Imo, the 9.0.5 change for Radiant Spark should be the magnitude part increase, instead of the DoT.
I chose Kyrian, because of the look, the ability is ranged one, and has more frequent, intuitive usage than the others (Venthyr and Necrolord is full of corpses, death, darkness, graves, abominations etc., NF ability is melee - who had this terrible idea, to be in melee as a ranged caster??). I don’t play at a highly competitive level. I don’t have the time and dedication for it, and I intend to keep this game a game, instead of a job.
Anyway, as frost, I can play Radiant Spark with both Brain Freeze and Ray of Frost (my favourite spell, despite it’s “suboptimal”), and RS gives a nice boost to both of them. This little boost could be a bit better (a bit more than 10%, like 12 or 15) for each tick, and I’m sure more frost (and arcane) mages would choose Kyrian.
I can see most other specs having insane single target bursts in short time windows, it’s the most noticable on bosses w/o tyrannical, when the fights could end within a minute. So the single target Kyrian ability could help a bit in these situations.
Despite this issue frost has (lack of burst), I can compete with the other classes (at my level of gameplay) in the overall M+ numbers, it’s just that little more burst I could use on bosses or on important st trash mobs (and pride).
There are alot of Frost/Arcane mages playing Kyrian tbh. It is indeed a very nice covenant to utilize Ray Of Frost with.
But as you correctly said, frost lacks burst. Using TV build can give you that burst on important AoE/cleave trash mobs. I switched to Necrolord because of that, so i can do HUGE burst when i need it.
In my ilvl (208 tam) when i pop everything (TW, Icy Veins, RoP, Deathborne, on use trinket, potion) i am pulling arround 18-20k on that 30 sec window. Which is more than enough to bring the boss down to arround 40% HP. Same thing on AoE trash mobs, if i pop everything (not TW ofc) it does huge damage.
Now if only Deathborne was a 2 minute CD instead of 3 then it would have the best synergy with Icy Veins. I just hope at somepoint they introduce a conduit that reduces Deathborne’s CD to much Icy Veins.
It really doesn’t though. Covenant choice will give you maybe a 1% difference in M+ but it’s really low on the priority of things you should be looking at, especially for Frost or Arcane. I am playing a Venthyr Arcane mage, with an ability that is literally useless in any aoe scenario, and still haven’t had a problem going up to M+18 while still topping the dmg meters.
Covenants are honestly quite well balanced and are all viable even going into higher keys or Mythic raiding.
You will have a lot more uptime on it in M+ as you get more stacks when an enemy dies and the time out of combat should be ideally very low.
Even then I still love the Nadja soulbind just for the aoe disorient on door of shadows. Just amazing in certain dungeons, especially Plaguefall.
Tbh, I think most of your on-demand burst comes from RoP (which I hate to use). Raw 40% increase for 24 seconds from 0% is a huge difference (I can tell when the game puts it into my face in Torghast, but I also have IF talented there from the start). But also arcane and fire has access to it, which is not a problem, and it’s also not a problem having “only” a haste cd as frost. However I could use a bit better magnitude increase from the Radiant Spark to have a little edge. Ofc it won’t compete with Combustion ever.
Can’t be sure if its just 1% or maybe more because when i was Venthyr i had gear arround 195ilvl and now i have 208, but what i’m talking about is situational. In a boss fight you get HUGE burst with Necrolord. It goes up to 23% increased primary stat just from Deathborne. Add to that Icy Veins, RoP, trinkets, potion and BL and you get some really amazing damage for 30 seconds. In a bossfight that lasts maximum 2 minutes thats absolutely huge.
Frost mage’s ST damage is our weakness. With Deathborne on bossfights it becomes really good. The bad thing is when there is a heavy movement fight where you lose alot of value from Deathborn, but if you utilize your shimmer and Alter Time its not much of a loss.
Here is an example.
Your tank pulls a group of 8 enemies. You have 20 stacks already from previous pull. You need 20 seconds to get to 40 stacks. If an enemy dies during that period you get 4 stacks instead of 2 per sec. The result is that you will get the buff at arround the end of the pull. And then you will have to build up your stacks again.
In a ST bossfight you will get the buff after 1,5 minute into the fight if you have no stacks at pull (which is usually the case). Most bossfights in M+ lasts arround 2 minutes except from bosses with downtime like last boss in PF.
Yes indeed, 40% damage increase is huge. Deathborne adds 23% to that.
Its really bad that we cannot freely switch covenants. If you could you would see that because Deathborne is on demand it can be more powerfull than Thrill Seeker and Mirrors of Torment in a M+ dungeon.
Mirrors of Torrment and Thrill seeker is really much better only in raids where you are constantly in combat where Thrill seeker acts just like incanter’s flow
I wouldn’t switch anyway (I listed my reasons above). Also I don’t know the math behind Deathborne, but it’s tooltip says it’s 10% increase. I can do 10-20-30-40% with Radiant Spark more frequently, I can combine it with at least 2 frost spells, and it’s low cd makes it more interesting. It can also help with aoe/cleave because of it’s interaction with Ice Lance and the legendary powers (Glacial Fragments and Freezing Winds).
Yes you are right i confused spell damage with spell power. Its 10% spell damage + 13% spell power from Emeni soulbind first row. Still its quite alot of damage increase.
Radiant spark is indeed very powerful, I haven’t tested in practice. The reason i prefer Deathborne over Radiant Spark is because Deathborne is also usefull on big aoe pulls.
If i wouldn’t pick Necrolord, Kyrian would be my choice over Venthyr for mythic+
Yes they are. The problem is that unless blizzard desides to make BF stack and FoF to not consume BF you will overlap procs or use FoF on BF too many times. And tbh it happened to me way too many times while i was Venthyr.
Yes it will, but it hurts more when it overlaps a guaranteed proc. Its like immediately negating the purpose of MoT.
The biggest problem of frost spec is RNG procs. It hurts when you cast frostbolts endlessly without getting procs. It hurts more when you procs overlaps.
You’re not really getting more overlaps tho, you just getting more proccs which makes it happen more but you’re also gonna have more proccs with no overlap.
No, i try to track the proccs, but I just try to dump my FoF before I brain freeze and if i do get a overlapping procc I just truck on and accept the price of playing frost right now.
