TLDR at the end.
First of all I would like to thank the developers for listening to the community and being so swift in making a lot of changes to the Mage talent tree. It feels good to be heard. There are, however, still some major issues imo that needs to be attended to in good time before release, regarding both the title and the general design of Frost.
Frost Mage, like any other ranged spec, should imo be rewarded for keeping melee at a distance. On the flip side: a melee that manages to stay on top of a caster should be rewarded for it. This is where Snowdrift in its design is odd. For it to be effective, you have to actively pursue going into someones face.
I realize this is sort of the same for the DB>Poly/RoF-drill, but in that case, you are soft-CCing the target, and they will never be at risk of dying. A melee being genuinely afraid for their life because a Mage is sitting on top of them is just weird. They should be afraid if they can’t stay on top of them. In a way, Frost Mage might become the ultimate melee counter now, because if you don’t stay on top of them, they will wear you down, but if you manage to get on top of them, they will stun you and kill you. Not healthy gameplay imo.
Deep Freeze, Fingers of Frost and Brain Freeze
Originally, FoF was a buff on yourself, and made your next 2 spell(hits) act as if the target was frozen. In retail, it makes your next 2 Ice Lances exclusively act as if the target was frozen. The Winter’s Chill effect from your BF procs (Flurry) has taken old FoF’s effect, but instead of being a buff to yourself, it is a debuff placed on the target. There has been some discussion in the community in recent expansions regarding these two effects overlapping, resulting in the inevitable creation of procs you literally have no means of spending. This is where I think Deep Freeze could come in and potentially clean up the design of Frost.
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Make FoF the same as it was back in WotLK. Being able to choose what spells you want to spend the procs on, gives a meaningful freedom of choice, instead of “guess I’ll Ice Lance again”. Even if you spend them on Ice Lance or Frostbolt 99% of the time, the option to spend them on something else (Blast Wave or Fire Blast for example) FEELS very nice, and might even prove useful (given that these abilities deal some damage baseline).
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New Brain Freeze: Activates Flurry for X seconds. Flurry deals X damage and slows the target by 50%, acts as if the target was frozen, and applies the Winter’s Chill debuff for X seconds. Winter’s Chill increases the effectiveness of your snares on the target by X%, and allows you to cast Deep Freeze on them. Deep Freeze encases the target in ice, stunning them for 5 seconds. The target counts as frozen for the duration. Deals X damage to targets permanently immune to stuns.
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Prune abilities that A: has no natural place in the Frost rotation, and B: has been requested removed by the community for some time.
- Ice Nova: Feels clunky to use, and has in general not seen much use since its introduction.
- Comet Storm: Same as above. Has definitely seen more use, but more for a lack of damage on your other abilities than a feeling of yes, I love this ability.
- Ray of Frost: Boring design, imo. Just another way of generating FoF procs.
- Glacial Spike: While I don’t inherently dislike the design of this ability, it’s problematic in the way it forces your other abilities to not be as strong as they should be (if viable).
With these changes, Frost Mage would lose a lot of tools. They are, however, tools I personally feel the spec doesn’t really need in order to feel fulfilling to play. How many ways of shattering do we really need? Think about it: the more ways we have of doing shatter combos, the less impact each shatter combo must have, just from a balancing standpoint. Now, I would much rather have a few ways of shattering someone, and each shatter feeling good, than having 11, and each singular shatter not being as impactful. And yes, there are actually 11 ways you can set up a shatter in Dragonflight atm:
- Frost Nova, Pet Nova, FoF, BF, Winter’s Chill, Ice Nova, Snowdrift, Ring of Frost, Glacial Spike, Freezing Cold (new Cone talent), Frostbite.
Now, let’s see how many ways we have of generating FoF procs:- Frostbolt, Frozen Orb, Ray of Frost.
On top of these abilities we also have Frost Bomb, Fire Blast, Arcane Explosion, Cone of Cold and Blizzard. There does not exist a single iteration of ANY spec in the entire history of WoW that has had this many tools for dealing damage. You could easily remove a large chunk of these without it being a problem, which would in turn make the spec a lot easier to both manage and balance. We have gotten more buttons to press, without the pruning of buttons we don’t want to press. This is the biggest flaw in the Frost design.
So what would my idea of Dragonflight Frost Mage look like?
The following spells/effects could set up a shatter:
- Frost Nova, Pet Nova, FoF, BF, Ring of Frost, Deep Freeze, Frostbite.
- Each offensive spell would have a chance of generating FoF (so it couldn’t proc off of Ice Barrier slow).
The following spells would be used to combo the shatter:
- Frostbolt, Ice Lance, Cone of Cold, Flurry (which in turn would activate Deep Freeze), Frost Bomb.
- FoF would be spent on whichever spells you preferred.
Other than this you would have your utility spells and defensive/offensive CD’s, and a few other damaging abilities. PLEASE, Blizzard, prune the spec. The spec is so vast that even if it performs well, you’re just a small patch away from having to learn not only another playstyle, but another rotation. Will it be Frostbolt-based? Ice Lance spam? Burst with Glacial Spike? Burst with Orb/Nova/Comet Storm? CLEARLY this is too much.
What are your thoughts on this?
TLDR; Snowdrift promotes bad gameplay; scrap it. Make Brain Freeze activate Flurry, which activates Deep Freeze. Make FoF the same as in WotLK. Prune clunky, uninteresting Frost abilities (Comet Storm, Ice Nova, Ray of Frost, Glacial Spike) and focus on the core abilities of the spec (Frostbolt, Cone of Cold, Ice Lance, Flurry, Blizzard). Frozen Orb can stay, and Frost Bomb is a welcome reintroduction.