This is detailing the effects of the suppposed nerf/bug with Frost Nova/Freezing Effects/Ice Lance.
Reposted from another thread:

I'll put in my two cents on the issue...


Untalented DpS comparison between fire and frost would put fire as the winner. Higher damage output with the option of a higher DpM spell to put into the cycle (ontop of Arcane Blast). The boost to the frost tree is having 200% crits upfront and the ability to 'force' crits (though not 100%) on a greater basis than fire.

That said there are 3 corner stones to the frost tree: Kiting talents, Damage Talents and Biding talents. Kiting talents increase the time it takes for melee to reach you, snare/root and range talents fall into this. Damage talents increase your base damage output, crit damage bonus, crit rate, bonus from damage gear and decrease casting time. Biding talents are a bit unique, they are talents that increase the time you stay alive solely to have the shorter cooldown timers ready or give you time to cast (talents that reduce cooldown timers also fall into this). Any talent in the frost tree falls under one of these titles (or the few rare that fall under 2, or the all in one wonder of the WE that falls in all 3). A heavy frost spec is built upon a synergy of these three talent types, more often leaning towards one of them.

A heavy frost build's damage normally relies on frostbolt spamming with being supplemented by crits (and now Ice Lance on frozen targets). Key markers of this corner stone are 200% crit (Ice Shards), +50% Crit chance on frozen targets (Shatter), Faster casting time on Frostbolt (Imp Frostbolt), Better gear scaling of frostbolt (Emp. Frostbolt), 10% increased crit rate debuff (Winter's chill) and an independant damage pet (Water Elemental). This creates a synergy with other (normally) non damage talents and abilities, Frostbite and Frost Nova/Freeze being the most noticable (and also any other freeze effect like the hunter's Freezing Trap). The ability for these effects to have a chance to last beyond one hit gives greater ability to improve damage. The Shatter talent can be seen as the center of this (hence, "Shatter Build").

The issue is that if this is changed to break freezing effects on crit it scraps the shatter talent. Though not all freezing effects will hold beyond the first hit, a good portion will. These give a few extra seconds for CD timers to count. Not only does reducing the time rooted decrease a frost mage's damage, it also hit's their survivibility.

You have to take a few things into account. First is that a mage's defense is active, not passive. This means that a mage either attacks or defends, not both. The 'Avoidance over Midigation' design also means that we don't take hits well. This means that while a mage is being attacked either their damage is (nearly) non-existant in comparison with it's actual potential but taking less from the hits or that they are dealing reduced damage (if any) while taking full damage. The only way to tip the favor towards the mage is through a counter (something that stops them from attacking for a second. Impact proc off of MA is a good example). The issue is that most of our defenses are in the form of snares and roots, the rest coming from small damage shields, stuns and lockouts.

Now what happens when a mob is immune to freezing effects (or being rooted for that matter)? The damage output of a heavy frost mage drops by a decent percentage (I can't give exact numbers as I can't determine the exact % of my crits that are caused by shatter). When that mob is also immune to snares (or when roots and snares have no effect on it's damage output) then the survivibility of mages in general is shot. One might say the same thing about warlocks and fear immune mobs, but they have other options given to them by higher hitpoints and a full time pet.

But saying the entire frost tree is centered on Frost Nova is flawwed. It would be much more accurate to say that the frost tree is heavily centered and dependant on freezing effects of which Frost Nova is our most powerful and reliable. It can also be said that any changes that are made to the effect of frost nova will be applied to all freezing effects. This means that if all freezing effects instantly break on a single crit then the overall effectiveness of shatter will be shot (having this talent turned into another double edged sword), or if an Ice Lance crit will instantly break any freezing effect then I can bind it to a lesser used space on my bars as it would kill a large number of the situations it can be used in (Breaking from crit after 1.5s into FN's cooldown or 4.5s into it's cooldown, easy choice). Changing Ice Lance in this manner actually makes it less worthwhile for a frost mage to use it than a fire mage.

Considering that both Frostbolt and Fireball got hit with an unjusified 10% coefficient nerf (If they were doing to much damage through the Empowered talents then they should change the effect of those talents or replace them entirely. That would only affect the builds that were causing too much damage in the first place instead of nerfing almost every build out there... And they should also update the damned tooltip to this nerf!) and then hitting either Icelance or Freezing effects themselves with this nerf is well on it's way to killing the frost tree as a whole. Frost would no longer have any reasonable spell to fall back on for constant damage and the new toy of the frost school would get trashed. Not to mention changing (nerfing) one of the key mechanics that an entire tree is based around would have adverse effects on specs that went deep into that tree...

The real question is why is Freezing then repeated Icelancing any different than fearing and DoTing? (Aside from the obvious remark that warriors don't have to deal with fear and instead are at the mercy of snares and roots) There are actually less ways to break fear (or prevent it) than there are for freezing effects and roots. Freezing effects on live seem to have about the same change to break from damage as fear does anyways.

Anyways, that's how I see things

Adding Tseric's post on this issue. Considering I'm likely quite close to the post size limit on the original, just adding it here.

---

Q u o t e:
The change affects Frost Nova. Frozen targets were never intended to be frozen after a critical. However, the usage of Ice Lance made it very noticable that being frozen was persisting through being crit, whereas normal damage had a chance to break the state. By insuring that a crit will break the frozen state, back to back crits from Ice Lance won't be occurring and such spikes in damage disappear.

I don't see how it makes Shatter useless, as you are still gaining higher chance of a crit, you just can't two-shot somebody with a zero second cooldown attack.

---

Just going to toss out a few numbers here. My frostbolt crits for 2.5k (with Spell power and Ice shards) and Icelance crits for about 1.9k for me. I've heard numbers of constant 3k frostbolt crits and 2.2k Icelance crits from level 70 mages. Fully powered with AP my crits reach 3.2k and 2.6k respectively. Now, even 2 frostbolt crits wouldn't kill a level 70 player (heck, wouldn't even kill me) and Icelance hits for less.

The issue is that not only will the spikes in damage disappear, but also alot of the expected damage that frost mages have been doing before Icelance. There isn't a single freezing effect that isn't on cooldown or is a proc, and freezing effects don't remove control of your character (a hunter's freezing trap being the only exception to that). All of the mage's freezing effects are treated as roots and are the most readly preventable and breakable (Talents to increase resistance to roots and snares, AoE avoidance talents, resist talents, Free action pots, Dispell, class trinkets and shapeshifting to name some).

This isn't just affecting a Frost Mage's damage, it's a hit to one of the key mechanics to our survivability. Making freezing effects break more often reduces the effectiveness of this defense.

I can't think of anything else to add to this at this time, but please ask the devs to reconsider this change. It's affecting more than they think.

---

Q u o t e:
(Aside from the obvious remark that warriors don't have to deal with fear and instead are at the mercy of snares and roots) There are actually less ways to break fear (or prevent it) than there are for freezing effects and roots. Freezing effects on live seem to have about the same change to break from damage as fear does anyways.

Anyways, that's how I see things

---

Warriors arent even stoped by freezing effects and roots anymore, theyre buffing charges so that they break any snare effects. This nerf is ill concieved (as most are) and poorly thought out, simple as that. Rather than going to the heart of the issue, as i understand it, they put a blanket over it. Then again effectiveness was never one of blizzards finer traits.

Meh, sucks that the main nice thing we got in the expansion gets messed up. :/

If the developers don't want mages to depend on burst damage in pvp, what do they suggest we do?

Do you really think they want to make AP/PoM the only obvious burst build for pvp?

---

Q u o t e:
I will ask, sure. However, I'm pretty sure they're determined to eliminate chain-critting on a frozen target. Ice Lance wasn't the sole reason for this, per se, it just became such standard behavior that it illustrated the fact that crit damage didn't necessarily break the effect.

As for the rest of it, I'll simply admit that an exaggeration was a poor way to illustrate a point on my part and I'll certainly apologize for it. I will also admit that chain-critting with Shatter was something that people were relying on, so if you want to think the talent is useless, nothing I say is going to change that. I don't really see saying anything beyond this point as helping, so I'll just read.

Nice post, by the way.

---

man u deleted my post wtf

---

Q u o t e:
I will ask, sure. However, I'm pretty sure they're determined to eliminate chain-critting on a frozen target. Ice Lance wasn't the sole reason for this, per se, it just became such standard behavior that it illustrated the fact that crit damage didn't necessarily break the effect.

As for the rest of it, I'll simply admit that an exaggeration was a poor way to illustrate a point on my part and I'll certainly apologize for it. I will also admit that chain-critting with Shatter was something that people were relying on, so if you want to think the talent is useless, nothing I say is going to change that. I don't really see saying anything beyond this point as helping, so I'll just read.

Nice post, by the way.

---

do you know of any kinda of threshold being worked on for CC and dmg working coopertively? Or will nova break on a scorch crit but not a frostbolt that did more dmg, but didn't crit.

---

Q u o t e:
I will ask, sure. However, I'm pretty sure they're determined to eliminate chain-critting on a frozen target. Ice Lance wasn't the sole reason for this, per se, it just became such standard behavior that it illustrated the fact that crit damage didn't necessarily break the effect.

As for the rest of it, I'll simply admit that an exaggeration was a poor way to illustrate a point on my part and I'll certainly apologize for it. I will also admit that chain-critting with Shatter was something that people were relying on, so if you want to think the talent is useless, nothing I say is going to change that. I don't really see saying anything beyond this point as helping, so I'll just read.

Nice post, by the way.

---

I can understand that chain-critting can be a problem for any class or ability, but does it really matter considering the increased HP pools?

Tseric, do you know if all crits break Frost Nova, or just mage crits? The implications of all crit damage breaking it are pretty severe in group PvP, especially with classes like druids and rogues on your side.

Also, could you give us an update on the WE's health and mana upon spawning? Currently warlock and hunter pets regen to full, but the WE, Earth Elemental, and Fire Elemental (shaman pets of course) do not. In fact, Warlocks can even get a free Dark Pact in after spawning, making the summon cost free if you neglect the shard loss for non-imp pets.

---

Q u o t e:
I will ask, sure. However, I'm pretty sure they're determined to eliminate chain-critting on a frozen target. Ice Lance wasn't the sole reason for this, per se, it just became such standard behavior that it illustrated the fact that crit damage didn't necessarily break the effect.

As for the rest of it, I'll simply admit that an exaggeration was a poor way to illustrate a point on my part and I'll certainly apologize for it. I will also admit that chain-critting with Shatter was something that people were relying on, so if you want to think the talent is useless, nothing I say is going to change that. I don't really see saying anything beyond this point as helping, so I'll just read.

Nice post, by the way.

---

im just a bit sad that of all things to be nerfed it was frost nova... ive always thought of frost spec and drew a connection with dagger rogues, where due to a certain circumstance (being behind a target/your target is frozen) you can selectively chose when you're going to crit. nerfing frost nova to me then sounds as silly as saying "dagger rogues were critting too often when they were behind their target."

---

Q u o t e:

From what I've heard, yes it is on any crit.

---

white damage from my rogue partner breaking nova ftw

My question (its been asked before) : Why is chain critting such a big deal when so many classes have such high HPs?

All i am going to say is if FN breaks on crit. Then so should Fear, and and everyother CC in the game. Think of all those rooted warriors who get moonfire spammed. Is it really any different?

---

Q u o t e:


I can understand that chain-critting can be a problem for any class or ability, but does it really matter considering the increased HP pools?

---

EXACTLY.

If you were chain kitting ICE LANCE, you get about what... 3k DMG?..

Give me a break. The only people that complain about this are rogues and warriors.

You gave rogues CloS, that fixed the problem.

Warriors have a !%*! LOAD OF HP, warriors DOWN-SIDE is being kitting by a player that uses ranged attacks.

This is a load of !%*!.

What if I took away your fear on the first dot proc?... you think you would be happy?

What about all the other forms of roots and snares?... what are you doing about that?

On another note you applied the 10% dmg reduction, which was quite reasonable do to the added ice lance dmg. Fine with that.

But now ice lance can only produce 1 crit and brakes your root?.... 1500dmg vs 15000hp.

10% of a warriors life.

---

Q u o t e:

From what I've heard, it is on any crit.

---

your molten armor crits [target] for [measly] damage.
frost nova breaks.

i think it should only break on ICELANCE crits, imo.
from a programming perspective, that's an easy fix.