Poster: Zarumon at 4/12/2005 2:08:03 PM PDT
Subject: Motive, please answer this for us frostmages |
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With the "fixed" change of Diminishing Returns being applied to Frost Nova and not on Cone of Cold, some serious examination needs to be done on the frost mage talent build then. It would be useful for us to have Blizzards perspective on how they see the usefulness of these talents with the purposed change, especially since a majority of Frost is a talent tree that keeps building on itself throughout that entire spec (which looks to be by design of the talent tree).
Coldsnap - 10 minute cooldown timer, instantly resets the cooldown on all frost spells.
There are only 4 spells that are on a cooldown timer in frost: Cone of Cold, Frost Nova, Ice Block and Ice Barrier.
Ice Block and Ice Barrier are talent only spells that are granted later in the talent tree, and are defensive in nature, and this isn't a balance on a mages defenses, so we'll throw the usefulness of these out the window. That leaves us with Cone of Cold and Frost Nova.
Cone of Cold is on an 8 second cooldown while Frost Nova is on a 25 second cooldown. The only real use for Coldsnap is for Frost Nova. With diminishing returns, this is not worth a 10 minute cooldown or a talent investment from the mage perspective.
Shatter - Increases critical strike chance of frost spells against frozen targets by 50%. 5 point talent investment (10%/point).
This change has a negative effect on this talent as well. Frost only has 3 offensive attacks. One of them is Blizzard which NEVER crits. So it's only useful for Cone of Cold and Frostbolt. Frostbolt is the major one to look at here, it's the base frost mage skill. After a single DR timer has gone off, and a target is frozen again, the ability to cast a Frostbolt within the time a target will become un-frozen is gone. This has put this into a first strike only type of combination.
At this point, it's better to be casting Arcane Missles or Fireball instead of Frostbolt for in the increased damage. Frost has been built dependant on the crits to be somewhat offensive.
Ice Shards - Increases damage from frost criticals by 100% (5 point investment).
While this is a spell that can be used without Nova, this is a talent that depends on eventually investing into Shatter for offensive abilities. It's the combination of talent trees like this that eventually makes full frost investment worthwhile, and it's hardly useful without being able to land criticals.
Frostbite - Gives chill effect a 15% chance to freeze target. 5 Point investment
Frostbite will also be subject to diminishing returns now, and with it being a proc and not an active ability, it's highly debatable how useful this talent will be now. Since it's unpredictible, there's no control for the frost mage to control the cooldown timer of their DR on freezing.
So we come to a situation where: Frost mage casts frostbolt to start fight (very common for the chill effect), and Frostbite goes off. Now the frost mage is going to have a very difficult time the rest of the fight since they will have less effectiveness on Nova. It's possible that frostbite can go off multiple times in a fight, which means as a mage you have completely lost any control over your crowd control. And with with diminishing returns, by the 3rd time, this will only be effective for 1.25 seconds for a freeze.
Frostbite has become more of a liability then a useful and wise investment for a frost mage from a players perspective.
I understand how in the situation of large scale PvP, how novas could possibly be abused, but I think there are possible ways to correct this without damage 16 of the staple talent point investments in the mage frost tree.
I'm really curious to how Blizzard sees these talents as being effective and viable after this change is made.
This is a very serious alteration to make to a completely balanced class and the most defining talent tree in the game. Please take a look at the effects of this change on these talents.
(Would post as my level 53 frost mage, but I can't access that avatar for some reason here).
-Z-
| | | http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.aspx?fn=wow-realm-test&t=15928&p=#post15928 | | | Poster: motive at 4/13/2005 2:32:31 PM PDT
Subject: Re: Motive, please answer this for us frostma |
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There still seems to be some confusion as to what spells are going to be affected by diminishing returns. The only frost mage spell that is going to be affected is Frost Nova, and no other spell or talent proc effect will trigger the diminishing returns on Frost Nova, it can only trigger its own diminishing returns.
Q u o t e:
So now if some bozo has been hit with a couple of frostbite procs (I have frozen a target 4 times in a single application of the new blizz, btw) my entire style of play is gimped.
Frostbite procs will not cause Frost Nova's diminishing returns to kick in. If you hit a player 4 times with Frostbite from your inproved Blizzard, you can still run up to him and Frost Nova 3 more times before the target becomes immune to the fourth.
As I stated before also, diminishing returns is being removed from Cone of Cold.[ post edited by motive ]
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