[FROST] Legion Beta Megathread

[Komman]

There isn't any exponential scaling here, because you're capped at 10 stacks. It is indeed stronger than regular linear scaling, but at best you cast a majority of the ticks at cap. To illustrate with an example:

0% spell haste: 10 ticks, 1 tick casted at each stack:
1, 1.2, 1.4, 1.6, 1.8, 2.0, 2.2, 2.4, 2.6, 2.8
Total: 1900% spellpower

100% spell haste: 20 ticks, but the second half are all at cap:
1, 1.2, 1.4, 1.6, 1.8, 2.0, 2.2, 2.4, 2.6, 2.8, 3.0, 3.0, 3.0, 3.0, 3.0, 3.0, 3.0, 3.0, 3.0, 3.0
Total: 4900% spellpower
Gain over 0% haste: 158%

200% spell haste: 30 ticks, last 20 at cap:
1, 1.2, 1.4, 1.6, 1.8, 2.0, 2.2, 2.4, 2.6, 2.8, 3.0, 3.0, 3.0, 3.0, 3.0, 3.0, 3.0, 3.0, 3.0, 3.0, 3.0, 3.0, 3.0, 3.0, 3.0, 3.0, 3.0, 3.0, 3.0, 3.0
Total: 7900% spellpower
Gain over 0% haste: 316%

"Infinite" spell haste: "infinite" ticks, basically all at cap. You can treat Ray of Frost as having a baseline 3x modifier, instead of the average 1.9x modifer with 0 haste.

As you can see, the multiplier is still linear, just with a slightly bigger coefficient.

[Keltas]

The tooltip isn't showing that for me, it's showing it ticking 10 times a second at 100% haste, or 100 ticks and not 20 ticks.


I'll report it, but that is how it's showing up and working in game for me.

[Komman]

Pretty sure 100% character haste should be causing your spells to be casting/ticking for twice as fast, not 10 times as fast. If it's 10 times as fast in game, that's a bug.

Wouldn't be surprised if it's just a tooltip error though. IIRC Fingers of Frost still has a tooltip that divides the damage bonus multiplier by half when you use one of two stacks.

[Kuni Zyrekai]

??? Seems fine to me.

[Deleted]

It's really funny to see more empty spaces on my bars but having more to do because of all those rotational spells.
Using Ray of Frost, Frostbomb and Glacial Spike as talents is quite entertaining. I tried to use Ice Nova as well, but I think that could be some kind of CD overload xD
I hope all three speccs will be around the same so I could play Frost without having to explain myself to every second player why I am playing Frost...
I didn't even recognize the higher casttime of Frostbolt, because I was watching what's next to come. :>

[Keltas]

??? Seems fine to me.

Yeah I reported it, then went and made a new mage to see if I could replicate it. I can't.

So I have no idea wtf was doing that.

[Deleted]

Probably network inconsistencies. It's still a good bug report. It probably exposes an important bug.

[Tirilka]

So, I got my hands on a beta, and now I can fulfill my destiny - share new spell effects in a handy format
click on images for much better quality

Chilled to the core





Ebonbolt




Black Ice

[Deleted]

Black Ice

Black ice, sometimes called clear ice, refers to a thin coating of glaze ice on a surface, especially on roads. The ice itself is not black, but virtually transparent, allowing the often black road below to be seen through it.

i.e. that spell should not be seen

[Synadrasa]

Does Ice Nova no longer replace Frost Nova in Legion? For instance can I pick Ice Nova and Ice Ward and have 4 ways of freezing people?

[Kuni Zyrekai]

Does Ice Nova no longer replace Frost Nova in Legion? For instance can I pick Ice Nova and Ice Ward and have 4 ways of freezing people?

Correct. None of the nova talents replace Frost Nova anymore, in exchange they only have 1 charge.

[Deleted]

in exchange

Why do you think it's in exchange? I don't disagree necessarily. But it might be about DPS and not CC.

[Jks]

I played the last two days frost in beta and what the fuck, did they change the procc rate for fingers of frost? the specc feels soooooooooooooo slow. on live, you have always something to press, here an icelance, here a frostfirebolt but on beta REALLY slow. even the orb gives sometimes only one frostfinger procc, even if you put it on 20 enemies. I have the feeling that the fast gameplay is now at fire, which i liked.

[Deleted]

the specc feels soooooooooooooo slow.

Assuming that is correct - it's a subjective argument - it might be because the class is designed for the entirety of Legion at 7.x, not only the start of Legion. Classes tend to feel pretty weak at the very start of expansions. It's after the first Tier is well underway that they start getting a feel of higher power and faster gameplay.

[Dizzeeyooo]

the specc feels soooooooooooooo slow

I'm really struggling to like frost on beta.............It's just not fun to play anymore. Really loved it in MoP, WoD it changed a little but was also fairly good. Now Frostfire bolt is gone, table is gone, arcane intellect is gone, deep freeze is gone, ice nova is crap, frost bomb was far better in MoP...I really hope fire is viable as that doesn't look as bad as frost does in it's current state. I really don't want to be playing arcane come legion.

It just has a completely different feel to me, not sure what they're doing..

#ClassFantasy #Legionhype

[Tirilka]

I'm really struggling to like frost on beta.............It's just not fun to play anymore. Really loved it in MoP, WoD it changed a little but was also fairly good. Now Frostfire bolt is gone, table is gone, arcane intellect is gone, deep freeze is gone, ice nova is crap, frost bomb was far better in MoP...I really hope fire is viable as that doesn't look as bad as frost does in it's current state. I really don't want to be playing arcane come legion.

It just has a completely different feel to me, not sure what they're doing..

Deep Freeze was gone for all intents and purposes since the start of WoD, so I dunno how that relates to Legion beta. Frost Bomb - same, it was changed in WoD (and yeah, I much prefer the MoP version too). How is Ice Nova crap? It's practically the same, only 1 charge but doesn't replace Frost Nova.
On the other hand Glacial Spike is awesome and opens up an almost combo points type of gameplay, and Ray of Frost is interesting and fun to play with/around. Not even counting all the artifact traits.

[Seneca]

My 2c.

Deep Freeze was gone for all intents and purposes since the start of WoD, so I dunno how that relates to Legion beta.

Deep Freeze was based on a interesting concept, but its inception in the game was unhealthy. The best solution would have been to make it healthy but guess what? Blizzard straight out removed it. What a gameplay loss.

Frost Bomb - same, it was changed in WoD (and yeah, I much prefer the MoP version too).

I prefer the MoP version too, not necessarily the in-game inception, but the general design behind it (same as Deep Freeze, basically). Live version first of all doesn't feel very frosty-based (MoP version made so we had to try to make it explode when our freezes were up, alteast) and, secondarily, the mechanic feels too artificial, for lack of a better word.

How is Ice Nova crap? It's practically the same, only 1 charge but doesn't replace Frost Nova.

Probably he/she didn't mean that WoD one is great and Legion one is bad, just that both are crap.

Personally, I think that it is/was crap because it is a boring talent. It has 0 interaction with any other thing in the mage arsenal, being it baseline spells, talents or anything else (which is the same issue 99% of the mage talents have, imho).

On the other hand Glacial Spike is awesome and opens up an almost combo points type of gameplay, and Ray of Frost is interesting and fun to play with/around.

But this brings some issues.

First of all, they are talents, they are not baseline spells. What does this mean? This means that we are "forced" to "always" pick them if they are "that good/interesting/ecc".

For example sometimes Comet Storm might be objectively way better than Glacial Spike, so, even if we like GS gameplay, we have to choose between a huge loss in fun or a huge loss in performance, now (Legion) more than ever considering that in the same row there are, for example, single target talents and AoE talents (goodbye (illusion for someone?) of choice).

(tl;dr: specs should feel fun/interesting without talents. Talents should improve that fun/interesting concept, not introduce that fun/interesting aspect which otherwise is no-existent.)

To make my point clearer, think if we had Frostbolt as the only baseline frost rotational spell and all the rest of the stuff as talents. We could still work, performance wise, but that would be so bad (and we are basically right there, just in a less pronunced and more subtle way).

I wish that all the interesting stuff was baseline, so, in the worst case (picking the less interesting talents for whatever reasons), would not mean having a shallow gameplay.

One could argue "but then you would force (for example) GS gameplay upon everyone". Yeah, but right now the 5x Icicle > IL gameplay is already forced upon us, so it would just mean force another kind of gameplay (hopefully more interesting) upon us.

Another thing about GS and RoF (for example) is that, no matter how good they are, it doesn't necessarily mean that some (all) issues of the specs are instantly resolved.

Some beta testers said that baseline frost feels very slow placed. How does picking GS and RoF remove that issue (if it is not worsened to begin with)?



tl;dr a few, wishfully thinking, extremely fun and interesting talents are not the ultimate cure to all the issues our baseline specs have, let alone the fact that it would not be perfect to have horrible baseline rotations and good talented rotations in the best conditions (by picking the right set of talents), let alone the fact that maybe there are not even good enough talents, to make such claims.

[Dizzeeyooo]

Some beta testers said that baseline frost feels very slow placed. How does picking GS and RoF remove that issue (if it is not worsened to begin with)?

the 3 second cast time on GS makes the spec feel even slower tbh, once the initial 10 mins of amusement at how exaggerated the animation of the spell is wears off

[Komman]

This might sound counterintuitive, but longer casts actually benefit Frost. With the attunement switching back to Haste and Frost Armor also returning as a Haste buff, Frost desperately needs longer casts so as to scale properly with haste beyond the 50% GCD cap. Spells like Ray of Frost are going in the right direction, when it comes to both scaling and making it so that increased haste feels powerful. Unfortunately, this also means much lower PVP viability. I'm not sure how they're going to deal with that.

[Dizzeeyooo]

This might sound counterintuitive, but longer casts actually benefit Frost. With the attunement switching back to Haste and Frost Armor also returning as a Haste buff, Frost desperately needs longer casts so as to scale properly with haste beyond the 50% GCD cap. Spells like Ray of Frost are going in the right direction, when it comes to both scaling and making it so that increased haste feels powerful

they benefit the scaling of the spec, but significantly hurt the feeling of actually playing the spec - from my perspective anyway

but then I'm just hung up on how enjoyable mop frost was in pve, and how fun frost mage pvp was in tbc/wotlk with haste stacking, as opposed to legion where I manage to log on and play for 10-15 mins before exiting the game in disgust at what they have done to my class

Unfortunately, this also means much lower PVP viability. I'm not sure how they're going to deal with that.

don't honestly think they have any intention of dealing with it - as long as one mage spec functions in pvp (and fire probably will because lol instant casts) why would they need to