Icelance spam, why is this not being addressed in the PTR?

[Snuggli]

I'm glad Ring of Frost duration/area is appearing to be nerfed.. but considering Mages will still have 2x Iceblock, Sheep, Counterspell on a tiny cooldown and many other ways to avoid getting hit by melee... surely their damage output must suffer?

I'm bored of being icelance spammed to death. Obviously it's a sign of a bad mage... but why should a "bad mage" play any different when it is so damn effective. :<

Many times in Battlegrounds, and 3v3 Arena my healer has been sheeped when trinket is on Cooldown, and i've been nova'd and deepfrozen and icelanced to death and I can't do ANYTHING about it. It's rediculously faceroll... am I the only one suffering and getting raped by this? Usually I can predict when damage from ANY other class is incoming, and I have time to swap to bearform and pop Barkskin / Surv Instincts / Frenzied Regen and help out my healer if he's stuck in a CC-lock. I can also powershift round a pillar and LoS until the opposite team get diminishing returns on my healer... but when I die from Icelance spam in 1 DF while my healer eats 1 sheep, it's silly.

Also, i'm not going to lie and say i've got 5000000 resilience, when I don't. I'm sat on a mere 2k right now as Feral, compared to 3k in my Boomkin gear. But the damage is still insane and this is coming from the only class who can effectively counter mages.

Is there any news on Icelance being nerfed, at all?


Healer got sheeped in a WSG, and Mage proceeded to do this:


Just fyi, I armoried the mage and he has 1.5k Resilience, 3-4 pieces of PvP gear and the rest is 333 blues.

[Omnus]

Its hard to take mages seriously when their class is boiled down to this ridiculous level (in PvP). All I can say is on my feral (3.3k resil) I trinket the first Deep Freeze, try to anticipate a 2nd one and use barksin/survival instincts. Were you in a Deep in this screenshot? Don't open with Feral Charge if you have the choice, save it for a blink later on.

[link064]

As much as I've lately despised the ice lance whining, it seems to cause significantly too much damage given how rapidly the damage can come out. I understand that nerfing ice lance would have significant pve implications, but I'm certain that things can be adjusted to accommodate for the change.

Additionally, I've noticed that this isn't even a "level cap" issue. I was pvping on my level 55 when a frost mage proceeded to spam ice lance on me for ~950-1000 damage per cast non-crit. As a reference, my priest has about 3800 hp with fort buff. So his non-crit ice lances were dealing roughly 25% of my health per cast. If he were hard-casting frostbolt I wouldn't have had a problem with it. However, being able to spam-cast while moving and dealing that kind of damage is a little silly. I have several characters in that level range right now (leveling lots of alts lately), and none of them can put out that kind of damage as easily.

OP: If you think 17k ice lance crits are big, you ain't seen nothin' yet.

[Snuggli]

Were you in a Deep in this screenshot? Don't open with Feral Charge if you have the choice, save it for a blink later on.

I can't see a deep freeze hitting for 10 seconds in the screenshot, so I assume not. I was out of stealth however, as I was helping run the flag up our tunnel.

And yeah, open with the pounce, feral charge the blink, using interupts off cooldown and powershifting every nova I get put into.. and I still get nuked in <5s with 1 instant spell being spammed.

I'll find an arena screenshot, hold on a second


Edit:

Additionally, I've noticed that this isn't even a "level cap" issue. I was pvping on my level 55 when a frost mage proceeded to spam ice lance on me for ~950-1000 damage per cast non-crit. As a reference, my priest has about 3800 hp with fort buff. So his non-crit ice lances were dealing roughly 25% of my health per cast. If he were hard-casting frostbolt I wouldn't have had a problem with it. However, being able to spam-cast while moving and dealing that kind of damage is a little silly. I have several characters in that level range right now (leveling lots of alts lately), and none of them can put out that kind of damage as easily.

OP: If you think 17k ice lance crits are big, you ain't seen nothin' yet.

I'm levelling a 45-ish mage currently, and Ice lance spam works out better DPS than standing and casting Frostbolt, it also allows for nova's to be cast inbetween GCD's and counterspells to be used without interupting a cast.

And regarding the 17k+ crits, i've eaten 25k icelances, but it is usually a one off... I took a screenshot of this because it was 50%+ of my health in 4s using purely icelance.

[link064]

I'm levelling a 45-ish mage currently, and Ice lance spam works out better DPS than standing and casting Frostbolt, it also allows for nova's to be cast inbetween GCD's and counterspells to be used without interupting a cast.

And regarding the 17k+ crits, i've eaten 25k icelances, but it is usually a one off... I took a screenshot of this because it was 50%+ of my health in 4s using purely icelance.

When did ice lance become so OP? The mage that I leveled (early in Wrath) never cast ice lance because its damage was laughable, even as frost.

After looking over your recount again, the mage did 77741 damage over 6.55 seconds (including pet) which is about 11k dps with basically only ice lance and frostbolt. If you take out the frost bolt and pet, it is 64052 damage over 5.09 seconds, which works out to 12589 dps with ice lance alone.

WTB 20k felfire crit spam

[Snuggli]

Logs from a game, where only the Mage swapped to me and the Spriests dot's were ticking over. My team mate bubbled the polymorph but it was too late to keep me up as both me and my partner were being focused.

Edit:
To put this into perspective, the mage solo dropped me from 70% using 2 Frostbolts and 2 icelances in under 5 seconds.
Editedit:
I'd also like to add that i've now got both 2k rating in 2's and 3's, with 60% win/loss in both. (2v2 as Balance and 3v3 as Feral), I don't consider myself to be a bad player by any means, but icelance spam is lolworthy.

[Amenman]

lol? get more resil. my mages lances hits for around 11k on resil targets

[Alex86el]

frost mages, along with warriors, along with ferals <- hello!
dont get to talk about OPness.

one could argue that ur trolling ;p tho u prolly arent

[Swizzle]

So let me ask a question: you did nothing when being focused by a Mage as a Feral? Hell, the numbers don't even add up. 28,780-17,609=14,499 (since I see no heals between each hit going in)?

[Snuggli]

frost mages, along with warriors, along with ferals <- hello!
dont get to talk about OPness.

one could argue that ur trolling ;p tho u prolly arent

Nope, i'm pretty serious. Ferals arn't that bad anymore really, in comparison to good DK's/Warriors/Mages, you just have to look at all the top arena teams in 3's and 5's to see that. 1v1 i still win against pretty much anything, but the game isn't balanced around 1v1, and in a 3v3 or 5v5 situation a mage's burst and crowd control is rediculous.

So let me ask a question: you did nothing when being focused by a Mage as a Feral? Hell, the numbers don't even add up. 28,780-17,609=14,499 (since I see no heals between each hit going in)?

First screenshot: I was assisting the flag carrier and got gimped by a Deep Freeze while out of stealth.
Second screenshot: We focus'd the mage into an iceblock extremely early, then both me and the warrior got feared while beserk was off cooldown, that's when the sheep on my healer and split nuke started.

Also, I have no idea which numbers you're on about, that's screenied straight from recount.

[Pwnpaw]

Mage is the most overpowered class atm, no nerfs in sight.
Blizzard just keeps on nerfing Druids.

Like 10 different freeze abilties on a 20ish second CD, ice barrier, ice block, blink, ice lance (instant, no CD, crits for 10-15k).
Cold snap to just reset all CDs, Water elemental as a permanent pet, Free Ice barrier when under 50% health, Deep Freeze (6sec stun, counts as frozen, not broken on damage), Ring of Frost (a placable Frost nova spam),

No thats not overpowered at all.

[Swizzle]

Mage is the most overpowered class atm, no nerfs in sight.
Blizzard just keeps on nerfing Druids.

Like 10 different freeze abilties on a 20ish second CD, ice barrier, ice block, blink, ice lance (instant, no CD, crits for 10-15k).
Cold snap to just reset all CDs, Water elemental as a permanent pet, Free Ice barrier when under 50% health, Deep Freeze (6sec stun, counts as frozen, not broken on damage), Ring of Frost (a placable Frost nova spam),

No thats not overpowered at all.

No on specs Reactive Barrier, Deep Freeze is a 5 second stun which only gives the mage 3.5-4 second of DPS time due to GCD, and RoF is hardly "spammable".

[sicness]

So you've got well over 1k less resilience than what is easily obtainable, and 2k less than what is possible at the moment and yet are trying to do a serious number comparison ignoring that?

[La]

Mage is the most overpowered class atm, no nerfs in sight.
Blizzard just keeps on nerfing Druids.

Like 10 different freeze abilties on a 20ish second CD, ice barrier, ice block, blink, ice lance (instant, no CD, crits for 10-15k).
Cold snap to just reset all CDs, Water elemental as a permanent pet, Free Ice barrier when under 50% health, Deep Freeze (6sec stun, counts as frozen, not broken on damage), Ring of Frost (a placable Frost nova spam),

No thats not overpowered at all.

And here's the type of person, who knows nothing about something and tries to argue about it. Feral was op, why the fuck do you think they were nerfed so badly? I think if frost mages were that OP, they would have nerfed them like druids as well. So they're either waiting for a way to nerf them without affecting PvE, which is difficult because all of these spells are important to frost dps in PvE, or they aren't nerfing them.

[Devdan]

You are not wearing any PvP Gear and censored your name so noone who'll point it out has a direct proove beside you getting hit for ~20k by an icelance (which is with trinkets and / or proccs on a target WITHOUT resilence and probably in DP).

[Amenman]

Also, feral shift form harder

[Cows For Life]

In PVP it's either or. You have instant or quick cast spells to do stuff while you're being trained or moving OR you turn into balance druids.

[Yizren]

Mage is the most overpowered class atm, no nerfs in sight.
Blizzard just keeps on nerfing Druids.

Like 4 different freeze abilties on a 20ish second CD, ice barrier (this absorbs only about ~10k dmg (aka half of a move)), ice block(ok, we can't do anything either), blink(Charge/Slow/snares/fear ext counters this right away), ice lance (instant, no CD (GCD), crits for 10-15k(Only when your Frozen, and all novas have been nerfed. 95% of the time they will break first attack. also dispelable.)).
Cold snap to just reset all CDs(6min CD? you will only see it ounce usually), Water elemental as a permanent pet(ok, other classes have pets to? this one doesn't do much dmg), Free Ice barrier when under 50% health(rephrase that; it just uses yours for you, if its off CD, its pointless. its avoided in PvP specs anyways), Deep Freeze (5sec stun, counts as frozen, not broken on damage(only thing you need a trinket for against us, besides polymorph (ALSO dispelable, and breaks on damage), also dispelable. also only allows ~2 moves due to GCD), Ring of Frost (a placable Frost nova spam(it is getting nerfed, and, don't walk into it and your fine? also it is 3min cooldown, not spammable).

No thats not overpowered at all(an actual true statement).

errors are fixed in bold

PvP is balanced around Arenas.

not battlegrounds
not 1v1 duels

[Pwnpaw]

errors are fixed in bold

PvP is balanced around Arenas.

not battlegrounds
not 1v1 duels

-Frost Nova, Ring of Frost, Freeze, Shattered Barrier, Cone of Cold, Deep Freeze (more then 4)
-I believe it absorbs more then 10k, but even if it doesn't 10k every (30sec?) helps alot.
-As you said yourself its not balanced around 1v1, so if u ice block, u remove all debuffs and you can still get healed.
-Global Cooldown is not a cooldown. And yes ice lance only does high damage when your target is frozen. But when your fighting a frost mage you are frozen 90% of the time.
-Yes you will only see Cold Snap once, but it still resets every other Frost CD you have. (2x ice blocks, 2x ring of frost, etc)
-Hunter and Death Knight have pets, and the Water elemental might not do too much damage on its own, but it gives you a placable frost nova which also automaticly triggers fingers of frost.
-Was not aware that the Ice barrier talent used the normal Ice Barrier CD.
-I never said that Ring of Frost was spammable, its an ability you put on the ground that spams frost novas for you, and the Ring of Frost nerf is so extremly tiny that it wont even be noticable. 3min CD yes (Cold Snap much?), Most of the time you will get hit by frost nova/freeze then getting Ring of Frost put ontop of you, or the mage will just put ring of frost around himself or a healer.


Please refrain from posting when you clearly have no clue.

[Deleted]

Wait a sec,
We got a Feral drood, whining on the OPness of frost mages... That makes alot of sense...

The problem with frost mages isnt the dmg they provide, nor the icelance spam. It's the power of CC combined with it. The solution would simply to reduce the numbers of novas, and ofc make iCoC and RB share same diminishing return as was intendet all along.