Frost mage: effort vs reward

[pleblius]

I do feel like other classes are still significantly more powerful than mage. Giving myself the 10% DPS buff I got last night from 2pc, weapon upgrade, and trinket upgrades, I'm still at least 100k behind every melee in the raid, and about even with our best Warlocks.
Now granted, I'm still about 5 ilvl behind those melee, and most of them have BiS legendaries, trinkets, and 4 piece (Our raid has seen almost zero Vanq drop, but we've gotten obscene amounts of Conq and Prot). I'm curious, if I had gloves and Shard, 4 piece, and Metronome and Whispers, how much of a difference that would make. Our Fury Warrior is currently #1 simDPS US on WarcraftLogs, so I doubt I could beat him.
Also, it was a normal, so most of our kill times were sub 3:00 minutes. Which could also explain the melee dominance. Without being in on Mythic and Heroic, I can't really say specifically. I do generally tend to pull top overall DPS in high-level M+, though. (Anything above 12, usually.)

But again. I feel like Frost parses on WCL are extremely low. Our Fire mages with 1 or 2 BiS legendaries for both ST and MT, good trinkets, and 2- or 4-piece are ranking about similar or slightly lower percentiles than I am for their spec, at the same ilvl I'm at. When I was Fire as well, and at about comparative ilvls between us as there is now, I was consistently 10-20 percentile points lower than they were. Which I think only makes sense.

So is there just some great misunderstanding of the spec? Are our legendaries not as good as I think they are? (Because I think they're really fucking strong.)



Let me rephrase this:

On our fights, I was competitive on almost every fight, both ST and MT, with some exceptions existing for very specific fights. (Tichondrius, Krosus, and Gul'dan.) These parses had me at the 95th-99th percentile for Frost Mages.
The difference between the gear that I was wearing, and BiS (including legendaries) should be 15-25%. I know there has to be a decent chunk of Frost Mages out there that have this kind of gear.
So my question is: Why was I consistently in the top 200 Frost Mages? I'm not narcissistic enough to think I'm that much better than anybody else.

And look at the rankings for Normal and Heroic, and then look at Mythic. Frost Mage is dominating Mythic, being the top spec at 99th percentile, and being one of the best at 90th. But on Heroic and Normal, even narrowing it down to 95th percentile, it's still one of the lowest.

[thepaan]

I'm still about 5 ilvl behind those melee

I recently obtained several upgrades which have put me 4 iLvl above the other mage in my raid group. I used to be just behind him on the meters, but for the past week or two I've been 50+k above him. I think you are underestimating how much DPS you get from an average of 5 ilvls. Keep in mind, that's 15 slots at 5 ilvl each; a cumulative 75 ilvl.

[pleblius]

You're probably right on that. I'm sort of guessing based on Sim variances.

To kind of further the question I'm asking: At 99th percentile, Frost Mage is the number one spec on M. I know that doesn't mean much because there's only 93 parses total, but it shows that it's possible. At 75th percentile, Frost is still the 7th spec.

On Heroic and Normal, it's either dead last or second-to-last. Even with kill time variances, I don't think the disparity between N/H and M should be that significant.

Which I guess goes back to the OP's point. Are most of the people who play Frost more casual? I do know that most high-end raiders stayed Fire, but there have to have been serious raiders who either started Frost, or, like me, swapped to Frost sometime towards the end of EN or in ToV.

[Xinder]

I feel like part of the issue is that frost can be so punishing to play incorrectly. I'm not sure between our 3 specs which is more punishing to your damage if you screw up but it's Frost or Arcane in whichever order you want and then Fire is a long ways away from punishing. Especially after the Fire changes to remove so much of the dmg from the 10 sec combustion/RoP window. Now you can still fuck up combustion a bit but because sustained damage went up it feels less punishing than it did before.

Arcane if you fuck up you go OOM way earlier and if you didn't use your best spells while going OOM then you are losing out on dmg or even worse, you burn mana too soon before Evo is up and screw yourself. Frost if you don't get the procs or have the legendary gloves then there goes your IV uptimes. Low IV uptime? Low dmg. You could run Glacial spike to remove that IV variance but you need 54 points in your weap and some really fucking good gear. Not to mention the itemization for GS is very different from TV.

When Blizzard took away all the ways Frost could generate FoF for themselves they really put even more emphasis on RNG and legendaries to parse well imo. Do you need the gloves to get 40-50% uptimes on IV with a TV build? No, but you do need a good chunk of things to go your way to get closer to 50% IV uptime. I still can't grasp why they left us only Orb and Pet Water jet for FoF generators. It just doesn't make much sense to me that instead of removing one of them and seeing how the spec played after they gutted nearly everything and crushed us.

One last thing that I think is worth mentioning. If you look at how many FoF procs even the top parses munch or how many BF procs get munched just by playing the spec, especially with two piece, I bet we could be so much better dmg if our class mechanics like FoF and BF didn't have the munch chances they do now. If I pick on Thingy and look at his top parses he has some ~10 or so more BF procs than he does Flurry casts. This means ~10 or so less shattered Icelances which is a good chunk of dmg. Maybe it wouldn't fix everything but I certainly don't think it would hurt and I think it'd make the less skilled frost player do a little better as long as their average abilities had them using Flurry correctly.

P.S. I think they could fix all mage dmg if they made our paragon trait an increase to all dmg and not just our school of magic, you know, like every other DPS class. Spriests and Mages are the only two who have magic school specific paragon traits. So our proc trinkets do less dmg, deadly grace does less dmg, Satyr neck enchant does less dmg.

[pleblius]

I don't think there are any Frost trinkets in the game. At least Shadow has some consolation on that.

[Xinder]

I don't think there are any Frost trinkets in the game. At least Shadow has some consolation on that.

Yeah and Fire has the legendary trinket along with Aran's ruby too. Frost's best proc trinkets before 7.1.5 were nature dmg proc trinkets like plaguehive and shock baton.

[Norrinir]

The legendary trinket is actually not affected by any paragon trait. It only works with target-based modifiers such as Colossus Smash.

It's not that bad this tier, as some of the best trinkets don't care about your paragon level (Metronome, Whispers). But yes, going forward, I'd like to see paragon traits just work with all player damage.

[pleblius]

I think it's more likely that those are our best trinkets because the other ones don't scale with our paragon level.

[Norrinir]

Nah, Metronome and Whispers are also the best trinkets for fire and arcane. But the difference between them and the damage proc trinkets (Star Gate and Fury of the Burning Sky for fire, Star Gate for arcane) is definitely bigger on our side.

[Drozzy]

Which I guess goes back to the OP's point. Are most of the people who play Frost more casual? I do know that most high-end raiders stayed Fire, but there have to have been serious raiders who either started Frost, or, like me, swapped to Frost sometime towards the end of EN or in ToV.

I don't think it's because our community is casual. here's how I see it. Considering only thermal void build: There are less frost mages than there are fire mages, by a lot. then let's take into account the strength of frost legendaries. Only shard is excellent by itself, but the synergy between mag bracers and vashj gloves is so insanely strong, that these 2 together often outperform the next best combination, shard and mag bracers. Now lets add in how much tier affects our icy veins up-time. Hint: It's a ton. Then let's not forget to add in the difficulty in playing frost, as well as our variance since our dps basically sucks if we get insanely unlucky with frozen orb and get 0 extra FoF. Now lets take into account how many of these players have the skill necessary, the legendaries, and 54 paragon traits. This number is small. VERY small. I've had some very respectable logs, at 893 ilvl, with BiS legendaries, I only have 42 traits.

Conclusion: Frost is capable of outperforming most dps specs in the game, under ideal conditions. Only a few select players have these ideal conditions. Frost in general, performs about equally with the other mage specs, by percentile, except at the highest percentiles. I think the frost player-base is like most player-bases. It's not flooded with casuals. It's simply an otherwise balanced spec, that is capable of performing exceedingly well when played to utmost perfection. I see it like a toned down version of Surrender to Madness Spriests. StM logs consistently went up throughout EN, as people got better and better at playing it (and got better gear). I suspect the same will happen with frost. It's not an easy spec to play the first few times you do a fight. But once you've got movement down, it performs very well. Our logs will rise with time.

[Drozzy]

One last thing that I think is worth mentioning. If you look at how many FoF procs even the top parses munch or how many BF procs get munched just by playing the spec, especially with two piece, I bet we could be so much better dmg if our class mechanics like FoF and BF didn't have the munch chances they do now. If I pick on Thingy and look at his top parses he has some ~10 or so more BF procs than he does Flurry casts. This means ~10 or so less shattered Icelances which is a good chunk of dmg. Maybe it wouldn't fix everything but I certainly don't think it would hurt and I think it'd make the less skilled frost player do a little better as long as their average abilities had them using Flurry correctly.

Very Happily, this just happened. they hotfixed flurry and brain freeze again. We now won't munch a brain freeze proc so long as we use the brain freeze we already have just as our cast finishes. They also changed flurry to allow it to work for ebonbolt, which is awesome.
Last Note: I think Frozen Orb munching excess FoF procs is a good thing, balance-wise. It helps tone down the potential outliers we could have if we had say, EVERY single tick of EVERY frozen orb in a fight give us FoF. This is absurdly unlikely to happen, but would be broken if it did, and it didn't munch the FoF. trying not to munch any FoF during frozen orb is a good gameplay mechanic. Outside of frozen orb, no high level frost mage is going to munch FoF. Ever. We get 3 charges, I rarely get to 2 charges before I get brain freeze and have to dump my FoF.

[Xinder]

One last thing that I think is worth mentioning. If you look at how many FoF procs even the top parses munch or how many BF procs get munched just by playing the spec, especially with two piece, I bet we could be so much better dmg if our class mechanics like FoF and BF didn't have the munch chances they do now. If I pick on Thingy and look at his top parses he has some ~10 or so more BF procs than he does Flurry casts. This means ~10 or so less shattered Icelances which is a good chunk of dmg. Maybe it wouldn't fix everything but I certainly don't think it would hurt and I think it'd make the less skilled frost player do a little better as long as their average abilities had them using Flurry correctly.

Very Happily, this just happened. they hotfixed flurry and brain freeze again. We now won't munch a brain freeze proc so long as we use the brain freeze we already have just as our cast finishes. They also changed flurry to allow it to work for ebonbolt, which is awesome.
Last Note: I think Frozen Orb munching excess FoF procs is a good thing, balance-wise. It helps tone down the potential outliers we could have if we had say, EVERY single tick of EVERY frozen orb in a fight give us FoF. This is absurdly unlikely to happen, but would be broken if it did, and it didn't munch the FoF. trying not to munch any FoF during frozen orb is a good gameplay mechanic. Outside of frozen orb, no high level frost mage is going to munch FoF. Ever. We get 3 charges, I rarely get to 2 charges before I get brain freeze and have to dump my FoF.

Yeah, the feeling when you orb and you're just hitting your IL hotkey for the next 15secs is a wonderful and powerful feeling. I think it feels that way because of how rare it is and I'm actually glad it doesn't happen more often if only because I'd hate to feel so frantic and spammy all the time even if it'd be amazing for my dmg. Lol

[Steelbane]

This thread pretty much sums up my feelings all expansion.. I am usually in the bottom 40% of Frost Mages.. despite my enthusiasm for the spec.. There was a brief month in Emerald Nightmare, where I could hit 1-2 targets on par with the other classes (most bosses were single target), I tried my heart out to be a Frost Mage, I ground out a L45 weapon.. I was used to being #1 or close to in previous xpacs.. but im not good enough anymore to make it work in legions.. I see logs of mages who can.. but I cant execute it.. there are too many situations where 3, 4 or 15 adds are in the N Hold Raid (or a mythic+) and I get roflstomped into the ground, by a factor of 2x or 4x or worse, the developers do not balance AoE damage.. its pretty clear.. they only balance single target. I was hoping the AoE Heavy NH logs would show Devs just how far wrong they had gotten it.

So now I play Arcane Mage and Boomkin (Im waiting on leggos to decide which will be my main), both of them still do the same single target damage as Frost.. but both of them can also burst 3million AoE on Scorp or handle cleave with ease, and ive not put 10% of the effort I have into Frost.. for example.. Arcane Mage.. I just have 1spec (the easiest one).. I just feel my way through what to press with no pre-conceived rotation.. no arcane leggos.. and I still crush my Frost logs in most situations.

The fix isnt that difficult.. I've said the Frost Mage solution is primarily an instant AoE, the parallels between Blizzard & Starfall are crazy.. they are the same skill, both ground based circles.. only Starfall is instant cast and hits like 10 hammers.. Blizzard is slow as, its lucky to even get a few ticks of damage before the mobs move or are dead, or worst case its a dps loss, because you have to move mid-cast to some encounter or M+.. they are trying to address it in 7.2 with deep artifact traits, but they need to acknowledge AoE is critical to a DPS role.. look at Monks casting Fists of Fury.. its instant.. they can move with it.. its their #1 Single Target skill, and its their #1 AoE Skill, and they arent alone.. Frost Mages shouldnt need to work so hard to put out competent AoE DPS.

[nirdana]

I Dont mind most chassis has běžte AoE.
But what is really strange. Classes With simillar AoE dmg (Nearly none) and I mean assa rouges are being buffed even though theyre already topping ST.
Well, at least we are still great at cleave

[Illeriia]

As someone using BiS legendaries, an 895 whispers, and gear that is almost as optimized stat wise as it can get, I see myself at the top of the dps charts in my group. To be fair, I attribute this more to my guild not have bis legendaries, minus one or two others, and the rest may or may not be playing properly, but as I don't play their class I don't really know. I do know many of them don't put in very much time into optimization though.

On the topic of AoE, I think the new trait in Tomb will help, (Blizzard being instant cast during the duration of frozen orb) but that being said, I never saw frost as an AoE spec in the first place. A great example of this was Mythic Scorpyron, whether or not you consider this much of a mythic boss, it still is one. In this fight, there's a bunch of aoe, but there's specifically a priority target, which you should be cleaving off of, you see this in this fight, Gul'dan, Elisande, and in a few other situations. I feel like frost excells in an extreme amount in these situations, and can still be competitive as well. I see no issue in any way with frost's performance in cleave situations, and its also decent in burst aoe on fights such as spellblade if timed correctly.

That being said, I do agree that it is fairly more difficult to get satisfactory numbers out of frost. I find myself doing whatever little step of min-maxing I can, whether its from maximizing Chain Reaction uptimes as I can, or pooling ice lances for things such as empowered eyes, which I know for a fact that most of the raiders in my group don't do. I personally love the current playstyle of frost, and feel like its in a good spot at the moment, I wish it could be more rewarding when you do play very well, and I'm sure that as people gear up more, the gap will widen.