performance but about the way the spec is. Shadow was a top spec for raids every raid but Uldir and in Uldir it was middle of the pack but did that make it a good spec? No, it was a broken spec with bad parts that needed changing.
Frost has been okay the entire expansion, it was the top spec until fire overtook. Currently its one of the worst performing raid and m+ specs and its success in arena is mostly on TR. Does that make it a bad performing spec? No. Does this make it a good spec? NO because it still has major issues which I and others have detailed but you seem to have trouble parsing simple concepts like this.