Thursday, October 23, 2008

Frost Tree Talents Reviewed

I'm back from some serious fun on the live realms with the new talent tree, and I have to admit that I love it! Here is my current talent build: Deep Frost [0/0/61]

I just want to review the pros and cons of this build and the changes to the talent tree in particular. First off I'll start with my favoritest talents:
Brain Freeze: I absolutely love this new talent. I now have a new macro for using it even:
#showtooltip fireball
/stopcasting
/cast fireball
I came up with this macro after cursing for not using my free fireball when I was half-way through casting my next frostbolt. I also have to admit I was not that excited about a free fireball since as a frost mage my fireballs kind of suck for damage, but after the patch they are much improved. The first thing I noticed about my gear was that my lovely Frozen Shadoweave Set no longer granted +Frost and +Shadow damage, but was converted to raw Spell Power. This is both good and bad. It's good because now the damage applies to all my spells (including my free fireballs). It's bad because my frost damage from the set which was +179 is now only +147, a net loss of 32 points, or about 18% of the damage from the set. Also note that the if you happen to get a Fireball proc when you have Fingers of Frost up, you do get the +50% crit chance benefit from Shatter.
Second let me spend a moment on Fingers of Frost. I just want to say I love this talent. I spam frostbolt more than a water elemental, and the amount of times that I see this proc is a lot, and resulting crits come very often. Added bonus if you have improved blizzard (to add a Chill effect to your blizzard spell) you get Fingers of Frost to proc off of each hit from your blizzard, and since there is no cool down on Fingers of Frost, it procs a lot if you are hitting a lot of mobs.
Shattered Barrier it's not just for PvP! It's another frost nova on a 60-second cool-down timer. Comes in really handy if you are solo'ing an elite mob, or say running through a bunch of mobs.
Which brings me to Deep Freeze. This is beautiful beautiful thing. I can't count the number of time that I have smacked down rogues, warriors, warlocks, etc. with a Deep Freeze, and then seen them get burned down in battlegrounds. This works like a charm, and I no longer suffer (as badly) from rogue paranoia in PvP, although mages are still nowhere near to dominating in PvP. This at least makes a frost mage spec a little more competitive in PvP, but there is still a long way to go.
Edit:I really had some fun last night on US-Ursin owning a 70 Alliance priest named Pucktin at least 5 times in a row (vs my 73 Mage). It all started when she decided to attack me while I was in the middle of Reclaiming the Quarry. I initially ran when she attacked after running a good 50 yards and noticing that I was still above half health I decided to turn and fight. I initially cast Fire Blast followed by Polymorph, then popped my Cold Snap to end my cooldowns, followed by Summon Water Elemental, Ice Barrier, then I let hell fly. First used the ranged Freeze spell on my Water Elemental to root her, then simultaneously started with my Frostbolt while my water elemental was throwing Waterbolt at her. By the time she recovered, I ran in and hit Frost Nova, then hit Deep Freeze, and finished her off with a few more Frostbolt's, Ice Lance, Cone of Cold, and Fire Blast. I camped her after the initial kill, and she made another attempt to kill me, so I killer her again except without the polymorph, and then proceeded to kill her 2 or 3 more times before she finally stopped attacking me and decided to try and run away. When she finally tried to run, I followed and burned her down again with Fire Blast, and finally left her alone after that. So Pucktin if you read this, thanks for the fun last night, and don't take it personally :)
Improved Water Elemental is better IMO for the extended duration of the water elemental and not so much for the mana regen that it grants. My Spellsurge enchant seems like it restores more mana than my Improved Water Elemental, but the numbers just don't add up to support that. I can't complain about the extended duration of my big blue friend when it comes to raw damage. The mana regen issue will of course change at level 80 since my raw mana pool will be larger, and the percentage of my mana pool will end up being larger.
Frost Warding doesn't quite live up to my expectations as an outstanding talent. I just don't think that the effect really procs enough to be of much use. I have seen it proc a total of one time out of the many many times that I cast the spell hoping for some mana regain.
Cold as Ice is another great talent. I'm really enjoying the shortened cooldown on the many spells that this talent provides.
Edit:
As of patch 3.0.3 this has been nerfed and no longer reduces the cooldown on deep freeze :( It's still an excellent talent, but I will miss the shorter cooldown on my stun.

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