Revert Glacial Spike Change

Glacial spike change needs to be reverted and here is why:

1- Raid, Mythic plus opener now weak while waiting for proc of Brain freeze. Using a cooldown right away in opener leads to more wet noodle frost bolt fishing later in rotation as 60 second GS spike no longer fills dead proc free moments. Just more feel bad moments in rotation now.
2- Mythic +. With frost capped at 5 targets for shattering, GS on 60 sec timer puts frost mages even farther behind uncapped classes. Now 100% dependent on cooldowns to do damage, and there are pulls where all cooldowns are not available. Gaps can’t be filled with meaningful core spell damage.
3- Open world content now no feels terrible, as either you have to spam crappy frost bolt or waste a cooldown on a mob that doesn’t need a cooldown to kill. Other classes in world content come in and kill everything much faster and you are left just tagging mobs. Worst of all, you often don’t get to use GS as mobs die before it can be used. Great design there.
4- Delves. You now have to use cooldowns on trash packs and end up waiting for cooldowns to come back up, before you pull again. You used to be able to stagger cooldowns better when you were able to open with GS that allowed you to finish off mobs with frost bolt and a shatter.

Blizzard revert GS change now!

60 Likes

Agreed 100%. This feels like a really clumsy solution to a self-inflicted problem.

17 Likes

Open world, delve, m+, and even raid content feel worse for all the reasons you outlined.

Icicles fast recharging out of combat was a great change. Having glacial spike be it’s own button would be best, but I at least I understood the logic of wanting to reduce button bloat. This, however, is the worst of both worlds. I’m actually impressed how blizzard can so consistently make changes that are bad.

12 Likes

There’s only one reason for this. The devs want Mages to die. All of the Midnight changes prove it.

8 Likes

this changes feel awfull, not cool and chill at all, totally unfitting with frost mage theme.

12 Likes

Agreed. Please revert. Feels so bad

12 Likes

Yup, the changes totally ruin the feel of the spec. Over the course of a delve, I’m doing less then half of the Glacial Spikes I was doing before. Opening up on trash packs feels horrible

10 Likes

Absolutely they need to revert this change. It makes the class so much less fun to play, and it is not like we have the option of switching specs giving how bad the other two are.

Was having GS available as an opener a problem for PvP? If so then just make the change effect PvP. Don’t ruin the overall game play for all mages.

10 Likes

Did they seriously brick Glacial Spike cause they thought people were too dumb to comprehend that Glacial Spike and Frostbolt are interchangeable/the same thing? Opening with Frostbolt instead of GS is so lackluster and punishing. When I raid now I don’t even participate in clearing trash so I can have my GS up for the boss pull. This is probably one of the most idiotic things Blizzard has come up with in a LONG time if ever.

12 Likes

Meanwhile it’s completely fine for warlocks to auto gen soul shards outside of combat.

12 Likes

Went to play my frost mage today and this definitely changes the whole feel of it for the worse.

Please revert.

6 Likes

What a depressing change, feels really bad now.

6 Likes

Amen. Bring it back!

4 Likes

100% revert this.

6 Likes

Devs, please revert this. This isn’t a ā€˜FOTM nerf’, it’s literally breaking the game for every frost mage who uses it as an opener. Not all people who play frost mage are SBA or ā€˜3 button mashers’. We put a lot of learning and thought into how we can best use our rotation, and removing the OPENER is the wrong way to deal with some people’s confusion. I don’t want to have to waste RoF on trash then sit and wait every damned time for the cooldown. I save RoF for the big guys, and having to sometimes burn it on trash, then having Valeera pull some nemesis mobs when RoF is on cooldown (when it wouldn’t have been before) is really crap and it happens.

10 Likes

This was such an out of touch change and needs to be reverted asap. GS is NOT over powered. And you simply could have just put frost bolt in the spell book and put in the description it changes to glacial spike at 5 icicles. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to problem solve the stupid spell book.

11 Likes

Agree with this sentiment. Aside from completely butchering our opener, there are also many such cases where when I do finally get to cast Glacial spike, the mob I’m trying to kill is already at a very low HP. At that point why cast GS at all if the huge damage chunk is negated by the mob dying in a couple of hits? So now I’m stuck with spamming Ice Lance or waste a Flurry charge since I cannot cast Frostbolt/FFB since its tied to GS. The change just feels really bad to the flow of the spec overall.

If the reason for the changes, ā€œCaNnOt FiNd FrOsTbOLt iN sPeLL bOoK herp derp durrā€, is to be believed. Then this change is a massive oversight that has not been tested properly at all on how it would affect how the class plays. The most simple and effective solution for this was to just separate the two spells. Instead they chose a hammer to fix a problem that required a screwdriver.

9 Likes

if you do world quests you will almost never use GS now. before it felt great now it feels bad

6 Likes

Signal boost signal boost signal boost

5 Likes

Blizz out here supporting illiteracy and lowest common denominatorism with this change…bad plays. #Revert

8 Likes