2.1.
New Content
Midnight Season 1 has arrived! Make sure to check out our guides on the new content.
2.2.
Class Tuning
Blizzard has been open with the player-base that class tuning will happen
primarily on set dates over the course of the beginning of the tier. March 17th,
24th, 31st, and April 7th are the currently listed dates for balance changes. As
usual, expect the guide to be updated as needed if theorycraft changes as a
result of these tuning passes.
When it comes to tuning adjustments, our next planned pass is expected to arrive
with the Midnight Season 1 launch on March 17. Our next pass will follow immediately
afterwards utilizing data gathered during the week Heroic difficulties are available;
these changes will go live with the launch of Mythic raid difficulty and Mythic+ on
March 24.
Beyond these dates, we will look to perform more tuning passes based on data gathered
during the starting weeks of Mythic difficulty for Season 1 and the March on Quel’Danas
available the week of March 31.For these two passes we err on the side of caution with
the amount of tuning we do until their respective Mythic end-bosses die to avoid being
overly disruptive to progression. After these key dates we will have several check-in passes
planned roughly a month apart. Once players obtain higher item level and better optimized gear
sets, the throughput of several specs will shift up or down relative to others and we feel
it’s important to be diligent in looking at the current state of class balance as time goes on.
2.3.
Midnight Changes to Frost Mage
Midnight is here, and Frost has been revamped from the ground up. Throw out
anything you know about the spec, this is the single largest change this spec
has seen in the history of the game.
The primary component is 
Shatter being changed from a Crit
bonus to a stacking debuff on the enemy, consumed by 
Ice Lance.
Functionally the same idea, where Shatter is a buff to your spells, but split
out into its own damage segment. Because of this, the freezing state no
longer matters to our DPS.
2.3.1.
Apex Talent
The Apex talent is a unique node you unlock as you level. You can choose to
put points gained from levelling into it, and you probably should given its
relative power. For Frost Mage, we get 
Hand of Frost 
Hand of Frost
and 
Hand of Frost, adding extra incentive to Shatter things, significantly
increasing the power of Ray of Frost, and a second charge of Ray of Frost,
giving us flexibility in how we use it.
2.3.2.
Hero Talent Changes
Spellslinger has had Splinters reduced to impact damage only,
with the old Storm mechanic changed into a random proc, since they are no
longer a stacking debuff on target. Changes to the passive buffs of the tree
have integrated it with the Shatter mechanic.
Spellfrost Teachings remains nerfed, and with the loss of the Season 3
tier bonus, 
Frozen Orb refreshes have become significantly more
rare.
Frostfire loses the 
Excess Fire and 
Excess Frost
buffs in exchange for focusing more on core spell buffs. Notably
Flurry becomes Frostfire with a new animation, 
Glacial Spike
explodes on impact, and the TWW S3 tier bonuses become new Hero
Talents.
2.3.3.
Rotational Aspects
The general idea of the new spec is to build Shatter on the target
using 
Frostbolt and Flurry, and consume them with
Ice Lance. This is complicated by random procs adding more stacks, and
wanting to keep the stacks below a certain threshold.
Glacial Spike and 
Comet Storm have been removed as
stand-alone spells, and instead transform your Frostbolt and
Ray of Frost respectively, when they are available.
2.3.4.
Cooldown Adjustments
Icy Veins has been removed, and our main cooldown is now
Ray of Frost.
With the loss of 
Ice Floes, and Ray of Frost going on cooldown
at the beginning of the cast, this is an extremely fragile cast. Any form of
knockback, interrupt, or even dropping fire under your feet will mean the loss
of your only cooldown. While 
Shimmer still exists, its cooldown has
been increased and will only deal with one of those situations. Thus Ray of
Frost is going to require you pay a lot of attention to the mechanics of every
mob you are in combat with, lest you lose the cast.
2.3.5.
AoE DPS
The cooldown reduction on Frozen Orb, from 
Blizzard, has
sadly been removed. This does mean that we can no longer rely on instant cast
Blizzards at all times during AoE, and will instead have to hard cast it. It
also means that Frozen Orb is not something that will be available on every
pull.
Comet Storm is now also double the cooldown, as it is now linked to
casting Ray of Frost.
Coldest Snap has been removed as well, removing our AoE burst
potential. In its stead, 
Cone of Frost, but as of current tuning and
inability to take advantage of multi-target Freezing stacks, it is unlikely that
it will be selected in any situation.
Instead, 
Frostbite adds an AoE component to Shatter, and
Winter's End deals that same damage when a mob with Shatter stacks dies
early. This means that our AoE is functionally our single target rotation, with
an added Blizzard cast on cooldown. Comet Storm now Shatters
stacks per comet impact, leading at least Frostfire to try and stack
as much passive AoE Freezing stacks as possible between Comet Storms.
Spellslinger has hooks attached to Ice Lance and will try and
Shatter as much as possible in between them, however.
2.3.6.
Defensive Changes
The removals and tweaks to existing spells are behind the click-through:
►
Click to expand
Mirror Image no longer provides a damage reduction, and the duration
of the copies have been reduced to 15 seconds.
Greater Invisibility likewise no longer provides a damage reduction.
Ice Barrier's cooldown has been increased, but the GCD has been
shortened for it.
Mass Barrier has been removed entirely.- Spellslinger's
Reactive Barrier has been nerfed to half
value, and 
Phantasmal Image is now entirely useless due to the changes
to Mirror Image.
Temporal Realignment has been added, which will whenever
Alter Time is not on cooldown when you hit 24% health, instantly heal
you for 50% of your max health. This is extremely strong, but does take away
actually using Alter Time. For the average player, this is the better option, as
it will always get better than average use out of Alter Time.
Glacial Bulwark is a choice node against Cold Snap. Giving us
a second charge of our only real active defensive spells is very powerful. While
Cold Snap will have niche uses, as the cooldown is ticking concurrently to our
other spells, there is a psychological aspect of not wanting to "waste" Cold
Snap on just Ice Barrier. Glacial Bulwark instead sidesteps that, in
exchange for sequential cooldown timers. This is likely the go-to for everyone.
2.3.7.
Utility and Movement Changes
We lost a good deal of utility and movement. The highlights are as such:
►
Click to expand
Blast Wave has been removed.- Ice Floes has been removed.
Temporal Velocity has been removed.- Shimmer's cooldown has been increased and the second charge split
into a different talent.
Blink gains access to a second charge through said talent.
Time Manipulation has been changed to a flat 5 second cooldown
reduction, rather than scaling every time we Ice Lance.- Frostfire's utility node is nearly entirely useless with the loss
of Blast Wave.
Spellslinger
Frostfire
