Hey, I was just wondering if playing pure IL without glacial spike is much worse?
I usually enjoy getting to ~2500 io in M+ and aotc. What are your thoughts?
Just asking before I decide to level my mage because I don’t want to run into disappointment.
Even if you aren’t, be aware spellslinger changes on the ptr have glacial spike giving 2 additional splinters when it hits a winter’s chill. As the 2 winter’s chills on splinterstorm are being removed, it means using glacial spikes causes splinterstorm every 2 flurries instead of 3. So its getting buffed directly and indirectly and will I assume be back to being cast during Icy Veins.
Noooo :((( I hate GS haha
I love glacial spike. It actually makes frost mage interesting
disagree, but love your name btw <3
Oh thank you! I’m glad you recognize it 
We already cast it during icy veins, the only thing we don’t is ray of frost. For GS you cast it even with FoF.
Prio:
Ice Lance with 2 winters chill
Orb
Shifting Power
Ice lance with 1 winters chill
Comet storm if splinterstorm is in flight
Glacial Spike
Flurry with no precast (during icy veins), and no winters chill obv
Fingers of Frost only Ice Lances
Frostbolt
No icy veins condition for it.
5% dps in ST, could be less if you arent great at glacial spike of course. There are just no good talents to take aside from it in raid. For m+ you’d take frostbite and then swap splintering cold to subzero, and gain a decent amount of damage on freezable enemies.
As Frostfire, I actually dropped Glacial Spike and picked up Death’s Chill instead. Glacial Spike slows the spec down too much at the moment. I might pick it back up when I get plenty of Haste.
is frostfire decent? maybe ill try this.
I’m just worried not taking GS is a huge dps loss, which it seems so.
I’ve been doing the spellsplinter thing but frostfire sounds way cooler.
Glacial spike is the majority of damage for Frostfire. In fact the buff to glacial spike Tuesday is a 5% buff to Frostfire while only 1.8% buff to spellslinger. I would advise using GS it’s a huge dps loss to not use it…
If you play Frostfire you need GS.
I understand that, but I don’t have enough Haste to support using Glacial Spike in Delves without getting thwacked. If I get to raiding again, I’ll add it back in.
I’ve never had an issue getting one off. Frost nova, ice nova will hold an enemy long enough to get one off and will also shatter them. Also dragon breath. Not to mention saving it for a preemptive attack
my problem with GS is mainly that the game kinda throws rng icicles at you and I always exceed 5 icicles before casting GS.
That combined with frozen orb compelling me to spam IL, it just feels so wonky.
Is there any way to counteract this other than hyperfocusing on the milisecond a new icicle appears
You should never have to watch Icicles. You get them often enough to support Glacial Spike and non-Glacial Spike builds. We are very proc-happy right now, and that means we’ll have some Icicle waste with Glacial Spike, but it is not really a big deal.
With the buffs today to GS and RoF, you are likely going to see them both making a comeback outside of IV to more of a Dragonflight playstyle on single target. The buffs don’t really change the IV spell priority or AOE, but it is still a roughly 2.3% increase to single target damage.
I am not sure why frost mages are trying to go without glacier spike. It is the biggest hitting spell in our arsenal as frost. IN delves alone the basic mob has so much health. it takes glacier spike to bring it down fast enough. Plus it snares.
I run delvs and m+ whitout GS simple because i hate it.
Its a dps loss for ST and AoE but im too busy worried about having fun instead of playing rotations i dislike.
I understand where you are coming from. I am one of those determined to make frost fire work even though it is a dps loss. lol. I too prefer fun over performance.
That’s the problem. In delves, I can’t stand and charge up a Glacial Spike because the enemies will start beating on me. I find kiting to be more effective since we are getting plenty of procs. As I said previously, I’ll probably add GS back into my toolkit once I have more haste.