it’s missing:
And devs can’t balance the class without it.
It needs to be a talent, in place of Snowstorm.
8 Likes
not sure what game you’re playing because frost aoe is good. glacial fragments should never return because it forces a degenerate one button rotation, and making the rotation even easier is the last thing frost needs.
1 Like
It was the case in Shadowlands too, and it’s still the case. In one of my M+ runs: 41% of my overall dps is coming from Ice lance, the 2nd place is for Icicles and Orb with 15-15% each and Blizzard with 10%, Flurry 7%, Ice Nova 4,6%, Frostbolt 4,2%.
The 2 main AoE abilities deal 15% and 10% of the overall dps (buffed by talents!), where the Ice Lance spam, which currently affects only 2 targets with each button press deals more than double the damage of these combined.
It would be acceptable, if the tanks would pull no more than 3-4 targets every time, but they pull usually the double amount of this, where a 2 target only spell is not enough.
Our “AoE” is not a 4-5 target cleave as it is at some melee specs. They don’t deal 80% of single target dps to an other target, resulting 180% dmg, they do 50% st dmg for 4 additional targets, resulting 300% dmg output.
Most of them have their ability damage also more balanced, where the difference is not +60% between the 1st and the 2nd ability, like between Ice Lance and Icicles/Orb (as you can see above).
So frost needs the missing Glacial Fragments mechanism, which boosts Ice Lance AoE potential, or we need a complete re-balance, where Ice Lance damage is reduced drastically, and the same time Orb and Blizzard damage would be increased by the same amount for AoE purposes and also Frostbolt and Flurry damage increased for single target. (In this case, missing a Frostbolt (due to almost constant movement) would be more punishing.)
As I see, Glacial Fragments, as a passive ability is much easier to implement than re-balancing all the abilities to have a better AoE dps pattern.
And I think, pressing 3-4 buttons for just AoE is enough. I’m a ranged dps, I’m not even thinking about running into the crowd, pressing Cone of Cold time to time, or any other braindead melee ability from the talents, which were never meant to be for the frost spec.
7 Likes
The big problem with frost aoe also is that even if it was godly, in practice it still wouldn’t be that great because both blizzard and orb stand in place, and you kinda need to move at times.
I think it would be nice considering you are already casting a lot of ice lances, and i don’t really wanna use cone of cold, just doesn’t feel too good, and also it is a problem that you have to take that talent for aoe.
Frost has a massive problem that also max bought up, specs like frost, ele, arms warrior are specs that are either aoe or st, there is no viable in between, that will make then uncompetitive.
Because many times the best option is to have a build that gets about 90 % of the way there in both aoe and st, and if you wanna specialize you can at the expense of one of the 2 aspects. This is the case for specs like fury, havoc, enhancement, and many other. But it’s not the case for specs like frost.
And glacial fragments would definitely help mitigating this. But it definitely wouldn’t solve the problem completely.
I think frost just needs a talent re design to be honest, it’s too polarized between aoe and st, it’s one of the worst offenders in my opinion in fact.
5 Likes
I look at details and see that frost have the most degenerate one button rotation already with ice lance doing the most of dmg even in aoe situations.
Yea it’s disgusting.
1 Like
I could live with that, I could live with that in SL too. We can’t have everything good. But right now, I can’t see anything good.
With the Glacial Fragments legendary, I felt somewhat competitive (even only I played at the +15M range), and executing the “one button” mongo rotation still felt satisfying, and nobody cared at all. I mean if you could bring the numbers and you also had some utility, you got the invite.
Now we miss the damage (the most important part), so we are not desired in the groups that much.
I also feel being carried all the time I play with others. I have seen logs where frost mage does 95% parse and being destroyed by a 65% parse meta spec. Bad game design.
Edit: Oh, and why are we doomed to skip entire seasons until we reach the crit cap? I mean it’s a game changing mechanism, but you are locked out of it, because in the first half of the expansion, you can’t get enough stats from gear to make it work properly.
6 Likes
I support the Glacial Fragments return, but as a separate ability instead of being tied to Ice Lance again. It would both prevent Ice Lance from being overloaded with effects and allow to give Glacial Fragments ability bigger and reasonable damage on its own, as it would not need to take into account base Ice Lance damage and its Splitting Ice cleave.
To make it synergize with other parts of Frost tree, Glacial Fragments ability damage can be modified by most talents that modify Ice Lance damage and it should be able to consume FoF procs to count targets as frozen (to provide synergy with Freezing Winds).
This would still give Frost Mages an uncapped ranged AoE ability to use when it is beneficial and allow Frost Mages to adjust to pack’s size:
- Small pack? Put them into Orb / Blizzard and cleave with Splitting Ice modified Ice Lances.
- Big pack? Put them into Orb / Blizzard and hit with Glacial Fragments ability.
I also think that putting Concentrated Coolness PVP talent’s Orb placement somewhere into PVE tree (into Everlasting Frost node or even baseline Frozen Orb effect) would be a massive QoL feature for Frost’s AoE and should be implemented as well.
2 Likes
It’s all unnecessary and would overcomplicate things. Most classes are Ok with 1-2 extra buttons for way better AoE dps than frost, we already have: Ice Lance, Frozen Orb, Blizzard, Ice Nova (Comet Storm from talents), and when Orb is on cd, we have Blizzard (and that mongo Fae melee ability) to reduce Orb cd, we press Frostbolt or Flurry as a filler.
In it’s original form, Glacial Fragments could allow frost mages to be less dependent on Orb and Blizzard cd (talents didn’t even work like as they do now) and you could mongo spam normal Ice Lances under a Blizzard and still had extra dmg without Orb.
It also had the effect (with both normal and empowered Ice Lance), that it triggered the effect from both of your Ice Lances, so both your primary and secondary targets had the extra effect of the other. It’s called “funnel” damage if I know correctly.
I believe it was the reason to reduce the 2nd Ice Lance (from the cleave) to be 65% of the main one, instead of 80% (which was given us back recently), because this “funnel” damage with the Glacial Fragments would have been over the top.
I also remember, that we were in the same sorry state AoE-wise as we are now, but our first Legendary was the Glacial Fragments one to get, and my M+ and Torghast dmg became “normalized” after getting it.
1 Like
The reason why I think GF should be a separate ability is close to things you posted - if GF would be tied to Ice Lance, it both might lead to Splitting Ice getting nerfed again (as Frost’s 2 target cleave would become stronger as well, because GF effect would be procced) and Glacial Fragments’ own damage would also be intentionally kept low, because Ice Lance and its second shard do their own damage. As Frost could use help mainly with AoE damage against big number of enemies, I think it is preferrable to get a stronger unlimited target AoE ability than addition to Ice Lance cleave against any number of targets bigger than 1 that might also lead to Splitting Ice nerfs.
And I said, it would overcomplicate things, because there is Fury warrior with a simple base rotation (build and spend) and it cleaves the same way it does st dmg, it needs only to use Whirlwind on every 3rd (or 5th with talent) global and just press the same buttons for 300% dps output. It can also specialize to Whirlwind.
Also there is Blade Flurry or Trick Shots.
They don’t have to think and overcomplicate for proper dmg output.
Mage is already overcomplicated with RoP (except frost that can happily live with IF) and it’s damage is just garbage on a casual level.
Check out raider.io for timed runs, +15 and up keys. Even as arcane, you get half of the player numbers participating, than the other meta specs. Also there is enhancement shaman with almost the same population as arcane, and the shaman also has access to BL effect.
Without Time Warp, our place would be even worse. I would seriously thinking about dumping my mage and play prot warrior for the rest of the expansion.
1 Like
I’ve been thinking about our discussion and about a way to both not overcomplicate things and avoid getting Splitting Ice nerfed and I think there is a way for that.
Blizzard could add Glacial Fragments with such effect:
“If you use Ice Lance against enemy standing in Blizzard and this Blizzard affects at least 3 enemies, your initial Ice Lance explodes and damages all enemies within X yds of target (excluding the target itself) for Y% of Spell Power Frost damage”
With such effect:
- There is no need to nerf Splitting Ice, as 2 target cleave remains the same
- All components of Frost AoE damage rotation scale based on number of targets with 3+ targets (current iteration does not scale total damage of Ice Lance, as it always hits up to 2 targets for the same amount of damage)
- You do not need to take Glacial Fragments for maximizing 2 target cleave, so no need to waste an extra talent point on it.
That seems like a viable compromise.
4 Likes
I was thinking about the same thing, I completely agree. We need something that automatically “triggers” multitarget cleave when it hits 3 or more targets.
And after that, we can just play around some AoE freeze effect for 1-2 extra crits with Ice Nova (which is a half Blizzard dmg on an instant cast).
2 Likes
I guess it’s fine as long as you have something to make up for it, like glacial fragments.
2 Likes
What should have been done:
- Splitting Ice now hit 20 aditional targets for 150% normal damage
- Blizzard radius increased by 40 yards and its damage is quintupled
- Frozen Orb now swirls at relativistic speeds generating FoF proc every 5ms
- Frost mage presence decreases enemies movement speed by 99% while within 1000 yards
Seriously now, I’m playing frost mage myself and its not THAT bad at all. And it scales even better thanks to mastery stat value increase.
Lol. Even with that dmg of blizzard will be very minor 
1 Like
Aoe is bad because simply blizzard and frozen orb damage is non existant. How are you supposed to deal aoe damage with aoe abilities that outdps’d by ice lance which hits 2 targets? Simply tripple blizzard and frozen orbs damage there is your fix for aoe.
3 Likes
They reduced the dmg orb and blizzard do because of its scaling on large packs. They effectively took power out of orb and blizzard and put it into ice lance. Frosts large aoe isnt amazing but its still not bad.
In the meantime on your average 4 target pug pull your ice lances do tons of dmg. And all those ice lances are giving you cdr on IV while your orb and blizzard don’t. You need IL spam to make the spec work giving more IVs and more RoPs.
Dmg is fine its just has a different strength now. Also its the only AI, TW bot spec that doesnt rely on a beefy target to stay alive long enough for your cds to work.
Are you serious? People pull 3-400k aoes while frost has hard time cracking out 100-150k.
3 Likes
Yea this is basically what’s happening.
Frost does good damage on low and very high targets. Good, but not excellent.
And as i pointed out before even if frost aoe was god tier, it still wouldn’t work that well in practice, because of how stationary it is.
But yea i wouldn’t consider frost aoe great at all.
The problem is, most of aoe is between 4 to 10 targets range, and that’s exactly where frost is bad.
Ice lance is not aoe, it’s 2 target cleave, blizzard is straight up bad, it’s just there for frozen orb reset, and frozen orb only really works when the enemy is stationary and you have a lot of targets, same for blizzard.
It’s just not a good design.
4 Likes