Our Frost Mage Writer, Dorovon, breaks down every aspect of this rework including Playstyle, Talents, and more. If you’re wondering whether you should dust off your Frost Mage in 10.1.5, then look no further as we talk all things Frost.
- MAGE
Take a look at the developer’s notes in the Mage feedback thread.
- All ability damage increased by 15%.
- Invisibility is now learned by all specializations at level 16.
- Incanter’s Flow now replaces Invisibility in the Class tree.
- Shifting Power has been moved to Incanter’s Flow previous location.
- Rune of Power and Meteor have been removed.
- New Talent: Ice Cold – Ice Block now reduces all damage taken by 70% for 6 seconds but no longer grants Immunity, prevents movement, attacks, or casting spells. Does not incur the Global Cooldown.
Ice Cold is located on Shifting Power’s previous location on the talent tree.
New Talent: Mass Barrier – Cast Prismatic/Blazing/Ice Barrier (based on your specialization) on yourself and 3 nearby allies. 2 minute cooldown.
- Mass Barrier is located as a choice node with Mass Invisibility.
New Talent: Mass Invisibility – You and your allies within 40 yards instantly become invisible for 10 seconds. Taking any action will cancel the effect. Does not affect allies in combat.
- Mass Invisibility located as a choice node with Mass Barrier.
- Developers’ note: The PvP Talent for Arcane will be updated in a future PTR build.
Accumulate Shielding is now a 1 rank talent (was 2). Barrier cooldowns now recharge 30% faster while the shield persists at rank 1.
Accumulate Shielding now connects to the Time Anomaly/Temporal Warp choice node.
Time Manipulation is now a 1 rank talent (was 2). Now reduces the cooldown of your loss of control abilities by 2 seconds at rank 1.
Time Manipulation now connects to the Time Anomaly/Temporal Warp choice node.
Displacement now heals the caster for 20% of their maximum health when returning to the Blink location.
Winter’s Protection now reduces the cooldown of Ice Block by 30 seconds per rank.
Displacement is now located after Flow of Time.
Greater Invisibility now replaces Invisibility when talented and is located below Temporal Velocity.
Mass Barrier is now cast on yourself and 4 allies (was 3).
Fixed an issue with Prismatic Barrier applying to more than 4 allies.
Mass Invisibility duration increased to 12 seconds (was 10 seconds).
Diverted Energy’s barriers now heal you for 20/40% of the damage absorbed (was 10/20%).
Flow of Time reduces the cooldown of Blink by 2/4 seconds (was 1/2 seconds).
Temporal Velocity’s movement speed duration increased to 3 seconds and 5 seconds after using Blink and Alter Time, respectively.
Temporal Velocity’s movement speed after Blinking increased by 10/20% (was 5/10%).
Incantation of Swiftness now increases movement speed by 40/80% for both Invisibility and Greater Invisibility.
Ice Cold can no longer be dispelled.
Fixed an issue that caused Displacement to replace Invisibility and Greater Invisibility.
Incanter’s Flow damage now flows between 2% and 10% (was 4% and 20%).
Frost
- Developer’s note: The Frost Mage changes listed below are currently in a state of flux and are partially implemented for this week’s PTR deploy. The in-game talent tree and mage abilities will not be fully updated with the changes below, but will be for next week’s deploy. We’re detailing these changes in advance to get early feedback despite some of these not being testable in the current build.
- Blizzard has been removed from the talent tree is and is now learned baseline at level 12.
- Cold Snap has been removed from the talent tree and is now learned baseline at level 19.
- New Talent: Winter’s Blessing – Your Haste is increased by 3% and you gain 10% more of the Haste stat from all sources.
- Winter’s Blessing is located on row 4 in Cold Snap’s previous location.
- Wintertide’s Frostbolt damage reduced to 5/10% (was 7/15%).
- Comet Storm damage increased by 10%.
- Comet Storm has swapped positions with Glacial Assault and now available after Perpetual Winter on row 6.
- Glacial Assault damage increased by 15% and now also causes your Comet Storm to increase the damage enemies take from you by 2%, up to 10% for 10 seconds.
- Glacial Assault has swapped positions with Comet Storm and now available after Deep Shatter and Comet Storm on row 8.
- Splitting Ice now causes Ebonbolt and Glacial Spike to deal 100% damage to a second nearby target.
- Splitting Ice’s tooltip now correctly causes Ice Lance and Icicles tooltip to display that it deals 80% damage to secondary targets.
- Deep Shatter now causes Frostbolts to deal 10/25% increased damage to Frozen targets (was 20/40%).
- Ebonbolt damage increased by 15% and cooldown reduced to 30 seconds.
- Glacial Spike damage increased by 10%.
- Chain Reaction has moved to row 8 directly after Icy Veins in Ray of Frosts old position.
- Slick Ice has replaced Icy Propulsion in the tree on row 8.
- Thermal Void now also extends Icy Veins an additional 3 seconds when Glacial Spike hits a frozen enemy in addition to its current effect.
- Thermal Void is now located directly after Slick Ice on row 9.
- Ray of Frost is now available after Chain Reaction and Slick Ice on row 9.
- Ray of Frost cooldown reduced to 60 seconds (was 75 seconds).
- New Talent: Cryopathy – The damage of your next Ray of Frost is increased by 8% each time you consume Fingers of Frost, stacking up to 80%. Icy Veins grants 10 stacks instantly.
- Cryopathy is available directly after Ray of Frost in row 10.
- New Talent: Coldest Snap – Cold Snap now also resets the cooldown of Frozen Orb, Comet Storm, and Blizzard. In addition, your next Cone of Cold applies Winter’s Chill to all enemies hit.
- Activating Icy Veins now also summons a water elemental to your for its duration. The water elemental’s abilities apply Frigid Exposure increasing the Frost damage enemies take from you by 2%, stacking up to 20%.
- Water Elemental’s Waterbolt damage increased by 50%.
- Water Jet damage increased by 75% and its cooldown reduced to 15 seconds (was 45 seconds).
- Summon Water Elemental, Icy Propulsion, and Snap Freeze have been removed.
The New Mage Class Tree
In patch 10.1.5, the class tree shared by the three Mage specializations is seeing a significant overhaul. The removal of Rune of Power is a welcome change given how it has interacted with Icy Veins cooldown reduction, as Incanter’s Flow could never keep up with this kind of synergy. Several powerful new defensive and utility options like Ice Cold, Mass Barrier, and Mass Invisibility have been added to the capstone tier of talents in place of throughput options, providing significantly more flexibility in which talents Mages can select in different situations and most of the throughput talents have been moved early in the tree where it is trivial to select them. I think the only complaint I have with this new tree is the fact that Greater Invisibility now replaces Invisibility, but it’s plausible this was an oversight the whole time and Mages were never intended to have two invisibility spells at once. Overall, the new class tree for Mages in 10.1.5 is a huge improvement and I am very happy with it.
Example Class Tree Build
The New Frost Mage Tree
Overview
The full Frost tree has not been implemented yet, but Blizzard has provided substantial details about the planned implementation that we should see on the PTR this week. From the listed changes, it is clear that Blizzard is listening to community feedback about the specialization and is trying to address many of issues that have arisen for Frost Mages over the last few years. It’s great to see change like this happening for Frost Mages after having minimal adjustment since Dragonflight released, but some more iteration is still needed to give the specialization a strong foundation going forward, particularly with regard to Thermal Void and Mastery: Icicles.
Major Playstyle Developments
Frostbolt vs Ice Lance
This rework includes some changes aimed at ensuring that Ice Lance does not drop out of the rotation to be replaced with more Frostbolts.
– Wintertide’s Frostbolt damage reduced to 5/10% (was 7/15%).
– Deep Shatter now causes Frostbolts to deal 10/25% increased damage to Frozen targets (was 20/40%).
These changes are likely to accomplish what they are aiming to do. However, at least from a PvE perspective, Deep Shatter is now unlikely to see much use since it is not required to unlock anything important in the tree and is a 2-point investment with a majority of its power in the second point.
Icy Veins
The rework also has changes to Icy Veins, the main throughput cooldown for Frost Mages. These changes appear to be aimed at making the cooldown more impactful.
– Activating Icy Veins now also summons a water elemental to your for its duration. The water elemental’s abilities apply Frigid Exposure increasing the Frost damage enemies take from you by 2%, stacking up to 20%.
– Water Elemental’s Waterbolt damage increased by 50%.
– Water Jet damage increased by 75% and its cooldown reduced to 15 seconds (was 45 seconds).
– Summon Water Elemental, Icy Propulsion, and Snap Freeze have been removed.
Historically, Icy Veins has been a weak cooldown that cannot compete with Arcane Surge or Combustion in terms of throughput. Frost Mages have relied on higher sustained damage output to make up for the weaker burst window. With these changes, Icy Veins is getting a lot better, although it will take some time for Frigid Exposure to ramp up and reach its full strength. Additionally, the removal of Icy Propulsion means that the only source of cooldown reduction available to Icy Veins is now Shifting Power, which helps to prevent Icy Veins uptime from getting too high. I am concerned about the ramping aspect of Frigid Exposure because it makes swapping targets difficult and is problematic when combined with Thermal Void, but overall it’s great to see Icy Veins finally becoming an impactful cooldown.
Glacial Spike
The 10.1.5 rework includes several direct changes to Glacial Spike aiming to make it a viable talent again.
– Splitting Ice now causes Ebonbolt and Glacial Spike to deal 100% damage to a second nearby target.
– Glacial Spike damage increased by 10%.
– Thermal Void now also extends Icy Veins an additional 3 seconds when Glacial Spike hits a frozen enemy in addition to its current effect.
Prior to this rework, Glacial Spike as a talent suffered from two major issues:
- The opportunity cost of casting Glacial Spike was too high because it did not do enough damage and did not have much synergy with the rest of the specialization compared to spells like Frostbolt and Ice Lance.
- With Glacial Spike talented, any overflow Icicles that are launched are unlikely to benefit from Shatter, while most Icicles with a standard Frost build would benefit from Shatter. Due to Icicles being abundant in Dragonflight, there were not enough Flurry casts available to mitigate this problem.
Overall, Issue 1 was partially resolved through the direct changes to Glacial Spike in this rework. The change to Thermal Void results in synergy that is too strong while Icy Veins is active. The base cast time of Glacial Spike is 3 seconds and Thermal Void provides a full 3 seconds of time to Icy Veins when a Glacial Spike triggers it. Because of haste, this means you get more out of Glacial Spike than you put into casting it. Issue 2 was partially resolved because during Icy Veins, Water Jet from the reworked Water Elemental provides a substantial increase to the number of Flurry casts available.
Additionally, the change to Splitting Ice helps to make Glacial Spike a viable option for cleave situations where Glacial Spike‘s issues with Shatter and Icicles are less of a problem because Flurry only applies Winter’s Chill to one target. Historically, Frost has been a two-target cleave specialist, so as long as Glacial Spike is up to par on single target, this change will help Frost to really stand out in two-target situations again.
While these changes do make Glacial Spike a strong talent, the problems Glacial Spike has were only resolved while Icy Veins is active, resulting in significant reliance on maintaining Icy Veins with Thermal Void. When Icy Veins does fall off, many of its problems will resurface.
Thermal Void
Prior to this rework, Thermal Void was already one of the most powerful talent points available to Frost Mages and worked together with Icy Propulsion to enable a playstyle that has relied on 100% uptime of Icy Veins. This playstyle was heavily punished by any downtime, which has continually resulted in Frost struggling in some raid encounters and dungeons where downtime is unavoidable. Unfortunately with this current rework, 100% Icy Veins playstyles are not yet going away.
With Icy Propulsion gone, Frost is still punished by downtime, but only while Icy Veins is active. Unfortunately, thanks partially to the new Glacial Spike interaction, playstyles with 100% or near-100% uptime of Icy Veins will still be possible in 10.1.5. These builds are even more punishing: if Icy Veins drops early, there’s no way to recover the cooldown faster. In addition, thanks to the new super-powered Water Elemental that is summoned by Icy Veins, the cooldown is more impactful than ever and any downtime will feel significantly worse.
Since the inception of Thermal Void, players have been finding new ways to achieve 100% uptime and changes have been continually made to mitigate attempts to do so. Given this continual arms race as well as current raid design, where many encounters have unavoidable downtime, it is probably time for Thermal Void to either be removed or to have changes made to limit the uptime of Icy Veins. By doing that, Frost Mage could be tuned around having a proper cooldown window and not be overly punished for downtime outside of that window. As a simple example, if there were a cap on the maximum number of seconds that Thermal Void could extend a single instance of Icy Veins by, then permanent Icy Veins would not be possible. Simply reaching this cap on each Icy Veins would be satisfying to achieve instead of the current situation where anything less than 100% uptime on a boss attempt can make that attempt feel like a failure.
Other Changes
New Baseline Spells
Blizzard and Cold Snap have been made baseline in 10.1.5. There is not much to say here: this is a great change because Frost Mages would always select these talents anyway and even if given the option to opt out of them, they have been core Frost spells for the entirety of World of Warcraft’s history and many players would not want to lose them.
Help for Rarely Used Talents
– Comet Storm damage increased by 10%.
– Comet Storm has swapped positions with Glacial Assault and now available after Perpetual Winter on row 6.
– Glacial Assault damage increased by 15% and now also causes your Comet Storm to increase the damage enemies take from you by 2%, up to 10% for 10 seconds.
– Glacial Assault has swapped positions with Comet Storm and now available after Deep Shatter and Comet Storm on row 8.
– Ebonbolt damage increased by 15% and cooldown reduced to 30 seconds.
– Ray of Frost is now available after Chain Reaction and Slick Ice on row 9.
– Ray of Frost cooldown reduced to 60 seconds (was 75 seconds).
– New Talent: Cryopathy – The damage of your next Ray of Frost is increased by 8% each time you consume Fingers of Frost, stacking up to 80%. Icy Veins grants 10 stacks instantly.
– Cryopathy is available directly after Ray of Frost in row 10.
While a lot of focus in feedback given for Frost Mage has been on Glacial Spike, it was not the only active talent in the Frost tree that needed help. In this rework, there are changes to Comet Storm, Ebonbolt, and Ray of Frost to try to give them a better place in the rotation. Overall, these seem like good changes that have the potential to shake things up.
Comet Storm and Ray of Frost in particular could see some use. One of the issues that Comet Storm has had was that it ward hard to reach because Splitting Ice is typically required, which made reaching Comet Storm on the other side of the tree difficult. With the new position slightly earlier on the tree, Comet Storm can be selected more easily.
The new Ray of Frost talents also look very interesting. While the time spent executing Ray of Frost will not generate any Icicles, the damage may be enough to offset that lack of Mastery benefit. Additionally, the Frost tree has had a lack of variety at the capstone level in Dragonflight, so any new ideas there, especially ones that have synergy with the rest of the rotation, are very welcome changes.
Coldest Snap
New Talent: Coldest Snap – Cold Snap now also resets the cooldown of Frozen Orb, Comet Storm, and Blizzard. In addition, your next Cone of Cold applies Winter’s Chill to all enemies hit.
Currently, Cold Snap is purely for defense and utility; it provides no significant damage. This talent overloads the spell with substantial offensive effects. It resets the cooldowns the Frost Mage’s AoE damage spells and the second part effectively reads: “In addition, your next Cone of Cold increases the damage of your AoE spells by 50% for 6 seconds.” While giving Frost an AoE burst cooldown is an interesting idea because it often struggles to keep up with Arcane and Fire in that area, it being a 5-minute cooldown and also being tied to Cold Snap, Frost’s specialization-specific defensive spell, is problematic. Put simply, players will almost always opt to use it for the damage and any other benefit will be a bonus. In the rare cases where players feel forced to use it in a specific way for defensive or utility reasons, players will feel frustrated about losing damage to get that benefit.
Winter’s Blessing
– New Talent: Winter’s Blessing – Your Haste is increased by 3% and you gain 10% more of the Haste stat from all sources.
– Winter’s Blessing is located on row 4 in Cold Snap’s previous location.
Winter’s Blessing is a new talent available in the Frost Mage tree. It is being placed early in the tree in a position where it will certainly be selected. This is similar to the Fire Mage’s Critical Mass, except that it is for Haste instead of Crit. This seems like a fun talent, since many players prefer playing with more haste, but there are some concerns I have with it that will be worth keeping an eye on.
- Percent Haste effects do not devalue Haste rating in the same way that percent Crit devalues Crit rating, so the rating multiplier is a bit out of place compared to Critical Mass for Fire Mages.
- Frost already has a lot of Haste on Frostbolt in particular thanks to Icy Veins and Slick Ice. This will make it more likely that Frost will run into GCD issues where Frostbolt‘s cast becomes too fast to properly queue Flurry after it for a Shatter combo.
Mastery: Icicles
As I mentioned earlier, the two parts of Frost Mage that still need the most significant iteration are Thermal Void and Mastery: Icicles. While Thermal Void‘s issues tend to come and go depending on the design and tuning of Frost Mage around it, Mastery: Icicles has been problematic since its inception. Whenever spells that do not interact well with it are strong, the stat tends to be completely useless and Mages are disappointed to see it on their gear. Conversely, whenever Mastery is strong, active spells that do not contribute to it struggle to have a place in the rotation (time spent casting those spells is time where all of that Mastery stat is doing nothing at all). An attempt to solve this problem was made by adding Hailstones so that Ice Lance would interact with Mastery in Dragonflight, but this has mostly just pushed active spells such as Ebonbolt, Ray of Frost, and Glacial Spike further out of the rotation.
While removing Icicles completely may be undesirable as they have been a major part of Frost Mage for many years at this point, they do not really need to be tied to the specialization’s Mastery. Back in Cataclysm when Mastery was introduced, Frost Mages had the following Mastery:
Mastery: Frostburn – All your spells deal X% increased damage against Frozen targets. Increases damage done by your Water Elemental by X%.
At the time, this Mastery was problematic for Mages because Winter’s Chill did not exist, which made the Mastery worthless in PvE when targets could not be Frozen. With the modern design of Frost Mage, this wouldn’t be an issue anymore and as long as a spell interacts with Shatter through Winter’s Chill, it would benefit from Mastery.
About the Author
Dorovon is a Mage theorycrafter in the Altered Time Discord and a SimulationCraft developer. Additionally, he is a current analyst and former raider for BDG‘s raid progression team and has played all three Mage specializations in the Race to World First.
