New Frost Mage Is Just Depressing

[MostUnfabulous]

The new frost mage is just so sad. Gameplay has been absolutely gutted, all of the snappy gameplay and satisfying combat replaced with a worse version of festering wounds. Pretty much a 3-button spec outside of cooldowns single Target and aoe doesn’t fare much better.

Absolutely no thought has been put into how the gameplay actually feels and no consideration has been put into such a drastic change to such a beloved spec for many. Completely ignoring beta feedback, looks like the entire focus has been on how to make bosses work without combat addons rather than making sure the specs feel good to play.

What we’ve been left with is hollowed out and totally unsatisfying.

[czarek]

Sounds good to me. Im old and lazy. Perfect match.

[LordVargK]

Next Expansion it's back to classic: Only frostbolt and Blizzard!

[Foolicious]

Frost needed an overhaul for a very long time. The mechanics of the spec where unintuitive and outdated.
Not saying the new version is the best they could have come up with. I especially dislike ray of frost as main cooldown, but overall its a great step in the right direction in my opinion. It's 1 or 2 patches away from being great.

[charizma]

I'll probably be switching specs just because of ray of frost. I don't find being stuck in place, channeling a spell (as my main damage dealer) to be fun at all.

[czarek]

As shadow priest player since few expansions i really approve channeled spells as main cooldown damage spell.

[Azerox]

Yeah lol my spell bar looks very empty.

[ayrton2388]

I loved the combo building of 5 icicles for Glacial Spike.

To me, that was the bread and butter of this spec. Build combos, and use them to cast one bad ass spell. Oh, and the human female animation for it is one of the best combat animations in wow, it FEELS and looks so powerful.

Casting Glacial Spike only once every 20-25 seconds sucks. I hate it when they do stupid shit like this.
It's like back in Legion, where they had an awesome, awesome core for a melee hunter. That Survival spec was the best that melee hunters ever had, and then they had to go and fk it up, by changing the abilities and removing the coolest animations.

Everything in this game feels like a neutered version of how amazing things could've been.

[Tiga]

Blizzard gave some free game time this weekend, so I came back to see what frost mages will be like in Midnight. I've been playing since Vanilla and played a couple of months of TWW (S1 & 2) and Dragonflight (season 1). I think frost was really enjoyable to play these past two expansions. I did some PvP during Dragonflight, but almost entirely solo PvE (Delves) in TWW.

I think the designers seem to have completely forgotten the roots of the class. And I mean the frozen roots that increase your crit chance and that make certain combos so satisfying. It doesn't matter anymore if the target is frozen. Obviously, that's something that hasn't really affected group content directly, but it makes a huge impact in world content, delves and PvP. Obviously it has also been a major headache and the crit modifier from shatter has frequently been troublesome for frost scaling. Just like Icy Veins was troublesome for haste scaling.

Anyway, what's left probably works for mythic+ and raids and world content these days is easy enough so that it also works fine there, but it does feel like an insult to the spec to scrap the core features and just recycle some talent names and pretend that they are the same thing when the mechanics are so different. What's worse, in order to play well, you now have to look at freezing stacks, which are a tiny number next to a huge number for the buff time remaining. So, you need some addons to fix the cooldowns and nameplates (cooldown centered and plater) and spend some hours tweaking everything. Even then, you have to do the math based on a number displayed in a bar instead of paying attention to what you are doing to the target and what spells you cast.

To make it worse, they got rid of ice floes. I'm a huge fan of the talent and have been using it since at least Legion (I don't remember when it was introduced). I still try to activate it using one of my mouse buttons, but sadly it is gone.

And also a huge fan of blast wave, although I'll admit it was odd to have it as a frost mage. But it's such a fun spell and it's gone.

So, I don't currently have a subscription (so I can't whine on the Blizz forums). I might get one just to finish up the storylines on my mage and maybe try a void elf demon hunter. I had plans to come back for a few months ago during the winter like i did in 2023 and 2025, but frost mages are currently a disaster and frost mage has always been my main, so I don't know if I'll be back at all for Midnight unless they fix this mess somehow.

My top priorities to fix (starting with my highest priority):

- Bring Ice Floes back.
- Make freezing/rooting enemies matter. Doesn't have to be exactly like it was, but something...
- Blast wave.
- Figure out a way to not make the rotation depend entirely on a tiny little stack count number.
- Bring back some of the defensives that were taken.

P.S. The new icicles are an absolute joke. Actually...not even a funny joke.

[Kulbaen]

This is a straightforward breakdown of how I feel Frost Mage has become, but it feels like OLD rogue or any other class that has to build anytime they change targets. Having to build freezing stacks sucks, IMO. Sure, we get spells splitting on targets, but anytime I have to change targets, I hate it. Now you can tell me I'm wrong, and all that, but that's what it feels like to me.

::edit:: Just wanted to add that I've played every incarnation of Frost Mage since release, and this one is by far my least favorite. BORING!