The New Deep FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF

• Deep Freeze: This spell now deals a large amount of damage to targets permanently immune to stuns.

Translation: Deep Freeze: This spell now deals a truck load of damage to raid bosses and many trash mobs.

Obviously this won’t work against enemy players, ever. It’s a PvE only thing, and frankly this is good, as the damage it deals is HUGE.

How huge?

REALLY HUGE.

As in, self buffed only, it will hit harder than frostbolt crits, and itself will crit for ludicrous numbers like 18k. Yes, 18k. Yes, self buffed only.

It’s bugged right now in that it doesn’t benefit from Ice Shards, but even without it, Deep Freeze is still happily critting away in the 13k, 14k area. Again, I must stress that this is without any raid buffs whatsoever.

With raid buffs up, 13% more spell damage, Totem of Wrath… oh man. It’s just… I mean… wow. Fully raid buffed we’re looking at DF crits of around 24k. This right here, even using DF once every 45 seconds is still going to result in an increase of about 10% to a frost mage’s personal DPS (not including WE), which is about 6% for overall DPS.

Even if nothing else happens, even if the permanent WE and this DF thing are the only changes that make it live, these are HUGE changes.

RIP Frozen Core changes, all hail our new Deep Freeze overlords.

Again, I’m basically sure Frozen Core isn’t going live, as it doesn’t really do anything for PvE. And GC agrees with me!

Philosophically, this is representative of a number of paradigms.

Most obviously, Blizzard desires to have multiple specs perfectly viable, and is pushing very hard to get different specs “close enough” for most players.

If frost is still, say, 5% behind arcane (which, with this DF change, it is), top end raiders aren’t going to spec frost. But a gap of 5% is practically nothing for the majority of raiders.

Three viable end game raiding specs for mages before the release of cataclysm? Who’da thunk it? This is… unprecedented. It’s awesome, to be sure, and fills me with a certian level of the warm and fuzzies.

This isn’t just good for mages. If Blizzard can get three viable end game mage specs, which it is on the cusp of doing, then there is nothing stopping the same from being true for all other classes.

Even if the DF changes don’t make it in, even of the WE glyph doesn’t make it in, it shows that Blizzard is not only aware of our sadness, but is actively attempting to give us lollipops.

Secondly, a change like this means that Blizzard is willing to change their minds.

Anyone remember when they said they wanted to keep abilities as close to identical between PvE and PvP, using the defence “we don’t want WoW to be too confusing for noobs”?

An admirable goal, says I, but PvP and PvE are already vastly different. Two completely different gear sets, completely different mechanics, PvP and PvE might as well be separate games. Consider taunts and diminishing returns, resilience, spell penetration and hit rating.

And here Blizzard is creating two completely different behaviours for a single ability in PvP and PvE.

I don’t think this is Blizzard abandoning their “PvE=PvP” policy, but it shows they are willing to compromise when they need to.

The divide between PvP and PvE will increase substantially in cataclysm, what with essentially “flavour” talents being the only ones left, and that whole “path of the titans” business providing an absurd level of customization. Which I, personally, am fine with. The bigger the difference between PvP and PvE, the better.

Enough philosophical rambling. To conclude:

DF done got buffed. It be more better now.

Fine, more philosophical rambling.

Has the frost rotation really changed at all here? With Frozen Core out and DF in, the frost rotation will still be spamming frostbolt while hitting DF whenever possible. Wasn’t the whole point to get Shatter combos into PvE and stop spamming the same button over and over again?

Which brings to light a very interesting question. If it isn’t possible, then which do frost mages want first?

Frozen Core doesn’t make frost end game viable, but it gives it shatter combos.

DF makes frost end game viable, but it does not give it shatter combos.

Or does it? With DF being instant, only usable with a FoF proc, and hitting harder than anything else in the game, will it actually feel like a proper shatter combo? It’s usable on the FoF ghost charge, obviously, there’s really no way for Blizzard to fix that (unless they make FoF a limited duration affair with none of this “charges” business).

A FoF proc could easily be: FrB, FrB, DF, resulting in something that (maybe) feels like a shatter, albeit a shatter than can be performed a maximum of once every 30 seconds.

Personally, I think getting frost end-game viable is the priority. Anyone who’s still frost is more than willing to put up with more frostbolt spam by now, especially if it suddenly doesn’t suck anymore. Those who haven’t played frost in a while, but still love the spec, would probably return as fast as they can press the respec button.

At least, most of the cryomancers-at-heart I know do.

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