Kuni's Frost Mage PVE Guide

[Deleted]

Hey Nath, do you think they are done with frost and the changes?

[Kuni Zyrekai]

I'm not Nath, but I'd say mechanics changes are likely done. Nothing big has really been sprung on anyone last patch. I'd guess number balancing will start showing up sometime this week, which is where the fun and tears begin.

[Deleted]

Yes your are not Nath, but your opinions are always a welcome guest If that is the case, we have to work with what we have and can just hope they will adjust the spec right. Recent PPM changes are an immeasurable factor for me atm, but I think they have to tweak the numbers from our T16 2 and 4p (4p overall damage varies between 0.5% - 2.2%) and maybe buff the mastery to 2% (up from 1.75%).

[Mastamage]

Recent PPM changes are an immeasurable factor for me atm, but I think they have to tweak the numbers from our T16 2 and 4p (4p overall damage varies between 0.5% - 2.2%) and maybe buff the mastery to 2% (up from 1.75%).

Seems like its still a lackluster 4p proc with that low of damage. Overall damage is similar to Ele shaman T15 proc.

[Kuni Zyrekai]

RPPM changes are moot once we're a couple weeks in anyway. We'll all have shiny new trinkets with better effective RPPM rates than the current ones with their haste scaling; except for Akraen, who will forever be cursed with reg BotH.

I'm not so sure our set bonuses really need that much tweaking. They're supposed to be about 2% single target gain each. I'm fairly interested in the circumstances that lead to 0.5% on the 4p, though. Was it just because of multiple targets, or was it just legitimate shit-tier RNG?

If it's simply AOE, keep in mind that the other two specs don't really get much out of their bonuses in AOE/multidot either. We at least can utilize the 2p on glyphed CoC, for whatever that's worth. I haven't really had time to be in the raid tests. I'm hoping to get into at least a flex run whenever they go up so I can see how best to utilize mechanics.

I don't feel mastery can go to 2%, as much as I really want it to. Considering it was simply supposed to be an in-place replacement on the PVE side, and it worked out to a buff at 1.75%, they're being fairly generous as it stands. The value of mastery kinda skyrocketed, and it's given us a valid stat to stack that doesn't result in the awkwardness of sub-GCD frostbolts in addition to making crit not entirely crap beyond the cap. It's also given us a fair damage boost on sustained cleave fights, and potentially burst(ish) cleave.

We've currently traded up front, single target burst to get icicles. By trading that on the PVP side, where they couldn't increase anything because everything could be increased by mastery as opposed to ~35% of PVE damage, they've basically gotten rid of the issue where frost buffs are amplified in PVP. Yeah, we have some weird artifacts because of it, such as BF-FFB being weaker than frostbolt crits, but I'd wait until the numbers pass has started to really complain about any of that. It's fairly trivial to re-balance +25% damage on FFB when used with BF vs our other spells. It takes a bit to get a new mechanic up and running.

That said, I hope fire gets the shit kicked out of it in the next couple weeks.

[Deleted]

@kuni: And i'm not you ^o^

If they plan on releasing 5.4 for the end of the month, like Kuni say big change are finish.

The 2p's number may vary depending if it used for balancing or not (like sinister in 5.2). For the 4p, I think it will be boosted because Warforged off-set will be better.
On tweaking, we can maybe see some damage slip from FoF-IL to BF-FFB, or a buff to BF-FFB but nothing certain.
Buffing BF-FFB can only be done by adding a damage buff to BF. It will increase both mastery and haste value.

We have to wait to see what can be done with Fire because now, it's not possible to compare with it actually.

[Deleted]

The 2p's number may vary depending if it used for balancing or not (like sinister in 5.2). For the 4p, I think it will be boosted because Warforged off-set will be better.

http://ptr.wowdb.com/items/99730-sho...sed-vanquisher
As it seems tierpieces will also get Warforged.

[Sombrelune]

OMG. I think it is too much. Thanks God I raid in a 25 guild, but it is unfair for 10 guild.

[Akraen]

RPPM changes are moot once we're a couple weeks in anyway. We'll all have shiny new trinkets with better effective RPPM rates than the current ones with their haste scaling; except for Akraen, who will forever be cursed with reg BotH.

I'm not so sure our set bonuses really need that much tweaking. They're supposed to be about 2% single target gain each. I'm fairly interested in the circumstances that lead to 0.5% on the 4p, though. Was it just because of multiple targets, or was it just legitimate shit-tier RNG?

If it's simply AOE, keep in mind that the other two specs don't really get much out of their bonuses in AOE/multidot either. We at least can utilize the 2p on glyphed CoC, for whatever that's worth. I haven't really had time to be in the raid tests. I'm hoping to get into at least a flex run whenever they go up so I can see how best to utilize mechanics.

I don't feel mastery can go to 2%, as much as I really want it to. Considering it was simply supposed to be an in-place replacement on the PVE side, and it worked out to a buff at 1.75%, they're being fairly generous as it stands. The value of mastery kinda skyrocketed, and it's given us a valid stat to stack that doesn't result in the awkwardness of sub-GCD frostbolts in addition to making crit not entirely crap beyond the cap. It's also given us a fair damage boost on sustained cleave fights, and potentially burst(ish) cleave.

We've currently traded up front, single target burst to get icicles. By trading that on the PVP side, where they couldn't increase anything because everything could be increased by mastery as opposed to ~35% of PVE damage, they've basically gotten rid of the issue where frost buffs are amplified in PVP. Yeah, we have some weird artifacts because of it, such as BF-FFB being weaker than frostbolt crits, but I'd wait until the numbers pass has started to really complain about any of that. It's fairly trivial to re-balance +25% damage on FFB when used with BF vs our other spells. It takes a bit to get a new mechanic up and running.

That said, I hope fire gets the shit kicked out of it in the next couple weeks.

Sensible analysis as always. And yeah curse my trinket luck

I'm fine with frost, it's GC's tweets about fire that are getting me down. It's not that I want those who play fire to be miserable or anything, but to not acknowledge the gap is quite seriously the most suspicious and insane thing I've ever heard from the dev team. It's akin to saying Detroit has a sound fiscal strategy.

[huth]

http://ptr.wowdb.com/items/99730-sho...sed-vanquisher
As it seems tierpieces will also get Warforged.

A piece existing isn't equivalent to it dropping. There's plenty of items in the databases which cannot actually be aquired.

[Deleted]

@akraen: we can only find out when they will began balancing.

[IsrafaelMage]

I'm fine with frost, it's GC's tweets about fire that are getting me down. It's not that I want those who play fire to be miserable or anything, but to not acknowledge the gap is quite seriously the most suspicious and insane thing I've ever heard from the dev team. It's akin to saying Detroit has a sound fiscal strategy.

In my opinion, It actually spells bad for fire (and possibly arcane).. If they go out of control on first week of new patch, Hotfix 2.0 is definitely incoming.

[Kuni Zyrekai]

I'm fine with frost, it's GC's tweets about fire that are getting me down. It's not that I want those who play fire to be miserable or anything, but to not acknowledge the gap is quite seriously the most suspicious and insane thing I've ever heard from the dev team. It's akin to saying Detroit has a sound fiscal strategy.

Sure. The problem is we don't actually know if GC has any sort of head for math, or if he's purely systems development lead, and simply talking points that were handed to him by people lower down. We also have historically had quite a different definition of scaling than the dev team. We're usually worried about individual stats for a spec. Other players have used scaling as a banner for their own issues. The dev team seems to use it with regards to DPS changes between tiers. In this particular instance, he seems to take ours, and says that they intend to adjust fire without crushing critical mass, which would be a specific stat scaling nerf, as opposed to a flat damage decrease.

Even if he doesn't know what fire's doing personally, the people watching the raid testing do. That'll be passed along to the number crunchers. I don't think we'll end this PTR without fire, and possibly even arcane, being toned down. Likely done via outright damage changes rather than stat scaling changes, though.

Edit: Yes, I'm aware lowering spell power coefficients is stat scaling changes. You know damned well what I mean though.

[Deleted]

If they really do that, they have to buff frost. But why on earth should they buff the spec and not the scaling? Changing the rppm mechanics just nerfed the only stat that scaled pretty decent with frost. I´m pretty confused by all of their steps so far.

[Sombrelune]

Rppm system was the last thing that kept frost mage alive T_T

[voltaa]

I hope fire gets the shit kicked out of it in the next couple weeks.

Sensible analysis

I know it's out of context but that made me laugh

[Erolian]

Sensible analysis as always. And yeah curse my trinket luck

I'm fine with frost, it's GC's tweets about fire that are getting me down. It's not that I want those who play fire to be miserable or anything, but to not acknowledge the gap is quite seriously the most suspicious and insane thing I've ever heard from the dev team. It's akin to saying Detroit has a sound fiscal strategy.

I'm starting to seriously doubt at least one of these two things I'm about to list because of the bolded and other things that have been going on with fire, like the combustion buff and then crushing nerf a few days later in 5.1.

- The fact that they have proper tools to measure theoretical maximum DPS outputs

- That they actually have the intention of balancing numbers to anything that the people who complain about it would accept

Seeing as how intelligent many of them have to be to have created the game to begin with I always leaned towards the second option myself

On the topic of frost though I really want the buffs to come in huge so that the spec doesn't just roll over and die in all aspects of the game that I'll be participating in. It sucked that it began to lag behind in PvE but at least at the end of the day I could hop into a BG and enjoy myself without feeling as if I were holding people back or not contributing my maximum effort just by my choice of spec.

Btw check out my trinkets if you think your luck is bad ;p

[Deleted]

According to this guy http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/9573278620#5 frost looks with the current RPPM changes like this http://gyazo.com/3b4cfaf966fba73bb9949369f1f1ce4b

A) Is this guy and his SimC numbers really trustworthy?
B) If this is the case, it´s a huge nerf to frost (I expected one, but not this huge)
C) Never ever will Blizzard buff frost by ~60k dps to compensate nor by more to bring it in line with arcane and fire.

[Erolian]

I'm no expert with SimC by any means but I've found that comparing different specs side by side like that is an absolutely terrible thing to even attempt doing. I've also found SimC mage to reflect a very distorted reality compared to what really happens this expansion. So I'd take his numbers with a Dump Truck of salt.

[Deleted]

I just compared Frost with Frost (~60k difference). Currently on live frost is behind fire and arcane with highend gear and far away on PTR.