Friday, August 1, 2008

Early frost feedback from alpha:

You may notice, after glancing over this, that several of these changes were indeed made:

1) There's still not enough synergy with frozen targets. We currently only have 3 ways to freeze a target. Random proc from mind freeze/icy touch, random proc from frost strike, and using our 1min cooldown hungering cold which requires 51 points in for the only guaranteed way to do it. So we get 2 random abilities that use up frost runes that MAY have a slight chance to freeze the target, and a long cooldown on demand one.

2) Once the target is frozen via mind freeze/icy touch/frost strike... then what? It lasts for maybe 3 seconds at best, and if you just used your last frost run, half of the time you can't even howling blast them before it wears off due it breaking on damage, no runes are available, and/or howling blast is on cooldown anyways. Soooo most of the time I see the target get frozen and say "neat", and that's about it, as I don't have enough tools to take advantage of it.

3) Hungering cold is fantastic. I really like this ability, I just wish I could use it more often. It's so strong, that I typically don't even need full runic power to use. I wish we had a single target version of this ability as a base ability.

4) Death's Chill needs to be off the global cooldown. So does Blood tap. It's beyond frustrating to find my target gets frozen and I wan't to pop a crit howling blast, but by the time I've waited for the gcd so I can howling blast, it's already broken. Same thing with needing an emergency frost rune via blood tap. It just takes too long to react to the situation due to GCD. I have to basically spend 3 seconds to get that emergency situation combo off, and by then, the situation is typically gone! Don't like it.

5) Howling blast is amazing, but I wish I had more tools that took advantage of a frozen target in someway. Doesn't have to be tripple damage to frozen targets ability, but something. Could be even single target. Also, it would be really nice if we had a runic power ability that could fill this role. It seems that most of the abilities that build up to the frozen target scenario (with the exception of hungering cold) require frost runes. It would be fantastic if we had the choice of doing rune-ability > runic power and vice versa to build our frozen target combos. Options are great, depending on the situation.

6) Icy talons needs to reduce gcd by the proper amount, since it's technically spell haste. I know someone already mentioned this, but it needs to happen.

7) Killing machine and unbreakable armor feel too bloated. Please consider 3/3 versions.

8) Endless winter feels like too weak of a talent. Perhaps if more talents were included to make it feel stronger, such as increasing the duration of your mind freeze interrupt/lockout, as well as making the effect of death's chill last a couple seconds longer to buy you time for another frost rune to perhaps recharge. Perhaps make this a 3/3 talent. Also needs to affect chillblains sorely.

9) New talent needed: Winters Reach: Increases the range of all frost spells and abilities by 10/20% Mind freeze especially needs this, but would also be a boost to the core ability of icy touch to the frost tree. Extra range on hungering cold/howling blast would be fantastic as well.

10) Frost Rune Mastery feels extremely week, and only really procs when you use hungering cold, meaning this talent doesn't really see a whole lot of benefit unless you're 51+ points in. Please change this.

11) One final thing: I really hate how hungering cold breaks on disease damage. Frost and Unholy don't get along very well. While level, we're taught that keeping diseases on as many targets as possible is a good thing. It allows us to blood boil when needed, and its a lot of extra threat. Now, once you train Hungering Cold from 51 frost, you're taught the opposite: Just in case you need to use it. I really find myself conflicted. Should I spread my diseases around (Ok, I probably could have worded that better), or should I not in case I need to pull an emergency HC out of my ass? I dunno. Feels counter productive, frustrating and more importantly: Not fun.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

This was an overall great post of suggestions, and it looks like a lot of them were made. 10 and 11 would both be very nice, and I think after hearing of the new upcoming changes to Frost and overall tanking Ghostcrawler posted about both these issues are going to be fixed.