Combine with the nerf to Ring of Frost. I can't wait for people to turn around and find ways to construe these changes as making frost mages more broken.

I gotta say, this hurts a little of spellsteal's PvE utility as well. Imagine fighting Jaraxxus as a mage not being able to spam steal his damage debuff.

ANYONE who says Frost Mages will be broken by those two changes alone should be taking out back and flogged.

Frost Mages had to know that they weren't going to keep getting OP buffs all expansion... at least these are a couple of very small steps in the right direction to knocking them down a few pegs so that they are only 10 pegs higher than the next instead of 20.

This just makes Spellsteal completely useless instead of nearly useless. Considering how much mana it sucks out, it was already kind of crappy as you often had to spam it 6 times to remove that one buff you actually cared about. Unless they significantly adjust the mana cost in exchange, I imagine it will only be useful for specific buffs in PvE now.

6 second CD is pretty freakin' harsh. 3-4 seconds, maybe. Upping the mana cost to 5k-6k, maybe. A 6-second CD screws up the dispel game in PVE very, very badly. Unless they make Spellsteal steal more than 1 stack/buff in PVE. (4 per spellsteal?)

@lesicor.caerlon: Sounds like somebody has been getting pwnd by Frost Mages in pvp... This makes Ring of Frost useless to me now. I have to stand around for 1.5s when getting hammered on... useless....

Spellsteal will still be useful - most of the effects we care about have over 6 seconds between casting, like Remedy or Surge in Throne of Tides...

Oh, PvP? For once, something is being nerfed for PvP and doesn't break PvE entirely?

Next they'll put a cooldown on Remove Curse and make Arcane Barrage a 1.5s cast...

Miserable...mage viability against buffed casters just plummeted...I would normally gleefully jump on any priest battles (or druid) but now I'm gonna be squashed by them...suck.

6 seconds is way too long and with the now - mostly useless ring of frost...just ugh...

Another PvP inspired nerf harshly affecting PvE it seems.

6 seconds spellsteal cooldown must be a joke. This is a PTR tryout that will never go live. As a PVP mage it will be virtually impossible to fight a druid, priest or pala when they can stack buffs many times faster than we can remove them. At least Blizz should let us choose which one to steal.

Amen. Good luck SS'ing Blessing of Freedom (or any meaningful buff for that matter) when you actually need it, when your target has a dozen trash buffs as they always do.

Why waste a GCD spellstealing thorns or grace while someone is wailing on you. Spellsteal will no longer be used in PvP, at all.

And whats with constantly nerfing all Mage specs, instead of just Frost PvP?