Just reran sim with the Glyph change -- it seems to mitigate about half the DPS loss from the FOF/EF changes. I replaced the Ice Lance glyph with the Deep Freeze glyph; it was already the weakest, and is now more so since we're casting about 1/3 fewer Ice Lances. It looks to me like it all adds up to about a 2.5-3% reduction.

I have not had a chance to recheck coefficients in this build yet.

No way.

That's huge. Are you seeing this effect on any other cooldowns? Does it happen if Deep Freeze does not deal damage (meaning, will this also affect its availability as a stun)?

Thats indeed huge, combined with the reduced chance of FoF (giving us more FB casts) this will bring haste back as a valuable stat again for frost.

Hopefully it brings it on par with mastery.

Just tested it on the beta and it is indeed true. It still reduces cooldown it Deep Freeze doesn't do damage.
I didn't notice it reducing the cooldowns of any other spells.
I'm very happy with this change, I didn't like haste not being valuable for Frost. It didn't make much sense to have a haste cooldown, if haste was our worst stat.

This could turn Icy Veins into something we mindlessly macro to Deep Freeze instead of something we try to line up with other procs, cooldowns, burn phases, etc. More subtly, it may bring Netherwind Presence back into parity with Ignite.

The Deep Freeze cooldown / haste change has a number of potentially significant repercussions on rotations, talents, and more. I apologize for nothing getting my sim up and running yet (work issues), so going to have to rely on Lhivera and company to work out the details.

Starting a list of open questions:

(1) Saving BF charges until FoF procs. The chance of BF is 15%, FoF 20%. If one is trying to save a BF proc until FoF procs, there's a pretty significant chance that BF will proc again first. Since you can't bank BF procs, this is a DPS lost. Saving BF charges was already only a 1-2% increase in DPS. Is it still worth doing this?

On a flavor note, I'd actually kind of prefer if it wasn't. With fewer ILs breaking up the rotation it would be nice if FFB was a different break, not a replacement for IL.

(2) Minor DPS talent balance. All of the "minor DPS talents" have had their values adjusted, either directly or indirectly. Early frost has been reduced in effectiveness. Haste, in general, is more effective with more FB casts, so Netherwind Presence becomes more attractive. If we are casting more FFBs then Ignite is boosted. If we aren't always casting FFB with FoF up crit chance goes down so Ignite is less effective.

In short, what is the new value per point of NP, EF, Ignite?

(3) NP and DF. Netherwind Presence affects caster haste but this haste bonus is not passed on to the Water Elemental (last I heard). Does the NP haste bonus affect the DF cooldown time?

(4) DF and Mastery. There was a bug where DF damage wasn't benefiting from the mastery bonus. Has this bug been fixed? The combination of DF's coefficient, +20% damage from the glyph, +X% damage from mastery, and more frequent casts due to haste could make it a huge portion of our DPS.

Yes, I can confirm Netherwind Presence allows you to cast DF's 3% more often.

On a naked premade char: 31 Frost talents spent only: Deep Freeze CD is 30 seconds
On a naked premade char: 31 Frost talents, with an additional 3 points placed in Netherwind Presence: Deep Freeze CD is 29.1 seconds.

A key question now is which of the following builds is better:

2/3 Netherwind Presence, 3/3 Ignite: Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft
3/3 Netherwind Presence, 2/3 Ignite: Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

(In both above builds: You may opt to max out Piercing Chill instead of Permafrost. However, like Pyromaniac, 2/2 Piercing Chill is very encounter specific - and something you'd probably only spec into for key fights that can actually take advantage of it).

I still dislike Ignite being attractive to Frost specs. Those last 2-3 talent points should be for choosing between things like: Blazing Speed, Reactive Barrier or Improved Counterspell. Sinking them into ignite is a little frustrating. I'd be more accepting if the position of Master of Elements and Ignite were swapped, then we'd probably skip the Tier 2 MoE (as frost) - and reallocate those 2 points elsewhere into 'fun stuff', even if we continued to pick up 3/3 ignite from Tier 1 along with Burning Soul.

The other outstanding issue is Reactive Barrier. The talent just doesn't really warrant a place in the tree, let alone something players consider sinking 2 points into. How about changing the talent to activate at 20%, but provide a second Ice Barrier (talent) that operates indepenantly of whether the Ice Barrier (spell) is on cooldown? Give the Ice Barrier (talent) an internal cooldown to prevent abuse, like Cauterize has, to balance situations where players health jumps under/over 20% in quick succession.

OK, simmed stuff out. Using a 2/8/31 spec, it looks like the net result of:

- EF reduction from 0.7 to 0.6
- FOF reduction from 30% to 20%
- Elimination of Ice Lance glyph
- Addition of Deep Freeze glyph
- Haste-based cooldown reduction on Deep Freeze

...is about a 2% increase over the previous patch.

I'll do some work probably this weekend on relative stat values and talent values.

Does Deep Freeze put a debuff on mobs immune to stuns that would make that glyph useful for bosses?

As mentioned on the previous page, the Deep Freeze glyph now increases Deep Freeze's own damage by 20%, instead of increasing Frostbolt damage against targets that are in Deep Freeze.

Actually, no, under the new rules it was using them as they came to try to squeeze a bit more mana efficiency out. Casting more Frostbolts means lower efficiency, and it was falling a bit short of the 6-minute mark.