Frost Mage is pathetic and relies on abilities that aren’t frost abilities.
Ice Lance hits for 70 damage where other casters like Shadow and Boomy are instant casting people off the face of the earth. Brain Freeze literally does not ever proc and can’t be taken over Missile Barrage because it is so inferior. FFB and SFB have excessively long cast times and hit for zilch while gobbling up all of your mana.
The spec needs buffs and alterations so badly it isn’t even funny or remotely debatable.
The other 2 specs being good has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that Frost sucks when compared to every single other caster
What would improve Frost Mage? It isn’t hard because it has been done throughout several iterations of the game.
Increase Brain Freeze proc rate to at least 40% chance.
Increase Ice Lance base damage to at least 250. Living Bomb shouldn’t be the only option.
Increase absorption of Ice Barrier to 800 damage, improved by spellpower.
Make Brain Freeze a belt rune for the love of God so we don’t have to make an impossible compromise.
When we get Displacement and Deep Freeze we will have actual real utility that every other caster currently has in some form.
Frost Mage has a VERY deep skill cap. Buffing it will not make it FOTM because hardly anyone plays it at a high level to begin with in PVP.
This is not difficult to see what the issues are. At this point the devs are just neglecting the spec entirely and it is really sad and unacceptable.
I am a warlock main, but I also have a 40 mage… I wanted to try and make frost work…
I was challenged to make a warlock pvp video without gear, and I can honestly say my warlock wearing grey/white gear in only the rune slots and naked everywhere else, STILL does about 5x as much damage as my mage does as frost with it’s gear on.
Frost isn’t even bad, it like fell into a mine shaft somewhere below bad, and in the process of trying to escape dug itself even deeper below that.
My only thought on this, is that Blizzard is testing these runes and abilities at max level and making adjustments based on their lvl 60 performance. That’s the only way I can make the most recent changes make sense.
at least frost mage is from a class in SoD that has a healer spec available unlike ranged hunters who barely beat you guys in pve dps. My ranged hunter is full gnomer bis and just does enough pve dps to edge you frost mages out in green gears
Yes frost mage needs buff, but those buff suggestions will make it way OP. If ice lance did 250 dmg, on frozen targets it’s 750. Then when it crits, that’s over 1500 dmg, closer to prob 1800. That’s ridiculous.
IMO buffing ice lance damage by 25%, to something around 90 or 100dmg, and increasing FoF proc rate to 25% or 30% should be good enough
For hybrds, I really think their specs should work. For pure classes, I really feel it to be excessive to make every spec compete evenly with each other, especially because it blows up PvP.
Frost mage healer is super good right now in PvP and fire is one of the best DPS specs in the game. Arcane healer is incredibly fun and brings easily 300-500 HPS while also doing 250-300 DPS. It is just frost DPS that struggles.
Mages are overall doing incredibly well.
Warriors for instance, need love with Prot and fury is one of the best in the game as well.
Yea I’m a frost healer. It’s actually really good right now, especially after the chrono heal buff. It beats a lot of other healing classes’ heals in terms of HPS. And none of them compare in the CC department that a frost mage has.
What would improve Frost Mage? It isn’t hard because it has been done throughout several iterations of the game
Thing is the fixes most people are suggesting are NOT how they fixed Frost in retail. Buffing FoF and BF proc chances were never the answer. No, they made it so FoF only proc’d 1 stack at a time (no more munching stacks when back to back Frostbolts proc’d it before you could spend 2 stacks), it only effects Ice Lance/Deep Freeze/BF-FFBs and not all spells, and gave more ways to force proc it like Water Elemental Freeze and Frozen Orb. Oh and Ice Lance had higher base damage like Scorch but only gets 2x bonus against Frozen/FoF.
Make Brain Freeze a belt rune for the love of God so we don’t have to make an impossible compromise.
That would not solve the issue at all lol, you’d lose FFB/SFB and have to use it on Fireballs which Frost tree doesn’t buff at all. You want to combine BF and FFB into one rune (sorry FFB main nuke lovers) and Ice Lance and FoF into 1 rune.
you cant increase Brainfreeze proc rate by much cuz it can chain proc off itself. Spellfrost bolts on my fresh toon are critting for 900+ in pvp on my just dinged frost mage. Being able to just get those non stop would be redic.
TBH FoF procrate to 30-35% would go a very long way. My ice lances on fresh geared toon are critting for 500 doesnt seem like its thatttt far off from what would be nice. The big outlier is FoF + Lance interaction you can never get shatters for it with 15% procs.
Step 1: Fingers of Frost rune made into a seperate proc from frostbite talent. Massive PvP buff for fingers of frost and actually makes it decent for the spec vs burnout
Step 2: Frostbite can now proc vs immune targets and does “something” (damage proc or haste proc most likely)… This is mostly a pve only buff, and only if needed.
Step 3: Ice Lance damage buffed.
Step 4: Icy Veins… I’d either just leave it the same, but cut the cd in half, or it gets a mild redesign. CD is lowered, but each successive frost spell cast puts a stacking haste and mana cost reduction buff on the caster. This would somewhat backload the damage frost outputs so they don’t go nuts in pvp, but provides a substantial pve buff where the spec ramps in damage over time
