T17 and Frost's Lack of Strengths

[Switch]

I've posted this on both mmo-champion and the wow-forums in order to create visibility ( hopefully for blizzard to see and work off). Here are the links if you want to follow the discussion there.

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/16543824436" target="_blank

http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/173 ... k-of-Frost" target="_blank

I want to state before this starts: I am in no way stating that frost is not viable on a general, "interclass" level. But on a mage level, it's now completely overshadowed for anything progression related, most notably in mythic. Thankfully this forum seems mostly absent of other classes so I hope the discussion can remain progressive and positive.

This tier has been the perfect storm to knock frost out of the running as a progression mage spec on any of the current fights. Highmaul inflated frost's viability with the high amount of MS and how weak fire and arcane were (post buffs). Mastery allows Fire to dominate AoE encounters and allows Arcane to dominate ST encounters. Following this, mages can have the same set of gear for both specs while doing the maximum amount of dps possible on each fight.

The set bonuses of arcane and fire (fire especially) are also spectacular, while frost's are outright awful. Combine this will the totally black and white encounters in BRF of either strong ST (Gruul, Kromog, Oreg, etc) or very strong AoE (every other fight...). The set bonuses, coincidental itemization and poor MS showing in BRF, and the lack of fight strengths have completely isolated frost as a PvE spec. If something isn't done, this spec will be lost to the abyss for the rest of WoD as it simply doesn't scale as well with gear. Crit and Haste are poor, and MS is already close to softcap with IV and frostwolf procs.

The problem that needs to be addressed is that frost has no strengths relative to the other specs. Originally, it's strengths were defined as: Mobility, Cleave, Burst. The idea was to have high mobility via a ton of instant casts, and cleave via Splitting Ice (mastery benefited), and burst from spells like FO and IV putting the instant casts on cocaine. This is no longer the case. Aspect of the Fox and Ice Floes completely dismantle any prospect of frost mobility as a strength. Fire is still winning on fights like Hans and Franz, and actually passes Frost in ST at ilvl 693:

http://i.imgur.com/XZDWlPA.png" target="_blank


Now, I don't believe MS making a comeback, or having good set bonuses next tier will put frost near Fire or Arcane on any encounter. Scaling will be a huge factor by that point, where frost does not excel. And as stated before, lacks strength on any type of modern encounter.

So the question is, what can be realistically done to give frost a notable strength in raiding, and improve its scaling?

[gameorg]

Yes there is an issue with the spec, but in general mages are in a good position. We should be glad, that we can actually use the same gearset for 2 specs. It would be painful, if we had to collect both mastery and multistrike gear.

Iam pretty sure with the next big Raid-Patch, adjustments will be made to the bad specs of each class and its not like blizzard is not aware that frost is behind. Many classes have a bad spec right now but the good specs are rather well balanced.

[Switch]

I totally agree, I think I am leaning more towards what you think should be changed in order to establish a more equal equivalence.