Midnight changes to Frost – a plea of an open world player

Classes Mage
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I’d like to start by saying that I do like the new class design philosophy, and I love the fact that since TWW open world is getting more and more love with delves, and future Prey system (as well as experiments like heroic world tier in Legion Remix).

Changes announced for frost mages in Midnight are generally very promising - fewer damaging keybinds (with Glacial Spike baked into Frostbolt and Comet Storm baked into Blizzard) and simplified mechanics.

I’d like to quote some of the Midnight alpha development notes:

We’re taking a pass to reduce button and aura bloat in the Mage core tree. We’re also consolidating defensive power to simplify the landscape of Mage defensives and make them more approachable.

Frost Mage is receiving a gameplay overhaul in Midnight targeted at simplifying their rotation by removing competing spell priorities and giving each spell a much clearer place in Frost’s rotation. In Midnight, Frost Mage features building and spending debuff gameplay centered around two reimagined mechanics: Freezing and Shattering. Frostbolt and Flurry apply stacks of Freezing and Ice Lance consumes them to deal significant bonus damage. Alongside this core mechanical change, we’re doing an overhaul of Frost’s talent tree targeted at reducing button bloat, reinforcing rotational clarity and priorities, while also removing a significant number of auras. One such change is the removal of Icy Veins as Frost Mage’s burst cooldown, now being replaced with Ray of Frost. Our vision for Frost Mage in Midnight involves a consistent damage profile with smaller peaks relative to the burstier specializations of Arcane and Fire, but a higher consistent damage output. We feel that Frost Mage has historically been deemed as the more approachable of the 3 mage specs and we like that for Frost’s identity, Our goal for the rework is for that perception to continue while also offering new Mastery for those players who heavily invest in playing Frost.

(emphasis mine).

Now I’d like to point out that out of three mage specs frost was always considered the go to spec for open world – primarily due to its extensive control abilities – to slow and freeze opponents in place. This core identity of frost mage has been in wow since vanilla (with mage aoe farming being one of the best examples of that).

Unfortunately, this core identity of a frost mage, as a ranged spellcaster keeping his enemies at a distance is being severely undermined in current Midnight alpha:

  1. Glacial Spike had its root removed

  2. Frostbite talent no longer gives our spells a change to root enemies (that’s a talent with history dating back to vanilla, and probably the most significant reduction of our control abilities)

  3. Improved Ice Nova and Ice ward are now on a choice node

  4. Frigid Winds talent removed

  5. Ice Nova is now a choice node against Freezing Cold. Ice Nova now replaces Cone of Cold – meaning You can’t have both.

These are drastic changes to our control capabilities – removal of Frigid Winds means that the targets we slow will come to us quicker. Removal of Glacial Spike roots as well as Frostbire random roots amplifies that effect. Improved Ice Nova and Ice ward being now on a choice node limits our ability to escape once the mobs reach us.

For open world players like me this means the content we play will get significantly more difficult than it is now.

On top of that, frost mages lose virtually all self healing (Diverted Energy talent removed, Cryo-Freeze talent removed) which means that we have to use our defensives proactively, anticipating incoming damage. Once our health is lost, we can’t really recover.

With that being said, while our rotation in Midnight does seem more approachable, playing frost mage as a whole seems more daunting than it currently is.

Also, our class fantasy seems to have changed from keeping enemies at a distance and blasting them with spells, to getting smashed by mobs in melee, while trying to get a cast off – this is not how a mage is being advertised on a character creation screen.

This is especially concerning with the addition of new, harder content that can be tackled solo (delves) or that is designed specifically to be a solo-only challenge (prey).

If anyone from Blizzard reads this – please, take open world players into consideration while making class changes. Not everyone has a tank at his side while playing the game.

3 Likes
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Good luck to all those who keep playing mage in this “melee” festa, now mage is going to be like piñata without mobility slows and blast wave getting one-shot, needing to hardcast to do 3 million hits but getting 10 million aim shots and chaos bolt which will be impossible play in pvp. This expansion is already making me feel sick playing frost mage because they’re overnerfed i don’t want to imagine in midnight nowdays everyone is a mage except mage at this point they should give us plate armor and two-handed swords

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Well, I guess my plea has fallen on deaf ears, as the current build further reduced Mages control abilities with Glacial Spike’s snare reduced from 70% to 50%.

Since icicles will be passively generated in Midnight in and out of combat, we could have hoped to start most fights with a nice 70% speed reduction on the enemy. Seems that’s gone now. And with the removal of Frigid Winds I mentioned before, we’re now stuck at 50% speed reduction (the only exception would be cone of cold).

Blizzard, please, reconsider this changes! I would hate to have to reroll to a tank or hunter, who somehow always manage to come on top regarding open world/solo play viability :frowning:

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Icicles are outdated mechanic and should be removed: we don’t generate them by any action, we don’t spend them… There is no point in saving it - just replace it with simple CD (switch FB with GS every X seconds)

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Personally I’d like Blizzard to just remove Glacial Spike and increase the base damage of Frostbolt at this point.

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I severely dislike their direction with frost mage. That satisfying feeling of control through frost into shattering people looks to be completely gone, and the CC is nerfed into the ground, all because some M+ high-end sweats got annoyed that their slow-spec slows stuff.

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It feels to me like the rework of “Frostbite” was mainly due to PvP. It was completely optional, and pve builds from popular sites didn’t recommend it.

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It’s not just that. It’s that Shatter is something you could do to mobs that were frozen or you had some buff that made you treat it like frozen, and every single ability except Ice Lance freezes or at least slows your opponent.

That was the whole point of the spec…

As far as I know, Shatter and freezes don’t even interact anymore, which begs the question: Why even call it Shatter?

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I’m shelving my mage for sure until it gets redesigned again, and it will, because hardly anyone is going to stick around to play this dogsh*t class. Blizzard will only realize this redesign is bad once the % of people that play the class drop down.

Mages lost far too much, while every other class lost only 2 relevant things at most. In the case of warlock, it even gained a whole lot. All of mage’s defensives are dispellable. It’s going to be a sh*tshow mage graveyard in PvP, as well as PvE

If the goal for them was to simplify mage for ease of use on handheld controllers, they are delusional. The class is just overall worse and there’s no point in playing it when some other class can do the job far easier and faster. The only pros to picking a mage are blink and ice block utility. Thats it. Everything else it does worse.

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ye never liked glacial spike tbh

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ye thats the core issue with wow, still made around m+ and 5 players that enjoy +30

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Why call it shatter? Idk, I think Festering Wounds sounds cooler. They should have stuck with that

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