Since the start of shadowlands untill our day fire has been the best spec for mage in dungeons, raids, torghast and pvp as well, from what I understand frost is supposed to be the early expansion favorite spec and then slowly gets out shined by fire becuse of how frost scales vs fire, well that’s not the case at all in shadowlands frost is very far from being the best as I mentioned and here is some complaints/ suggestions
1- Aoe : why is glacial fragments target capped and blizzard isn’t an instant cast with frozen orb as a passive not a talent, fire mages gets to freely cast flame strike 90% of the time with almost no drawbacks for frost you have to lose a very good talent and not to mention blizzard damage is nothing in comparison and it’s a 5 sec spell if the tank decided to move for some reason then you’re just standing there almost doing nothing, so you have to actually mind where you blizzard and when just to be able to spam those ice lances and still do less damage than a fire mage jumping around casting flame strike over and over.
2- single target : first of all mirrors of torment is nothing compared to shifting powers that even mdi players just cast it whenever it’s off cool down and even with no mobs around, that’s how good it is, I don’t know if it’s just me but I always notice that I only get 2 flurry procs per cast which is a 1.5 mins CD compared to the 1 min CD of shifting power, and why is icey veins on a such a high CD, I get it lasts longer than combustion but still it’s a very reliable source of damage and should be at least close to combustion, fire mages can have there combustion up almost every pull on both bosses and trash, while a frost mage has to actually be mindful if this is a good time to use the 3 mins CD or it won’t be back in time before the next pack or boss, both can have thier CD reduced, why not make icey veins 2.5 mins CD, that’s more appropriate.
And don’t get me started on scorch and it’s overpowered execute phase talents when boss reaches 30% , you get free guaranteed crits and 150% extra damage on scorch and not only that but you also get a 30% movement Increase on top of being able to cast while moveing and doing more damage just in case you had trouble raiding???
My point is frost needs more, it’s the specs time to shine and it’s not even on top 5 specs for any of the shadowlands content, the spec will have it time and fire will be back eventually and I got no issues with the scaling part, it seems like blizzard thinks frost is still overpowered from whatever patch that was and want to keep it under control ?, I know blizzard can’t nerf fire to be unplayable or not an S-tier , I mean we have ptr for a reason, just try to work stuff out your way and give it a go.
Actually Frozen Orb --> Blizzard --> icelance spam is more consistent and since Blizzard lowers the CD of Frozen orb every time it hits a target makes it a better AoE rotation in theory. The reality though is different because of the damage output of Flamestrike + the uncapped flamepatch where in huge pulls fire is miles ahead from any other spec in the game. On 2-4 targets though Frost’s AoE is much better and will probably do more damage. Btw Blizzard is a 2 sec base time cast not a 5 sec. I agree with the tank moving mobs out of Blizzard though.
I’ve found out that using Necrolord covenant (if you are a M+ focused player) is much better in pretty much every case inside a M+ scenario. Lining up Deathborne (which gets buffed in 9.0.5) with Icy Veins, Rune of Power and any other trinket you may have gives your ST damage a great boost + makes it THE BEST ability on cleave boss fights.
Knowing your way arround the dungeon you’re running you can use deathborne on hard packs (there are many of those in M+) which will boost your overall damage by quite alot.
Also Icy Propulsion conduit lowers your icy veins CD whenever you crit by 1.05 sec at rank 5. If you use that smartly you can have Icy Veins up every almost 1,5 minute. And theoriticaly at max level this conduit will pretty much make us use icy veins every 50 seconds which is simply HUGE.
Nevetheless fire is still miles ahead from the other 2 specs. Be that because they are bursty? Be that because of their damage profile or because of their execute phase? Dunno tbh. Although nerfing fire seems “fair” to all other classes and specs in this game, i wouldnt like to see fire spec getting nerfed.
I would prefer if frost got buffed, also I don’t wanna change from venthyr cuz it’s so cool plus it’s a very solid option for frost, but still shifting power is way better, also usually I get my icey veins on 40-50 CD with big pulls but still that’s a very rare occasion while fire can still reduce his combustion CD with conduits and shifting powers to like what 20-30 sec maybe 40 if unlucky, icey veins should be a 2.5 mins and they should remove the cap from frozen orb and glacial fragments, I can work with blizzard not being insta cast with orbs got used to it already
Dont forget that combustions lasts 10 seconds and can’t be extended. Icy veins lasts 20sec and it can be extended by ALOT. I’ve never actually count how much the buff is up, but once i’ve popped ALL my CDs (for the lol’s) and when BL faded i still had icy veins up, and bloodlust lasts 40 seconds.
Frost is probably gonna scale much better than fire this expac imo. IV can already get over 50% uptime and will only get higher.
Fire’s sustained ST is good but not amazing. It’s power comes from burst windows like sludgefist or deleting adds on Sire. Same in m+, its burst aoe is great if the pulls are big and they live about 10s. Sustained aoe frost would kick its butt… i think.
In 9.1 I can see a situation where frost is used when there’s constant uptime and fire’s used when there’s downtime or burst windows are needed.
