Is Glacial Spike always bad for DPS

[Sw1tch0 0]

In title. I noticed in the guides here for both M+ and raids it's not even mentioned (and I tried control f lmao). I've been a frost mage PvE player for a long time, even back in the days of deep chill/shatter whatever it was called. Is it that bad to pick up numerically? It feels like it pairs pretty well with flurry procs when they feel pretty awkward with ice lance.

[Kuni 28]

Right, I meant to put a section out on this. I'll get that added at some point this week.

 

Anyway, Glacial Spike is a pretty hefty DPS loss, nearing 10%. You actually gain back 2% or so of it when specced into it by straight up not casting the spell. The problem is that Glacial Spike doesn't do anything. It's a long cast time for mediocre damage, that doesn't scale with Mastery. The fact that it combines the Icicles into the spell hit makes it seem like it's a strong spell, but those Icicles would launch anyway, and even more of them are Shattered via Winter's Chill using non-GS Frost. Icicles have the same crit damage bonuses as GS, and GS takes up an incredibly large amount of your actual casting time while not generating Icicles.

[Sw1tch0 0]

1 hour ago, Kuni said:

Right, I meant to put a section out on this. I'll get that added at some point this week.

 

Anyway, Glacial Spike is a pretty hefty DPS loss, nearing 10%. You actually gain back 2% or so of it when specced into it by straight up not casting the spell. The problem is that Glacial Spike doesn't do anything. It's a long cast time for mediocre damage, that doesn't scale with Mastery. The fact that it combines the Icicles into the spell hit makes it seem like it's a strong spell, but those Icicles would launch anyway, and even more of them are Shattered via Winter's Chill using non-GS Frost. Icicles have the same crit damage bonuses as GS, and GS takes up an incredibly large amount of your actual casting time while not generating Icicles.

So the additional damage on icicles from mastery isnt baked into GS at all? That seems silly

What do you feel they could do to make it great? Mastery scaling and significantly lower cast time?

Take icicles out of it entirely?

[Kuni 28]

The extra damage from Mastery is there, but consider that those Icicles would launch regardless of GS or not. Both Icicles and GS benefit from Piercing Cold, both benefit from Overflowing Energy, both from Rune of Power, everything. Anything you can apply to GS applies to Icicles. GS itself is to be taken and balanced isolated from Icicles, just as its own 3s cast, 310% Spell Power spell that does not scale with Mastery itself. The lack of Mastery scaling means that 40-50% of your casting time suddenly does not benefit from Mastery, where normal non-GS Frost is almost fully Mastery backed.

What made it good in BFA was Flash Freeze, the Azerite trait, had a hidden damage modifier on the final damage dealt that scaled on Mastery, so yeah some form of extra Mastery scaling would fix it entirely. A base damage coefficient buff would work in theory, but would be extremely awkward to balance around, as it would ideally be tuned high enough to keep up with it at that tier's end game gear, but that means it would be drastically overpowered early on in the tier. I don't wish for it to become the dominant playstyle, just not a DPS loss to take. I personally adore the talent, and wish I could take it.

The only way I foresee this working out is taking the old Flash Freeze hidden component of final damage*(1+(Icicle SP coeff/GS base coeff)). I tried hard to communicate this to Blizz during the beta, but to no avail. It is frankly embarrassing that of our row 11 capstones, only one is good, with another one being acceptable, and two being absolute garbage.

 

Editing to add: Fascinatingly, this does not fix itself if you lock Hailstones behind Glacial Spike, as you'll simply spec into Hailstones and never cast GS, as I said that was a DPS gain over casting it earlier. This also doesn't fix itself if you start removing spells from Mastery, such as Hailstones/Ice Lance. I know Blizz doesn't particularly enjoy the aspect of "Mastery is just +all damage" but I feel they need to embrace it, at least on Frost, where it breaks the spec either for better or worse on the regular. There's a reason we don't take Ray of Frost, there's a reason Meteor will eventually fall out of use in later tiers, and there's a reason we never took any active talents in prior expansions. There's a reason the Water Elemental used to also scale with Mastery, although they've since removed it, much to my dismay.

Mastery has to apply to important spells, or it is doomed as a stat. Personally speaking I'd like to see Icicles become a baseline spell and Frostburn return as Mastery, as we can benefit from that greatly in PVE now with Flurry. However, barring such a change, they need to start scaling non-baseline spells with Mastery, lest they fall behind and out of use entirely.

[Sw1tch0 0]

It is a shame, because without ebonbolt/GS as good options…frost is incredibly boring to play and that saddens me a lot. 
 

at that point it’s just frostbolt, flurry, Ice lance, and your occasional orb. Even comet storm not being a good talent blows my mind, especially with its winters embrace interaction.

 

I feel like our mastery is holding us back from quite a fun play style

[Sw1tch0 0]

On 12/15/2022 at 1:26 PM, Kuni said:

The extra damage from Mastery is there, but consider that those Icicles would launch regardless of GS or not. Both Icicles and GS benefit from Piercing Cold, both benefit from Overflowing Energy, both from Rune of Power, everything. Anything you can apply to GS applies to Icicles. GS itself is to be taken and balanced isolated from Icicles, just as its own 3s cast, 310% Spell Power spell that does not scale with Mastery itself. The lack of Mastery scaling means that 40-50% of your casting time suddenly does not benefit from Mastery, where normal non-GS Frost is almost fully Mastery backed.

What made it good in BFA was Flash Freeze, the Azerite trait, had a hidden damage modifier on the final damage dealt that scaled on Mastery, so yeah some form of extra Mastery scaling would fix it entirely. A base damage coefficient buff would work in theory, but would be extremely awkward to balance around, as it would ideally be tuned high enough to keep up with it at that tier's end game gear, but that means it would be drastically overpowered early on in the tier. I don't wish for it to become the dominant playstyle, just not a DPS loss to take. I personally adore the talent, and wish I could take it.

The only way I foresee this working out is taking the old Flash Freeze hidden component of final damage*(1+(Icicle SP coeff/GS base coeff)). I tried hard to communicate this to Blizz during the beta, but to no avail. It is frankly embarrassing that of our row 11 capstones, only one is good, with another one being acceptable, and two being absolute garbage.

 

Editing to add: Fascinatingly, this does not fix itself if you lock Hailstones behind Glacial Spike, as you'll simply spec into Hailstones and never cast GS, as I said that was a DPS gain over casting it earlier. This also doesn't fix itself if you start removing spells from Mastery, such as Hailstones/Ice Lance. I know Blizz doesn't particularly enjoy the aspect of "Mastery is just +all damage" but I feel they need to embrace it, at least on Frost, where it breaks the spec either for better or worse on the regular. There's a reason we don't take Ray of Frost, there's a reason Meteor will eventually fall out of use in later tiers, and there's a reason we never took any active talents in prior expansions. There's a reason the Water Elemental used to also scale with Mastery, although they've since removed it, much to my dismay.

Mastery has to apply to important spells, or it is doomed as a stat. Personally speaking I'd like to see Icicles become a baseline spell and Frostburn return as Mastery, as we can benefit from that greatly in PVE now with Flurry. However, barring such a change, they need to start scaling non-baseline spells with Mastery, lest they fall behind and out of use entirely.

Do the Dec 20th changes help GS enough?

[Kuni 28]

Sadly, no. It does not change the fundamental scaling issues GS has, and it seems done to keep parity with where it stands today.

WHICH IS FUNNY, because these buffs without buffs to the rest of the talented kit means that the Water Elemental isn't even a valid choice for M+ anymore, Ebonbolt and Ray of Frost fall further behind, and it means Meteor is just that much closer to falling out of use in single target. Like these are good buffs for our single target/cleave, and they were needed, but they are incomplete, only further cementing our builds.

 

ETA on 01/06: Getting ahead of this, no. GS still bad. RoF might be on par, need to optimize the APL to really tell. Check back later.