Ice Cold: Rank 1/1
“Ice block now reduces all damage taken by 70% for 6 seconds but no longer grants immunity, prevents movement, attacks, or casting spells. Does not incur the Global Cooldown.”
If that’s case, how am I not able to use shifting power after I pop Ice Cold? Actually after some additional testing, I am unable to really cast anything - is this intended?
Frost mages already have basically 0 reactive (oh sh*t) CD’s to stay alive, all proactive.
Says right in the description that I can cast spells. So what’s the reasoning I am unable to cast shifting power on the move after I pop Ice Cold?
For those that say “just use ice flows”, I don’t spec into Ice Flows as it’s just something else I need to keep an eye in the already bloated skill tree.
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Ice Block makes you unable to do anything and Ice Cold trades the immunity for a high potency defensive cooldown that let’s you act while it lasts. Nowhere does it say you are able to cast on the move so I really don’t know where you got that idea from. It says it no longer prevents you from casting spells, it doesn’t say casting while moving.
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I can see why you thought that because the tooltip is worded poorly in typical Blizzard fashion. But when it says that it “no longer prevents casting spells” it means that literally because with Ice Block you were stuck in a block of ice and couldn’t do anything for the duration, including casting spells, but now with Ice Cold you can.
By itself it’s a mediocre talent at best especially given the trade offs like giving up your only immunity and having to pick a ton of otherwise completely useless talents just to get to it. But when combined with the other talent that heals you for 80% of your health it becomes good because you can now DPS while you’re healing instead of being taken out of the fight for the duration. It’s especially good if you’re playing Frost and can reset the cooldown with Cold Snap.
But at the end of the day all capstone talents in the class tree feel lackluster, and that’s true across the board not just for mages. Imo, they could all use a boost or a redesign. Adding a casting on the move component to Ice Cold would be one possibility.
Others have already pointed this out, so I’m sure you’re aware by now, however:
Ice Block reads (emphasis mine):
Encases you in a block of ice, protecting you from all attacks and damage for 10 sec, but during that time you cannot attack, move, or cast spells.
Causes Hypothermia, preventing you from recasting Ice Block for 30 sec.
Ice Cold - talent (emphasis mine) reads:
Ice Block now reduces all damage taken by 70% for 6 sec but no longer grants Immunity, prevents movement, attacks, or casting spells. Does not incur the Global Cooldown.
Ice Cold - spell reads:
Your blood runs cold, reducing all damage you take by 70% for 6 sec.
Causes Hypothermia, preventing you from recasting Ice Cold for 30 sec.
All that extra text in Ice Cold serves to do is undo what ice block does. In all honesty, the talent should read “Replaces Ice Block with Ice Cold” with the description of the actual Ice Cold spell tacked on below.
Regarding your complaint about proactive vs. reactive spells, this talent is actually a really good reactive spell if you take Cyro-Freeze. If you take a big hit that you weren’t expecting, you can pop this to get a significant amount of healing over 6 seconds and the damage reduction means you’ll be less likely to die to something else in that time frame.
The main downside is that the cooldown is still just a bit too long and the garbage tier talents you need to pick up in order to take it make it a questionable choice sometimes.
The lack of a connection from Time Manipulation to Ice Cold is sooo frustrating lol. Those forced talents do absolutely zero in PvE as Fire - why can’t I just take 4 seconds off blink and Displacement which would at least get some minor use…
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It’s ridiculous! Everything has to come with a downside for mages! We can never just have a straight up gain when it comes to talents.
You want 2 charges for your main movement ability (that has been busted since the game launched)? Okay, but you have to give up the cc break and it’s gonna have a longer cooldown!
You want your shields to be ever so slightly better? Okay, but you have to pick up 50 talents all up and down the tree with no logical connection between them!
You want to not be frozen in place during Ice Block? Okay, but you will have to give up your immunity and pick up another 20 pointless talents just to get to it!
I mean come on, ffs! 
P.S. And the spec trees are no different. I am looking at you 4 talent points to buff AE and AM damage and half a dozen ABarr talents that were previously all baked into the baseline spell!
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Lol same with Firefall for Fire. Want this great ST ability? Gotta take Living Bomb AND the talent that buffs it, and then never cast Living Bomb in any scenario whatsoever. Sometimes I’ll just take Hyperthermia instead even though it’s a loss because the idea of taking two 100% useless talents just bothers me deeply…
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Yeah, I’m on record as overall being happy with the Fire rework but this one doesn’t make sense to me either. They should either give us a reason to cast Living Bomb or they should shuffle the tree a little to make Firefall accessible without it.
Same re: the rework but Living Bomb just has to go lol. Suffers from the same problem of Ignite - it just has too much potential to spiral out of control. At this point just kill the spread of LB aspect and make it explode once on expiration/death; no one’s gonna complain about hitting the button we talented into once in a while. (Though I will say half the appeal of Fire is not having that many buttons, but smashing them twice as fast as any other spec…)