First, I'd like to urge anyone reading this to vote in the poll I posted this weekend. This sort of cosmetic glyph is, I believe, a relatively easy thing to implement; feedback on playstyle and balancing is important, but Blizzard likes to hear about the lightweight, fun stuff as well; if we can post some results with healthy participation, who knows, it may make an impact.
Second, I intend to write a post explaining the basic playstyle of Frost PvE. Frost has been considered a PvP-only spec for so long that I'm seeing quite a few people asking both whether that's going to change in Mists of Pandaria, and how it will work. It's too early (since it is, after all, still beta) to nail down precise optimal rotations and the like, but I don't think it's very likely we're going to see a huge change in the basics at this point. Experienced Frost players probably won't get too much out of this, but for those who are less familiar with it and curious, please post your questions in comments under this thread, and I'll try to cover them when I write the post.
Recent Changes
There have been a few changes since I posted last.
Alter Time Duration Increased
Alter Time's countdown has increased from four to six seconds. I'll cover this in more detail below.
Frostbolt Heals the Water Elemental
Frostbolt can now be cast on our Water Elemental to heal it. The heal has the same value as Frostbolt's damage. It does not appear to proc Fingers of Frost when used in this manner. I cast it about forty times without seeing any crit heals, but Halanad on the beta forums says s/he's seen it happen.
This addresses a couple of related complaints. I found that my Water Elemental sometimes died while questing simply because it didn't have time to heal up between pulls. It was never really a case of one pull being too much and clobbering the pet; it was a matter of attrition through normal combat. Sitting and waiting for a pet to regenerate health naturally is boring; this gives us a quick and pain-free way to top it off while out of combat.
In combat, it provides us the opportunity to trade DPS time for a chance to save the pet if it's taking damage. Now, some have complained that we suffer more than Hunters or Warlocks, both to keep the pet alive and if it dies. I don't believe this to be the case.
Health Funnel, the Warlock channeled heal, heals at about half the rate of Frostbolt, at least at my current spell power and health levels. It's a six-second channel that heals 6% of the demon's health per second. Frostbolt, by contrast, heals about 22% of my Water Elemental's health in two seconds.
Hunters have an instant-cast HOT they can use, but it heals for only 2.5% health per second. We arguably have the strongest emergency pet heal.
As for when the pet does die, it's true that we go without some 10-15% of our DPS for 60 seconds before we can resummon it, while a Hunter or Warlock can resummon immediately. However, resummoning means going without 100% of their DPS for five or six seconds, respectively. It's not exactly the same loss, but it's not wildly different, either.
There's an interesting bug in the current build: Frostbolt will heal any friendly target, not just the Water Elemental. This is obviously unintended, but it might be very interesting to offer a major glyph that allows this to happen; it doesn't seem offhand as if it would be a significant balance problem for a Frost Mage to be able to suspend DPS entirely to throw out some not-particularly-powerful heals at the cost of a major glyph slot. I'd be very interested in feedback on this idea.
Ring of Frost Cast Time Increased
Ring of Frost now has a 2.5 second cast time. I figure one or both of two things was happening: too many Mages were speccing for Ring of Frost, and/or it was simply too powerful in PvP testing.
As I don't PvP, the primary appeal of Ring of Frost for me has been emergency CC — dropping a ring around myself and other squishies if I see mobs getting loose, dropping one in front of a tank who's kiting mobs if she needs a few seconds of relief, that kind of thing. 2.5 seconds is a bit much for emergency use, in my mind. 1.5 worked pretty well, with the coalescence time removed from the spell, but 2.5 just doesn't feel right for the way I like to use it. So I've switched to Frostjaw.
I don't necessarily think this was a bad change. If the spell was the most common choice by a significant margin, then it's a good thing if the change results in a more even spread across the three choices. But it may just lead to people dropping Ring of Frost en masse. Time will tell.
Alter Time
I reached level 87 this weekend, and learned our new spell, Alter Time, played with it a bit, and started thinking and discussing it in earnest with some other Mages. You may have read or heard about the behavior of the spell in earlier builds, and it has been worked on a bit, so here are the basics:
- When you cast Alter Time, it takes a snapshot of your current Health, Mana, and buff status.
- Six seconds later, provided you are still alive, it resets you to the saved status.
- Buff durations such as Icy Veins, Arcane Power, etc. are reset to their saved durations; e.g., if you had 15 seconds remaining on Icy Veins when you cast Alter Time, it will count down to nine seconds, then reset to 15.
- Charged buffs are restored to their saved status as well. If you had two Fingers of Frost charges when you cast Alter Time, then used them while it counted down, it would restore those charges.
- Debuffs are not affected; they count down normally.
- Cooldowns are not affected; you cannot use a cooldown followed by Alter Time to reset that cooldown.
- This means you need to be careful about using Cooldowns after using Alter Time — if you cast Alter Time followed by Icy Veins, Icy Veins will be removed six seconds later, and left on cooldown. It is not yet known whether this behavior is intended.
- Currently, Alter Time and Presence of Mind do not play well together, but this will be corrected in a near-future build.
- Alter Time also messes with Time Warp, Heroism, etc. This will also be corrected in a near-future build.
So many people have criticized this ability from a PvE standpoint as "just a six-second cooldown extender that we'll macro to Icy Veins, Arcane Power, or Combustion." Of course it has other uses — there will be the occasional raid mechanic that Alter Time allows you to cheese completely — but it seems to be the popular opinion that these uses will be rare and that the rest of the time, using it will be mindless and dull.
I'd like to challenge this opinion. Yes, it's true that the majority of the time, you'll be using Alter Time for DPS in PvE; one way a good Mage will distinguish herself from an average Mage will be knowing when to forego that use in favor of using it for utility, but most of the time, that choice won't be available.
But even when "just" using it for DPS, getting the most out of Alter Time will involve some forethought and intelligent decisions.
An Arcane Mage is usually going to want to use Arcane Missiles procs as they happen. But when Alter Time and Arcane Power are coming off cooldown, you'll want to prepare for them by stacking up two charges of Arcane Missiles and ramping your Arcane Charges up to full; after starting Alter Time, you'll fire off both volleys of Arcane Missiles, and when Alter Time triggers, fire off two more, all with maximum Arcane Charges.
A Fire Mage doesn't have as much to do, but will want to ensure that he has a Hot Streak proc ready to use after casting Alter Time.
A Frost Mage will normally be keeping a single Fingers of Frost charge banked for movement or burst, but leading into an Icy Veins/Alter Time combo, she'll want to make sure Freeze or Frozen Orb is available to top the charges off, and make sure the bomb she's specced has generated a Brain Freeze proc before starting Alter Time. Burn off both FOF charges and the Brain Freeze FFB immediately, and all three will be back when Alter Time triggers.
None of this is rocket science, but it's a lot more interactive than is implied by the claim that "we'll just macro the spell to our DPS cooldown." That won't work, because a combination of random procs and timers go into making sure everything you want up is up when you hit the Alter Time button.
I hope this provides a different perspective on the ability, and spurs some new discussion.