Blizzard
Lots of feedback on the first round of changes. Here's the second iteration:
冰霜之柱 Previous changes to
冰霜之柱 have been reverted. While the ability is quite simple in a vacuum (20% damage increase with no other mechanics), there were clearly a lot of players who were uncomfortable with the idea of removing a core ability that's been around for so long.
After reading all the feedback and examining the ability's place on the spec, we think the ability did provide a couple valuable things to the Frost rotation. One is
冰霜之柱 is a window to play around – it allowed you to occasionally pool/spend your resources for a gain in a way that otherwise Frost doesn't really have baseline. Additionally, it was a damage amp that you could/would want to line up cooldowns for –
冷酷严冬,
冰霜巨龙之怒, etc. Straightforward, but felt good to use.
冰霜之柱 is now back, at 45 sec cooldown and 15 sec duration – shorter cooldown but same uptime. Since it's providing some useful gameplay direction for the rotation, we're leaning into it more and making it available a little more often. Additionally, to give it just a little more texture and gameplay, its damage bonus now starts at 15% and increases by 1% per Rune spent while it's active. Pillar usually ends with a 25% damage bonus or more.
Talent Changes- 冰川突进 now costs 30 Runic Power (instead of 1 Rune), has a 6 sec cooldown (down from 15 sec), and also applies Razorice to all enemies hit. 冰川突进 overlapped a lot with Frostscythe in both use and cost, and we're looking to differentiate it so it can find its own use case.
- 冷酷之心 has replaced Shattering Strikes. It's basically the same as the legendary but without the stun, and provides the spec's talent tree with some single-target burst.
- 湮没 is mostly back to its live design, but it's now a passive, and triggered while 冰霜之柱 is active. With Pillar of Frost being back baseline, we still want to avoid a setup where casing 3 self-buff cooldown consecutively was possible (冰霜之柱, 符文武器增效, 湮没, in any order). We're still iterating a bit on 湮没's cost reduction mechanic - it has some slightly awkward effects on resources which we'd like to make feel better.
Current talent layout:
Notes:- 冰冷之爪 now triggers from 冰龙吐息, since it's replacing your 冰霜打击 for a period of time.
- 冰封之韧's damage reduction was increased to 30% for both Frost/Unholy specs
As always, thanks for the continued feedback and we expect to hear more from you all.
