Ice Lance now shares an eight-second cooldown with Fire Blast: why some Frost players feel a button short

One line in Blizzard's development notes, posted on 3 November, changes how a Frost Mage's instant spells work: "Ice Lance now has an 8 second cooldown shared with Fire Blast." The same line raises Ice Lance's bonus damage to Frozen targets back to 300%. Our summary of those notes left this line out, and it's the one Frost players have been arguing about since. We haven't tested any of it in the game.

What Blizzard changed

Two things happened at once. Ice Lance gained a cooldown, and that cooldown is shared with Fire Blast. On the plain wording, casting either spell puts both on the timer. The damage went the other way. Notes from 16 October had cut the Frozen bonus to 200% from 300%, and this line puts it back.

No developer's note names this line. One explains why Piercing Ice is gone and Ice Barrier is stronger. A broader one says Blizzard raised class damage and was "likely hasty in turning to Burning Crusade- or Wrath-era solutions", but it doesn't mention Ice Lance, so we won't call that the reason. The notes also move Improved Fire Blast to the third row of the Fire tree without saying whether it touches the shared timer.

Why some Frost players feel a button short

AmnesiaHaze, who opened one EU thread, wrote that Blizzard "basically removed" a spell from the rotation instead of adding one. They sketched Frost as three Frostbolts and an Ice Lance on repeat, and said they'd rather have the bonus at 200% with no shared cooldown.

Quazarstar, a self-described "die hard Frost player", went further in the other thread. Their worry is Fingers of Frost. As they read the talent, a proc should mean two strong Ice Lances, then back to Frostbolt. "And what if Ice Lance is already on cooldown by the time I get a FoF proc?" they asked. "Just do nothing?" They suggested letting the proc reset the cooldown, or giving Ice Lance charges. That's a prediction from the wording, not a test, and the notes say nothing about how procs and the timer interact.

Quazarstar also fears a "one button Frostbolt machine" for most of levelling, and argues that holding Ice Lance for procs means Frost "effectively lost a spell" in Fire Blast. They still plan to try Frost, but they're disappointed that a change this size arrived after Beta ended, with no time left to test it.

The players who shrug

Not everyone agrees there's a loss. Nordle called Fire Blast "a waste of mana in classic PvE", though that's about Classic, not Forever. Magi, who says they've played Frost since early Vanilla, wrote: "An occasional Fire Blast (or lack of) doesn't change the appeal". They also joked that Fire Blast never suited the theme. Wutever suggested the point may be "to move Frost back to how it used to play a little", with Cone of Cold and the older buttons, though they also called the Fire Blast part "really odd" and said PvE Frost "seems pretty grim". Diabolo argued that the shared timer holds back how much instant damage a Mage can deal.

The PvP argument

Ma7rix put the change down to "PvP reasons for sure", which is a guess: Blizzard hasn't said. Nitromethane, one of the loudest critics in that thread, said they couldn't see why it was made, and called it "a big nerf for mage PvP". One example they gave was having to wand down a Grounding Totem instead of spending Fire Blast or Ice Lance on it.

What this doesn't settle

Both threads react to one line of notes, not to play on live servers. They don't show how often a proc will land while Ice Lance is on cooldown, what the change does to damage, or whether any talent shortens the timer. Those answers will come from players, and we make no call on them here. What's confirmed so far is Blizzard's line: eight seconds, shared with Fire Blast, and 300% against Frozen targets.