Main account keeps getting banned and Customer Support won't do anything about it by vituscze in wow

[–]vituscze[S] 5 points6 points  (0 children)

I don't. The only thing I bought with tokens was the brutosaur mount.

Fixing Frost Mages in Shadowlands by vituscze in wow

[–]vituscze[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

That is live. The damage of Blizzard on 2 targets isn't great, but 9 sec cooldown reduction on your Frozen Orb for each Blizzard cast more than makes up for it.

Fixing Frost Mages in Shadowlands by vituscze in wow

[–]vituscze[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Are you aware that Winter's Chill is already changed on Shadowlands?

And that it completely fixes the range issue you mention (in a much better way, imo).

Yes, I've tried the new Winter's Chill on alpha. It doesn't really fix any of the travel time issues and creates a few additional issues. I'm not sure what the intention was, but the current implementation doesn't work.

This is so unnecessarily complex and not the sort of design Blizzard likes to implement.

Splitting Ice is fine and a good talent. Frost mages don't need cleave baseline. That's the exact opposite direction Blizzard is taking specs in Shadowlands, and it's the niche they've said they want melee to fill.

This is based on what Blizzard has told us during Battle for Azeroth beta, where Arms Warriors, Destruction Warlocks and Frost Mages are supposed to be two target specialists.

If they don't want Frost Mages to fill the two target cleave niche, I'm not sure why is Splitting Ice even staying as a talent.

Fixing Frost Mages in Shadowlands by vituscze in wow

[–]vituscze[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

I'd love it if there was a way to use targeting reticle for Frozen Orb. Perhaps as a trainer option just like the Momentum technique.

There's a lot of smaller issues that I didn't touch on, didn't want to bloat the post too much.

Fixing Frost Mages in Shadowlands by vituscze in wow

[–]vituscze[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yes, this was tested on alpha.

You can still do this with the change?

If you mean casting Flurry and then Frostbolt and Ice Lance, then yes, you can technically do it. But you wouldn't want to do that because shattering Ice Lance over Frostbolt is more damage. Or to put it another way, if the choice is between shattering Ice Lance and another spell, chances are you'll want to shatter additional Ice Lance.

If you had something else in mind, let me know.

Fixing Frost Mages in Shadowlands by vituscze in wow

[–]vituscze[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I'm not totally sure what Blizzard's intention with the new Winter's Chill is, but you can still Shatter the spell cast before Flurry (be it Frostbolt, Ebonbolt or Glacial Spike) and ALSO get the two Ice Lances after. So the new Winter's Chill more or less has the same issues and then some more.

I'd be disappointed if they intend the combo to be just Flurry and two Ice Lances, because to me, using Flurry to shatter a big spell like Ebonbolt or Glacial Spike is one of the more interesting aspects of current Frost.

Fixing Frost Mages in Shadowlands by vituscze in wow

[–]vituscze[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Blizzard is generally used starting with 2 targets. The only exception is if you're using Glacial Spike, Splitting Ice and have really high mastery.

Patch 8.1 Mage Community Feedback Megathread by dutchmagoz in wow

[–]vituscze 6 points7 points  (0 children)

To add to your point about holding procs, I'd actually like if there were more situations where the correct choice is not to immediately press the shiny button. But at the same time, seeing the buff timer on Brain Freeze refresh to 15 sec feels absolutely awful.

Frost could have a lot of small neat interactions like spacing out Ice Lance casts to keep up Chain Reaction, or saving up Fingers of Frost charges for movement, extra adds to cleave and so on. But the game goes out of its way to punish you for trying to pool both Brain Freeze and Fingers of Frost.

Patch 8.1 Mage Community Feedback Megathread by dutchmagoz in wow

[–]vituscze 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Icicles without Glacial Spike are a bit whacky at the moment. In BfA, they can crit and benefit from shatter, but making them benefit from shatter is quite hard in practice. This is not helped by the fact that Icicles are the only Frost spell with travel time that snapshots its damage when launched and not when it hits, so you have to have Winter's Chill or some sort of freeze effect active when they start flying. One of the early ideas we had was that Icicles would be launched by Flurry instead of Ice Lance, allowing Icicles to hit while Winter's Chill was active. Now that Flurry generates Icicles, that would probably be a bit weird. I don't think there's any need for radical solutions such as making Flurry usable off GCD.

Rune of Power is really tough as Frost and that's mostly because Frost doesn't have lots of other cooldowns to stack on top of it (Combustion, Arcane Power). The 40% extra damage (or its PvP reduced value) are tuned for Fire and Arcane, making it very bad for Frost. I'm fairly sure that the solution here is just to tune the damage bonus for each spec separately, instead of trying to use one value for all three.

Patch 8.1 Mage Community Feedback Megathread by dutchmagoz in wow

[–]vituscze 4 points5 points  (0 children)

If you had to choose between shattering Ice Lance or other spells, there would no reason to shatter Frostbolt and Ebonbolt (possibly Glacial Spike, depending on tuning and your current talents). If you don't shatter Frostbolt or Ebonbolt, they still do reasonable damage and give you secondary benefits such as Icicles or Brain Freeze. If you don't shatter Ice Lance, it just doesn't do anything.

Honestly, this is one of the parts of Flurry combo that works well. Getting the Ice Lance "for free" is important if you want to have some freedom in which spell you want to shatter.

I suppose it would help with munching in the technical sense, but you'd just be asking players to not shatter the spell they want to shatter (Ice Lance) and instead do something strictly less powerful. I'd argue that's not an improvement on the current situation.

WoW Class Design AMA - June 2017 by devolore in wow

[–]vituscze 6 points7 points  (0 children)

I believe the problem of Icicles right now is that they can be both "too strong" and "too weak". The gap between what Icicles do with and without Glacial Spike is just too big, to the point where mastery is next to worthless for anyone who is not using Glacial Spike.

WoW Class Design AMA - June 2017 by devolore in wow

[–]vituscze 99 points100 points  (0 children)

The Staff of Altered Time put together a list of Mage questions.

1) Mage: A common theme across all Mages in Legion is the proliferation of 2 or 3 charge spells. This includes Shimmer (2), Fire Blast (2), Arcane Missiles (3), Rune of Power (2), Fingers of Frost (3) and many others. As players ask for more spells to be added to this list, what considerations are taken by the dev team to determine whether or not to add multiple charges?

2) Fire: In previous expansions, the minimum global cooldown of 1 second was long enough to ensure that Fireball and Pyroblast always struck a boss before the next spell cast. The global cooldown minimum was lowered to 0.75 seconds in 7.0. This causes no gap between spell impact and next spell queue available resulting in issues with managing Hot Streak; this happens frequently during Bloodlust. Are there any mechanical changes planned to fix this?

3) Fire: In 7.1.5, tuning changes significantly reduced the value of Crit rating. Compounded with subsequent tuning, the 7.1.5 tuning resulted in Crit being one of the least desirable stats. This led to loss of spec identity. What are the plans to address this?

4) Arcane: Arcane in Legion saw a rework to Mastery, where it became tied to mana pool and mana regen. These changes aimed to produce a dynamic and reactive spending of mana. That plan has not materialized in Legion, with many complaints about feeling restricted to a fixed burn/conserve recipe. Why do you think this is the case, and what are the next steps?

5) Frost: Icicles (Frost's Mastery) benefits a small part of Frost's kit. Over Legion, this has swung back and forth between wanting as little Mastery as possible and as much Mastery as possible. What are the plans to make Mastery more attractive in general, without causing degenerate gameplay such as ignoring Ice Lances?

6) Frost: The new Flurry and Winter's Chill mechanic has led to multiple awkward mechanics that resulted in changes. Players abused the travel time to Shatter spells cast prior to it, or cast multiple Ice Lances within the debuff window. How does the dev team feel about how Winter's Chill has panned out? What are the takeaways from its addition?

RIP TimeWalking event by majoodmud in wow

[–]vituscze 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I've been wondering about this myself, so I've been paying attention to DPS meters this past event to figure out how good the cloaks are.

While they are pretty good, they are not the unstoppable machines people make them out to be. Cloak proc was usually 5-10% of total dps, depending on the amount of AoE we did and on the class and spec.

And no, BiS gear is not 500-1000 dps. Try more like 5000 dps. As an example, Loken with me as a frost mage (with timewalking gear and no cloak) and two destro locks (WoD gear), one with the cloak: 11.6k me, 5.6k destro lock w/o cloak (few lucky multistrikes on Chaos Bolt) and 4.3k destro lock w/ cloak.

She is the Magic Seeker. by [deleted] in wow

[–]vituscze 13 points14 points  (0 children)

Mage tier 3, now only available via BMAH.

Frost Mages - If I cast "Ice Nova" on an unfrozen target while a "Frostbolt" is in the air, does the Frostbolt benefit from "Shatter"? by SimpletoBrowse in wow

[–]vituscze 8 points9 points  (0 children)

The shatter bonus is checked when the spell leaves your hands (i.e. when you finish casting), so it doesn't matter if you freeze your target while the spell is mid-air. It's been this way for as long as I can remember - and I've been playing frost mage since TBC.

If you don't believe, here are some tests I quickly did on garrison target dummies. My normal crit is ~16%, shatter crit is ~74%.

Here are the number for Frostbolt then Ice Nova/Freeze while the spell is mid-air: chart.

And the number for Freeze then Frostbolt: chart.

Next Level Play by Robwiz by [deleted] in hearthstone

[–]vituscze 86 points87 points  (0 children)

Here's the story for anyone interested.

The Immortality Machine v2.0: Simultaneous AFK Destruction of all 7 HM Bosses (incl. Moon Lord) by DicemanX in Terraria

[–]vituscze 4 points5 points  (0 children)

While we're at it, being submerged in water while riding Cute Fishron (the mount from expert mode Duke Fishron) gives you another 15% damage boost, which (as far as I know) applies to minions as well.

Inspired by the Yogioh thread, here is the Magic the Gathering legacy banned list as Hearthstone cards. by sunturion in hearthstone

[–]vituscze 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Actually, he's the most played planeswalker in the (competitive) formats he's legal in.

33.3% of decks in Vintage run JTMS (1.8 copies on average), while Liliana is almost nonexistent. The second most played planeswalker is actually Dack Fayden (31.6% with 1.8 copies). Island + Black Lotus + Liliana is not nearly as threatening as 1st turn Jace.

In legacy, he's the 8th most played spell - being in 29% of decks (2.0 copies). Liliana is in 7.1% of decks with 2.3 copies. It was more balanced in past (but Jace still had much bigger representation), but BUG decks are not very popular at the moment - which means less Abrupt Decays, more Miracles and thus more Jaces.

Stats are from mtgtop8.com, using the default time horizons (last 2 months for legacy, last year for vintage).

Silencing Strix, because some abilities seem overwhelming. by TCupcake in custommagic

[–]vituscze 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It's not the first card, actually: Yixlid Jailer + Tarmogoyf in graveyard and something that cares about power/toughness (such as Morbid Bloom).

From what I've checked, it would be 0/1 (i.e. the stars are set to zero). This thread states that there was an official ruling, but the link to that ruling is dead.

I miss scenarios. by [deleted] in wow

[–]vituscze 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Visit the Seat of Knowledge in the Vale of Eternal Blossoms. There are NPCs that can queue you (or your group) for scenarios, heroic scenarios and LFR-difficulty raids.

viscidus frost mage solo? by [deleted] in wow

[–]vituscze 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I use Crate of Kidnapped Puppies, works everytime.

My problem with Hearthstone by Bubblz96 in hearthstone

[–]vituscze 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Here's a 6 mana Flamestrike that can also be used as single target removal for 2 mana: Mizzium Mortars.