I’m genuinely so confused why you’re one of the only people on here saying Frost spec is so bad.
Out of all the classes I play, I genuinely find Frost Mage’s talent tree to have super great choice when it comes to what you want to do. Whether you want to focus on empowering your Frostbolt in a Frostbolt oriented build, using Glacial Spike, or maybe going with an Ice Lance spam build, even taking Ray of Frost if you want, Comet Storm if you want it, Splitting Ice for optional cleave. And so on. The Haste from all sources talent (Winter’s Blessing) was one of the most incredible additions to a class tree I’ve seen, as well as Icy Veins being updated to feel powerful and unique with the Water Elemental summon.
Can you explain further to everyone what you would like to see for Frost if they rework it, and what problem areas you have with the tree?
Really? Because one of Frost’s biggest problems is that it offers virtually no choice and is the only tree in the entire game without a single choice node. You are locked in on so many talents and most capstones are terrible. You literally do not change your build for the first 20 points you spend no matter what you want to do.
Frost plays well but its tree is most likely the currently worst designed one. Frostbolt nodes are garbage from both tuning and gameplay standpoints, you don’t pick Comet Storm if you want it because you always want it and Ice Lance spam is bad gameplay (thank god WC is getting removed from Splinterstorm). I really like Glacial Spike and Ray of Frost although GS should have its DF s3/s4 2pc set bonus as a talent option and Ray does need a vfx update badly.
Frostbite and Subzero should be removed since it’s toxic gameplay reliant on freezes that don’t apply everywhere, maybe return Frostbite as a PvP talent only. Fingers of Frost, Shatter and some Flurry talents should be baseline (3 talents to make Flurry useable is ridiculous) and maybe even Hailstones should be baseline as well, Lonely Winter should’ve been removed when the permanent Water Elemental was moved to Icy Veins, Wintertide was a failed experiment to help with proc munching and is too expensive, all Frostbolt talents should be retired/reworked, remove Death’s Chill, add more spells to Fractured Frost (again, Frostbolt spam = bad), rework Cold Front, Bone Chilling is also kinda bad. Splitting Ice should be way higher up in the tree, maybe at the start of gate 2.
That wall of text aside, it’s pretty much a consensus in the Altered Time Discord that the Frost tree is in a dire need of a rework and is one of the worst trees in the game, if not the worst.
I get that there are definitely some issues with the Frost talent tree, but I think calling it the worst or being in ‘absolute shambles’ might be a bit of an exaggeration. Sure, the tree could use more flexibility, and I agree that some of the talents, like the Frostbolt nodes, feel underwhelming. But there are still viable builds, and Frost itself can perform well in both PvE and PvP when played optimally.
I do agree that some talents feel locked in, and the lack of choice nodes is frustrating, but other specs also have similar issues. I wouldn’t say Frost is uniquely bad compared to others. A lot of specs deal with talents that are less impactful or situational, and the game as a whole could use some talent tree refinement. It’s definitely not perfect, but ‘the worst’ might be pushing it.
That said, I like some of the points you made, especially about Splitting Ice being higher in the tree and reworking the Frostbolt-heavy nodes. I just think there’s still room for Frost to compete without such drastic language. Blizzard has shown they’re willing to make mid-expansion changes, so maybe with enough constructive feedback, we’ll see some improvements.
Do you think the issues lie more with how Frost compares to other specs right now, or is it more that the design of the tree itself feels off?
Nah, I think Frost is most likely the worst tree in the game right now and definitely the most outdated one. It played pretty well in Dragonflight after the rework, but the choices were locked in outside of maybe 3 points you’d move around whether you wanted ST versus AoE.
Tree is definitely the biggest problem.
I’m really not too sure what other gameplay styles Frost Mage would be able to bring through a talent rework. As a Frost Mage (Mage in general really), you kind of do 1 thing and that’s direct damage at a range. In my eyes, the only real way to shake up the talent tree is to do what they already have done, which is add new interesting and optional spells to the rotation, i.e. Glacial Spike, Comet Storm, Ray of Frost.
It’s not like Mages want them to introduce DoTs into the class or something. I’m just not sure exactly what could change in any drastic way without completely disrupting the gameplay loop a Mage is used to.
I personally wish that the talent trees (class and spec) were smaller, and more things were baseline. This goes for many classes. I feel like we’re in a corner with these trees because so many people want reworks basically every patch cycle. It’s probably not really worth the development time having to “fix” talent trees every other patch. It seems like a headache.
The specs are all way different and you need instant casts with mobility and interrupts
I don’t think that Frost tree needs a total redesign, but rather some issues addressed.
- Tree should get some choice nodes, preferably also for different situations like single-target focused choice node between Glacial Spike vs passive boost to Frostbolt / Ice Lance, AoE choice node (like options for different placement of Frozen Orb) and utility choice node (like between Frostbite and Deep Freeze).
- Fractured Frost playstyle still needs changes and improvements like adding more spells to the rotation and restoring synergies with other talents. If that would still not work well enough - it could be just replaced.
- They should also address overpriced (like Wintertide) and undertuned (like Deep Shatter) nodes and Frost’s issue where it both has significant gap between freezable and unfreezable enemies and loses many potential shatter effects against CC immune enemies which can affect its balancing.
Most of these issues were explained with potential solutions offered in this PTR thread - 11.0.5 Frost Mage Feedback And Suggestions