World of Warcraft®

WoW PVP is awful. People who are asking for "balance" are asking for classes to be homogenized further than they already are, so you may as well ask for the removal of classes.

This game's PVP has stunk since it required gear to stay alive while doing it for any decent amount of time.

It was always secondary and has lead to a convoluted mess where we are all running into similar mechanics and having less meaningful spec choices and interesting individuality.

No change has ever remedied QQ about "balance," and has only lead to multiple unintended ridiculous changes to those of us who don't take PVP seriously nor participate in it.

The last time PVP was decent was BC when you didn't have to wear resilience gear. You could just queue and go. PVP gear was nearly equally as appealing in PVE.

Which is ultimately my point:

Frost Mages are viable for the first time since BC as a top-tier DPS spec and now there's all these BS changes getting thrown around over something that only a minority of the playerbase gives a rats !@# about anyway.

I think that would be touching on one of my biggest problems with PvP today; the dominance of instant-cast spells for damage, CC and even healing.

It has gotten to the point where having to use a spell with an actual cast time is seem as some sort of affront or major insult to the caster.

Try getting a 1.5s cast time off with a melee cleave on you, and get back to us on that one. World of instant-cast-craft is a product of necessity, not convenience. Not saying it's good design, but those the mechanics bliz is trying to balance around.

With knockback, interrupts, and CC, frostbolt is almost never worth casting. It's a wet noodle.

Frankly, all interrupts need to be on a 24+ second cooldown. Blanket silences should be allowed, too, in the form of major glyphs. Knockback should be eliminated - it's a dated mechanic. Maybe even make it so that LoS from circle-strafing isn't quite so effective if someone has even the slightest latency. All of these changes could potentially make it so that bliz can start balancing the game around strategic interrupts as opposed to mass CC and mass instant casts.

The 5.2 change to Freeze will also reduce control a bit; if the target is immune to roots due to DR, Freeze will no longer be able to generate an FOF charge, which could otherwise be used for a Deep Freeze.
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False.

We would still get a FoF proc regardless of rooting or DR. Its the reason we still get FoF procs when Freeze is cast on raid bosses.

False.

We would still get a FoF proc regardless of rooting or DR. Its the reason we still get FoF procs when Freeze is cast on raid bosses.

The 'only provides Fingers of Frost on a successful freeze' line in the 5.2 PTR patch notes implies they're getting rid of that mechanic.

Ice lance should have a diminishing power tied to it, more you spam it before DR timer is up, the less damage it does, its idiotic really, Casters need to go back to "casting".

I also have a very large distaste for running and casting abilities, What happened to skill cap ranged classes?

They went away when melee started getting more mobile. Between fears and stuns and silences and disorients and lastly interrupts, sometimes its hard to even get a poly off.

The 'only provides Fingers of Frost on a successful freeze' line in the 5.2 PTR patch notes implies they're getting rid of that mechanic.

Correct. Currently, we get a charge if Freeze deals damage. In 5.2, we'll get a charge only if Freeze roots a target.

Oh really? Didn't see that... well that sucks

They went away when melee started getting more mobile. Between fears and stuns and silences and disorients and lastly interrupts, sometimes its hard to even get a poly off.

Ele has to cast. So does destro. Why are frost mages the exception?

Its the design that leads Frost Mages to spam Ice Lance. Since the damage of Ice Lance is multiplied by 4 on a frozen target, and as a crit on top of that thanks to the Shatter ability, it then becomes their main nuke.

I agree that Frost Mages need to have Ice Lance nerfed.. though I think with the changes in the upcoming patch, many will start casting Frostbolt instead.

01/02/2013 05:54 PMPosted by Dactylion

though I think with the changes in the upcoming patch, many will start casting Frostbolt instead.

Really? I think people will just stop playing frost.

Good to know that they're pretty much explicitly destroying a spec's pvp viability so that it works in pve.

It's difficult to take anything seriously from a person who shows complete negligence with their character, like failing to apply enchants and gems.

They went away when melee started getting more mobile. Between fears and stuns and silences and disorients and lastly interrupts, sometimes its hard to even get a poly off.

Ele has to cast. So does destro. Why are frost mages the exception?

This is a bit of a false premise, because our biggest burst spell (frost bomb) has a cast time and a countdown timer and is dispellable.

Ignoring that - Ele has two spell damage trees that both do lots of damage. Destro has a silence/interrupt immunity talent and also has two potent spell damage trees. They're plainly more well equipped to get casts off, and can tank more damage due to higher HP/mitigation.

It's important to note that Destro and Ele are both doing fairly poorly in high rated arenas right now. "Mages should have to cast more, just like these other unsuccessful specs" isn't particularly convincing.

<---- average mage here but with lots of experience in pve and pvp

IMO too much emphasis on mage burst is now/was placed into frostbomb and our procs. But since it was what it was for half the season maybe they should have kept the playstyle similar until 5.2.

I think the nerf went the wrong way. Instead of nerfing its damage so much (slight damage nerf would have been needed tho) they should have just doubled the cast time, doubled the cd, increased its secondary target(s) damage and lowered its main target damage slightly.

This being said i do agree with the fire blast glyph nerf because being able to get a 200k frostbomb crit on a poor holy pally all because i was able to detonate right after in a nova ... giving him ZERO time to react is too much. (this done with all procs trinket, curse of elements and IW buff ... yes he was in full resil non - ghetto pvp gear)

Nerfing frostbomb my way would have given a reward for finding the time to cast it in pvp..and not effected it for pve because its only used in a long term large AOE situation anyways (which is offset by the increased non-main target damage). All while keeping the burst opportunity to every 20 sec (ish) as opposed to every 10 secs (ish)

This would have not completely changed the style of play

With the new nether tempest style i feel like i am playing a spriest with less utility but more burst.

All this mid season too

Destro has a silence/interrupt immunity talent and also has two potent spell damage trees. They're plainly more well equipped to get casts off, and can tank more damage due to higher HP/mitigation.

If it was more like a disc priest's inner focus maybe, but at a two minutes and forty second cooldown, and the fact that it's also a defensive cooldown, and the fact that it doesn't stop CC or all the other "non-interrupt interrupts," unending resolve doesn't have nearly that much an impact. Frost is the outlier and game design has long suffered accommodating it.

It's important to note that Destro and Ele are both doing fairly poorly in high rated arenas right now. "Mages should have to cast more, just like these other unsuccessful specs" isn't particularly convincing.

Kind of like how warrior defense is being lowered to that of "unsuccessful specs" like Pre-5.2 DKs and Rets?

01/02/2013 03:02 PMPosted by Positron

Ele has to cast. So does destro.

Funny that you don't see a trace of them in competitive PvP huh?

12/29/2012 08:55 AMPosted by Raw

ice lance hits for 3-4k if the target isn't frozen and ice lance isn't proc'd.

This. If a mage is icelance spamming you and "that's it", then he is doing no damage to you.