#0 - March 6, 2007, 2:34 p.m.
I don't understand the change being done to Frost Nova. I do understand the need though, spamming easy crits is not a desirable effect. I wonder why Blizzard isn't fixing what is clearly wrong, instead of just nerfing the spell.
Frost mages rely on shatter to get their DPS. When I'm usually farming mobs 1 by 1, I count on the Freeze, Bolt Crit, Ice Lance crit. The funny thing is this works because of a bug. Let me tell you what the bug is. The +crit chance is calculated when the spell finishes casting instead of when it hits the target. This clearly makes no sense because you are able to get the bonus when hiting non frozen targets:
1) Target is frozen
2) Frost Bolt starts flying (gets the bonus cause target is frozen)
3) Ice Lance starts flying (gets the bonus cause target is frozen, didn't break yet cause bolt didn't land yet)
4) Frost Blot hits the target and gets the bonus added in 2). Target loses frost.
5) Ice Lance hits the target and gets the bonus added in 3). Target had already lost frost.
Although this is wrong it is what makes my mage have enough DPS at the moment, not the fact you can, sometimes, spam ice lance 3 or more times which annoyed some people in PvP and thus we are getting nerfed instead of fixed.
Another thing that is broken, making frost mages have MUCH lesser DPS in that situation, is frost effects at instaces. Since frost mages rely on freze effects to do DPS and those effects break early beacuse everyone is attacking the target, you rarely get to use shatter bonus on instances. This is what we, frost mages, NEED to be fixed, since a significant part of our dps come from, as I said, hitting frozen targets. So, instead of the change to frozen effect which nerfs mage survivability instead of just nerfing the dps output against frozen targets, I propose a TOTAL fix to this problem which really deals with both problems.
Change Shatter to:
Your freeze effects also apply a "Frost Vulnerability" debuff to the target. Lasts 8 seconds, stacks up to 30 times. Your spells have an increased 10/20/30/40/50% chance to crit a target with "Frost Vulnerability". Target loses one counter of Frost Vulnerability when they are hit by a critical spell from any player with Shatter.
- All shatter mages add counters to the same debuff slot.
- All shatter mages remove counters from the same debuff, when critting with any spell.
- Only crits from mages with shatter should remove counters.
- Bosses immune to slow/freeze effects should still get the "Frost Vulnerability" effect, but not be freezed/slowed at all.
- If you still want a random effect that lets you sometimes crits twice, give shatter a small chance to apply 2 counters instead of 1.
This would mean:
Frost breaking or not could be completly separated from damage calculations.
Frost mages could still get the desired +crit effect at instances.
Shatter damage would be easily controlled.
Please take this idea into serious consideration, I like to play my mage. I really don't need to see it overpowered in any way but I don't want to see it broken either. I speced frost cause of survivability, not damage. Don't nerf my survivability.
Regards.
