Just general arena chat

PVP Arenas
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I started from “how can they make frost mage a pvp spec on par with fire?” And I quickly realized that this topic can be expanded to viability for various specs: MM hunter to name one.

I also realized that every specialization has its own answer.
Frost mage, for example, could get deep freeze again. I don’t think that’s the best answer. Personally, I want frost to be able to pull off big shatters. Given the pve damage profile… it seems that this would require something specific for pvp. Maybe a return of frost bomb in a form that is single target focused and pretty lethal.

Which led me to the conclusion that frost doesn’t need to suddenly become “viable” in the sense that it can slot into AWC comps. Frost needs the fun element. I’m posting this from my lock and yeah, I’m degenerate and pvp as demo. And it’s not “viable” in the way I just outlined. But it’s fun.

And that’s the angle that should be pursued in my opinion. For example, even if WW was actually not good right now - let’s imagine-craft a state of the game where WW doesn’t have the defensives it needs, but it can still one-shot with dummy thicc SCK. People would still play it a lot due to the fun aspect of pulling that off.

I’m just some hardstuck 2k 2v2 demolock. So I thought I would throw this topic out there on these forums because, at least in the past, I remember really good players like absterge and dilly etc… would actually post stuff here.

I know that viable and fun are both relative terms: anything is viable up to at least 2400 and fun is what you make of it.

But I think we can agree that fun for a damage dealer is being able to 100-0 someone that doesn’t have defensives available. If we make that a metric, like defining time to kill as the time it takes to 100-0 someone without defensives, I think we can coarsely identify which specializations are lagging behind in the fun department. It’s only a coarse approximation, because TTK defined in this way doesn’t account for classes that are more focused on sustained output - assa rogue, aff lock, bm hunter, etc…

I don’t know. Maybe it’s a fool’s errand to try and discuss arena pvp in this fashion. Regardless, still throwing this out there for discussion.

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Okay so just to give a bit of deeper insight
You don’t need to give specs new abilities or what not to make htem viable. While giving frost mage Deep Freeze would definently make them consistent, it isn’t the reason they aren’t viable. They don’t have the immediate burst and pressure fire has, they require ramp up time. The easiest way to fix something like that is to look at what makes other specs more powerful and try to find a middle ground for them all.

Demo is fun to play, so there’s that. But a spec being viable in AWC doesn’t mean it’s viable on ladder and vice versa. We’ve seen Wealthyman pull out frost in AWC just to underperform. We’re talking one of the best mage players here pulling it out in a tournament for money. 99% of mages couldn’t play frost right now because they just want to zug like a melee player can with fire, and it’s just substantially easier on their small brains.

WW doesn’t have good defensives, so don’t even begin me on that train of thought. And you also can’t name a single WW who enjoys afking until a dance/keefer’s line up for a CHANCE at one shot. Pathetic way to play.

Every comp can 100-0 when no one has defensives. Literally every comp. No spec is lagging behind, everything right now is viable in it’s own niche way, the FACTOR that makes it viable is if you want to suffer through the obnoxious queues to get the few queues you want to get. And that’s where the specs don’t see play. No affi wants to play vs double melee (or lock in general), because htey just get run down and have 0 fun.

People seem to forget that the game is fun and specs are fun when you are allowed to queue into anything and outplay them. You don’t get that with a lot of current specs because other comps just have;
a) Too many counters
b) Too much damage
c) All of the above.
Outplay is a major part to making specs viable, not necessarily it’s damage.

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Frost was the dominant pvp spec for like 10 years before fire ever started to consistently outperform it. Why? Because they butchered it’s design in Legion because of “class fantasy”.

They turned fire into the burst spec. Frost doesn’t have the short cd on-demand burst it used to. It’s a dampener spec now and it’s really not that fun to play.

Overall I think the game is exciting to play when everything is op if that makes sense. It’s why s15 in MoP is regarded as arguably the best pvp season ever. Just about everything was strong and viable, and that’s what made it fun.

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I mean it also just had a crazy amount of uni students queueing who pretty much would all have jobs that don’t allow for the shadowlands gearing system to work.

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It’s weird because the burst was fine in legion, comet storm + ice nova, ebonbolt, and orb + lance spam could all function individually as somewhat threatening damage

Must’ve been something on the artifact idk but if you can’t just spam frost bolt now you do 0 damage. Also feels like fof procs way less from orb, idk if that got nerfed or what

6

Frost can 100-0 people in one good kidney/blind or other similar cc combo. The combo is such:
Radiant Spark > Flurry (BF Proc) > 2x Frost Bolts.
To set this up you want ice form, on use trinket, (racial if availiable), Rune of Power, and of course the Kyrian Radiant Spark. in battlegrounds ive hit some players has high as 39k frost bolts. Frost Mage is by far the burstiest when given the chance. Dalaran Gaming has featured that very build on his channel on his own kyrian mage.

It’s biggest weakness is that something as small as a grounding totem or windshear, or any form of cc will absolutely ruin the setup since the window for radiant spark and the shatter “debuff” lasts for so little time. There is also the waiting time for a frost bolt > brainfreeze proc and/or fishing for a chance to cast ebon bolt for an auto proc.

I, for one, advocate for giving frost deep freeze (idk what it was but I assume a 4 second stun). Fire has Dragon’s Breath, so it can’t be too broken… right?

7

Hmm yeah it’s just tuning and design changes.

Ebonbolt is now a talent that no one takes. And the frost meta spec currently seems to be all passive, taking thermal veins and freezing rain over talents like ray of frost and comet storm.

At least that’s what wealthyman plays, and most other frosts I see.

8

The burst for Fire is obviously stronger and much easier to set up, but don’t forget how powerful DB is.

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The thing is, I think frost right now is how everyone’s wanted it to work for a while, they want frostbolt to do dmg, they have decent but not broken burst. The only problem is with how bursty shadowlands is, they just don’t keep up. In any other expansion they’d probably be just fine.

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It’s not just about frostbolt dmg. Considering how much passive defensives/healing there is in the game while frost being a spec that requires significant cast time to do damage outside of major cds, it forces it to being a damp spec. Having deep freeze would be nice, but procs don’t hurt compared to previous expansions like Wrath-WoD when frost was the go-to PvP spec. Ice lance dmg needs to be buffed significantly and they need to give back flurry/brain freeze procs through an alternate method rather than just being triggered from hardcasted frostbolts. Would be really nice if they could give back nether tempest/living bomb type of playstyle where brain freeze procs trigger from.

In this meta, casters w/ instant casts are pervasive for a reason. Casters with lots of hardcasting requirements to apply threat will not be ideal and won’t be apt for this meta unless they have several different spell schools to work with.