Saturday, September 17, 2011

My Class Feedback Response.

Recently, Blizzard made some forum topics on their website asking for player feedback about their classes. Being the loudmouth that I am, I wrote them a short novel, only to find out that you can only make posts with 5000 characters or less. Either way, I posted it, and I thought I'd post it here, too. So, for the other two Frost Mages on Earth, what do you think? Agree, or disagree?...

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Almost every answer here pertains to the Frost Spec, as I play it far more than Fire or Arcane. I enjoy the other specs and also find them very fun; however, I lack the experience to comment on them in-depth.

What type of content do you focus on? [PvE/PvP/Both]

Both, with a much bigger focus on PvE at the moment.


If PvE, what type of PvE? [Heroics/Raids/Other]

Raiding. My guild is 6/7 Firelands, and we were 1/12 Heroic on Tier 11 before Firelands was released.


If PvP, what type of PvP? [Arenas, BGs, Rated BGs]

Arenas (usually 2's and some 3's) and normal BGs.


What are your biggest quality-of-life issues? For instance, no longer requiring ammo could be considered a quality-of-life improvement for hunters.

It would be nice if Mage-class Armors carried a one-hour duration without a Glyph, along with Arcane Brilliance.


What makes playing your class more fun?

I enjoy that Frost feels more 'Active' than Fire or Arcane, in that I feel like I have to make more split-second decisions due to the way procs change what you are able to do - and possibly, what you should be doing.


What makes playing your class less fun?

Here's a few things:

1. Far too dependent on Crit as a stat. We need to get as close to 34% Crit as possible. This is a pretty high number, so this makes gear options pretty strict and limited. It also makes us comp-dependent, as Critical Mass/Shadow & Flame is one of the only feasible ways to hit that number.

This may sound like a complaint about my DPS not being competitive. It's not; I rank on World of Logs every time I can make to my guild's raids - my DPS in Frost is just fine. Needing such an outrageous amount of one stat is not fine.


2. Frostbolt costs too much mana. The cast time of Frostbolt is 20% faster than Fireball or Frostfire Bolt, and yet it costs 4% more of our Base Mana to use. We're stuck a few, extremely inefficient options: Run Mage Armor, which is flat-out overkill, or max out Enduring Winter, which only lowers the base mana cost by 1%.


3. Too many filler points in the talent tree (for PvE). Frost has 4-6 points spent on talents with _extemely_ specific uses: using Blizzard against AoE groups with no threat table (3 Points in Permafrost, 2 Points in Ice Shards, 1 Point in Enduring Winter), or getting more Fingers of Frost procs against boss encounters where there's two adds that are always in close proximity to the boss (2 Points in Piercing Chill, 1 Point in Permafrost, 3 Points in Enduring Winter). In other words, if we put one point in Permafrost and Enduring Winter (for raid buffs/debuffs), we could seriously put the other four points anywhere in the tree and it would make no difference in most encounters. Even Permafrost's raid debuff is pretty insignificant, so it could be as much as five pointless points.


How do you feel about your “rotation”? (Rotation is the accepted order in which abilities are used to maximum efficiency.)

The single-target rotation is fine - great, actually. On the other hand, the AoE rotations leave something to be desired.

Blizzard is our only AoE spell worth using, and it requires somewhere around twelve targets for it to be comparable to a single target rotation. Cone of Cold isn't much better, requiring about ten targets and having a cooldown.

Again, while this may sound like a complaint about DPS, it's not; it's a complaint that there's almost never a reason to use our AoE spells.


What’s on your wish list for your class?

- Please, let us name our pets! Since it's here for good, it would be nice to have a name with a bit more personality than "Water Elemental."

- It would be nice if Frost Armor had a more common reason to be used in PvE...Not that I have any logical reason why.

- Can we also have one or two new talents in our tree?

- Having Critical Mass available to Frost would be cool, too, and solve one of the only obnoxious aspects of Frost PvE.

- I'd like to see the mana cost of Frostbolt go down proportionally with the other Mage Fillers.

- Is there any way to make Cone of Cold a useful PvE spell without having a huge, rippling effect on Frost PvP?


What spells do you use the least?

Cone of Cold and Frost Nova. I feel like there's a lot of potential for these spells in PvE, beyond proccing Fingers of Frost and snaring adds on Nefarian.

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