Forst mages will always get the raw end. I understand, I realize, that a benefit of greater survivability is lower DPS. I think is an awful strategy. This essentially condemns the frost tree from being weak competitively in a raid/PvE format. Great for solo, and perhaps dual specs will help on this, but a poor spec otherwise. Shatter combos might be great, sort of. I'm sure this will be lost on bosses, where the DPS race really counts. I'm sure this will be lost on groups of mobs, where the frost tree AoE (Blizzard) is most essential. So what are we left with? Solo? The occasional single mob in the raid? PvP (probably)?

Frost would benefit from some passive DOT (frostbite) or something passive that would be shared raid wide. The water elemental, as it stands, sucks. Unless this minion (not a pet) was made to exist all the time (a real pet) then the water elemental's output is barely noticeable in the overall DPS race. There needs to be greater incentives for a raid to ask, "where's our frost mage?" rather than "Can you go respec?"

Hopefully this will be improved with dual specs. I'm sure it would. Still, the frost tree isn't competitive in most situations. I wish it was.

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