PTR Change to Frostbolt and Frozen Touch

[EbullientPrism]

Has anyone noticed with the PTR notes that Blizzard is turning Frost into Fire? Instead of guaranteeing FoF through FT and providing fun burst dmg, they turned FT into a passive FoF generator. Essentially, you are repeat casting Fbolt (like Fball) hoping the the Fbolt will proc a FoF (much like how Fball procs heating up and hot streak). The passive % from FT plays the same role as crit for Fire.

[aznxk3vi17]

Yes, and it feels awful. What was once a smooth, reliable, and predictable rotation has turned into an RNG infested inconsistent nightmare. You're often in a drought with nothing to extend IV, and end with an IV that lasted barely a minute, whereupon the dice rolls then give you all those FoF procs after IV has already ended.

Instead of six guaranteed Ice Lances every minute (two from Ebonbolt, and four from Frozen Touch), we now get what seems to be a high chance to get procs, except it's a multiplicative increase, so what appears to be a massive buff is only a 4.8% increased chance for Frostbolt to give us FoF. Overall, it's a massive nerf to TV and is exacerbated by the loss of the haste buff from Frost Armor. Very disappointing.

[Bucky]

What was once a smooth, reliable, and predictable rotation has turned into an RNG infested inconsistent nightmare.

I think the change it to dissuade frost mages from doing that specific kind of build where you're extending IV as long as possible for the damage buff increases (in addition to haste).

However, doesn't this mean that you can now store up to 4 FoF procs? 2 Baseline, 1 Artifact (Icy Hand), 1 Talent (new Frozen Touch).

[lamilambkin]

What was once a smooth, reliable, and predictable rotation has turned into an RNG infested inconsistent nightmare.

I think the change it to dissuade frost mages from doing that specific kind of build where you're extending IV as long as possible for the damage buff increases (in addition to haste).

However, doesn't this mean that you can now store up to 4 FoF procs? 2 Baseline, 1 Artifact (Icy Hand), 1 Talent (new Frozen Touch).

It does. This will make it easier to wait for chain reaction x3 before dumping FoF charges without risk of wasting charges. But I would have to agree the lack of on demand FoF charges with the ebonbolt changes and the FT changes feels very odd. The spec feels more bland now.

Also I have seen many people on here mention the nerf to our haste via frost armor? When does this go live? I could not find any changes to frost armor on 7.1.5 ptr notes.

[EbullientPrism]

What was once a smooth, reliable, and predictable rotation has turned into an RNG infested inconsistent nightmare.

I think the change it to dissuade frost mages from doing that specific kind of build where you're extending IV as long as possible for the damage buff increases (in addition to haste).

However, doesn't this mean that you can now store up to 4 FoF procs? 2 Baseline, 1 Artifact (Icy Hand), 1 Talent (new Frozen Touch).

Yes, we can have 4 FoF charges now, but with the new system it is rare you are ever going to reach that. FoF generation is almost entirely passive outside of frozen orb, which i terrible for the spec. Furthermore, reducing the effectiveness of the IV/TV build is absurd on the part of Blizzard. That is the only build frost has that can do comparable damage. With this passive nerf, I would bet that frost damage falls dramatically. IV/TV almost becomes pointless.

[Steelbane]

May well be right that they got this implementation wrong (may be fixed before live), but I think the intention is sort of getting there.. I know FT/Ele gives you some protection if specced , but one of the biggest issue with Frost for me is these periods I get where I literally dump 10 or 20 frostbolts in a row, and FoF is just not proccing, could easily be while IV is up too.. I wanted to see some sort of passive 'bad luck' protection built in the way Fire does.. knowing that you wont go more than 4-5 casts before you will get atleast 1 FoF proc, its also useful for getting some charges ahead of movement.

I thought it should be an ability native to the spec though.. not something you had to spec into..

[Rikx]

I think the change it to dissuade frost mages from doing that specific kind of build where you're extending IV as long as possible for the damage buff increases (in addition to haste).

Last I checked, TV only extends the haste portion, since the damage buff increase is a separate buff from IV.

[Allayva]

I had a chance to talk to a dev and pick his brain on frost mage balance/rotation during Blizzcon and the mentality was that we had too many FoF charges rolling around so early and it made TV almost a guaranteed best pick for that tier and made balancing TV with GS/CmS hard (if not impossible) so they were wanting to tone back FoF charges heavily and reiterate on that and add some back as needed to get the flow back to a good place.

The mentality was that with IL casts being so dominant and Frostbolt almost being lost in the rotation mastery became so highly devalued it was garbage and they wanted the changes to help gain some of that value back without hurting overall damage too much (hence the 35% buff to Ice Lance). The Frostbolt nerf was probably to help compensate with the buff to Glacial Spike's base damage and Ebonbolt's buff too. I'm hoping the disappearance of 8% haste from frost armor was merely an oversight in the removal of the passive slowing effect on hit that transferred to Ice Barrier and will be returned to us in the next PTR build.

Also, look at it this way in that with more Frostbolt casts potentially we can bring IV off CD faster and take advantage of quicker times between Chilled to the Core uptime instead of just the haste from IV through a TV build (not that the haste and uptime on IV wasn't huuuuge, but it's something to consider as well).

[Seatoo]

Is it really just passive? It looks like its still a CD.

Frozen Touch Immediately generates 2 charges of Fingers of Frost Increases your chance to generate Fingers of Frost charges by 40%. Increases the maximum number of Fingers of Frost charges by 1. Frost Mage - Level 60 Talent. Instant. 30 sec cooldown. 30 sec cooldown.

Still says 30 sec CD

[Norrinir]

Is it really just passive? It looks like its still a CD.

Frozen Touch Immediately generates 2 charges of Fingers of Frost Increases your chance to generate Fingers of Frost charges by 40%. Increases the maximum number of Fingers of Frost charges by 1. Frost Mage - Level 60 Talent. Instant. 30 sec cooldown. 30 sec cooldown.

Still says 30 sec CD

It is passive, probably just an error in datamining.