New Frost Mastery: Icicles!

[Johnkie]

PvP is the point. Incredible amounts of Mage QQ from 1700 players about how our burst is out of control so blizzard caves and nerfs the shit out of our damage and can't find a way to compensate in PvE. It's long past due for "spell does X damage (Y if used against players)"

Ye i cant believe they haven't done it yet, they did it with some abilites, the only one i can remember atm is Collosus smash, reduced effect vs players.
Its the only way they can balance it.
Its so bloody painful to be mage in 3s, this is just gonna make it worse.

[Libretto]

I think I could get away with mastery stacked frost on a couple progression bosses, so at least I don't have to regem all my arcane-centric gear.

[Deleted]

@ Nathyiel: Agree to all of your points and conclusion execpt one (overlooked it in your mail): BF FFB can only delayed with frost bomb, not with NT/LB.

@ Citrique: Yeah, but Frost is pretty weak atm. Just came from the PTR and some dummy tests: With arcane I´m able to pull sustained 250k on PTR.

Then I tested Frost 15min each with 1x bloodlust:

Live T15 4p Ilvl 551: 236k
PTR T16 4p Ilvl 554 and Legendary: 211k - the legendary alone made 5.7% overall.

[pyrostorm9001]

contradicting with T16 as it's best use is to cast FoF-IL after BF-FFB

How about changing the T16 consume FOF-IL to increases the damage of your next Ice Lance, Frostbolt, Frostfire Bolt, or Cone of Cold by 20% and a 30% chance to drop an icy boulder on your target, rather than BF-FFB? Would create larger BF-FFB inturn creating larger Icicles. Would feel good to use Frozen orb with IL spam.
May need to bump up the % chance to drop Icy Boulder.

[Kuni Zyrekai]

@Pete: To be fair, they've said that they'll likely adjust arcane, so it's not entirely an accurate measurement currently.

[Deleted]

I don't really care if this is a nerf or a buff, I just don't like the new playstyle.
If you raid you're probably gonna like this change though.

[Deleted]

@pete: Yep I have see it too but it was already send. It's not a big things ...
@Djbicepsirl: it's the contrary. good change but nit adapted to the most of the fight.

@kuni: Dev really have to explain what they will do. How can we made a good report if we can't compared because it will be changed back next week?

[Deleted]

Yes you are right Kuni, arcane numbers are untouched. A comparison makes more sense after the last or next mage changes. But if you going to compare frost (I don´t mean my numbers, everybody for his own), you will see a significant difference between live and PTR. I said to myself yesterday "okay with t16 (3ilvl more) and legendary, I have to be able to pull my old (live) numbers". But I didn´t. I pulled over 10% less.
Dummy tests without all buff are not super accurate, but it´s just to get an idea and feeling.

[Kuni Zyrekai]

I'm fairly sure that everyone's numbers came down a bit with the RPPM change, though. That was kind of the intended goal, people were too high in general. I'm not sure comparing to live numbers is the proper way to do it. Arcane has yet to be balanced, fire's bug should be fixed though.

Unrelated, I love the new cloak spell missile. Beats the giant green flame.

I'm sure you all do realize why they can't come out and say "Our DPS goal is X." As soon as they do that, everyone who has no clue will bitch that they're not exactly at X. Either due to small sample sizes, RNG, or people who just don't play well.

[Deleted]

Of course they can´t. But I think we all have the blue post in mind, where they promised to compensate classes who will hit harder than other classes by RPPM nerf. Right now I only recognized a huge nerf compared to live. I will know more after tonights PTR tests (hope we can do at least 3 of 4). The tonights encounters require a lot of burst AoE, movement and multi dot in heroic mode. Immerseus is completely different in nhc (single target, slow,cc, movement) and hc (+ controlled single target damage and huge aoe) in terms of dps.

[Kuni Zyrekai]

Good luck. Chuck me the logs if you've got a fire mage hanging around as well, I'd be interested to pick apart their outputs since combustion was fixed.

[IsrafaelMage]

Widespread panic on russian forums, one guy published such numbers:

frost 175к - 185к
arcane 185к - 200к
fire - 160к - 170к

for 540-ish gear on dummy. Not sure about his skill and luck with combo, but he seems VERY frustrated.

[Somaa]

After the long discussion on Tweeter. Here's my through (some already said, some new).

The design
Good on single-target, very good on two target, then less good.
Building Icicle then choosing to delay FoF-IL seem to be part of the design.
Icicle isn't designed for being generated all the time.


Good points
very PvP oriented. building Icicle and banking FoF & BF for release a big burst.


Bad points
not really good to PvE
no interaction with AOE.
contradicting with T16 as it's best use is to cast FoF-IL after BF-FFB
contradicting with Frozen Orb as it's the time we want to built Icicle
over-writing FoF is a strong nerf over any Icicle built. normal IL will be used over FoF-IL for releasing


Comparison with my previous analysis
It only comfort all what have been previously said:

• the spec isn't adapted to actual fight design.
• it don't work good with multi-dot.
• It lack of AOE burst and sustained.

Proposition

• idea n°1 -- I keep all my previous proposition: switch IL and FFB, generating Icicle with IL and releasing them with BF-FFB. FoF proc rate, FoF & BF's damage need to be tuned accordingly. FFB could be delayed more easily than FoF.
• idea n°2 -- make Frozen Orb generating Icicle. It will help both in burst AOE and cleave. Advantage, it will be a really good burst CD with a shower of Icicle & keep IL for release. Inconvenient, a lot of little Icicle.

Conclusion
Blizzard should explain how the wanted it to work. So we can discuss it more easily.

I am legitimately trying to not be a douchebag, but you Should seriously work on Your English if You want anybody to take you seriously

[Polarthief]

I'm fairly sure that everyone's numbers came down a bit with the RPPM change, though.

Was Frost actually affected all that much by this? I mean, it has a decent opener, but it's no Combustion, Arcane Power, or UVLS-heavy Warlock.

Yes, it's going to be a nerf, but I don't see Frost being penalized that much by it.

[Deleted]

We lost between 10% and 20% on up-time on most trinket.

[Polarthief]

We lost between 10% and 20% on up-time on most trinket.

They nerfed raw uptimes? I thought it was just the RPPM on pull bullshit.

[IsrafaelMage]

Was Frost actually affected all that much by this? I mean, it has a decent opener, but it's no Combustion, Arcane Power, or UVLS-heavy Warlock.

This is precisely why it hit frost the most.. We had stable high uptime on trinkets (50%+ on hydra on council for me) compared to all other classes/ specs. Furthermore, nd as we dont have any 'snapshotting' big dot that constitutes the big part of damage done, throughput DPS is much more important (and dare i say, is usually higher than fire 'non-combustion' sustained DPS) for frost.

For me it was always like that - if trinkets' uptime is fairly high, i'd rank, if not, good luck with that.

- - - Updated - - -

They nerfed raw uptimes? I thought it was just the RPPM on pull bullshit.

It doesnt scale with haste anymore. Only some things, like cha-ye, were left out (still scales with crit).

[Deleted]

It affect even more mage like Akrean or Pete that are good at Snapshooting too.
Even Cha-Ye was impacted, less because of the crit but still.

Example here : http://lhiveras-library.com/sites/lh...les/frost.html and http://lhiveras-library.com/sites/lh...frost_ptr.html
In the perfect world of SimC, Tempus Repit (sinister meta) change from 52% to 33%.

[Polarthief]

It doesnt scale with haste anymore. Only some things, like cha-ye, were left out (still scales with crit).

In the perfect world of SimC, Tempus Repit (sinister meta) change from 52% to 33%.

Oh wow. That's retarded.

And yet we continue to be nerfed on top of it. Someone at Blizzard definitely didn't do their math right.

[Deleted]

Its pretty nice, that Skada is able to readout Tempus Repit buff on PTR. The buff uptime is always around 30%. Lower, but more stable. Same with the trinkets: Uptimes are lower (around 20%), but more stable compared to live.