Midnight Patch 12.0.5 OverviewFrost Mage Guide
Patch 12.0.5's Glacial Spike Changes
In Midnight, Glacial Spike was altered to no longer be a standalone button; instead, the ability now automatically replaces Frostbolt upon generating 5 Icicles. With Icicles rapidly generating out of combat, the change did cause some initial confusion for players who couldn't find Frostbolt in their spellbook due to it being quickly replaced by Glacial Spike.
With the first PTR build for Patch 12.0.5, Blizzard debuted changes for Frost Mage that sought to bring some clarity over the rework of Glacial Spike and help players 'easily find Frostbolt in their spellbooks.'
March 12th Patch 12.0.5 PTR Development Notes - Classes
MAGE
Frost
Developers’ notes: We’re making some cosmetic and clarity-related changes to Glacial Spike so that players can easily find Frostbolt in their spellbooks. We’ll be monitoring the throughput impact of these changes and make adjustments as necessary.
Icicles has been updated – No longer generates rapidly out of combat.
Glacial Spike now has a duration of 60 seconds (was unlimited).
The above changes ensured that Glacial Spike would not override Frostbolt out of combat indeed helping players identify Frostbolt in their spellbooks. However, the changes also had the major side effect of severely nerfing Frost Mage's opener, especially in solo content and Mythic+ where downtime is more prevalent. With raids, you're typically in combat constantly so there's very little shift in tuning from a single Glacial Spike over the course of multi-minute long encounter.
Community Sentiment
Losing critical cooldown mitigation for a spec that can have major ramp-up time for 'clarity' purposes feels awful. Even if this was done for balance purposes, it more adversely affects casual targeted content. To vent their frustrations over the massive hit to quality-of-life, players are once again taking to the forums and Reddit:
A top Reddit Post discusses why cooldown mitigation is a necessary gameplay element.
Another Reddit Post memes they 'can't find Glacial Spike in my spellbook', a riff on the original reasoning for the change.
A frustrated Reddit Poster who regrets boosting a Mage after the disappointing changes.
Forum Post calling for a reversion of the changes.
While a full reversion of the changes would likely go a long way. there's multiple avenues to fix the issue that both meet the design intent but also return that quality of life:
Icicles could only stack up to 4 out of combat.
Icicles regenerate out of combat, but Glacial Spike only replaces Frostbolt in combat.
Icicles rapidly generate for the first few seconds of combat.
Returning Glacial Spike to it's own separate ability.
Blizzard has acknowledged player feedback regarding Patch 12.0.5, so there's hope that they'll continue to listen in the coming weeks. We can just hope Frost Mage is on their radar.
