When I have one charge of Fingers of Frost and get a refresh from a single Frostbolt cast, oftentimes both of the new charges are consumed by the Frostbolt that applied it. It consumes one charge of a fresh stack of Fingers of Frost when I already have two charges as well. The problem only happens when I have both the Fingers of Frost talent and the Frostbite talent.
According to the tooltip, charges of Fingers of Frost shouldn’t be applied until a Chill effect is applied to the target, just like how Frostbite isn’t applied until a Chill effect is applied to the target. I confirmed that when mages have the Fingers of Frost talent but not the Frostbite talent that Fingers of Frost is only applied when a Chill effect is applied, not when a spell with a Chill effect is cast. With the Frostbite talent, spells with a Chill effect will instead apply Fingers of Frost when they are cast and not when they apply their Chill effect.
Basically, Fingers of Frost is behaving like Frostbite when Frostbite isn’t talented and behaving like Brain Freeze when Frostbite is talented. Fingers of Frost always behaving like Frostbite would both match the wording of the tooltip and fix both charges being consumed by a single Frostbolt.
This is accurate to 3.3.5.
What is happening is as follows:
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When you are talented into JUST Fingers of Frost and Shatter - you will only gain Fingers of Frost procs from Frostbolts: when the Frostbolt lands.
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When you are talented into Fingers of Frost, Shatter, AND Frostbite 3/3 - you will only gain Fingers of Frost procs from Frostbolts: when the Frostbolt leaves your fingers/the cast completes. (This also means that every time you get a Fingers of Frost proc when the frostbolt leaves your hands you KNOW it will be a Frostbite proc every time.)
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When you are talented into Fingers of Frost, Shatter, AND Frostbite 1/3 - you will get Fingers of Frost procs from Frostbolts: when the Frostbolt lands 10% of the time, and 5% of the time when the Frostbolt leaves your fingers (this will result in a Frosbite proc).
The reason for this is because Frostbite and Fingers of Frost seem to be rolling on the same numbers on the chill effect. E.g. Frostbite and FoF are both maxed and 15%. It doesn’t do 2 separate rolls. It rolls once and if it lands on 10 then it applies a FoF and FB.
If you don’t have FB maxed and have let’s say 1/3. It rolls once and if it lands on 10 then it applies FoF but not FB. And that FoF will only apply after the slow lands.
So TL;DR this is accurate to 3.3.5. Frostbolt is rolling one time for both FoF and FB. If you have both abilities maxed then every time your cast is completed and you get a FoF proc you KNOW that Frostbolt is going to have a Frostbite on the enemy. So the fact Frostbite is rolled right when Frostbolt completes and not when it lands is what is causing this, but this is reference accurate behavior so likely to not be adjusted.
A single Frostbolt cast consuming both charges of a fresh Fingers of Frost proc when one charge is already present should still be considered a bug though, even if the overall behavior of receiving procs on cast instead of on hit is accurate to 3.3.5.
I haven’t encountered or been able to recreate a frostbolt refreshing fingers of frost and consuming both stacks of it right away. Can you include some footage?
It only consumes two stacks right away when you already have one stack and the Frostbolt you’re casting procs a fresh stack. You can hear the sound effect of the proc, see the blue aura around your character, and see Frostbite proc on the target once Frostbolt hits, but there’s no more Fingers of Frost buff even though there should be one stack left.
It’s easily reproducible just by casting Frostbolts at a training dummy until you get a proc of Fingers of Frost then using one and casting Frostbolt again, though it often takes awhile to hit that 15% chance when you only have one stack; it also sometimes only consumes a single stack of the fresh buff as well, but over 80% of the time it removes the buff entirely for me. One time, with Floating Combat Text and Fading Auras enabled, it showed two “<Fingers of Frost> fades” simultaneously, but I wasn’t able to reproduce it.
I think it might be caused by the game seeing one stack of the buff and deciding that the entire buff needs to be removed instead of just one stack; it could also be because the game detects Frostbite as a cast before Frostbolt actually hits the target and spends a charge of Fingers of Frost on it for some reason. When I noticed it out in the wild, I knew the Frostbolt was going to kill the target so I didn’t cast Ice Lance to double up on the frozen damage, but it consumed the extra charge I was planning on saving for the next target anyway.
I don’t have any recording software, but I screencapped the buff fading along with the visual blue aura around my character showing that Fingers of Frost procced. I also screencapped what it looks like when I consume the last charge of Fingers of Frost without getting a fresh stack for comparison (there’s no blue aura).
Fingers of Frost proc: https ://i.imgur. com/ZhLjBPp.png
No Fingers of Frost proc: https ://i.imgur. com/DXfsgQf.png
-Ignore all this, I’m just wrong-
I actually checked for rooted and not rooted, and it was happening while not rooted as well. To confirm, I went and tested again and found out that the double “<Fingers of Frost> fades” happens when there is no Frostbite on the target. I even enabled aura gains for the second image and reproduced it again to show that there was no Frostbite on the target and it still consumes both Fingers of Frost stacks.
https ://i.imgur. com/LOnG45H.png
https ://i.imgur. com/6ZPrZff.png
Thanks for speaking with me on discord and getting this all straightened out. Appreciate it.