Frost Mage Tier Bonuses
These set bonuses will generally not have any impact on a Frost Mage's rotation because
Lança de Gelo casts against frozen targets and
Orbe Congelado are already high priority spells in the rotation. The only talent build that may see rotational changes is one that specifically tries to avoids ever casting
Lança de Gelo by relying on talents like
Estilhaçamento Profundo,
Maré Invernal,
Gelo Liso, and
Frente Fria to massively increase the strength of
Seta de Gelo casts; however, being encouraged to actually spend
Dedos Glaciais with this build thanks to the 4-piece bonus is actually a positive rotational change. A minor concern for all builds is that the 4-piece bonus could encourage waiting to spend
Dedos Glaciais (increasing the chance of overlapping it with
Calafrio do Inverno) to improve uptime of
Toque do Gelo, but with its current tuning I do not expect that to be an issue.
Early simulations show that the 2-piece bonus can be expected to increase damage by between 2% and 4% and the 4-piece bonus can be expected to increase damage by between 4% and 6%. The specific numbers are slightly affected by the number of targets, but are mainly a function of how well selected talents synergize with the set bonuses. Talent builds utilizing
Ventos Congelantes will typically reach the higher end of those ranges (around 10% damage in total), while those that select
Punhal Glacial will be on the lower end (around 6% damage in total).
Overall, this set bonus already seems to be in a good place in terms of tuning and is mostly meeting Blizzard's stated goal of not significantly altering talent choices or rotational decisions. Unfortunately, there is one area where the bonuses fail to achieve this goal, which is due the lack of synergy with
Punhal Glacial: casting
Punhal Glacial means spending time that does not interact with either bonus at all. If
Punhal Glacial were a strong talent this would be less of an issue, but it is already looking to be a generally weak capstone and this set bonus causes it to fall even further behind other choices. The simplest way to resolve this would be adding an additional effect that has synergy with
Punhal Glacial.