Ice Wizard Suggestions

[V]

Below are some suggestions for the Ice Wizard class. This sub-class is very capable of solo play, through their defensive talents and spells, heavy hitter single target attacks and crowd control options. I would like to see some improvements to the Ice Wizard class in group settings and in terms of their mechanics and combo options. It feels as if there wasn't as much creativity that went into the Ice talents in comparison to other classes.

Spells

Glacial Spike

Suggestion: Add a secondary property onto this spell: If used against a frozen enemy, that enemy becomes pierced, and is dealt ice damage over 10 seconds.

Ice Shield

Suggestion: Add a secondary property onto this one: Enemies that melee attack you suffer from 25% reduced movement speed

Ice Floes

Suggestion: Add a secondary property onto this one: Casting this while at maximum health will heal your Ice Shield by 3% of its missing health

Deep Freeze

Suggestion: Reduce the cooldown from 1 min 10 sec to 45 sec

Bitter Chill

Suggestion: Add one more property to this spell: Enemies who are within the range of Bitter Chill for at least 15 seconds will become encased in Ice after the effect expires.

Crystallize

Suggestion: Place an Ice Rune underneath your target, dealing damage over time. After 7 seconds, the Rune shatters, dealing massive damage to enemies upon it.

• Base Mana Cost: 150
• Base Cooldown: 1 min

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Talents

Brittling Chill

Suggestion: There are already 3 other classes that have this exact same talent. Here is a proposal to differentiate it a bit: You can now stack frozen effects on enemies. If an enemy has 3 stacks of frozen they will become encased in a block of ice.

Frost Barrier

Suggestion: Add an additional property onto this: If Ice Shield expires without being destroyed, your next shield will reflect 30% of damage absorbed back to the attacker

Ice Bloom

Suggestion: Gaining ability power just by casting spells is a bit lame. Here is a proposal: Gain a charge of Ice Bloom whenever you apply a status effect on an enemy. At 30 charges your active cool-downs are reduced by 60%.

Thermal Shell

Suggestion: 20% of your Ice Mastery is added to your Armor and Magic Resist.

Thermal Core

Suggestion: Now that this property has been added onto Thermal Shell, we can use this Ultimate for something more exciting: Casting Ice Shield while below 15% maximum health encases you in a block of ice, regenerating your health to 80% over 5 seconds. Your are immune to damage during this effect. This effect can only be used once every 5 minutes.

Shatter

Suggestion: The only thing this Ultimate does is guarantee 2 critical hits every minute. How about something a bit more fun: Hitting encased enemies with Hoarfrost will shatter them, resulting in damage to the targeted enemy as well as AOE damage to nearby foes (5m radius). An example of an encased enemy is one that is frozen from the Deep Freeze spell.

Cold Blooded

Suggestion: 40 talent points just to increase the damage of a spell. Here's something more dynamic: Defeating frozen enemies will add a charge of Cold Blooded, up to 50 charges. Each charge increases the chance and duration of your status effects. Casting Ice Storm will consume the charges and provide the following benefits:

• 1 - 30 Charges: Increases the damage of Ice Storm by 10% to 300%
• 30 - 34 Charges: Additionally increases the range of Ice Storm from 8m to 12m
• 35 - 50 Charges: Ice Storm will now pierce enemies, dealing additional damage over 1 to 15 seconds

---

So, how does all of this come together?

• In terms of defense, Ice Wizards can save themselves from near death by recasting Ice Shield. However, doing so may prevent them from gaining the reflection bonus from Frost Barrier!
• Additionally, Ice Wizards can restore their shield health by using Ice Floes when they're at max health.
• In terms of offense, Ice Wizards have many more tools. They can shatter encased enemies by using Deep Freeze followed by Hoarfrost. They can also encase enemies by ensuring they use Bitter Chill at the right moment and by building stacks of Brittling Chill on enemies.
• Ice Wizards have some fairly long cooldowns, but by playing their role they can reduce their active cooldowns through the Ice Bloom talent.
• Additionally, Ice Wizards can slowly power up their CC effectiveness through the Cold Blooded Ultimate, and consume those charges with a powerful Ice Storm!

 

[Annie Oakley]

I think this is great idea I would love to see these adjustments made to ice wizards! I would definitely switch back to ice if so

 

[Rubyn]

Yes, nice ideas to improve ice I would love to see them in game.
I would just like to add that Ice floes should restore more hp than it does now, and give instant heal, or at least in 2-3 ticks.

 

[Rubyn]

Ice doesn't have any dot spells, for example Hoarfrost could be turned into dot dmg spell to compensate it's lower dmg.

 

[IoOvOo]

I have been playing ice wizard for years. Even though I'm hybrid now, my dmg output still mainly comes from ice. Fire is just employed for mind spark and extra sustainability.
I believe at the beginning, ice wizard was designed to be a damage dealer doing less dmg but better at survival and CC compared to other damage dealers, at least to fire wizard. It's obviously ice wizard is somehow underpowered now. And when ppl make suggestions, they usually focus on sustainability and CC. But would this be enough to fix ice wizard? My answer is NO, and I'm going to give the reasons here.
Before that, let's take a look at current ice wizard. All the talents and ultimates in V&H can be divided into 5 tiers.
Tier1: have the potential to be the core of builds, and can still be useful when u don't build around them, e. g. warcry talent of warrior.
Tier2: Make a great difference when u have them, and may change ur way to choose ur gear, stats, other talents or spells. They are worth the talent points even though from the other subclass, but works better when u are the right subclass. blazing speed, bright and brilliant (mind spark), the talent for block of lightning and so on.
Tier3: not game changer, but it's always good to have them for ur class or subclass, without them ur power would be decreased for sure, e.g. frostfire and all affinity talents.
Tier4: only good to put extra talent points in for some extra power, e.g. invisibility and all the mana/hp talents.
Tier5: nope. You don't want them.

Brittling chill-frost barrier is somehow between tier3 and 4, only because it needs just 5 points to max and do give some extra power even u don't use ice shield. I will talk about ice shield later.
Frost bloom-frost nova is tier3, but frost Nova is so good that no ice wiz would give it up. Because of frost nova, we are willing to max this no matter what frost bloom gives.
Thermal shell-core and Frost dominance-shatter are definitely tier5 now. For a maxed ice wizard, the armor and magic res given by shell and core are less than those given by 2 armor runes and 2 magic resist runes. And the gears would give other stats at the same time. 20 talent points for that, compared to 20 points in anywhere else, seems always to be more useless. Frost dominance-shatter might be designed to give ice wizard an extra mana regeneration way and more CC, and a bit more dmg while including glacial spike and hoarfrost. But again, 30 talent points are too many for this. In contrast, 30/30 talent in other classes can indeed change their play style.
I have a complex feeling for cold blooded. It's boring, simply but powerful. 250% dmg ice javelin is the best single target dmg spell and does crazy dmg. Must be careful if u want change this ultimate for more fun, because you may end up making ice wizard even weaker.

So, what ice wizard needs now?
For solo, ice wizard works well in regular zones. With enhanced ice javelin and two instant single target spell, efficient daily hunting is easy to finish. But regular zones are easy for any class with maxed gears, does ice wizard have any obvious advantage when soloing harder contents? You may say CC or sustainability.
CC: fire, MM, fury, all of them have CC similar to frostnova as well. Deep freeze is single target/long cooldown. And Frost dominance, even if u chose it, it's unpredictable. With both frostnova and fireburst, wizards can permastun enemies if no CC resist. But u know how this works, especially on bosses *facepalm*. Okey! This seems to be a little advantage anyway.
Sustainability: Comparing to fire wizards who are considered to be glass cannons. Ice floes, ice shield and thermal shell-core if u chose, all these 3 together would provide similar sustainability to the single talent cauterize and just two fire spells, fireball and fire burst. That's my experience. Lazy to do math but I did test.
Well, for solo, ice wizard is still acceptable anyway. Serious Problems rise when it comes to party: ice wizards can't find their positions in the party. Definitely not tank or healer. Damage dealer? A damage dealer with good sustainability is actually a pseudo proposition in the party. Because only when ur dmg is high enough, u may be in danger. But when u have good sustainability, u can't deal highest damage at the same time. So the only possible position for sub classes like MM and ice wizard is supporter. But unfortunately ice wizard isn't able to be supporter either. Hmmmmm

Suggestions

incomplete

 

[Kvaser]

I have been playing ice wizard for years. Even though I'm hybrid now, my dmg output still mainly comes from ice. Fire is just employed for mind spark and extra sustainability.
I believe at the beginning, ice wizard was designed to be a damage dealer doing less dmg but better at survival and CC compared to other damage dealers, at least to fire wizard. It's obviously ice wizard is somehow underpowered now. And when ppl make suggestions, they usually focus on sustainability and CC. But would this be enough to fix ice wizard? My answer is NO, and I'm going to give the reasons here.
Before that, let's take a look at current ice wizard. All the talents and ultimates in V&H can be divided into 5 tiers.
Tier1: have the potential to be the core of builds, and can still be useful when u don't build around them, e. g. warcry talent of warrior.
Tier2: Make a great difference when u have them, and may change ur way to choose ur gear, stats, other talents or spells. They are worth the talent points even though from the other subclass, but works better when u are the right subclass. blazing speed, bright and brilliant (mind spark), the talent for block of lightning and so on.
Tier3: not game changer, but it's always good to have them for ur class or subclass, without them ur power would be decreased for sure, e.g. frostfire and all affinity talents.
Tier4: only good to put extra talent points in for some extra power, e.g. invisibility and all the mana/hp talents.
Tier5: nope. You don't want them.

Brittling chill-frost barrier is somehow between tier3 and 4, only because it needs just 5 points to max and do give some extra power even u don't use ice shield. I will talk about ice shield later.
Frost bloom-frost nova is tier3, but frost Nova is so good that no ice wiz would give it up. Because of frost nova, we are willing to max this no matter what frost bloom gives.
Thermal shell-core and Frost dominance-shatter are definitely tier5 now. For a maxed ice wizard, the armor and magic res given by shell and core are less than those given by 2 armor runes and 2 magic resist runes. And the gears would give other stats at the same time. 20 talent points for that, compared to 20 points in anywhere else, seems always to be more useless. Frost dominance-shatter might be designed to give ice wizard an extra mana regeneration way and more CC, and a bit more dmg while including glacial spike and hoarfrost. But again, 30 talent points are too many for this. In contrast, 30/30 talent in other classes can indeed change their play style.
I have a complex feeling for cold blooded. It's boring, simply but powerful. 250% dmg ice javelin is the best single target dmg spell and does crazy dmg. Must be careful if u want change this ultimate for more fun, because you may end up making ice wizard even weaker.

So, what ice wizard needs now?
For solo, ice wizard works well in regular zones. With enhanced ice javelin and two instant single target spell, efficient daily hunting is easy to finish. But regular zones are easy for any class with maxed gears, does ice wizard have any obvious advantage when soloing harder contents? You may say CC or sustainability.
CC: fire, MM, fury, all of them have CC similar to frostnova as well. Deep freeze is single target/long cooldown. And Frost dominance, even if u chose it, it's unpredictable. With both frostnova and fireburst, wizards can permastun enemies if no CC resist. But u know how this works, especially on bosses *facepalm*. Okey! This seems to be a little advantage anyway.
Sustainability: Comparing to fire wizards who are considered to be glass cannons. Ice floes, ice shield and thermal shell-core if u chose, all these 3 together would provide similar sustainability to the single talent cauterize and just two fire spells, fireball and fire burst. That's my experience. Lazy to do math but I did test.
Well, for solo, ice wizard is still acceptable anyway. Serious Problems rise when it comes to party: ice wizards can't find their positions in the party. Definitely not tank or healer. Damage dealer? A damage dealer with good sustainability is actually a pseudo proposition in the party. Because only when ur dmg is high enough, u may be in danger. But when u have good sustainability, u can't deal highest damage at the same time. So the only possible position for sub classes like MM and ice wizard is supporter. But unfortunately ice wizard isn't able to be supporter either. Hmmmmm

Suggestions

incomplete

Suggestion.
Wizards gets a mana Spell, like priests have cure. Giving party combat meaning.

 

[IoOvOo]

Suggestion.
Wizards gets a mana Spell, like priests have cure. Giving party combat meaning.

lol I was going to say this but no time for detailed designs so...

 

[Salty Sal]

I think this is great idea I would love to see these adjustments made to ice wizards! I would definitely switch back to ice if so

Traitor!

 

[Ildranach]

lol I was going to say this but no time for detailed designs so...

I think that was the original intent of Inner Will. Except for the part where Will is pitifully weak as a stat, of course.

 

[Sumi]

Hello! I really enjoyed reading these creative ideas from Kave and just want to add some more insight and opinions on this matter. I am currently a level 81, 4 rebirths, hybrid (35 fire, 20 arcane, 55 ice) wizard who has always been an ice wiz main. I have done lots of raid soloing, with soloed Woods to 22, Swamps and Cloister to 20, and Rook to 19 without sockets besides 2 on my staff to get 5 spells. I really love the wizard class and enjoy creating new builds and ideas.


SPELLS
Glacial Spike:

Suggestion: Add a secondary property onto this spell: If used against a frozen enemy, that enemy becomes pierced, and is dealt ice damage over 10 seconds.

I think this would be a great addition, as it means that glacial spike isn’t just another little dps spell and it would have interactions with other spells (and the interaction wouldn’t occur too often due to long freezing cooldowns).



Ice Shield:

Suggestion: Add a secondary property onto this one: Enemies that melee attack you suffer from 25% reduced movement speed

This addition will up the appeal of ice shield which, currently, is widely regarded as inferior to ice floes and therefore isn’t commonly used past Summer’s Hollow and helps with something ice wizards love to do- kite.



Ice Floes:

Suggestion: Add a secondary property onto this one: Casting this while at maximum health will heal your Ice Shield by 3% of its missing health

The new property here will also up the appeal and synergy between the two main ‘passive’ defense spells and could help add variety to builds since ice shield could become more popular.

Another suggestion I have heard several times is for this to heal a little bit more as ice wiz needs a bit more healing capabilities especially in raids when not at cap level and fully socketed, but your other defensive suggestions could make up for this. This increase to the amount healed isn't necessarily needed though, as some maxed ice wizzes get far up in raids with just ice floes.



Deep Freeze:

Suggestion: Reduce the cooldown from 1 min 10 sec to 45 sec

Deep freeze has a long cooldown with not much damage for a ten-second stun so this would make this spell much more viable, especially with your proposed changes making freezing an enemy much more crucial.



Bitter Chill:

Suggestion: Add one more property to this spell: Enemies who are within the range of Bitter Chill for at least 15 seconds will become encased in Ice after the effect expires.

This will definitely help the synergy of the proposed changes, as just deep freeze to freeze enemies wouldn’t be enough. However, bitter chill’s very long cooldown combined with the fact that 15 seconds is a long time for common enemies to be alive make this not OP.



Crystallize:

Suggestion: Place an Ice Rune underneath your target, dealing damage over time. After 7 seconds, the Rune shatters, dealing massive damage to enemies upon it.

The ice necklace spell, when compared to the fire necklace spell, is terrible as it is currently. The fire necklace plays a key role in most fire builds (as well as my current hybrid build) and this change to the ice necklace will make it much more appealing while adding a mental bridge between Lilith and the main game. I would change your suggestion though to increase the cooldown depending on the amount of damage it does, as Lilith’s runes do quite a bit more than this necklace probably should.



TALENTS
Brittling Chill:

Suggestion: There are already 3 other classes that have this exact same talent. Here is a proposal to differentiate it a bit: You can now stack frozen effects on enemies. If an enemy has 3 stacks of frozen they will become encased in a block of ice.

I’m not too sure how I feel about this one, as yes, it will definitely make ice wizards more diverse compared to what they are now, but the proposed idea seems to need more defining (which is fine as this is technically just a player suggestion post). If deep freeze is the only way to freeze enemies, then even with the 45 second cooldown, achieving 3 stacks of frozen would be extremely difficult to do. I propose leaving it as it is, for it currently isn’t too strong but is indeed a nice debuff for small group/solo play, and undoubtedly helps to take down enemies quicker. However, I agree that this is a somewhat weak 5-talent line compared to, say, the fury, nature, marksman, fire, shadow, holy, water, and earth versions (not sure how strong the lightning one actually is, as warriors aren’t my strong suite).



Frost Barrier:

Suggestion: Add an additional property onto this: If Ice Shield expires without being destroyed, your next shield will reflect 30% of damage absorbed back to the attacker

This is idea is very strong, as one could let a shield expire before starting a tough enemy. However, it would up the appeal of this spell by a lot. Maybe change it to 15% or 20% reflect instead.



Ice Bloom:

Suggestion: Gaining ability power just by casting spells is a bit lame. Here is a proposal: Gain a charge of Ice Bloom whenever you apply a status effect on an enemy. At 30 charges your active cool-downs are reduced by 60%.

The current version of this talent is similar to the one nature hunters have. I agree that it is a little weak right now when compared to other 10-talent lines and think that this idea is nice but wouldn’t be triggered that often, especially if brittling chill is changed. Otherwise, status effects would only exist with deep freezing, ice-cubing, and frost nova stuns (and of course the cooldown reduction should change if brittling chill is kept).



Thermal Shell:

Suggestion: 20% of your Ice Mastery is added to your Armor and Magic Resist.

Yes. Just, yes. This is the weakest ice talent right now and most people neglect it because of how terrible it currently is.



Thermal Core:

Suggestion: Now that this property has been added onto Thermal Shell, we can use this Ultimate for something more exciting: Casting Ice Shield while below 15% maximum health encases you in a block of ice, regenerating your health to 80% over 5 seconds. Your are immune to damage during this effect. This effect can only be used once every 5 minutes.

See above with thermal shell, and this idea would be really cool. It also means that 105 talents in the ice tree might be prominent! As a mix of Gaia’s Ward and the 40 lightning ultimate, this will greatly increase survivability (and would synergize well with the glacial spike potential DoT).



Shatter:

Suggestion: The only thing this Ultimate does is guarantee 2 critical hits every minute. How about something a bit more fun: Hitting encased enemies with Hoarfrost will shatter them, resulting in damage to the targeted enemy as well as AOE damage to nearby foes (5m radius). An example of an encased enemy is one that is frozen from the Deep Freeze spell.

This would be a very fun addition to the subclass and is the talent that ties together the encasing mechanics of other spells. It will also add more AOE to ice wiz, something that is currently lacking (as ice rain just isn’t that great and is a big mana sucker).

Also, I agree that the current version of the Shatter ultimate is not that great in comparison to many other ultimates out there, as, at higher levels where you have 30 talent points to spare to go in there, your crit chance is probably high enough that it isn't a huge dps increaser, especially at level 95.

Cold Blooded:

Suggestion: 40 talent points just to increase the damage of a spell. Here's something more dynamic: Defeating frozen enemies will add a charge of Cold Blooded, up to 50 charges. Each charge increases the chance and duration of your status effects. Casting Ice Storm will consume the charges and provide the following benefits:

I must say that while this change would be really cool, it would absolutely ruin ice wizard damage. Most of your other suggestions are defensive or stuns/freezes which is good for solo/raids but terrible for your standard group content (elders, event zones, etc.). It currently is a crucial talent to all ice and ice-leaning hybrid builds and so a change could devastate the viability of ice wizard as a wizard, which is a dps class.



OVERALL
I must say that these proposed changes would make ice wizard much more fun and complex, which is lovely for some players, while keeping it simple enough for new people to get the hang of it through time, experimentation, and potential guides. However, there are some questions that could use answering:

• What does encasing actually mean? Is it a stun that doesn’t wear off? Does it melt over time? What would melting add, fire resistance? Would a fire spell, such as scorching burn or combust, melt it?
• Stacking charges of frozen would be tough to do, meaning that, when combined with how many enemies would actually ever be encased by bitter chill, hoarfrost wouldn’t have that many opportunities to shatter.
• Would frost nova freeze enemies instead of stunning them? Or would deep freeze be the only way for enemies to become frozen? Adding another way to freeze enemies and gain charges of frozen, if brittling chill is replaced, would be almost-necessary. I believe that this is the biggest flaw in your build, aside from the next bullet.
• Cold Blooded is the most powerful ice talent and is necessary for any ice build. Ice javelin is the staple ice spell, like shadow orbs, holy bolt, fireball, true shot, phoenix strike, etc. and is the main source of damage for ice wizards, the only thing keeping them as actual dps classes and a fairly viable subclass that isn’t useless in large group content.

But other than a few things, I feel your proposed changes would make ice wizard much more intricate. Currently, it is a good class that is fun to play but is a little bit basic with lots of high-level ice wizards dipping into fire for added dps (and debuff).

And if your suggestions are implemented, ice wizard would be a very different class than it is now. For better or for worse, I'm not yet sure.

*Note- this post was formatted on mobile so I apologize if it hurts your eyes.

Have a great day, and thank you if you managed to stay awake through my post!

 

[Sumi]

I must also add that ice wizard still doesn't have a group role. In general, it's dps isn't that of a fire wizard/shadow priest/nature hunter/a dps shaman/fury war dps, and since stuns are pretty much useless in large group content, ice wizard is lost searching for it's position. And since every class has stuns, ice wiz doesn't have the ability to have an exclusive role in group content.

 

[ripcord]

I think I'm one of the top ice wiz on US2, and probably the most active these days. I recently completed Gold on raids, can tank most EZ bosses and up to 85 elders with healing support. My dps usually ends up mid to high during 95 elders. Caveats, I had to make all new raid gear, and sacrifice all of my AOE except frost nova. I am all ice except for thermal shell. Those points get me blazing speed and the rest into arcane.

I need to solo a lot, so ice wiz to me is a decent "Jack of All Trades" class. I agree with you @KAVE and @Sumi that the ice wizard doesn't have anything that makes it stand out, other than it has a little bit of everything.

I agree with many of the suggestions above, in particular with Sumi's tweaks. I think the big problem with all of the suggestions is they are starting from the wrong end. I think that the suggestions above look at ice wiz and try to patch interesting things into it to make it distinctive, but you haven't defined WHAT you want the class to be.

My impression for ice wizard is that in solo content it is the CC master and I can use deep freeze and frost nova to great effect to take down a group without any AOE. In group raids this is still useful if I time my frost nova to keep a group off our back or deep freeze a blue enemy while we take down regular mobs. Personally I think that versus mobs ice wiz already has a lot going for it. I agree with the added AOE opportunities above - I don't use ice storm for a reason - too much mana and I just ignore it during boss fights.

Boss fights are where ice wizards get lost. I am going to propose something the devs might not like but I think it would really be a game changer for the ice wiz class just like the Marksman has their quick cooldown skill for the party. I propose the ice wizard can get:

An UNBLOCKABLE stun.

I know I know, all mobs and bosses have this thing where stuns are reduced and ignored after being stunned so many times. I am saying that the ice wizard shatter or ice bloom ultimate be replaced with a frozen effect that cannot be affected by this. Perhaps you could even make it more complicated: the ice wizard has to trigger shatter WHILE standing on the permafrost necklace feat. It can have a 1-2 minute cooldown so it is only useful really against long fights. Ice wizards could try to time it so it occurs at a critical point in the fight making it more dynamic.

And yes, I am saying this skill should work against ALL enemies even the ones that say "cannot be stunned" (I'm looking at YOU Lilith)... maybe that's going too far.

Now you're gonna say "but Ripcord, now everyone will bring ice wiz so we can stun lock a boss." This is not true. Are all hunters Marksmen so that we can get infinite fast cooldowns? No. But there are SOME Marksmen and they change the dynamics of a group fight.

The unblockable stun would truly give differentiation to the ice wizard. This wouldn't change the class entirely but it would give the ice wizard something special.

 

[Giruv]

An UNBLOCKABLE stun.

I am a fan of that one, tho for most part of the game stun is kinda useless, but at the harder side of the content stun become a really important asset. The tech or may be bug to do it is available already from Devastate the relic spell which can both pierce stun immnunity and also don't get affected by built up resistance. Crystalize can be a great candidate for this, just switch the sleep effect to 7(?) second unlockable stun.

Also agree that biggest Issue of Ice Wizard is that most of their capabilities rendered useless on group fight. I think it would be cool if they gain some more group support abilities like.

• Frost Barrier
  Your Ice shield now grant Damage Immunity for 3 second and can also be casted on allies
• Ice Floes, should be able to be casted on allies too.

 

[Constantine ElSheba]

Why not having a Mana Orb in the place of the shield with a spell of area Mana Spring. This can act as a type of mana battery for teammates like when the priests do area heal. (Sorry for my poor explication).
And i agree that Ice Shield should also be casted on others. And also it would be nice if the shield could be seen, likea crystal membrane surrounding the player.

 

[VittoriaVixen]

Yes please! Ice wizards need improvement! Most choose to switch to fire wizards by the time they are max level, because they offer more dps, etc. I have an ice wiz that I would like to keep as an Ice Wiz if it gets a bit of a boost and offer us something uniquely needed amongst a group (ex: 95 elder runs, group raids).

 

[VittoriaVixen]

Why not having a Mana Orb in the place of the shield with a spell of area Mana Spring. This can act as a type of mana battery for teammates like when the priests do area heal. (Sorry for my poor explication).
And i agree that Ice Shield should also be casted on others. And also it would be nice if the shield could be seen, likea crystal membrane surrounding the player.

I love your ideas!