[theorycraft]Making Frost PvE viable and even more interesting/balanced in PvP!

[Sane]

Yes, almost every mage has wished at one point that they could be competitive in a raiding environment whilst spamming frostbolt, but have never seen this day come because:

1. Buffing frost means making them alot crazier in PvP, which, of course, is not going to happen.
2. Blizzard likes to keep some trees more PvP orientated - if every tree were viable it wouldn't make sense.

The solution I propose is twofold, and will solve the first problem, while keeping the 2nd in line. It's not a minor damage tweak or talent modification, it's a mechanic overhaul designed to make the the mage pump out more damage in a raid, while also forcing them to make a bit more decisions than just hitting their Frostbolt key and Fireball button during mind freeze procs. This change has probably been considered or suggested at one point, but for those who haven't had the chance to agree or disagree with the following, here's what I propose.

It's well-known that one of the reasons Frostbolt specs don't do as well as their fire counterparts is because they simply don't do as much base damage. The tradeoff they have, however, is a snare. The obvious solution to make frostbolt more attractive is trading off the snare for more damage. The FrB glyph is a start in the right direction to making the frost tree better, but it screws over PvP mages who would like to consider using this glyph for that respective field. The key lies in the water elemental - it scales relatively well based on your level, and hits for quite a bit. Shatter combos are impossible in boss fights, so Fingers of Frost was inteligently designed and created. If a WE could scale even more, and benefit from buffs even longer...would this help?

If the water elemental were a permanent pet...would this sound crazy?

If the WE could benefit from buffs like a hunter or warlock's pet does - don't forget ghouls for those unholy DKs -the extra damage would fit in nicely with the inherently weaker Frostbolts. One of the problems our permanent pet would face is mana, but can easily be alleviated with, well, buffs! Wisdom, replenishment; all of these skills we never even cared about using for our WE's own benefit are now real, viable and important solutions. Just like a DK does when the ghoul get's low on health, he sacrifices it and summons it anew. The same concept can be applied to the WE as it gets low on mana. A permanent WE that can benefit from buffs just like any raid member is, imo, a step in the right direction for making frost a PvE possibility. It probably still wouldn't compete with fire or arcane, but it would be an avenue nonetheless.

A water elemental that never goes away sounds crazy in PvP, but in my mind, it can be very balanced if the right changes are made. Just like any class with a permanent pet, focusing it down first in a pvp situation is a risky tradeoff. If you spend too much time attacking a pet that doesn't die because it's getting healed too well means that the owner is free to do what he wants. Make the WE scale with resilience just like hunter and warlock pets do. The problem now is: having a loose water elemental hitting everything very hard until it runs out of mana or dies. Solution? Up the mana cost on Freeze. PvE mages won't care, but this would add depth to PvP encounters. Concern for your WE's mana pool is an interesting twist to playing frost, don't you say? Freeze is now an ability with added risks and rewards. Using it too much means your pet will get less water bolts in, and vice versa. Giving the water elemental a cast time to summon anew is something im not yet sure about. Comparing it to a ghoul makes sense in some ways - gnaw can be compared to Freeze in utility, but pales in comparison the damage oppurtunities. Ideally the water elemental would be a "burstier" pet than the ghoul, but succeptible to LOS and OOMing.

The last idea I have to making Frost more competitive in raids is to, im afraid I have to say this, buff Ice barrier with a talent change. The concept is simple: make it so while Ice Barrier is active, all damage is increased by x%.
What this does is force frost mages to keep ice barrier up at all times for that appealing damage buff. Imo, it makes frost mages play like a frost mage - you want to use cool abilities and have cool stuff happen. Over in the pvp side of things, this change would increase damage, but also makes them prime targets. See the synergy with the permanent WE now? Players have to choose who to kill! Staying on the mage means making his ice barriers less "potent" and also somewhat draining him of his mana. There could possibly be more depth added to the class if they now have to decide whether or not keeping up Ice barrier is a good idea. mana doesn't come by as easily in pvp, and if an increase to the ice barrier's mana costs is the solution, then good! Another option could be to create a new talent that would bloat the frost tree a bit more, because let's face it, almost every talent in there is good regardless if you pve or pvp, and add the ice barrier's bonus damage in that new talent.

When you think about it, these ideas don't seem that blown out of proportion. Making these changes available in Cataclysm does make more sense, because you would have the introduction of new mechanics and five more talent points and a whole new ballgame with Path of the Titans. Let's just hear what you guys think about it

[pimms]

Sounds quite good in my opinion, but I'm pretty sure Blizzard already have the details for what they'll do with mages (and all classes / specs) in Cataclysm more or less sorted out, but with the changes they said they'd give to all talent trees, I could easily see something like this happening.

[Kelesti]

I was a little antsy in 3.0 when they made Warlocks actually care about their pets. Hunters were the "pet class". Then they made Unholy Death Knights. So while I'm worried about every class eventually getting a "pet spec" of some form (Beta Wrath had an air elemental pet for Shaman), that anxiety I have may be a little overexagerated, and it would add a definition to Frost as a whole, though.

[Tiga]

Casting ice barrier means you use a GCD at least once every 60 seconds. In many encounters, the shield will not last very long.

The water elemental already benefits from totems, heroism etc. Giving it intellect, spirit, stamina and mark of the wild wouldn't affect its DPS.

What frost needs is gear (and possibly skill) based scaling. A relatively static 10% damage increase (by increasing water elemental uptime to 100% from 50%) doesn't accomplish that goal. Increasing uptime increases gear scaling a little bit, but it's mostly flat "base damage", meaning that frost mages in bad gear would receive a huge buff and frost mages in great gear would be buffed relatively less. That's the opposite of what is wanted.

[Radux]

@Sane

I like the general ideas you bring. However, I'm not sure if they will actually fix frost in the PvE environment. You point out that one of the largest issues, especially with scaling, is the low coefficient for FrB. This is completely correct. Along with this issue comes the problem with gearing a frost mage. Frost mage = spell power and haste (period).

While I love the enthusiasm, I don't know if Blizzard will fix frost for raiding without drastically upsetting the world of PvP (oh noes). Asking for frost mage to scale well is like shadow priests asking to scale with gear, as well (although they are in a much better situation than a frost mage).

[Fancyfeast]

I don't mind the changes you talked about, they're pretty well thought out. The Ice Barrier damage buff is an interesting idea, as it's a way to encourage PVE frost mages to use a spell they don't normally use, while adding a threat and urgency to purge it in PVP without adding a new talent or ability at all. The inherent problem with frost is its simplicity; as you outlined, the rotation is literally just Frostbolt until you get a Brain Freeze proc. Your changes are nice, but in spite of a permanent pet and a flat damage buff on Ice Barrier, the rotation doesn't get anymore complicated. With such a simple rotation, you really have to be weary about the amount of damage one is pumping out for fear of making it hugely OP in PVP, and that's always been the problem with PVE frost. Arcane has a fairly interesting rotation. Fire has a fairly interesting rotation. They become difficult to pull off in a PVP situation. Frost does not.

Frost is an interesting beast though, since shatter combos all but don't exist in PVE but the class is essentially based around it in PVP.

[Kelesti]

The inherent problem with frost is its simplicity; as you outlined, the rotation is literally just Frostbolt until you get a Brain Freeze proc. Your changes are nice, but in spite of a permanent pet and a flat damage buff on Ice Barrier, the rotation doesn't get anymore complicated. With such a simple rotation, you really have to be weary about the amount of damage one is pumping out for fear of making it hugely OP in PVP, and that's always been the problem with PVE frost. Arcane has a fairly interesting rotation. Fire has a fairly interesting rotation. They become difficult to pull off in a PVP situation. Frost does not.

Brain Freeze has been proven to be a DPS loss, the rotation is just Frostbolt.

[Tiga]

Brain Freeze has been proven to be a DPS loss, the rotation is just Frostbolt.

Show me the proof.

The latest numbers that we got from SimulationCraft (run by Lhivera on the EJ mage forum and confirmed by my own calculations & SimulationCraft runs) show it to be a small DPS increase. Using FoF ghost charges for BF fireballs needs to be a bigger DPS increase than it is now though. It takes some skill to pull those off consistently, so it's a good way to increase the skill cap of frost.

However, even ignoring FoF ghost charges, BF is a minor DPS increase.

The big unknown about BF as a DPS increase is how instant cast spells behave when you insert one between two cast time spells. My experiments on a target dummy showed that you actually end up using less than one hasted GCD on each instant - as long as you only cast one instant between two cast time spells. Strangely, fire mages seem somewhat uninterested in exploring this effect even though it has a far greater impact on their DPS than on frost. The reasoning is that the GCD starts on client side when you queue the spell, which you can do up to about 200 ms before the previous cast finishes. Your ability to time this then becomes a factor in how much your DPS benefits from it.

The old default (I'm not sure what the default is now) in SimulationCraft was to put an extra latency penalty on each instant cast. This eats up most of the DPS benefit from brain freeze and leaves it pretty much DPS-neutral.

[rathok]

TLR. Frost is and has been the only viable PVP spec for the last 5 years and as such i cant imagine why anyone would want to raid AND PVP while spamming frostbolts so i definitely welcome the oportunity to spec fire for raids.

[Sane]

SO WAS I RIGHT OR WHAT

ok so the change is not exactly what i said but its better than nothing!

[Veyne]

Glyph of Eternal Shadow, IMO

Oh wait, wrong thread. =D

[Illunis]

TLR. Frost is and has been the only viable PVP spec for the last 5 years and as such i cant imagine why anyone would want to raid AND PVP while spamming frostbolts so i definitely welcome the oportunity to spec fire for raids.

if by "the past 5 years" you counted out the entire season 5 where arcane was awesome, then yes. i think frost has a chance to be competitive in pve soon, a couple more changes to glyphs and a few talents would probably do it. it wont be the dominant endgame pve spec, but it would be a pretty good raid spec

[addictedtotoads]

there is a way easier way to make frost viable in pve IMO.
whenever something is supposed to freeze an unfreezable target, just give a debuff that is the same thing as freezing them in place... but without actually stopping them from moving... and i guess it should have a different visual effect.

the problems i see with it though are:
1. it still makes frost pve a frostbolt spam, so it wouldn't be very enjoyable for me...
2. since shatter procs off other mages too, it might mean that frost outdoes everything if your in a group with alot of other frostmages, but does crappy damage solo.(this would be solved by making the debuff only able to proc every X seconds)... but i guess other mages would steal your shatter and it would get annoying. you work it out.

[prettyponymonster]

but i guess other mages would steal your shatter and it would get annoying. you work it out.

Hi, I'm Fingers of Frost and I'm here to fuck shit up.

FoF is your movable freezing debuff - just a buff on yourself that last for 2 casts which is the most you will usually get out a frost nova.

For frost PvE, they could probably make Deep Freeze work different on NPCs. Just have it chill there as a visual chunk of ice on the boss and a debuff that lasts maybe 8 seconds ??? or so that counts as a frostbitten target. Potentially 5 Frostbolts and an Ice Lance or 2. And in PvP, it would retain the effect it already had. Just a thought! 8)

[Skarrd]

Hi, I'm Fingers of Frost and I'm here to fuck shit up.

FoF is your movable freezing debuff - just a buff on yourself that last for 2 casts which is the most you will usually get out a frost nova.

For frost PvE, they could probably make Deep Freeze work different on NPCs. Just have it chill there as a visual chunk of ice on the boss and a debuff that lasts maybe 8 seconds ??? or so that counts as a frostbitten target. Potentially 5 Frostbolts and an Ice Lance or 2. And in PvP, it would retain the effect it already had. Just a thought! 8)

Giving deep freeze some sort of utility would be great, but it seems unlikely. I suppose it's possible to make deep freeze give you a damage buff when it gives an immunity message (which it does on every raid boss), but that seems silly. Could be fucked up with grounding totems too. Blizzard has said a number of times they dont like giving things different uses in pve and pvp, most recently with pet avoidance.