Those are rewards from the quest to kill Kael in normal Magister's Terrace. It is one time, non repeatable as far as i know. There wasn't a badge vendor on the island yet. Speculation was that it would show up after the island was reclaimed to give casuals incentive to aid in opening up the last half of the Sunwell.

They are a quest reward from the MT heroic key quest it seems, the statless part is a bug currently.

e: damn you Vulk! :p

I'm not, but the GM of my live guild is the GM on test as well.

I've seen it come up again and again on this thread. So, maybe I should consolidate some of the points and re-state it in one post.

We know a couple of things:
1.) a.) Lack of spell-hit on gear
b.) Spell-hit is only needed for fighting bosses or higher-level trash, Holy priests and Discipline priests do not need a large abundance of spell-hit for farming or leveling (and the have a talent to cap spell-hit for even level mobs).
2.) a.) Abundance of spirit on gear
b.) Spirit is [suppose to be] the priest primary stat
c.) Holy priests convert up to 35% of spirit into +damage, NOT shadow priests
d.) Priests have the most spirit-based talents, for both healing and damage-dealing - 10% more spirit, spirit tap, spiritual guidance
e.) Putting spirit on cloth-dps gear intended for a warlock is most likely a complete waste, following the mage evocation change, spirit isn't terribly appealing for mages either.
3.) It takes healing gear to convert to the damage gear.

It seems quite obvious to me that intended purpose of the cloth drops is for Lolsmite priests / Leveling priests / Farming priests. The spell-crit is sorta nice for Surge of Light procs, the spell-haste is always good.

Now, I must fess up, the only classes I actively play with are mage/priest/warrior, so I don't claim to know about the other armor-levels, but this is just what jumps out as being obvious for me.

It's not only that. Fire Mages uses Molten Armor because they almost always have Shadow Priests (and even without, it's doable with Mana Potions) while Frost Mages are efficient enough to use Molten Armor even without a Shadow Priest. The only spec which currently benefits from spirit is Arcane, which also has the meditation talent. However, since the MSD change and the Fire/Frost buff, Arcane became pretty much obsolete. Nobody at a high level specs it. Considering Kalecgos is most likely immune to Arcane, Sunwell isn't helping either. So while potentially Spirit is useful for Mages (if combined with Mage Armor or Meditation) in real terms it is completely and utterly useless.

That said, I'm much more concerned about the lack of spell hit rating on Sunwell equipment. It creates a problem because Warlocks and Mages cannot really benefit from the new gear. There is a lot of spell damage, haste and red sockets - that's a very good thing - yet the lack of hit rating means one cannot upgrade to these pieces without using gimmick high-Hit items or gemming for Hit. It would be cool if the items were re-itemised to have more Spell Hit rating instead of the semi-useless high amounts of Spirit, for example.

About drinking change: it wont be that bad, don't forget that they buffed spirit regeneration, probably this changes are related.

He means that it's going to be fun to have to sit down for a full 30 seconds to regenerate the same amount of mana you might have regenerated after 10 seconds as a low-level caster. Anecdotally, before 70 it's rare that you need to drink the max duration to hit a full mana bar. A small matter, maybe, but it basically enforces maximum downtime between mana bars.

I don't see why they didn't just implement this drinking change to Star's Tears and possibly Mage water, adding a bit of flavour text and keeping other water functionally unchanged. In PvE, you could use the conjured biscuits if you had time to recover, or normal vendor bought water if you needed a quick burst for successive pulls.

It really is nothing more than an inconvenience for any mana user outside of arena, and seems an inappropriate fix to the problems water brings to arena. Changing the wider game for the sake of the Arena metagame strikes me as odd any way you put it.

Perhaps the spirit change for caster dps is blizzards round about way of rebalancing the DPS charts? Give the mana dependent classes the ability to sustain their damage for longer periods of time and reduce dependence on mana pots, and letting rogues take #1 dps again without a stacked melee group

As a shaman you should be aware that not all the casters rely on spirit. 88 spirit is not going to help that much.

Spirit regeneration in 2.4 same for all classes. And where did you get 88? Raid buffed i have over 200, 0 spirit on gear. With 2.4 values its around 230 mp5 for me.

Paladins have 88 base spirit, I don't know if it's the same for Shamans but I think so. And how do you get 110 spirit from raidbuffs?

His base spirit is 122. With MotW, Spirit buff and Kings that'll put you at around 205. For a paladin with no spirit gear and the same buffs, you're looking at around 167 total spirit.

E: Adding that for myself, as a prot paladin, the changes to the intellect also don't help a ton. I don't think there's anyway where I'll be regenerating enough mana between trash waves such that I won't miss being able to drink instead. Guess I can pop pots, but that'll be annoying to say the least.

E2: Even if you get 250 mp5 for that, consider that drinking a [Item not found!] gives you 1200 mp5. It's not even close to being in the same ballpark.

At the risk of derailing the thread:

Divine Spirit Rank 5: 50 Spirit
Gift of the Wild: 14 Spirit
Golden Fish Sticks: 20 Spirit
Blessing of Kings: 10% of (88 + 50 + 14 + 20) = 17 Spirit

101 Spirit there, is it that farfetched?

I think an important point to remember is that most mages and warlocks do not have talents to allow spirit regen to continue while casting. As a mage, I can see myself having to pot a lot more in between waves to have enough mana to clear the next wave. Especially going into Kaz'rogal, where it's really important that all your casters are on 100% mana. I imagine the warlocks will continue to bum mana off their healers by lifetapping in such situations.

There are cases where you can get that much time out of combat in arenas, usually involves killing a pet or similar but still. Yes, it would make a lot more sense to just prevent drinking in arenas ... but I guess they didn't want to completely remove it. Don't see why they should either, the only part that bothers me is the mana you get back from two ticks of drinking that can keep an arena match going forever.

But yes, the effects on PvE are entirely retarded and that's why I think this change isn't motivated by PvE. Why mess with something so trivial in PvE? We don't get out of combat in boss fights anyway and you can't seriously argue that they're trying to make trash even more annoying than it already is. There's just no reason to the nerf in PvE, only in PvP.

But that conclusion does give rise to some odd questions like "Why not just make it Star's Tears?" or similar and I really no good answer for that. Claiming technical limitations seems a bit stoopid.

Can any mages confirm if the ghost hit for frostbolt is still in 2.4?

Im sure this ability will be of some use to mana starved mages however?
Not like healers are strained on Kaz'Rogal to be unable to heal a LT'ing Warloc or 3 either.


Update about Water:

Quoting Drysc:

WoW Forums -> 2.4 - Drinking Nerf

It shouldn't be a big deal, if it works as advertised.

Yes it will be. Drinking is especially common in 2's, and druids are the one class that can most easily get in 6 seconds of drinking time. This is a nerf to non druid healers most certainly.

It really increases downtime on raids since it basically means you lose the first few ticks. We're in SW25 right now and it's really obnoxious.

Should have clarified that i meant it shouldn't be a big deal PvE wise. I'm aware its definitely not working as advertised on the PTR though. PvP is a whole can of worms i'm not going to bother commenting on.

Yeah, I'm gonna go with 'this really sucks'. Unbuffed live I have 88 spirit, for 88 mana/5. On PTR, I have 55 mana/5 with 88 spirit.

I somehow doubt it will improve that strongly when I'm buffed, and I'm mostly concerned about heroics/5 mans. In raids I can usually get all the time I need to med up to a reasonable level before the next pull (10-15 seconds or so), so I'm not too worried, allthough Hyjal will suck.



The 'ramping up' bit if it's broken is fine with me, but on PTR right now it's pretty agonizing. This is really kind of a kick in the crotch to a class that tends to have to slow down (a lot) if we overgear, so I'm not doing backflips over it.
This was the point, though I'd disagree with 'non druid'. The real people who are gonna hurt are shaman I suspect.