So I switched from Kyrian to Venthyr because of Preheat’s dire warning about Radiant Spark not being much value, waiting for a Brain Freeze, et al.
But I’m thinking he used it wrong. A better choice of usage would be Orb, Frostbolt (to get to two fingers), Radiant Spark, 4x Ice Lance, gaining two more frozen target ice lances than offered by brain freeze.
With the 9.2 Harmonic Echo, this ought to make Kyrian the go to covenant for frost
No, it won’t. Radiant spark isn’t really worth playing around with for frost when you get better value out of mirrors and shifting power and even that horrid deathborne cd.
I was thinking 9.2 is going to make Venthyr Frost even more viable/mandatory given that the Venthyr covenant legendary is a single target one (though I don’t know the tuning of it) which is Frost’s weak point outside of fights where you can get decent uptime on Thermal Void.
Unless the tooltip and Preheat’s guide are totally misleading, I do not understand the value of mirrors at all. Supposedly the added value is a guaranteed 3 brain freeze procs within 25 secs plus frostbolt-size damage from the mirror destruction. BUT, with a 30% BF proc chance on Frostbolt, you are statistically guaranteed a BF anyway, and likely two. So the gain, mathematically, would be 1 to 1.5 BF procs over 90 secs. I suppose they sim great, but in practice, I don’t see it. If this analysis is wrong, I would love to have someone show me why.
This is exactly how I use it. =)
The added proc from mirrors helps with the uptime needed for frost to maintain icy veins. Much like how shifting power helps in the same way, but with reducing the cds directly.
The point of that for frost is to maintain the up of icy veins. Radiant spark isn’t as impactful for frost of fire it is for arcane. In fact, in my time playing kyrian frost the only build worth while for it includes ebon bolt and glacial spike to get full value out of it, but even then it’s still awful. Fire is the same way where the synergy with spark for fire and frost is not there.
The builds used for frost with venthy and night fae will remain superior because of that. RS will never be worth it for the other two specs.
You don’t always have access to Frozen Orb right when Radiant Spark comes off cooldown. Regardless of which procs you wait for, you’re going to have delay Radiant Spark sometimes.
As for using Radiant Spark with Flurry, note that because Radiant Spark’s bonus damage is per stack. The total bonus damage from all four stacks is 10x: (x + 2x + 3x + 4x), while the bonus damage from the last two stacks is 7x (3x + 4x). You still get 70% of the bonus damage from Radiant Spark → Flurry → Ice Lance → Ice Lance. With Frozen Orb, it is still possible to get unlucky and just not get four Fingers of Frost procs unless you’re using Freezing Winds.
You get those three BF procs in addition to any procs you would have gotten normally. It’s hard not to be a little wasteful with procs in those windows, but you’re still shattering a huge number of spells that you wouldn’t otherwise. This is a lot of damage as well as benefit towards Thermal Void and the Icy Propulsion Conduit.
Despite all that, it is worth noting that there isn’t a huge difference between Frost Covenants in AoE scenarios where most damage is coming from Frozen Orb, which isn’t significantly buffed by any of the covenants.
You can decipher the problem with your idea quite easily.
First, Orb is a 1 min cooldown, and this will result in lost Spark uptime
Second, you’re relying on the base RNG of Frostbolt to get the FoF, which is basically playing roulette.
The problem with Frost has always been its over reliance on procs, and your idea makes it worse. It’s also very easy to test your hypothesis via the APL (just make it do what you want to do and compare results), but anyone who’s tinkered with the APL at all can save you some time and tell you your idea is terrible.
The only reason Venthyr is great for Frost is because it removes RNG of proc fishing, which synchs really well with Icy Propulsion + Thermal Void. The recent buffs also tie in nicely with Mirrors of Torment.
Two things here as well
As things stand right now, the Necrolord lego is much better than the Kyrian lego because the Kyrian lego does nothing on ST at all, but the Necro lego offers damage regardless of content type.
Until we know what the upcoming Tier 2 and 4 piece bonuses are, any and all hypothesis of a “go to” are pointless.
You get 3 BF procs in 12 seconds because a mirror can be consumed every 6 seconds (so 0 > 6 > 12).
Let’s look at the potential of 3 x BF procs:
So you get, right now with an enhanced Icy Propulsion conduit a total of 18 x 1.5 = 27 seconds of Icy Veins CDR from just 1 spell. You also get 6 x Thermal Void procs to extend an existing Icy Veins cast at the same time.
Nothing Radiant Spark does compares to Mirrors, for Frost.
This stays even if you’re Venthyr, btw, so you can sometimes proc a BF after using a guaranteed proc to further snowball your proc roll.