[Suggestion] Frost mages...really?

#1 - Feb. 26, 2011, 9:24 p.m.
Blizzard Post
So, after about two days of head bashing arena and one GM ticket later, I decide to come to these forums and ask the developers: WHY did you have to take the damage of a pure class and nerf it to the point that you can't even put up enough pressure as a warrior, ret paladin, DK, or a feral druid?

I am not insisting that these classes are "OP." What I am insisting however is that because ice lance can only hit around 8k in arena with no helps of shields and the cast time on frostbolt is so ridiculously slow that interrupting it is child's play. Since just about every class has an interrupt except healer priests, pressure in arena is terrible as a frost mage now.

What I want from Blizzard is the acknowledgement of the fact that mages would really like some help in the damage area.

The amount of roots we have needs to be reduced, but they need to be effective, just like Vileroze explains in a resource link below: "2) Change Improved Cone of Cold talent so that it roots the opponent only when the Cone of Cold slow is dispelled, change the root so that it is undispellable and 3sec instead of 4sec. This further cuts back on instant roots/peels and the promotion of Ice Lance while being trained, but it also makes it so that Mages aren't so badly punished by spam dispels. It also makes Cone of Cold more dynamic and makes Mages put more thought into the use of the ability."

Another good point posed by Vileroze: "4) Add new ability to frost talent tree choice or frost talents that functions as a modified R1 Frostbolt: .5sec cast, no cooldown, no damage or very very minimal damage; applies debuff that snares the target. When used, the ability lowers the cast time of the Mage's next Polymorph by .3sec, and when dispelled increases the damage of the Mage's frostbolts by 20% for 10sec.

The new ability's debuff wouldn't override the Frostbolt or Cone of Cold debuff, but instead both could exist simultaneously on same target. For reference, noncrit frostbolts currently do 5.5k damage on 3500 resil targets, so a 20% frostbolt increase in damage would just be 6.6k frostbolts. This lowers Mage susceptibility to dispels, provides a minor cover debuff for Polymorph, and allows Polymorphs to actually land more often."

Please refer to Vileroze's post to get the full version of these citations.

--- Vileroze's chart. ---

Net Effect of Proposed Changes:

1) Less instant novas / peels.
2) Less Ice Lance opportunities.
3) Less susceptibility to spam dispels.
4) Less awful in really long games.
5) Greater reward for casting Frostbolt.
6) Polymorph more effective.

--------------------------------------------------------

The total damage nerf to ice lance was about 30%, while frostbolt only maintained it's damage from before the patch.

I would like if the mastery was added back to frost, just like before with a baseline of 8, instead of 2.

I know I'll get flamed, but if you do indeed play a frost mage you will know exactly what I'm talking about.

[EDIT]

I am not the only one (believe it or not), look for yourself:

Vileroze even agrees:

"Mages are extremely bad right now as a class in arenas; they're just very aggravating to play against due to the extreme amount of instant cc they have in arenas which I proposed to significantly reduce in this thread.

Right now the only tier 1 comp a Mage can play is Spriest Mage Druid, and other SPriest Druid variants work just as well if not better than that."

Direct quote from ArenaJunkies: "Most dire state of mages, ever. I honestly dont understand why they would overnerf a class which was okay (Vileroze and affix already posted several threads on how mages were too easily countered by good players (top teams). Now what i get is 4k shattered icelance hits... WTF? Sheep cast time is unreliable, not being able to get any mentionable amount of haste on gear is stupid aswell, being forced to gear into crit to avoid the dreaded 10k shatter (FB+Lance) hit."

Possibly THE MOST IMPORTANT LINK:

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/2065610125?

Another link:

http://www.arenajunkies.com/topic/189569-17k-shatters-thank-you-blizz/


Yet another link:

http://www.arenajunkies.com/topic/190145-how-am-i-meant-to-get-a-kill/

And another:

http://www.arenajunkies.com/topic/186761-so-anyone-else-rerolling/
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[Vattenkraft, on 14 February 2011 - 04:08 PM, said:
[Scoring kills are fine, sure it's harder, but the more coordination it requiers with your [partners the more fun it gets!

[Shatters got hit by a big nerf, indeed... but it's more then doable to coordinate burst while [succeeding with landing CCs.


Reply by Arillyna: "OH I guess that makes it ok. We can outplay the other team tenfold and maybe we can score a kill!"
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#177 - March 4, 2011, 12:39 a.m.
Blizzard Post
Since this thread has encountered quite a bit of trolling, it has been locked.

http://us.battle.net/en/community/conduct