8 seconds for an AoE root is an eternity, especially in pvp. And also, Water Elemental's Freeze does the same thing, with a 45 yard range.

In PvE, Frost Nova is the #1 reason why frost mages are gods at powerleveling - AoE grinding. Being able to plant a crap ton of mobs in one place and blizzard them down is a time-tested way to get a lot of xp fast.

Anyway, if they reduce the duration to 6 seconds, I think most mages can deal with that. If they reduce it to 5, it'll be tough, but manageable. At 4 seconds or below, that's a heavy nerf.

But make no mistake, the main point is a nerf to mage pvp.

Remember frost nova is now level 56. Which completely retardifies frost as a viable levelling spec.

Blizzard REALLY need to look at what levels classes are getting spells. Levelling these classes now just feels like they randomly chose which where going to get what when.

@Tasty

Frost Nova is level 8. Blizzard though is level 52.

@Tasty: I hear you. I'm in the middle of leveling a couple of my paladins, and I got two healing spells at level 8. What the heck do I need two healing spells right then for? I don't play Holy, so just one healing spell is enough to make sure I can top myself off after every fight... then it feels like an eternity before I get any spells. I'm stuck on a Judgement/Crusader Strike/Wait for fifteen seconds rotation on every encounter, and it feels so annoying... I just want one or two more abilities that I can throw around while those two are on cooldown.

Eh, they just need to make some of these spells less effective against players instead of just nerfing them across the board...

@Tasty: As Vaeku said, Frost Nova is at level 8. Also, I leveled my mage from 20-85 as frost, all after patch 4.0 dropped, so I disagree that it's not a viable leveling spec. I loved it then and I still love it today.

@Pyromelter & Cetha: On one hand, I went *frowniface* when I saw that because I PvE with my frostmage and love it. On the other hand, Pyromelter is right that it really doesn't have a bearing on PvE. I mean, when I use Frost Nova in a dungeon, it never lasts long enough for me to get Deep Freeze off, but that's not because of its duration - it's because the mob gets hit. That's just the way the cookie crumbles and why I don't often put it in my regular rotation. So... meh. I'll take that nerf if that's all we get.

As a devoted frost mage, though, I perked up when they mentioned that we *might* be low on the dps side. Whether they decide to buff our numbers or not, the fact that they are watching us means that they are no longer willing to just throw out frost as "not a viable PvE spec".

I find it interesting that you only took into account the nerf's impact on PVE. As much as I would like to disagree at times, Blizzard does spend a great deal of time balancing the PVP side of WOW. Currently, Frost Mages are king at control with: Nova, talented IB breaking, CoC, Pet freeze, Deep Freeze, Counterspell and a snare built into their primary nuke. Ask any Rogue, Death Knight, or Ret Pal, something needed to be done with Frost in Battlegrounds and Arenas.

I've found in general while leveling my prot pali after the shattering that mobs tend to have shorter leashes and be more spread out in a lot of places. Rounding them up takes more time than just blasting through them usually. My frost mage was pre-shattering, but still plenty of times I went Arcane for superior single target.

I think either way though (and the aim of the designs) they were viable leveling specs and each had fun stuff to it.