120% per tick, ramping up 10% per tick (don’t know if that’s multiplicative or additive). Without the ramp-up, it’s 600% total. With it, I guess it’d be either 700% or about 733% depending on how the 10% is applied.
IOW, in terms of direct damage alone, you’re doing some 14 to 14.67 Frostbolts worth of damage in 2.5 Frostbolts worth of time. Which isn’t a bad deal. But of course the lost procs and icicles and the risk of having to move, and all the talented multipliers that can be added to Frostbolt, complicate things considerably.
I also want to mention that we have more than one talent that lets us move while casting. ice flows and shimmer both allow us to pick different options to move while casting this spell. And the slow for this spell is so strong. If you cast this and blink or ice flows away they won’t catch you unless you are interrupted or they use a movement cd.
Wait it’s 14 frostbolts over 2.5 frostbite cast time?
It also guarantees fof X2?
And works with ice floes for 5s of movement?
Ok I stepped into the wrong forum since I don’t really know all that much about mages but holy naughty word I’m not allowed to say on forums how is this even something to complain about! It’s a beast spell with strong cc and you can easily run away while slowing someone.
Honestly a great spell with a ton of power, sure some talents might bridge the gap a bit but I doubt anything will make frostbolt worth casting over it. It’s fine, there are far worse situations to be in
The issue is that Ray of Frost is extremely clunky for Frost’s current playstyle.
Frost is effectively a haste junky that focuses on maintaining Icy Veins and other maintenance buffs through spamming Frostbolt and Ice Lance, generating Icicles as well.
Ray of Frost interrupts the rotation because it doesn’t contribute to Icy Propulsion (for some reason), doesn’t generate Icicles and it doesn’t cleave. It’s the same reason why Ebonbolt effectively cannot find a place in the spec and Glacial Spike struggles to. Instant spells like Ice Nova and Meteor can sneak in between Frostbolts, but 2.5 second casts need to justify themselves with more than just raw damage to do so.
It’s the unfortunate reality of the degenerate way they’ve made Frost rely on Icy Propulsion.
It doesn’t apply to PvP at all. Frostbolt hits kinda hard in PvP, unlike in PvE.
Also, if you pick ray of frost, you no longer have access to the thermal void talent in Shadowlands. Thermal void is worth a whole lot more in just about any situation.
Basically, pick ray of frost in PvE to deal less overall damage. Pick Ray of frost in PvP to give your opponent some very, very easy interrupts on frost.
Of course, in DF you can take both, and you get two guaranteed FOF lances at the end of your Ray, which can’t be said for two Frostbolts. It might actually work well in conjunction with TV.
I think the fundamental problem with ray of frost is that it simply doesn’t fit into the frost play style right now. Its generation of 2 fof charges is a bandaid solution to try and solve that problem but it really doesn’t make it less jarring, to the flow of frost, to use.
I think the solution is to let ray of frost proc fof and bf, and/or let you cast ice lance and flurry without breaking the channel. This way you can keep making use of shatter with ray and keep activating icy propulsion.
If this was done it could slot into the rotation a lot better and not feel like a jarring change to frost’s flow.
I assume then that they’ve fixed the issues with it not working then? Last time I ran Ray in 8.3 it would regularly apply damage and just not proc FoF on several bosses, and also had some problems with hit boxes (trying to ‘hit’ the top of giant bosses, significantly reducing the effective range).
For me the concept of Ray always sounded good, but it never fit with the playstyle for Frost for the past few expansions. I’d have loved for it to be a viable choice, but it seems that Blizz is continually pushing IP/TV builds. Maybe the solution would be to have it part of the kit for Welly, to at least make it somewhat of a choice against LW (could add Ebonbolt to the Welly kit too) and give the welly talent an option to let BF stack twice, FoF 3x to compete. Just seems like so much QOL functionality has been lost in the last 2 expansions.
Oh, no idea. If the ability’s plain broken, of course that’s another story.
If it is working properly, though, consider macroing it with IV. You’ve got five crit chances over the course of the channel for IP, and then two FOF charges for TF. Seems like a pretty good combo. If it’s not broken.
The channel time doesn’t bug me; I always kind of looked at RoF as an option for people who want to take a breath or two as a break from the constant reactions and instant casts.
