Kuni's Frost Mage PVE Guide - 8.1.0

[Deleted]

That's fine and dandy, but it completely killed the fun of the spec. Spamming Frostbolts and praying for procs is not enjoyable, engaging, or rewarding gameplay. It makes your dps feel separate from your skill, after all: what separates a good Frost player from a mediocre one in 7.1.5? One got luckier with his dice rolls.

They could have simply removed passive FoF generation during IV, reduced the time extension per lance, or similar, instead they chose to remove control in place of the RNG they're in love with this expansion.

Is there any idea what would be the ideal build moving forward? It just feels like overall, Frost got nerfed in single target, and with absolutely no changes to our dreadful AoE, seems like Frost is just not as good (and more importantly for me, less fun). I guess they want us to play Arcane?

Frost is just as reliant on RNG now, extension of IV after you have used your cooldowns is totally reliant on procs to bridge the gap for those cooldowns to come back up to continue, as long as you are using your cooldowns in the correct order to maximise uptime, pumping out at many frostbolts as you can to facilitate this and keeping up Chain Reaction if those procs don't happen your IV drops and your damage tanks. It is clear that this playstyle was not what they intended.

Removal of FoF during IV hurts the spec in all other areas of the game, dungeons, questing, PvP etc so why should that suffer? Sure they could reduce the extension time, but this is a scaling issue and as we collect more gear we will end right back where we are now, so i'd rather not end up with frosts version of critical mass thanks.

Don't get me wrong, i dont like the change either, but it is necessary as we were never ment to be achieving the uptimes on IV that we currently are which results in a spec that plays amazing on the meters when played well, but totally tanks if you don't get the procs to bridge the above described gaps. The changes are made so that you should never expect to get anywhere near the uptime we currently have, if you get a few lucky procs for a few seconds more then thats fine, so stop thinking the aim of the spec is what is currently on live, you wont be praying for procs as there is no brdige to gap!!! Less uptime on IV means damage can be redistributed elsewhere. Ice Lance being the first thing buffed, tho numbers are still in flux.

Conversely the FoF maybe more RNG but CR has also been reduced to 10% per stack so reducing RNG swings in damage from losing CR due to FB not critting which will go a long way to evening out damage with the IL buff.

AoE is still an issue, i still wish they would make Comet Storm baseline and RoF a 100 Talent as between ray, spike and TV you have 3 distinctive playstyles, which is exactly what a 100 row should provide.

As they have said, just be patient there is still a long way to go before the final iteration of 7.1.5, we are not dead a buried yet.

[Kuni Zyrekai]

That's fine and dandy, but it completely killed the fun of the spec. Spamming Frostbolts and praying for procs is not enjoyable, engaging, or rewarding gameplay. It makes your dps feel separate from your skill, after all: what separates a good Frost player from a mediocre one in 7.1.5? One got luckier with his dice rolls.

And spamming Frostbolts hoping for procs to keep your IV going, hoping you don't have a lag spike, hoping there's no phase transition at a terrible time (looking at you Odyn), and being unable to take cleave talents is fun/engaging/rewarding? Having the entirety of your viability dumped into something that's beyond your control isn't exactly a great design. Dump your IV uptime and you're just done on that pull, might as well go stand in fire and get a drink. RNG dicked you? Fight isn't suitable for it? Doing M+?

The build feels great on a target dummy.

They could have simply removed passive FoF generation during IV, reduced the time extension per lance, or similar, instead they chose to remove control in place of the RNG they're in love with this expansion.

Ah yes, the 44 second IV, definitely on the same level as the current 70% uptime version. So much skill in hitting 4 FoF cooldowns inside of IV, two of them twice; I can tell the good mages from the bad already! Literally what you're telling me is you don't like procs, while praising the most proc-reliant spec in the game. The build's already overly reliant on RNG in terms of actually getting procs off of Frostbolt.

Is there any idea what would be the ideal build moving forward? It just feels like overall, Frost got nerfed in single target, and with absolutely no changes to our dreadful AoE, seems like Frost is just not as good (and more importantly for me, less fun). I guess they want us to play Arcane?

Depends on what else happens. Don't think the sim's updated yet, so best anyone's got is toying with dummies. I was still getting best results with TV, since I can STILL force ~45% uptime on it.

Changes will come, give it time. Mechanics first, then numbers.

[aznxk3vi17]

Ah yes, the 44 second IV, definitely on the same level as the current 70% uptime version. So much skill in hitting 4 FoF cooldowns inside of IV, two of them twice; I can tell the good mages from the bad already! Literally what you're telling me is you don't like procs, while praising the most proc-reliant spec in the game. The build's already overly reliant on RNG in terms of actually getting procs off of Frostbolt.

Depends on what else happens. Don't think the sim's updated yet, so best anyone's got is toying with dummies. I was still getting best results with TV, since I can STILL force ~45% uptime on it.

Changes will come, give it time. Mechanics first, then numbers.

Well, yeah, I don't like procs. The live version is definitely reliant on it, but the PTR is ENTIRELY reliant on it. I never anywhere said that the live version is the epitome of design. Why are you being so hostile?

[Deleted]

Well, yeah, I don't like procs. The live version is definitely reliant on it, but the PTR is ENTIRELY reliant on it. I never anywhere said that the live version is the epitome of design. Why are you being so hostile?

Probably because you are contradicting yourself and making atypical knee jerk reaction comments like "the PTR is ENTIRELY reliant on it" when we are in the first build. Who know's what else they are going to add in future iterations.

The build is bad for frost, really bad, it needs changing if we are going to have any hope in variety of choice between fights.

Examples of why:

Mythic Nythendra, i would love to be able to take Ice Nova for breaking ppl out of mind control
Mythic Ursoc, splitting ice you say? yeah that would be awesome for clones.......
Mythic Evil Tree, see above, better make the most out of AG because Comet storm aint gonna happen.
Mythic Spider what ice nova would be sick for nuked spider adds? FFS

The list goes on, non above are accessible as your IV uptime just plummets along with your light blue bar on the meters and thats of course still relying on frostbolt critting for CR proccing FoF during very heavy movement fights, its a mess.

There is a very good reason a lot of mages are playing around with a mastery orientated GS spec, it gives them other options of doing damage other than mindlessly tunneling the boss and spamming frostbolt and ice lance as hard and as fast as you can.

Just to add, i am actually getting more out of running RoF and RoP than BC/IF even tho the later sims higher, reasons being i can front load so much of my damage into Ray during RoP the early drop of IV doesn't have as much impact because you simply cannot maintain IV anywhere near what you would want on mythic content.

[Kuni Zyrekai]

Why are you being so hostile?

Probably because you are contradicting yourself

And also that I've been warning Blizz against TV for over 2 years, we finally get somewhere where a non-TV spec might actually not be the optimal (Legion)/practical (WoD) choice, and people have popped out of the woodwork in support of it. Would people support it if it wasn't top? Should a talent bring a 16% (after FV drops it to 2 minutes, a crazy high reduction) uptime cooldown to 70%+?

It's mildly frustrating that the only arguments I can get out of people are "procs are too random (read: sparse)" and "I like having IV up a lot". This is the most, by far, the spec's ever had in terms of non-tier-bonus FoF/BF generation. And the second: good! We have a cooldown that feels good to have up, great; we shouldn't be balanced around an obscene uptime and make it the norm. It's unworkable for literally everything other than single target raid encounters with no downtime. You either balance around a really low IV uptime and make the high end gods, which you can't due to good players dumpstering everyone else; or you balance around the high end, and let Frost become unusable by the vast majority and relegated to single target raid encounters only. It's unhealthy for the spec, doubly so now that M+ is a thing and TV is entirely unworkable there, both by virtue of not having a consistent target to hit and you need actual AOE to perform.

Now, that said, the AOE in the spec is pitiful and needs help. I'm hoping to see some buffs that direction this patch. Also hoping to see some ST buffs to make up for what's being lost. But I also acknowledge that this is the first build of PTR, and clearing out what is quite honestly degenerate gameplay took priority for the first build.

[aznxk3vi17]

And also that I've been warning Blizz against TV for over 2 years, we finally get somewhere where a non-TV spec might actually not be the optimal (Legion)/practical (WoD) choice, and people have popped out of the woodwork in support of it. Would people support it if it wasn't top? Should a talent bring a 16% (after FV drops it to 2 minutes, a crazy high reduction) uptime cooldown to 70%+?

It's mildly frustrating that the only arguments I can get out of people are "procs are too random (read: sparse)" and "I like having IV up a lot". This is the most, by far, the spec's ever had in terms of non-tier-bonus FoF/BF generation. And the second: good! We have a cooldown that feels good to have up, great; we shouldn't be balanced around an obscene uptime and make it the norm. It's unworkable for literally everything other than single target raid encounters with no downtime. You either balance around a really low IV uptime and make the high end gods, which you can't due to good players dumpstering everyone else; or you balance around the high end, and let Frost become unusable by the vast majority and relegated to single target raid encounters only. It's unhealthy for the spec, doubly so now that M+ is a thing and TV is entirely unworkable there, both by virtue of not having a consistent target to hit and you need actual AOE to perform.

Now, that said, the AOE in the spec is pitiful and needs help. I'm hoping to see some buffs that direction this patch. Also hoping to see some ST buffs to make up for what's being lost. But I also acknowledge that this is the first build of PTR, and clearing out what is quite honestly degenerate gameplay took priority for the first build.

No reason to be hostile, you could have simply stated the facts and not take out your frustration on randoms on the Internet. You'll have to excuse me for not having faith in Blizzard for making changes after builds go up on the PTR; with the way things are, while degenerate gameplay is gone, we aren't getting enough back to make up for it, which will once again put Frost back into obscurity. Things may change, but I'm not holding my breath.

[Deleted]

Wish Ice lance cleave would be baseline. Feels so bad to pick splitting ice atm and tanking ur IV uptime

[FrostyButt]

Can people stop bitching about IV up time?

You don't need massive IV up time to be competitive in the first place.

Does it give you more DPS having high up time? Hell yeah it does.. But chill out. I have been parsing anywhere from 90% to 100% of Frost Mages on Warcraft logs with average around 45% up time on IV per fight. It's not THAT big of a deal.

With that said. I do wish like the person above said that Splitting Ice was just baseline.

[Deleted]

Can people stop bitching about IV up time?

You don't need massive IV up time to be competitive in the first place.

Does it give you more DPS having high up time? Hell yeah it does.. But chill out. I have been parsing anywhere from 90% to 100% of Frost Mages on Warcraft logs with average around 45% up time on IV per fight. It's not THAT big of a deal.

With that said. I do wish like the person above said that Splitting Ice was just baseline.

Its fun mechanic trying to maximize its uptime imo. Also I dont believe u got 90-100% percentile with that uptime post logs or gtfo with ur bullshit

[LordAmbrosia]

And also that I've been warning Blizz against TV for over 2 years

Do you have a direct line of communication with Blizz?

I think going for IV uptimes is really fun, I don't see why they would want to stop it. Feels like stomping on fun for no good reason. Besides the glacial spike build is actually competitive anyway, so people can just play that if they don't want to game TV. Win - win. Comet storm needs to be baseline though, and damage lowered to be only worth on 3 target, with lower cooldown. I feel like that's the really obvious solution, I also like the idea of moving Ray of Frost to 100 talent level too and buffing it.

[Kuni Zyrekai]

I think going for IV uptimes is really fun, I don't see why they would want to stop it.

While I agree it can be fun, you surely have to see the faults in it from a design aspect?

And yes, the GS build. The thing that doesn't cast Ice Lance or Ebonbolt, and uses Water Jet on autocast for the raw damage rather than the procs. I need the sim updated to see if the Lance buff and Frostbolt/Ice Nine nerfs were enough to address that, but at least that's a numbers tuning issue more than anything else.

[LordAmbrosia]

While I agree it can be fun, you surely have to see the faults in it from a design aspect?

And yes, the GS build. The thing that doesn't cast Ice Lance or Ebonbolt, and uses Water Jet on autocast for the raw damage rather than the procs. I need the sim updated to see if the Lance buff and Frostbolt/Ice Nine nerfs were enough to address that, but at least that's a numbers tuning issue more than anything else.

I don't think its flawed design wise. I like to see specs have mini-quest like goals that set them apart from others, kind of like old fire trying to get a huge combustion. WoW lacks a lot of that. Maybe Icey Veins could be nerfed a bit haste wise.

At the very least, those changes will make the GS build cast Ice Lance when it has high CR stacks. The build isn't thaaatttt bad if you are lancing.

[Deleted]

Instead of making CmS baseline as many people suggest, couldn't they just lower the CD, so it can be a viable pick instead of TV? 15 sec cd on CmS would be great.

[Deleted]

I don't think its flawed design wise. I like to see specs have mini-quest like goals that set them apart from others, kind of like old fire trying to get a huge combustion. WoW lacks a lot of that. Maybe Icey Veins could be nerfed a bit haste wise.

At the very least, those changes will make the GS build cast Ice Lance when it has high CR stacks. The build isn't thaaatttt bad if you are lancing.

We are only coming out of the first tier of content out of supposedly four and people are already achieving 70% uptime on IV and you don't see this as a flaw? It's Fire crit scaling all over again. Not to mention if you cannot stand and tunnel the boss to maintain that uptime and CR uptime your damage just totally tanks, which is unavoidable in mythic content bar one or two fights AND we have zero choice in picking other talents that would be of benifit also in mythic content.

The spec is more cookie cutter than the old talent trees, i've simmed every other spec possible from patcwerk to helter skelter and this build is always min of 30k above all the others (apart from RoF/TV Patchwerk is 6k difference, so i use that as you can front load the damage into RoF meaning dropping IV because of mechanics less punishing) sometimes 50k in my gear so you cannot pick anything else for progression without totally gimping your damage, its hugely flawed.

On GS build i like the idea of lance's becoming a dps gain at 3 stacks of CR as with the changes to Ebonbolt we won't be swimming in FoF anyways so it gives the spec an extra dimension of something to watch and not ignore core abilities, which it currenlty does.

Fingers crossed on Comet Storm baseline and RoF becoming a 100 talent, i see so many players echoing this suggestion, hopefully they will take note as makes totaly sense for aoe and differential playstyles.

EDIT: Also it would be nice if Comet Storm was made baseline that it applied the winters chill debuff for 4s say(clearly damage adjusted like you mentioned to +3 targets) that way it can boost blizzard damage without it creeping into the ST rotation outside of AG and give some free ice lances(even better if Splitting ice was baseline) which could be a good way to boost our woeful AoE.

[Swizzle]

What Blizzard needs to do is just remove UM as a talent and make it a class unlock for hitting level cap. Make it class fantasy that we are so brimming with power from our artifacts or w/e that our spells inherently have a chance at exploding. It would help a bit on AoE and free up an option for talents in that tier.

I also wish they would make Splitting Ice work like Holy Prism in that it shatters off of the main target to hit everything around it for a percentage of the damage.

[Bombkirby]

I don't think its flawed design wise. I like to see specs have mini-quest like goals that set them apart from others, kind of like old fire trying to get a huge combustion. WoW lacks a lot of that. Maybe Icey Veins could be nerfed a bit haste wise.

At the very least, those changes will make the GS build cast Ice Lance when it has high CR stacks. The build isn't thaaatttt bad if you are lancing.

You aren't really getting what people mean by "design". Designing a spec to solely be good around a lengthy cooldown is not healthy. If that IV buff drops off from you due to reasons beyond your control then you're now hitting like wet noodle. To balance that would require butchering the spec so that the difference with and without Icy Veins is so minimal that it wouldn't even be fun anymore. Have some foresight. Think about if something is healthy rather than if it's fun. Leaving it as is means bad things in the future

If you want reliability then just play the Glacial Spike spec I suppose. In theory it should be a viable alternative if the numbers are balanced correctly. But we are not at that stage of test realm yet.

Also something that no one has been mentioning is that currently the Ice Lance spec has very little "frostbolt" casting. This makes potential tier bonuses, artifact traits, and talents like Unstable Magic not very good choices. Making sure each spec has a basic spell they all routinely cast constantly is important for making tier set bonuses/talents and etc easier to design/balance. It's a lot easier on Blizzard if they can just make a tier set bonus that simply says "your fireball, arcane blast, and frostbolt increase your Intellect by X amount"! instead of a bunch of niche spells that each spec uses.

[Deleted]

What Blizzard needs to do is just remove UM as a talent and make it a class unlock for hitting level cap. Make it class fantasy that we are so brimming with power from our artifacts or w/e that our spells inherently have a chance at exploding. It would help a bit on AoE and free up an option for talents in that tier.

I also wish they would make Splitting Ice work like Holy Prism in that it shatters off of the main target to hit everything around it for a percentage of the damage.

As long as for pvp this perk was removed and the damage adjusted accordingly, as it would be horrible for breaking cc in arena.

I like the Splitting ice idea, i like that alot!!!

Also something that no one has been mentioning is that currently the Ice Lance spec has very little "frostbolt" casting. This makes potential tier bonuses, artifact traits, and talents like Unstable Magic not very good choices. Making sure each spec has a basic spell they all routinely cast constantly is important for making tier set bonuses/talents and etc easier to design/balance. It's a lot easier on Blizzard if they can just make a tier set bonus that simply says "your fireball, arcane blast, and frostbolt increase your Intellect by X amount"! instead of a bunch of niche spells that each spec uses.

Ummmmmm, 6 min parse

Ice Lance=147 Execute 128.8s Time spent casting IL

Frost Bolt=192 Execute, 222.s Time spent casting FB

I'm not sure where you are getting that FB is not cast enough? Its just as and more important to cast than ice lance once IV drops, since it procs 2 things (FoF,CR) as well as mastery, adding a set bonuses too it makes it even more important lol.

[Ham on Rye]

I also wish they would make Splitting Ice work like Holy Prism in that it shatters off of the main target to hit everything around it for a percentage of the damage.

Too similar to what Frost Bomb does. They might as well remove Frost Bomb, make Splitting Ice baseline, and add a passive talent that adds a Frost-Bomb like explosion to Ice Lance without the need to waste a GCD on Frost Bomb every few seconds.

Just thinking out loud.

I think we all agree that Frost's AoE is completely unacceptable, especially even fully talented it pales in comparison to what other classes and specs get baseline.

[Swizzle]

Too similar to what Frost Bomb does. They might as well remove Frost Bomb, make Splitting Ice baseline, and add a passive talent that adds a Frost-Bomb like explosion to Ice Lance without the need to waste a GCD on Frost Bomb every few seconds.

Just thinking out loud.

I think we all agree that Frost's AoE is completely unacceptable, especially even fully talented it pales in comparison to what other classes and specs get baseline.

Frost Bomb originally was amazing when it was introduced, then it's slowly been gutted over time. Maybe give it a graphic like the Arcane Bombs from EoE, Frost flavored of course, and have it do increased damage as it descends to more and more targets until it explodes, debuffing all targets with some sort of debuff that treats them as if they were frozen (without rooting or snaring them, but being dispellable). Primary targets take X% increased damage.

I don't like the current iteration of Splitting Ice being baseline, but if it needs to be done to give us actual AoE options then I'm all for it.

[LordAmbrosia]

You aren't really getting what people mean by "design". Designing a spec to solely be good around a lengthy cooldown is not healthy

I get it completely. Like people said, we are already at 70% uptimes, 100% uptime isn't really that much more extreme. If you get stunned during evocation for any reason, then Arcane falls off a cliffs. Designed around a lengthy cooldown? you mean like Combustion, where 10 seconds does as much damage as a minute outside of it?

If that IV buff drops off from you due to reasons beyond your control then you're now hitting like wet noodle

Or what if, the buff drops and you fucking DIE. Oh wait, shadow has that. And its the coolest fucking spell in the game. Do you think every class in the game hits like a "wet noodle" when Lust falls off? Lol