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Monday, November 03, 2008

Why I'm Currently Happy As Frost

So why am I currently happy as frost, caps and all?

Well over at Critical QQ, Euripedes made a very nice post about the state of the Arcane tree (and I agree with most of the points). However, I was struck by this sentence:

Frost is easily the most boring spec right now

I'm not sure this is as true as it used to be before 3.0.2. Sure, you're still nuking with Frostbolts, however you now have (in addition to WE summons, IV and trinket activations which you had before):
I think that fights post 3.0.2, from a Frost mage's point of view, are less of a "nuke Frosbolts till my finger drops off from boredom" than they used to be :)

In addition, one of the things I loved about Arcane before-3.0.2 was the high DPS.

Well due to the general instances nerf and the general buffing of classes, mobs are going down very fast in both 5-mans and the raids I've done such as ZA. Add to this the fact the all tanks can now AoE tank and the result is that most times runs consist of pulling the next group of mobs and AoEing them down - and CC-be-damned.

So what happens when you take a run heavy on AoE damage and a Frost mage with fully improved Blizzard which can finally proc criticaly? That's right, you get a very happy mage :)
Even if the tank losses agro on mobs, they are now moving so slowely, they can never reach you before dying :)

Solo play, both when alone and when killing a single target in an instance/raid, is more disappointing. Crit values are a bit pathetic compared to my pre-3.0.2 values. But this isn't surprising, since as an Arcane mage I had some serious buffage to my spell damage from talents.

Game play in WotLK at level 80 is something I'm not going to try and predict. Even if current numbers show Frost as being bad for raiding, Blizzard could easily change the entire picture between now and level 80. So for now, I'm happy with Frost and sticking with it for both the remainder of BC and for leveling to 80.

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