Actually, I consider this a perfectly serious reply regarding Mage gear choice. At least, it's what need to be beaten in to the head of 95% of Mages.

You're right about MP5 for mages. Since we never stop casting anyway, MP5 is more effective than spirit, so the value of our 45% regen factor is dubious (and when we do want to regen, we just ask for a JoW :P ). Spirit really exists to beef up Evocation.

Not really. 1 Spi generates 15 mana during an Evocation. In those rare fights where Mage mana is a factor, we're almost certainly Evocating, so Spi is strictly greater than Int. You only need enough Int so you don't start have mana issues in trash situations (which is just annoying).

In 2-minute fight (no time for Evocation to be useful):
1 Int gives 15 mana
1 Spi gives 6.75 mana
.4 MP5 gives 9.6 mana

In a 6-minute fight:
1 Int gives 15 mana
1 Spi gives 35.25 mana
.4 MP5 gives 28.8 mana

In a 10-minute fight:
1 Int gives 15 mana
1 Spi gives 48.75 mana
.4 MP5 gives 48 mana

Sorry Alliance mages don't count. :P

Mana matters a fair bit more for Horde, without JoW and, even with Tranquil Air, in situations where aggro concerns restrict you to chaincasting Arcane Missiles with Subtlety. There, pure damage builds end up lagging far behind well-rounded builds with ample mana regen.

Also, is it really true that each volley of AM now can independently proc JoW? That's so silly.

Any time a spell costs zero mana it doesn't break your spirit regen.

Clearcasting definitely works the same for mages and druids as it does for shamans

There are still some fights where I swap in a bit of MP5 gear. In truth, Mage gear tends to make incredibly little difference to raid performace.

It is (although it also means that each volley of AM uses up a ZHC charge, which is really annoying). It's not nearly as silly as before, when you could stack all 3 different ranks of JoW.

either way that mana regen is insane. Yep MTT is definately equal to JOW.

JoW is still cried about far too much though. There's not a single fight in the game currently that is made noticably easier with the use of JoW, simply because if you have enough time to be wanding the mob as a healer, you have so much healing present that you can rotate/potion for nearly infinite mana anyway. And for mages, if they are doing arcane missiles, it's not mana that is the limiting factor.

It is a potential powerhouse though, and may be significant in future encounters. It's nice for semi-trivial content too, because it saves some potion money if for some reason things get tight.

Eh, no. Name one encounter that is made noticably easier through the use of JoW, and how?

1) Any fight for which you are not overgeared. No kidding we don't need elaborate mana conservation strategies today, for content we mastered months ago. But when we were learning Ragnaros, Broodlord, or Firemaw, to name a few, mana was very much an issue.

2) Any fight where aggro is a major concern. JoW gives Alliance hunters a massive advantage over their Horde brethren in damage output, and since hunters are essentially zero-aggro DPS, that's significant.

3) In practice, recovering or stablizing any shaky situation on nearly any fight where something goes wrong. An Alliance priest can wand back up to workable levels of mana far faster than his Horde counterpart.

I don't know, none of those ever really depended on mana for us. Ragnaros was too short for it to matter much for the dps'ers, and most healers were outside of wand range due to having to spread out. Broodlord is also quick enough that it didn't matter much, but then we never fought him in his 100% aggro-wipe form. He might have been trickier then. On Firemaw it's counterproductive to use JoW for healers, since the mana used to heal away the AoE damage you take will be higher than what you gain from it. The dps'ers are aggro limited rather than mana limited.

I have to admit I've not played a raiding hunter, so I don't know how big the difference is, but I assume it's quite decent. Unless you bring an abnormal amount of hunters though, it's a relatively small raidwide increase, but it could be significant.

Yes, I mentioned this. This is not really something that makes encounters easier though, it simply provides a safety net (one you rarely have the luxury of being able to use on non-mastered content).

But yes, it definitely does have potential to make a big difference, it's just that in our experience, it's been more "handy" than "necessary".

I completely agree with points 1, and 3, and never really thought of 2. BTW gurg judgement of light = thanks too :P

Think about the amount of healers you had for those fights though. Realistically it allows you to have less healers cause they will be able to cover more ground. Thus allowing more DPS and a faster kill.