So an eagle-eyed viewer spotted on one of my videos that my Glacies Tempestas tome has a 10% chance to freeze an attacker yet their tome only has a 5% chance. Having checked at the Blacksmith I can see that it is indeed a 5% chance. I've been digging back through my old videos and it seems that in ANB Bronze 7 (played in December 2020) the freeze chance was 10% yet by Gold 7 (January 2021) this newly crafted tomes had the reduced 5% chance. I've not been able to track down the actual date of the change, but I strongly suspect it was something snuck in at the same time as the change to Trial drops which just so happened to be in January 2021 too. Any Mages out there that took part in Silver 7 and have any evidence of what the freeze chance was at that time (I've checked Bo, Romme, Hegemony, Splendor and Kinnu's youtube videos to no avail and also my own bloated archives!). Failing that, Travis did Adrian by any chance let slip when he put this one in?
As far as the old change goes, I'm completely meh on it. On the one hand the freeze has saved my life once (and only once) in a high level trial by failing to dodge a Magroth charge (he then froze and I managed to break stun before he could kill me), on the other hand it has caused me many many many deaths at the hands of Magroth in past (pre belts, bracers, trinkets) when he would do un-telegraphed attacks from a frozen block of ice.