6.1 changes

[Dutchmagoz]

Originally Posted by Blizzard

Alter Time now has a 1-minute cooldown (down from 1.5 minutes).
Mirror Image copies of Frost Mages now deals 15% less damage with Frostbolt.
Evanesce should now provide protection against many more effects, and function more consistently.


Arcane
Presence of Mind can now be applied to Polymorph spells.

Fire
Fireball now replaces Frostfire Bolt for Fire Mages.

Frost
Deep Freeze stun effect now always breaks on damage from Ice Lance, but no longer has a chance to break from other damage sources.
Ice Nova (Frost) now roots the target instead of stunning them, but the root is no longer affected by diminishing returns.

Talents
Blast Wave (Fire) now has a 3-second cooldown.
Ice Nova (Frost) now has a 3-second cooldown.
Supernova (Arcane) now has a 3-second cooldown.

Glyphs
Glyph of Frostfire Bolt has been replaced with Glyph of Ignite. Glyph of Ignite causes Ignite to also reduce the target’s movement speed by 40%.

Armor Sets
PvP 2-piece set bonus for Frost Mages has been redesigned. Cone of Cold now leaves behind a patch of ice on the target area slowing any enemies caught within it by 50% for 6 seconds.
PvP 4-piece set bonus for Frost Mages has been redesigned to increase Frostbolt damage by 30% against unsnared targets, and increases Frostbolt damage by 50% against snared targets.
Tier-17 4-piece bonus for Fire Mages is now approximately 0.7 procs per minute (down from 1 procs per minute).

Not really anything big for mages. RoP overtakes MI now for frost single target. And the PvP changes which were data mined a while ago.

[Berlinia]

And Frost becomes a meh spec for PvE in comparison to it's companions :/

[TLTeo]

Why would the MI change make frost worst? Doesn't seem like that big of a deal to me

[Wilderness]

Why would the MI change make frost worst? Doesn't seem like that big of a deal to me

Yeah, I don't see how its a huge deal. It is a nerf, and no one likes to see that for their spec, especially since its not like Frost mages were crushing everyone else in dps. But looking at a few of the top Frost logs on Butcher, MI is between 12-15% of their damage. A 15% nerf to something doing 15% of your damage isn't game-breaking.

I get what they are trying to do with the nerf though, since why would anyone take RoP over MI, for single-target at least, when perfect play with RoP is barely better?

This is also not final. I don't think that Arcane/Fire will remain untouched - it may wait until they see some BRF data, but my guess is that Arcane and Fire will be brought down a bit. Maybe what SimC is predicting for Arcane and Fire in BRF isn't going to be accurate, and they won't be strong enough to warrant a bit of a nerf, but if it does hold true then we will probably see some adjustments coming our way.

[TLTeo]

The wierd thing about both fire and arcane is that they are very fight-specific specs (arcane much more so with fire's 4set), and so they are heavily balanced by fight mechanics.

Arcane looks ridicolous on sims, but BRF fights look less Patcherk-y than HM, and on any fight but Butcher it is nowhere near OP. Fire has strong cleave and pretty good single target, but so are lots of other specs like Survival or Fury. I guess we will have to wait and see., but i feel like if Fire doesn't start scaling ridicolously as usual it may not be as big of a deal as people seem to think.

[EthicsGradient]

On the balance, it seems to take MI (in group PvE) from being marginally the best in single target and mediocre at anything else to being mediocre at single target and terrible for everything else. Although I'm not a theorycrafter or anything. I'll wait and see the sims like everyone else.

If that's how it turns out, it does seem to run against often stated design goals of all talents being a viable choice. However, it seems to me that these are all changes made for PvP balance. There are plenty of examples where Blizzard has been totally O.K. with making an ability bad in PvE for PvP balance reasons.

[zhengma]

A 15% nerf to something doing 15% of your damage isn't game-breaking.

Even if it weren't "game-breaking", the detrimental effect of this change to Frost spec is much more profound than it might seem to be.

1. MI being affected by IV is a major strength of TV. With MI being nerfed, the entire "MI+TV" package deal becomes weaker, and we can expect to see much fewer fights where TV outshines PC.

2. Now that RoP is the default choice of all specs, the mobility (or more precisely, the skill and knowledge-of-encounter to achieve mobility) of the Mage class is nerfed as a whole.

[Dingtroller]

There is more to come ? as from what i understood , this build is not the one with major class changes.

[aycheff]

No this is the class tuning build. The one they pushed out before this was supposed to include the class tuning, but they delayed it to this one.

[Boomop]

I get what they are trying to do with the nerf though, since why would anyone take RoP over MI, for single-target at least, when perfect play with RoP is barely better?

--That's a problem with RoP, not MIs.

--MIs problem with Frost is largely TV + IV (Especially with Hero/Lust lined up on the opener). But as pointed out 15% of 15% isn't a huge deal.

--What I find really strange (SEE ALSO: Interesting) is that Arcane is the most consistent dmg of the 3 specs. It's really not all that bursty. Frost is extremely CD/Burst oriented in comparison.

I find this odd mainly because nuke down Arcane was the Bursty spec prior to MoP (in MoP all 3 had fairly big Burst due to AT). Arcane used to trade Mana for Burst. That's not really happening in WoD. Although I like Arcane quite a bit in WoD, it just kind of always does consistent dmg.

--Comet Storm needs to be fixed.
--There's pretty much no reason any of the CD AoEs should split dmg. If they made them just hit like a normal AoE (like Novas), holding them for AoE would be a single target DPS loss. This is the kind of thoughtful interplay you want with these kind of abilities. Splitting dmg just makes you never want to use them in AoE (which begs the question, why not just make them single target in the first place?)

Both:
--RoP
--PC
are problematic design that Blizzard seems married to.

--Curious what the 3 sec CD is going to do to the Novas + PC. It means the recharge CD on later Novas are going to miss PC (Or that we have to delay recasting PC by 3 secs)(Or maybe it won't really do much).

All in all, the changes don't look too major or game changing.

NOTE: I do think Arcane could use a little more incidental Cleave considering how much the other specs have. Something like an Arcane Missiles version of Glyph of Splitting Ice could go a long way towards making Arcane not feel so gimped in Cleave compared to the other 2 specs. P.S. I'm not saying it should eclipse the others in terms of Cleave, just that it shouldn't feel like a major handicap to use Arcane in a Cleave fight.

EDIT NOTE: Would also like to see a Glyph that let Arcane Explosion be channeled from range like Blizzard (but put a 1 sec GCD cap on it, so it's basically always the same as using AE, in terms of dmg).

[zhengma]

--Curious what the 3 sec CD is going to do to the Novas + PC. It means the recharge CD on later Novas are going to miss PC (Or that we have to delay recasting PC by 3 secs)(Or maybe it won't really do much).

I'm quite convinced that this is not initially intended to putting consecutive Novas on PC, but to prevent dishing out two consecutive back-to-back Novas in the arena, which could instantly and reliably bring down your opponent at low health. Of course we can still save two charges of Novas to set up a burst, but now there is a 3-sec gap where you're forced to use lower DPET spells, giving your opponent some chances.

The class change sessions of this patch note as a whole-- not only the mage part-- is hardly inspired by PvE balance, because Blizzard don't care nearly as much about which class/spec shines a bit more/less in PvE.

[gameorg]

Frost is already underepresented in top brackets. Frost also isnt particuarly strong in Arena right now. These changes are a bit weird from that PoV and altough dont target pve, they affect it quite a bit.

I can only imagine they want to nerf down all classes in PVP to a certain point, and frost was still above that point.

[TLTeo]

Saying that RoP will now be the go-to talent is really unrealistic. All it takes is a small break in its uptime, or extra forced casts, for IF to be better, which is already the case in the vast majority of encounters.

My guess with that tier is that they want to go for choice of talents that give more or less the same contribution, but scale upwards in situations when you can either burst, stay still or are forced to move respectively. The problem with that however is that in PvP you'd pretty much always go for burst, and in PvE one of the other two depending on fight mechanics, so the choice actually doesn't really exist.

Regarding Comet Storm, does anyone here PvP seriously? Is it actually good in PvP? That's the only thing i can think of that would keep Blizz from buffing it.

[zhengma]

Regarding Comet Storm, does anyone here PvP seriously? Is it actually good in PvP? That's the only thing i can think of that would keep Blizz from buffing it.

I don't PvP much, so I just share what I know for sure.

The reason why Comet Storm is almost the go-to talent for PvP is not how good it is per se, but the fact that the other two talents are so clearly inferior.

I don't think I need to talk about TV: if you can't burst someone down in 20 seconds, giving you a few extra seconds of IV won't help at all. And don't forget, IV is magical effect that can be dispelled or even stolen.

For PC, if the opponent can be CCed inside its range, it actually performs fairly well. Unfortunately, Polymorph breaks on damage, DF breaks on damage (as per patch note, it'll only break on the lance, which should make Frost Mage substantially stronger in the arena), RoF and Welly Freeze break on damage. You'll need someone who has a CC that doesn't break on damage to keep the opponent pinned. Even in that case, the opponent can trink away. Trink is 2-min CD while PC is 1.5-min CD, so you only have a 30 sec window to set up another PC burst, which may not always be possible depending on position, your teammate's cooldowns, etc.

Side Note: However, Dragon's Breath doesn't break on damage, but unfortunately again, Meteor is an overall more attractive talent than Comet Storm, PvE or PvP.

From my humble experience, Comet Storm's DPET is meh, but at least it's instant (i.e. won't subject to interrupt), so, better-than-nothing.

[Wilderness]

Even if it weren't "game-breaking", the detrimental effect of this change to Frost spec is much more profound than it might seem to be.

1. MI being affected by IV is a major strength of TV. With MI being nerfed, the entire "MI+TV" package deal becomes weaker, and we can expect to see much fewer fights where TV outshines PC.

2. Now that RoP is the default choice of all specs, the mobility (or more precisely, the skill and knowledge-of-encounter to achieve mobility) of the Mage class is nerfed as a whole.

#1 isn't necessarily a bad thing, at least from Blizzard's POV, as they are trying to bring talents more in line with each other. #2 is a bit of an overstatement - the mage class as a whole is not at all nerfed, the MI change specifically states when they cast Frostbolt. The other 2 specs are unaffected. The nerf, if it is the only change we see (which is rather unlikely), just makes the choice of RoP vs other talents more meaningful.

I said it in my first post, and I'll say it again - this is the early part of the PTR cycle. There are very likely more changes coming, and I doubt that we are seeing the bigger picture with where they want mage dps (for all specs) to be. So I think being cautious in overreacting (which really hasn't been the case in this thread, I've seen it a lot more on MMO-C) to what amounts to a small nerf.

The 3-second CD won't really impact PVE. If you have 2 charges up for PC, then you'll cast one, cast another spell, then cast another one. It won't change that you can get 2 into your PC, and personally as Arcane I find myself having to do that regularly anyway because I hit 3 charges of AM after my first SN, so I don't want to cast the 2nd and waste a proc.

[zhengma]

#1 isn't necessarily a bad thing, at least from Blizzard's POV, as they are trying to bring talents more in line with each other.

Um...Can you please define "in line"? I'm not native speaker of English so I'm not sure about its precise definition. What I do know, however, is Blizzard intends to give all talents some chances to shine. Even with the MI+TV combo, TV is still picked substantially less frequently than PC (I'll gladly admit I'm wrong if someone can provide e.g. WCL statistics).

#2 is a bit of an overstatement - the mage class as a whole is not at all nerfed, the MI change specifically states when they cast Frostbolt. The other 2 specs are unaffected. The nerf, if it is the only change we see (which is rather unlikely), just makes the choice of RoP vs other talents more meaningful.

Of course, MI for Arcane and Fire is not nerfed per se, but if I use MI in Arcane or Fire spec, my raid leader could ask me: "Why are you not using RoP? Isn't that a superior talent?" The solution used to be simple: I just retreat to Frost and use the best single-target talent in that tier, which coincides with my preference. You might have inverted the causality here: I hate RoP with a passion and I'm yet to learn to maximize the benefit of IF, which is the cause; with this cause as a starting point, I pick Frost as my main spec, which is the consequence. Therefore, the question becomes: where do I retreat to, once this change goes live?

[nickseng]

Side Note: However, Dragon's Breath doesn't break on damage,

Dragon's Breath absolutely breaks on damage. The more you know

[zhengma]

Side Note: However, Dragon's Breath doesn't break on damage,

Dragon's Breath absolutely breaks on damage. The more you know

It does seem so as per tool tip. Therefore, either Hansol's video commentary used inaccurate wordings, or I misinterpret it.

Either way, I'll edit that out. Thanks for the heads up.

[Wilderness]

#1 isn't necessarily a bad thing, at least from Blizzard's POV, as they are trying to bring talents more in line with each other.

Um...Can you please define "in line"? I'm not native speaker of English so I'm not sure about its precise definition. What I do know, however, is Blizzard intends to give all talents some chances to shine. Even with the MI+TV combo, TV is still picked substantially less frequently than PC (I'll gladly admit I'm wrong if someone can provide e.g. WCL statistics).

Exactly, they'd like all talents to have their place/use. Right now RoP mostly has no use for Frost. If you play perfectly and get near 100% uptime, it is barely better than MI. So nerfing MI makes it more of a choice - if you can play RoP well, its worth it. If not, use MI.

It does indirectly impact PC vs TV as well, but we likely haven't seen all the rounds of balancing yet, and I think that PC looks better in sims than reality b/c of splitting ice and its really tiny range. They have specifically said that they are working on balancing each classes talents better, so we're going to see more, because any balancing of frost mage talents has to include something about Comet Storm. There's more coming, so we'll have to see what they change and what they think mage dps for each spec should be.

[Boomop]

Has anyone messed around with Frost's PVP 4pc in PVE?

That seems REALLY strong in PVE. And might be a serious boost to Haste builds.