Frostmage current state in Shadowlands:
After a very weak start to the expansion due to several nerfs implemented just before expansion launch, frostmage had a very rough time for the majority of the patch, being dead last in the castle nathria charts and extremely weak in M+.
As time went by, the two aura buffs we received certainly changed things, we’re not a “top of the meters” dps spec but i feel as though we’re no longer at the bottom of the table and quite good in M+ even, but theres still some major flaws pointed out since the beginning on the spec that blizzard still hasn’t looked into and its been a long time already, but since frostmages now are happy with the buffs and being playable, they dont look into requesting a change nearly as much as at the beginning simply because the spec became “Playable”.
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The first thing is the procs conflict and i think this is the flaw mostly pointed out by frostmages from all around, our fingers of frost and brain freeze procs are constantly fighting eachother and there are no solutions to this problem yet, especially during mirrors of torment and it makes the playstyle very clunky not to mention the potential damage that you’re losing everytime you need to throw a fingers of frost into a target that already has brain freeze, it feels horrible.
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The second thing is brain freeze allowing us to crit our two next spells, due to the playstyle of the spec currently, frostmages essentially always need to fire two icelances after hitting the target with flurry, but this feels very weird and the only way it provides smooth “gameplay” is at very high levels of haste, also im not sure if other people share the same feeling, but the GCD of icelances when you’re trying to optimize these procs also makes it feel very clunky, for instance:
Fingers of frost proc -> into flurry -> into two icelances = why did it take us that long to do this combo, why does it feel so clunky? it feels as if our character is standing still literally waiting for spell queues (because thats what its doing) and it makes it not fun. -
Rune of power: frost is just not a burst based spec, needing to limit its movement or cancel its long list of successive spell queues through the procs, with a burst based talent makes the playstyle also feel clunky. its not like a fire or arcane mage where you feel like when you drop that rune you’re spells are gonna chunk, especially the third rune of power after the first one from icyveins when things are on cooldown but you’re still meant to use it while nothing is up, it feels very… bad.
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Dependancy on borrowed powers:
Slick ice (cause standing still casting frostbolts while having a million procs is fun… not. very boring legendary);
icy propulsion (if you need to deal with a mechanic whilst using icy veins or you’re in an M+ with icy veins up but theres no pulls going on, your icyveins and overall damage goes from hero to zero real quick, i would much rather see icyveins properly buffed and being more than a “ripoff heroism” than to have the ability to use it more frequently provided i can consistently hit targets and generate crits for its cooldown reduction. to clarify on this second one, im not saying frostmages cant do damage without icyveins, im saying that you will not do nearly as much damage as if you had icyveins);
The last time frostmages were in a good spot raiding wise (And im sure some people will debate this and tell me im wrong, but truth is you can literally go to warcraftlogs and look up statistical history) was back in Legion.
edit: even though i fully believe we’ll soon be in a very good spot, i still feel like we’re gonna shine for all the wrong reasons
Legion’s “borrowed” powers brought a lot of what should have been made baseline for frostmages and was instead turned into talents. Ebonbolt is a shadow of its legion self, Icelance cleave being a talent instead of a passive is absolutely horrible, it makes you forced to pick it, not to mention its recent nerfs because again borrowed power from glacial fragments but we won’t revert these changes after shadowlands cause no one actually properly looks into this. Chain reaction is a scuffed version of the legion legendary that again makes you forced to pick this talent and it only gives us a max of 15% extra damage really. its boring. And the damage of these icelances i feel is very weak, because it only scales off of vers, mastery has no relation what so ever to this playstyle which is an entirely different issue on its own, similar to glacial spike being so damn dependant on mastery.
all in all probably harsh criticism, but i look at how frostmage used to be before all of these borrowed powers and it makes me feel pretty bad about it.
and lets be honest, people are gonna feel like they demanded too much lately and received too much with recent aura buffs (twice) but these aura buffs not only made the spec simply “Playable” (frost really isnt that far ahead in castle nathria logs, still bottom of the table statistically) like they dont address the real issues of the spec.
Small things like storing 3 icelances like you used to, brain freeze having a higher proc rate and hitting harder rather than allowing us to crit twice from it, frost mage cleave being passive, so many small things taken over the years.
When are we getting something new and exciting? giving frostmages boring legendaries like slick ice “because you have to give us something, but we will put no passion what so ever into actually playing the spec and seeing if its enjoyable”
Ebonchill (legion artifact weapon) had more thought put into it than the entire spec put together right now, and it showed, legion frostmage was extremely enjoyable. Honestly, take a good look at what you gave us then, and what you’re giving us now by just looking at what ebonchill used to give, you’ll see what i mean imediatly. if that was baseline, even if nerfed it would make the spec a lot more enjoyable.