Can we have one spec that isn’t so heavily dependant on timing bursty cooldowns? Early Arcane had and still has the burn phase… but now every spec has a “burn” phase of its own while feeling bland and weak outside of it:
Frost: Every power/legendary/talent has to revolve around making Icy Veins permanent.
Anything that breaks Icy Veins early (getting CC’ed, boss transitions somewhat, heavy target switching like explosives) leads to a LONG boring time fishing for Brain Freeze and Frost Fingers procs.
Fire: The downtime outside Combustion windows feels too weak and unsatisfying. Like Frost, you feel forced to pick stuff like Flame On to make the most of these short seconds.
Those moments where your Combustion flunked for some reason and you have to wait until the next window outside the Execute range (Searing Torch) throwing Fireballs are very frustrating…
Can’t really complain about Arcane, since it was designed to function in bursty windows.
Do we need 3 bursty specs?
I would love to be able to choose a smoother one, with more focus on filler spells like Fireball and Frost Bolt… without that mad rush to make the most of cooldown windows.
Interesting, I love DPS casters, but I definitely found Frost to be THE most consistent damage dealing caster. It’s also to be said that Frost is an amazing caster DPS spec in M+ due to it’s high consistent damage profile.
Frost: 3min Icy Veins that can be prolonged and the CD reduced. Frost Orb “burst” can happen more often with Blizzard crits.
Fire: 1min - 1.25 min kindling combusts, otherwise meh.
Arcane: Kyrian has the 1.5min AP & 45sec RoP, 45sec dmg burst hills.
Boomy: 3min Venthyr heavy ramp, into < tank DPS or 1min Kyrian spike or Random Pulsar spikes with Convoke ~2min
SP: 2min VF + PI windows with minor ramp, does ok dmg outside VF
Ele: 2min Storm Ele windows, random aftershock EQ procs, does poor dmg without lucky aftershock slot machine
Aff: 2min Darkglare windows, ramp ST, crazy 1 button seedspam burst, overtuned.
Demo: 1min DeCons, bigramp, AOE ramp has too many buttons for ok dps with 9imp/6imp explos whether FTS/implosion build
Destro: meh
Frost’s overreliance on Icy Veins uptime is definitely a design problem. Icy Veins itself needs to be redesigned to fix that problem because it’s one of the weakest DPS cooldowns in the game by itself and it’s on a 3min cooldown as well. The only reason it’s strong now in Shadowlands is because it’s practically permanent in optimal conditions like you mentioned and it’s only so because of the IP conduit.
Blizzard doesn’t need to crit to reset Frozen Orb. It’s minus 0.5s cooldown per hit.
Frost is great in M+. Sadly it’s kind of balls in raids, and because Blizzard treats them both as the same content and doesn’t differentiate between them, those wanting to play Frost in raids are left behind.
Definitely. Blizzard made a big deal of getting rid of the degenerate playstyle of NoIL (by nerfing GS into oblivion and putting 60% of our damage profile into IL which is also terrible), but in the process designed a new and just as degenerate playstyle. The requirement in raid for Frost to keep IV up for as long as humanly possible to do mid-pack damage is honestly pretty gross, but it’s what happens when you design 4 different systems to interact with each other rather than just having specs be solid as a baseline.
I’m hoping they actually do something with 10.0. If they aren’t going to completely overhaul and redesign Frost entirely (which is much needed), they should at least attempt to make the spec feel better to play. No more having to keep up IV, no more dps loss taking talents, no more reliance on only 1 spell to do most of our damage.
You’re right, I was subconsciously thinking of how I focused on blizzard crits primarily in keys.
True. I could say that same thing about Demo being great raid, and meh for M+, or how Ele is similar to your FrostM point. I could also say SP is alright in both content, but not admired like a FrostM/FireM in either content.
The point I was emphasizing, which is what the OP was emphasizing, is that Mages are maybe 2/3 Burst Specs rather than 3/3, and in comparison to the other DPS specs, Frost Mage is one of the more consistent damage profile types.
I agree the Icy Veins is a problem design wise. Solution-wise… IDK what could be done there. Making it a hard stop duration and have it increase damage & haste would be a nice but bland fix.
I wouldn’t really listen to that take that “frost is balls” during raid. Although you can’t really keep iv up perpetually in most cases during raid (unless there a good amount of adds or bosses stacked) it’s far from “balls”.
I mean it’s mid-pack at best in Mythic, and lower in Heroic so while it may not be entirely balls, it’s pretty bad. I guess it feels worse because it not only has a high APM but is considerably weaker in raid than it is for M+, epsecially on important ST bosses or for priority/burst targets.