Mage Community Gets Good News About Iceblock
November 8, 2007 by Angelo Fernandez
Filed under Mage
The iceblock ability of frost mages is such a powerful spell that it’s been the subject of many discussions. Iceblock is one of the most important reasons why mages spec frost instead of fire (but personally I’m frost because I love my ice barrier and water elemental soooo much!) Iceblock also got a nerf some time ago when the hypothermia debuff was added so that one could not perform the abusive iceblock + coldsnap + iceblock combo allowing the the mage to use the iceblock ability twice in a matter of seconds. Hypothermia restricts the mage from using another iceblock until 30 seconds have passed.
It appeared that iceblock was going to get another nerf by increasing the duration of hypothermia to 45 seconds from the original 30 seconds. This is the way it was in the PTR until recently. Yes, Blizzard decided to undo the nerf in the public test realm so the 30 second hypothermia is here to stay. Blizzard poster Kalgan explains,
It’s a deliberate change. We initially felt like it was too quick at 30s and decided to test it out at 45s, but after playing with it for a while we felt like it opened mages to focus fire a little too much so we decided to keep it at 30s. It’s worth pointing out that making changes like this and later un-doing them is not at all uncommon, it’s just most of you generally don’t see that process in action since it often happens before the patch even gets to the PTR.
Kalgan also pointed out in the same post that there will be more improvements coming for the mage class in the future that likely won’t make it to patch 2.3. What changes? Improvements to our mana issues. Since they’re already changing evocation to be based on a percent per tick instead of spirit, I’m guessing they’re planning to buff our mana gems. Oh yeah… Iceblock will be trainable!!!
Ughhhhhh…I absolutely hate Iceblock since I’m a Warrior.
Why can’t I just smash their faces in without them having some kind of “bubble”. Even though I hate it, it really is kinda cool for Mages.
Here’s how it goes during Arena when fighting a team with a Frost Mage: Mage down to quarter of life, iceblocks, healed to full life, Blinks right as Iceblock wears off, and it’s pretty much back to the beginning.
Well, I hated it for a while but now that i’ve got it, its a pretty cool spell to have.
Ice block is awesome and I’m sort of glad that all mages have it since it’s a pretty handy spell that all mages really need.
Here’s how not to use iceblock though:
You pull aggro from your tank and then iceblock, leaving some other guy most likely your healer to get aggro and die. I’ve seen a guildie do it so many times it’s kinda funny but I guess it’s bad mage behavior.