Frost Mage Review of Frostfire Hero Talents – Fantastic Aesthetic But Proc Rate & AoE Concerns

This past week, Blizzard revealed another round of Hero Talent Trees in a Sneak Peak at the upcoming War Within system. Our Frost Mage guide writer, Dorovon, offers an early review of the Frostfire Mage Hero Talents that have an exceptional aesthetic and offer some intriguing gameplay changes but pose some concerns for AoE.

Frost Mage First Impressions: Frostfire Hero Talents

Blizzard recently revealed several new Hero Talent Tree previews, which includes the Frostfire tree that will be shared by Fire and Frost Mages in The War Within. While this initial Frostfire tree is not perfect, overall I have a positive view of it, especially in terms of how it will thematically feel to play as a Frostfire Mage.

Note: The icons for each talent are placeholders.

Things I Like	Potential Concerns

Keystone: Frostfire Mastery

The core gameplay created by the Frostfire tree is focused around the tree’s keystone: . provides powerful stacking stat bonuses as you cast Fire and Frost spells. Additionally, and provide an extra incentive to reliably reach maximum stacks of both elements every 12-second cycle of the buff. For Frost Mages, stacks should generally be easy to obtain because almost any damaging spell you can cast will provide a stack. Conversely, most of the spells a Frost Mage casts do not generate and most of those stacks will come from and procs.

While the stat bonuses from are nice, they shouldn’t noticeably affect gameplay very much. The main aspect of that will affect gameplay are and . triggering Brain Freeze in particular is very strong and puts a lot of emphasis on consistently reaching maximum stacks of during every 12-second cycle of the buff. This is likely to have three main effects:

1. The value of Haste as a stat will increase because it will make it easier to consistently reach maximum stacks of .
2. There are likely to be cases where casting Fire Blast to gain a stack will allow you to reach maximum stacks of in a cycle when you would otherwise be unable to. Spending a GCD on this to get a Brain Freeze proc from would be very worthwhile, but some players may not like having Fire Blast in their rotation.
3. Weaker procs like Fingers of Frost might be ignored in favor of casting more s.

The first two effects sound fine to me, but the third effect is concerning. Frost Mage has frequently had seasons where Ice Lance was just ignored in favor of casting more Frostbolts to get more Icicles. In Dragonflight, this was resolved through the Hailstones talent and by tuning Mastery: Icicles and Frostbolt to ensure that casting Ice Lance was always beneficial. Now with the Frostfire tree, is replacing Frostbolt and gaining many new benefits, which could outweigh what was done for Ice Lance in Dragonflight.

Additionally, it is important to note that Frost normally does not cast Frostbolt much in the AoE rotation. While means that there will be additional opportunities to cast in AoE encounters, the number of stacks a Frost Mage is generating will still be far below reaching maximum stacks each cycle unless the proc rate of is very high. It is unfortunate that Frost will not be triggering much on AoE because Living Bomb is more of an AoE effect than single target.

The last concern I have with this keystone is the potential that it could be beneficial to use /cancelaura to remove the buffs in some cases. Because and trigger when reaching maximum stacks, any Frost or Fire spells cast at maximum are not contributing to additional procs. This means that canceling and early after they reach maximum stacks would cause and to trigger more often. Whether this is worthwhile remains to be seen, but it is probably a good idea to simply remove the ability to cancel those buffs to prevent this gameplay from ever coming up during The War Within.

Capstone: Flash Freezeburn

The capstone of the Frostfire tree is . The best part about this capstone is that you will always have the full 12 seconds of the maximum benefit from when activating Icy Veins. This preempts most potential optimizations that could happen around the best time to use Icy Veins relative to . It does still encourage delaying Icy Veins slightly by waiting for low stacks of one or both of and first to maximize the overall number of and procs, but this is at least a straightforward optimization.

Choice Nodes

At level 80, we will have access to all nodes in the Frostfire tree. This means that the main decisions we will have to make are focused around the choice nodes.

Imbued Warding vs Meltdown
provides a reduced effectiveness Blazing Barrier when casting Ice Barrier, similar to the Triune Ward effect from Shadowlands. This is thematically very cool and is one of the visual designs I was really hoping to see from the Frostfire tree. Numerically, 25% of Blazing Barrier is a very significant defensive boost and helps to erase one of the weaknesses that Frost Mages had when compared to Arcane Mages where Prismatic Barrier was just generally better than Ice Barrier thanks to its magic damage reduction.

on the other hand is likely to be much more situational, although that also depends on its tuning. If the movement speed increase over time is significant enough and applies during Ice Cold, then I think could see a lot of use just for the movement speed increase. The Blast Wave trigger is an interesting design choice because the knockback will not always be desirable as it can knock enemies that you do not want to move, but in other cases having an extra knockback would be more valuable than the Ice Block/Ice Cold itself.

Elemental Affinity vs Flame and Frost
For Frost Mages, is a simple passive reduction to the cooldown of Fire spells. In Dragonflight, the only Fire spells that a Frost Mage has access to that have cooldowns are Fire Blast, Blast Wave, and Dragon’s Breath. While Fire Blast could see some usage to gain stacks of , I think the main spells of interest here are Blast Wave and Dragon’s Breath. These crowd control spells are some of the stronger utility available to Mages and being able to use them more often is a nice bonus.

Similar to , is situationally very useful when back-to-back usages of Blast Wave or Dragon’s Breath are desirable. In some cases, and could even be combined to allow for three usages of Blast Wave and two usages of Dragon’s Breath in quick succession. In raids or dungeons, this could mean stopping the casts of a group of enemies five times in a row with nobody else in the group having to do anything.

This node mostly appears to be a utility choice for Frost Mages. In situations where using one of the Fire spells multiple times in succession is strong, is the clear winner. Otherwise, will provide more usages of those spells on average. It is also important to keep in mind that Cold Snap is usually reserved for Ice Block/Ice Cold, so it will feel kind of bad to use it for Blast Wave and Dragon’s Breath unless Ice Block/Ice Cold is already on cooldown.

Severe Temperatures vs Thermal Conditioning
The best option here will largely depend on the situation. When is being cast a lot, such as in single target encounters, looks better because it will help with consistently reaching maximum stacks of and . In AoE situations, seems better because will mostly just be cast when is active. The cast time reduction from does nothing in those cases and will likely be at maximum stacks almost every time procs.

Design Questions and Minor Issues

• How often do and proc? Because and puts a lot of emphasis on reaching maximum stacks of and , the expected proc rate of these effects is going to be very important for the gameplay of Frostfire. If the proc rates are too low, Frost Mages will struggle to reach maximum stacks of consistently (especially in AoE situations), Fire Blast may enter the rotation, and Ice Lance may fall out of the rotation. If the proc rates are too high, then will likely be mostly ignored and will just be a passive buff. Where exactly these proc rates need to be depends a lot on the design intent for Frostfire.
• Some of the nodes further lock you into Comet Storm. does not do anything if the Frost Mage does not have Comet Storm talented and some of the effect from is lost without it as well. Comet Storm is a fun talent so I don’t mind this too much, but it is still a further restriction in a talent tree that already has very little diversity in node selection.
• Blizzard can lose ticks when the Mage’s Haste is dynamically reduced. Because Blizzard‘s duration is hasted when the cast finishes while its tick rate adjusts dynamically, whenever falls off Blizzard‘s new reduced tick rate will likely result in at least one lost tick for that cast.
• It is a little strange with and that Fire is better than Frost at the shared Frost spells and vice versa. This feels especially weird as a Frost Mage in situations where Blast Wave and Dragon’s Breath are not useful, because this node doesn’t really do anything in those cases regardless of which choice you pick. It might be better to have these choices only affect utility spells and give both specs both the Fire and Frost portions.
• Hard to control AoE procs like and can accidentally break crowd control. This could be especially problematic in PvP where Mages sometimes try to avoid passive and random cleave specifically for this reason.

Closing Thoughts

Overall, I think the initial design of the Frostfire tree looks pretty good. The general aesthetic of playing a Frostfire Mage is captured well by the design of the tree and there a number of nodes that look quite fun to play with. There are some rotational issues that could come up thanks to the importance of reaching maximum stacks of both and , but if those are addressed the tree seems like it will work well for Frost Mages.

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.

Frostfire Mastery
Hero Talent
Your damaging Fire spells generate 1 stack of Fire Mastery and Frost spells generate 1 stack of Frost Mastery. Fire Mastery increases your Haste by 1% and Frost Mastery increases your Mastery by 1% for 12 seconds, stacking up to 8 times each. Adding stacks does not refresh duration.Imbued Warding
Hero Talent
Fire
Blazing Barrier also casts an Ice Barrier at 25% effectiveness. This also affects your Mass Barrier.

Frost
Ice Barrier also casts a Blazing Barrier at 25% effectiveness. This also affects your Mass Barrier.Meltdown
Hero Talent
You melt slightly out of your Ice Block and Ice Cold, allowing you to move slowly during Ice Block and increasing your movement speed over time. Ice Block and Ice Cold trigger a Blast Wave when they end.Frostfire Bolt
Hero Talent
Replaces Fireball (Fire)
Replaces Frostbolt (Frost)
2 sec cast
Launches a bolt of Frostfire at the enemy, dealing Frostfire damage, slowing movement speed by 50%, and causing additional Frostfire damage over 8 seconds. Frostfire Bolt generates a stack of both Fire Mastery and Frost Mastery. Replaces Frostbolt for Frost and Fireball for Fire.Elemental Affinity
Hero Talent
Fire
The cooldown of Frost spells is reduced by 10%.

Frost
The cooldown of Fire spells is reduced by 30% for Frost.Flame & Frost
Hero Talent
Fire
Cauterize resets the cooldown of your Frost spells with a base cooldown shorter than 4 minutes when it activates.

Frost
Cold Snap additionally resets the cooldown of your Fire spells.Isothermic Core
Hero Talent
Fire
Meteor now also calls down a Comet Storm at 150% effectiveness onto your target location.

Frost
Comet Storm now also calls down a Meteor at 100% effectiveness onto your target’s location.Severe Temperatures
Hero Talent
Casting Frost or Fire spells increases the damage of your next Frostfire Bolt by 6%, stacking up to 5 times.Thermal Conditioning
Hero Talent
Frostfire Bolt’s cast time is reduced by 10%.Frostfire Infusion
Hero Talent
Your Frost and Fire spells have a chance to trigger an additional bolt of Frostfire, dealing Frostfire damage. This effect generates Frostfire Mastery when activated.Excess Frost
Hero Talent
Fire
Reaching maximum stacks of Frost Mastery causes your next Phoenix Flames to also cast Ice Nova at 200% effectiveness. When you consume Excess Frost, the cooldown of Meteor is reduced by 5 seconds.

Frost
Reaching maximum stacks of Frost Mastery causes your next Flurry to also cast Ice Nova at 200% effectiveness. When you consume Excess Frost, the cooldown of Comet Storm is reduced by 5 seconds.Frostfire Empowerment
Hero Talent
Your Frost and Fire spells have a chance to activate Frostfire Empowerment, causing your next Frostfire Bolt to always critically strike, explode for 80% of its damage to nearby enemies, and be instant cast.Excess Fire
Hero Talent
Fire
Reaching maximum stacks of Fire Mastery causes your next Fire Blast to apply Living Bomb at 150% effectiveness. When this Living Bomb explodes, reduce the cooldown of Phoenix Flames by 10 seconds.

Frost
Reaching maximum stacks of Fire Mastery causes your next Ice Lance to apply Living Bomb at 150% effectiveness. When this Living Bomb explodes, gain Brain Freeze.Flash Freezeburn
Hero Talent
Frostfire Empowerment grants you maximum benefit of Frostfire Mastery and refreshes its duration. Activating Combustion or Icy Veins grants you Frostfire Empowerment.Fire Mastery
Your damaging Fire spells generate 1 stack of Fire Mastery. Fire Mastery increases your Haste by 1% for 12 seconds, stacking up to 8 times. Adding stacks does not refresh duration.Frost Mastery
Your damaging Frost spells generate 1 stack of Frost Mastery. Frost Mastery increases your Mastery by 1% for 12 seconds, stacking up to 8 times. Adding stacks does not refresh duration.