I just got back into the game and to change things up I started playing frost for this expansion. I usually keep myself away from PTR these days but I couldn’t resist eavesdropping on the balance changes and saw Rune of Power got removed
My question is, as an avid fire player (or was at least), frost’s damage from what I’ve seen is already low enough (takes time to build up which is a pain in levelling) and without RoP what exactly do we win back? Some talent adjustments on Glacial Spike and Ray of Frost maybe but the baseline damage is already low enough that without the damage buff from RoP I wonder how well frost will fare in the future patches.
Supposedly getting dps buffs to make up for rop removal, but way they are nerfing it on ptr atm and being very vauge on reasons for screwing us over on dps yet again, mostly a wait and see aproach.
Someone at blizz end seems hell bent on making mage useless for higher content and outside tiny 0.1% that run pre mades and pretend our dps is fine.
Idk what they thinking, but those nerfs are huge. 10-12% on everything? I dont like RoP but to remove it and remove the ‘‘compensation’’ buffs too? But not only this 12%, i tried fire today and they nerfed lot of little things too. First they nerfed our Ignite spred target numbers then Feel the Burn was 3x4% mastery now 3x2%, Firemind nerfed to form 6% bonus int to 3%. So what is this rework after all? More like a nerf not a buff. Ok, Unleashed Inferno looks good, but just think about it. Its good because of the +CDR but the damage? Sure we need the bonus damage while Combustion is active, but we had it before from RoP, and We could use RoP every 45sec +shifting power cdr/ Combustion on use RoP, it was much longer 40% damage uptime than this 50% inside combustion only. So i dont really know why they nerfing other talents too. Maybe they want to force us to use Flamestrike side on aoe but this side is still weak as ****, we have great CDR with Inferno+Kinding but flamestrike is just a waste of CDR, because not working with either of those talents. Living Bomb is weak too, dont worth to waste a GCD on it. And SKB is a dead talent now whiteout RoP and whiteout any bonus damage.
Sorry, i see u asked about frost, frost looked good, but they nerfed it too. -12% on everything and much more on Glacial Spike, either damage and cast time. This new ray of frost… Idk not a bad idea, but its just boring if u ask me. We will see it on live but now i dont really know. I was hyped when i saw the first notes but after this nerfs? But frost’s mastery scaling with more spells not just with orb and icicles like before, so its a buff after all.
For Frost at least, we’ve gotten a good number of buffs to offset the loss: -
Icy Veins now has a damage increase component via the elemental, it’s also on a lower CD with slightly less haste, and we’ve now got a talent for 8% baseline haste.
Mastery: Icicles now buffs the damage of Frozen Orb, Comet Storm, Blizzard, Ray of Frost, Glacial Spike and Ice Lance, rather than just Frozen Orb.
Despite the ‘‘nerfs’’, all our abilities and talents with the exception of Flurry, Wintertide, Deep Shatter and Lonely Winter are still hitting harder than they are on live, and that’s without considering the Mastery: Icicles buff.
The nerf to Flurry and part of Lonely Winter is largely compensated for by Brain Freeze having a 5% extra chance to trigger and buffing Flurry’s damage by 65% instead 50%.
Pretty sure most of the nerfs are aimed at disuading us from using that build where you just spam Frostbolt.
