Well, raid parses are starting to come in and things aren’t looking great for Frost and Arcane (especially Arcane). Pretty much anything Frost and Arcane can do, Fire basically does better. Every cutting edge mage is going Fire with a few holdovers sticking to Frost and Arcane representation absolutely falling off a cliff. I have even heard higher M+ groups are starting to kick mages from groups if they aren’t specced Fire.
In all my digging through Undermine logs, the only fight where it seems like one of the mage specs can outdo Fire is Junkbunker, where some Arcane mages have posted some excellent numbers (likely because the density of targets allow for Arcane Charge feasting through Orb spam followed by consistent Barrage cleaving). Even then though, Fire and Arcane are about neck-and-neck in terms of top percentile parses.
I know changes are very unlikely until after RWF is soundly concluded, but there is definitely a case to be made to give some slight buffs to Frost and more substantial buffs to Arcane.
It looks like the pve you are referring to is the undermine raid but i can tell you the gap is much, much larger in Mythic+.
Frost AOE Spells need to be updated. placing a blizzard and frozen orb, and having everything get kited out of it feels like some stuff that should happen several expansions ago, not in 2025. Plus the idea of your frozen orb just floating off into nowhere? like what
Frozen orb should have the same idea as Entropic rift for shadow priests, its literally a shadow orb that follows your target, and if the target dies it finds the next best one and continues down the line until it expires. it should literally have the same effect, i don’t see any reason not to.
Blizzard should act like starfall. it just hits whatever you are in combat with. drops from the sky on their heads like a big DoT.
But overall it just is a terrible spec to play if you have to have constant movement. Starting a 2+ second cast on glacial spike when some mobs/boss are dropping stuff at your feet every second is awful. its just no damage while you have to keep moving. ice lance is decent with some fingers of frost procs but outside of that it doesn’t compare to the options that other classes have for quick casts or instants
Unsurprising after the massive nerfs Sunfury and Frostfire ate. Spellslinger was also nerfed even though it was never even close to overperforming. And Fire would be in shambles too if it wasn’t for the brokenly overpowered tier set bonus which I am sad to say they will likely be nerfing as soon as their precious race is over because if they do it before the top raiders will riot. Even if they don’t nerf it Fire will go back to being bad next patch (which hopefully won’t take another 6 months to roll out ).
They have shown a complete inability to balance this expansion in addition and to repeatedly demonstrating they don’t understand fundamental concepts about the class or its inner workings. Those who play D4 can attest to much of the same there too. Idk who works at Blizzard these days but they’re clearly incompetent and it shows with everything they do.
That’s probably more a function of who you play with than anything else. If you have a dedicated group with a tank that’s learned your habits and knows how to adapt you will have a much easier time. Unfortunately, most players don’t have that luxury.
This is especially true for Frost because a ton of your AoE damage is dependent on the tank not moving mobs out of your Blizzard and Frozen Orb.
this is also tricky because in normal PUG M+, people usually pull 1 pack at a time. on like 4-5 mobs, frost is fine. but the meta routes for higher up is like 2-3 packs and you see frost fall off really fast
I have no problem with large packs. You just need to keep frozen orb up and blizzard. With all do respect you’re just playing it wrong. And ok maybe a good ele shaman can beat me in dps? I have yet to see it, but even still someone is always going to beat you. My dps as frost has not been a problem. With that said, if frost gets a buff I won’t complain.
Yeah, so. the distinction here is im not saying its unplayable. its just clearly worse. this “im so good you must suck” argument is kinda wack when there are clearly tier rankings out there that disagree with you lol
That’s literally the only argument people post on these forums. “It’s not a problem for me, therefore it’s not a real problem.” It’s why we are in this mess, most people can’t see past their own narrow experiences and look objectively at a situation, let alone put themselves in other people’s shoes.
Frost is doing decently in M+ against many other classes - the issue is that Fire is just way better at it, and the meta AoE crowd is heads and shoulders above everyone else. And herein lies my gripe: there aren’t any situations where Frost or Arcane can shine over Fire. Fire is just objectively better at everything.
I suppose in M+ if slows are relevant then I guess Frost has a leg up on that.
Blizzard used to be channeled, and now it being a fire and forget, is a good quality change.
Frozen Orb should benefit from the PvP talent, where it’s a targeted reticule. It should also be a Frost Fire orb for frost fire mages, like the one in Cataclysm.
I don’t mind fire being better, but Frost needs some love. It feels bad having to manage icicles during hectic parts of encounters. They really should consider a viable non-Glacial Spike build. In SL Frost had Icy Propulsion and a pre-nerfed Thermal Void which gave us perma Icy veins. They gave that playstyle to fire. Now they have perma Combustion smh…
And they removed this because everyone hated it. Nobody wants Icy Veins to be a “Slice and Dice” maintenance buff— it’s meant to be a cooldown. Combustion gets complained about often with how it’s the only moment Fire Mage can do decent damage. They also didn’t really “give that playstyle to Fire”. Fire has been trapped in the Combustion for damage style for a while now. Any damage outside of it is practically mosquito bites. Fire has always done massive burst in their damage profile, while Frost has always had a more flat damage profile, specifically in the build you brought up with old Icy Veins.
I agree with you that Frost should have viable builds outside of Glacial Spike 100% because the talent trees literally gave us that promise when they were coming out in Dragonflight. But me personally, I hated the Ice Lance machine gun turret playstyle and massively prefer Glacial Spike. So, to each their own, but yes, more builds should be viable.
The issue with the idea of slows being good is that EVEN when slows are important so many other classes and specs can bring them, and some bring slows at a HIGHER reduction % then frost can and often times theirs ALSO push the mobs away. Frost gets taxed for its utility that isn’t very good because it effects 0 bosses. Most elite mobs are immune to it as well. Frost identity is horrendously outdated and needs good lookover.
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