Frost mage: tuning

[Packmule]

I am througly saddend by how blizzard has treated frost mages the past couple years.

During the pre patch frost mages has had significant nerfs. And on top off that they had no real changes to their toolkit, which is realy sad..

-It would be appropriate to make ebonbolt baseline, have the cast time reduced.

- Have flurry 2 charges

- and buff everything for about 7%.

-comet storm baseline or viable?

This would put us in the middle of the pack.

I am sick and tired of fire being the specc to go. It has been that way since WOD. Thats like 6-8 years ago.

Can frost mage get some love? I am not asking for it to be the best DPS. But to be atleast be viable and fun to play. It’s to procc depending and not rewarding at all atm..

What do you guys think?

[unbound]

I would agree.

I don't mind being a glass canon, but I'm simply glass. The spec is entirely too RNG dependent which means on rare occasions I can shine, but on other occasions I'm having to bounce around frantically because I don't get procs. And since Blizz is convinced that most areas must be jam-packed with mobs, it isn't even very easy to bounce around without aggroing even more.

Unfortunately, I think it's time to put the Frost Mage on ice for a while.

[Nova8]

I was testing ray of frost today and I found it is a DPS loss over just casting frost bolts. The other talent on that line glacial spike is also a DPS loss if you take it. Its pretty obvious frost is completely neglected by blizzard balance team due to such mind-blowing misbalance like this. How can 2 out of 3 talents be DPS losses- like not less-than-optimal, actually a DPS loss if you use the ability over just not using it at all. They haven't put any time into actually testing and balancing frost, just saw that they were doing high damage in beta and just gutted them and moved on.

Ray of frost needs to have a mechanic built in that automatically shoots FOF ice lances if you overcap while channeling because it is really clunky to use, and then it still needs like 20% more damage. Actually everything besides ice lance needs ~10% flat damage buff. Its fine they nerfed ice lance so much pre-launch since all of frosts dps was all in that one ability, but you gotta compensate it with buffing something somewhere else otherwise you are left with their current last place meme tier dps.

[Tekko]

It does need some sort of buff, you can be getting 80-90 parses in the raid, and MM hunters and Boomies getting green parses will be beating you.

They are pretty solid in M+ though, GF is great for trash.

[Packmule]

They are atm getting worse and worse in m+ also, the GF legendary does not increase enough in power to compensate the lackluster power a frost mage has. Sadly, it feels i have to go fire. I wouldnt have to parse 99%, more like 60% and id be doing the same as a frost mage that parses 99%

[Moggers1990]

Same issue with Assassination currently. The lack of people even playing thr spec should give a strong hint to Blizz but the spec was just completely gutted from anything good in BfA, then ignored the whole of Alpha/Beta.
When you get an almost-perfect opener and you look down to see you're still 13th, just above the tanks, then shit is wrong.

[Mascotte]

Besides the numbers issue its just.. boring.
Apart from one patch late Legion (or early BFA, cant remember) where Glacial Spike was OP we have been basically been spamming Ice Lance.
And what a surprise, we are still spamming Ice Lance..
Ebonbolt cant compete with Chain Reaction, Comet Storm cant compete with Splitting Ice and neither Ray or GS can compete with Thermal Void.
Our permanent pet cant compare with Lonely Winter so he's gone because we cant miss out on that 25% increase for, you guessed it, Ice Lance..

If you actually talent Ebonbolt, Comet Storm, Ice Nova and GS the spec becomes so much more engaging but since the numbers just dont add up we are basically forced to go back to spamming IL. And even then Frost is bottom of the barrel.

[Packmule]

I would realy like that some of the cool abbilties become baseline to make the specc more engaging and fun. And they need to up the numers. Its getting worse and worse

[enigma77]

Many specs right now are simply numerically undertuned and need big buffs. Frost, Assassination, Destruction, Demonlogy, Survival, Beast Hunter to name a few all need love.

[Merlunie]

Many specs right now are simply numerically undertuned and need big buffs. Frost, Assassination, Destruction, Demonlogy, Survival, Beast Hunter to name a few all need love.

4 of those specs are fine.

[Warning]

I'd like frostmage to be the standard in PVP again. More frostbolt damage and maybe replace that silly double nova talent with a 60 sec CD Deep Freeze.

[Cosmic Janitor]

I would agree.

I don't mind being a glass canon, but I'm simply glass. The spec is entirely too RNG dependent which means on rare occasions I can shine, but on other occasions I'm having to bounce around frantically because I don't get procs. And since Blizz is convinced that most areas must be jam-packed with mobs, it isn't even very easy to bounce around without aggroing even more.

Unfortunately, I think it's time to put the Frost Mage on ice for a while.

For me personally the move back from from GS to TV centric builds has shown me that the base version of frost is really flawed. Not just in raids, but from a basic toolkit PoV. The idea that the spec is pretty much living and dying by random procs that mostly only happen if you use a terrible boring and weak spell like frost bolt is simply devoid of fun. This time around mage is clearly built around spamming icelance, that much becomes clear from all the covenant fluff that interacts with it, but it also makes the whole randomness situation in everyday gameplay worse, as GS was at least a big hitting spell that you could use the way you wanted. When it hits like a truck you could also force some interaction with Frost Nova and got something out of it. Without that though you are just throwing snow balls that hardly make he enemy care until you accidentially conjure a yellow one and at least something happens.

On top of that it looked like Blizzard was originally going to adress the ranged issues of frost, but sadly in the end that didn't work out at all and you still want to optimize the exact moments when your spells hit which also depends on distance. While it could be worse (blink icelance), it's certainly not great either right now.

All of that wouldn't be that bad if the flat dps output was at least decent but as everyone already mentioned, they nerfed that at the end of BfA in some panic reaction and now we are kinda stuck with that in SL.

[Nova8]

The first tier of frost has some of the most boring talents in the game. 1) gain .5% more passive damage after each spell cast! ooo wowie 2) we take away your pet and just give you a big chunk of extra passive damage. uh ok 3) you get ANOTHER frost nova but this one you can target!

[Alvanck]

Not going to lie....

I still love the frost mage. I honestly think they are worth playing and sticking it out until they get some tuning. I think they will be great once the Meta slows down a bit!

[Xires]

I'd like frostmage to be the standard in PVP again. More frostbolt damage and maybe replace that silly double nova talent with a 60 sec CD Deep Freeze.

So...then no more frost mage pve and the rest of us would be screwed. No thanks. I like frost in a raiding/mythic+ environment...and getting 90+ parses while the unholy DK is getting 50% parses and yet he's either keeping up or out dpsing me despite him being mediocre. And it's the same with others.

[Warning]

So...then no more frost mage pve and the rest of us would be screwed. No thanks. I like frost in a raiding/mythic+ environment...and getting 90+ parses while the unholy DK is getting 50% parses and yet he's either keeping up or out dpsing me despite him being mediocre. And it's the same with others.

Don't fully understand why you think my post implies frost being unviable in PVE? Do you think Ice Ward is somehow crucial for raids or m+? I mean I don't see how adding Deep to that row and more Frostbolt damage would hurt your PVE performance.

[Xires]

Don't fully understand why you think my post implies frost being unviable in PVE? Do you think Ice Ward is somehow crucial for raids or m+? I mean I don't see how adding Deep to that row and more Frostbolt damage would hurt your PVE performance.

No, I didn't say anything like that. I said Frost is dead last after all the nerfs they gave to it during pre-patch. And to show how far behind it is you'll have Frost Mages getting 90%+ parses for their class while a unholy DK might get around 50-60% percentile for HIS class during that fight...but you look at the damage meter and see that you and the unholy did around the same damage or the unholy DK beat you. THAT is how far frost is behind as a spec. And the other two specs compared to the other classes are mediocre at best (when it comes to fire) while arcane is still close to the bottom itself. But across the board...frost is very very bad.

Mythic+ environment TV is still good and Frost does some damage. But others are too far ahead which means if you rely on pugging or want to pug on higher keys...you'll likely be denied because their is so much better out there.
Mage is a pure DPS class and shouldn't have all 3 of its specs completely outclassed by so much.
I forgot how "durp" people are on these forums. You completely misunderstood what I said...and it's no surprise.
And no Mage spec should be DEAD LAST...like Frost is.

[Warning]

No, I didn't say anything like that. I said Frost is dead last after all the nerfs they gave to it during pre-patch. And to show how far behind it is you'll have Frost Mages getting 90%+ parses for their class while a unholy DK might get around 50-60% percentile for HIS class during that fight...but you look at the damage meter and see that you and the unholy did around the same damage or the unholy DK beat you. THAT is how far frost is behind as a spec. And the other two specs compared to the other classes are mediocre at best (when it comes to fire) while arcane is still close to the bottom itself. But across the board...frost is very very bad.

Mythic+ environment TV is still good and Frost does some damage. But others are too far ahead which means if you rely on pugging or want to pug on higher keys...you'll likely be denied because their is so much better out there.
Mage is a pure DPS class and shouldn't have all 3 of its specs completely outclassed by so much.
I forgot how "durp" people are on these forums. You completely misunderstood what I said...and it's no surprise.
And no Mage spec should be DEAD LAST...like Frost is.

I mean you quoted my post and started with "So ... then". That basically seems like a conclusion you drew from my post. But whatever, yeah I agree Frost needs PVE buffs too...

[Rhuan75]

I am througly saddend by how blizzard has treated frost mages the past couple years.

During the pre patch frost mages has had significant nerfs. And on top off that they had no real changes to their toolkit, which is realy sad..

-It would be appropriate to make ebonbolt baseline, have the cast time reduced.

- Have flurry 2 charges

- and buff everything for about 7%.

-comet storm baseline or viable?

This would put us in the middle of the pack.

I am sick and tired of fire being the specc to go. It has been that way since WOD. Thats like 6-8 years ago.

Can frost mage get some love? I am not asking for it to be the best DPS. But to be atleast be viable and fun to play. It’s to procc depending and not rewarding at all atm..

What do you guys think?

The hilarious thing is that with these buffs you want, IMHO we would still be among the last in DPS as Frost is on average 25% below Fire (taking into account that Fire is not Top Tier)!

[Packmule]

The hilarious thing is that with these buffs you want, IMHO we would still be among the last in DPS as Frost is on average 25% below Fire (taking into account that Fire is not Top Tier)!

Probably, atleast the specc would flow better lol.