I know a lot of guilds are no where near finishing this thing (nor will they be for a while), but people are getting splinters already so it is very important to look ahead. After the different versions were posted a good number of my guild mates were advocating giving it to a Priest. That's all well and good but, honestly, how much +Healing will you really need? Most of our healers have +700 or more (We're on Emps atm and have cleared the Instructor's wing) so I figure by the time we were near the finishing point everyone would have +1000 or more, and that's figuring in either 1h/oh combo or the Augur staff.

Now, personally, I advocate giving the staff to a Mage or Warlock, imo preferably Warlock. The +damage is obviously ridiculous, but I think their auras are much more beneficial to the raid as a whole. I know the Priest version is awesome for us an I'd love to have that extra 66 healing, but you're going to be adding +165 overall +damage which is pretty good. The best Horde guild on our server gave their first splinter to a Warlock.

Any time you can get extra raid damage, you should take it imho, it benefits everything.

Mage or warlock. There's a sizeable thread on FoH on this issue where I've expressed similar thoughts.

Damage is everything, in my view. The staff is the aura. And assuming a nuker/nuker/nuker/nuker/healer group, 10% crit (8% offensive and 2% to a healer) or 132 damage and 33 healing are far superior to pure +healing or 55 mana/5 spread across 5 people. Which is a more valuable buff? Nightfin Soup, or a Greater Arcane Elixir? That's kind of what this boils down to.

More damage will save you mana, it will save you required healing, and it can do things that are irreplaceable otherwise. As I said in the other thread over on FoH, DPS is progression.

In order of importance, you need:
1) A tank who can survive spikes and mitigate sustained DPS to healable levels
2) DPS
3) Healing/Longevity

My preference is to see it go to a mage. As the saying goes: "DPS is king" The increase in damage will override the need for more healing.

Edit: I prefer mage over warlock because the 2% crit will continue to scale. However the warlock one is still strong in its own right. Unfortunately the priest and druid versions lag terribly far behind when it comes to the auras.

Yeah, what Gurg said.

Warlock's best in my opinion because the aura is so strong, but in our guild's case it's going to a mage. Our Warlocks fluctuate but we have 2 steady mages.

Mage with Atiesh, 3x Warlock with Improved Shadowbolt and a Shadow Priest is a very strong Alliance group.

I basically agree with Gurg on this. We peed off a few druids in the process becuase it wasnt transparent enough in how we decided it but i agree:

"DPS is King"

I see the point on the Mage thing, so I think that may be the best option.

Our guild has the same problem with Warlocks; we have far more active Mages than 'locks.

I'd like to see the group that is: Nuke, Nuke, Nuke, Nuke, Shadowmage (The reason I originally favored the 'Lock one). Shadow Weaving, increased Priest DPS... oh dear goodness that group will hit hard. I feel bad for we Horde that don't have Paladins :( I guess you could put an Shaman in the group for TA... meh.

Mages aren't people.

As has already been pointed out, the mage staff is considerably better long-term than the warlock one. I'm rather surprised mages got the crit bonus, but hey. Their damage has continued to scale better than ours and this doesn't change things in that regard.

It's not a scaling issue. The warlock aura is better than the mage aura -- it really boils down to the players when deciding between the two, in my view.

By the time 2% crit is worth 33 damage for a typical caster, Atiesh will no longer be anything too special.

How about a 5xmage/lock group? I think many encounters don't require significant amounts of dedicated caster healing, and healing them out-of-group is not hard (emergency monitor or a group box from CTRA). A setup like this should be a little better optimized for damage.

mage dps is one thing, but you forget a key feature to this staff: the port. Portal Roulette will become even better if a mage had this staff, whereas if a warlock were to take it, you'd have him doing summoning and lol and behold he pops the portal and you end up with 10 people at karazhan and you have to kick the jerk warlock out and summon the others back.

in short, warlocks can be jerks with this, mages not as much so.

Eh, 2% crit is already worth 2x15=30 damage for me and that's with no naxx gear at all (drop damn wraith blade drop!).

I like the scaling mage aura better, crit has become a very good stat since the talent revamp. The mage aura also benefits alot of classes and not just mages/locks. But even if we scale past the lock aura, it wont be that much to talk about.

The problem I see is that warlocks will at some point be stuck with warriors, in which case your aura is less useful.

If you believe the crit scales better, pleases visit http://www.fohguild.org/forums/523144-post62.html

Well, it depends mainly on how active your people are. If you have a really active warlock, that's a really good bet. But lacking that, a mage will be fine, as long as he then is active.

Also, atiesh fire mage + 3x fire mage + oomkin could be funny, especially with onyxia buff. Surely +15% crit chance would lead to nice long rolling ignites and severly improved mana efficiancy from master of elements.

Praetorian I couldnt agree with you more about the DPS is everything.
About which class would be best to get it :
I would give it to mage because +crit scales while that +33 dmg will be obsolete someday. You can already get over 750 in damage gear from naxx. With my current gear without considering improved shadowbolt. 1crit is ~16dmg for me.
About who should get it :
Some old core member in the guild who has very good attendance and pays the most dkp.

We are giving it to a Druid. He's one of our most active and trusted guildies, and after losing two Thunderfuries to rerolls and sellouts, you kind of go for someone that will keep it around rather than having the "best" aura classes /roll for it. What good is such a best class if he feels he likes summertime better than raiding?

Basically, team warlock is pretty new to the guild and we're simply not sure enough of any of them. Team mage preferred the higher damage staves, swords and offhands over an (let's be honest, looks matter too) ugly legendary and I believe our priests, while also a trusted team, felt the same way but in terms of +healing.

We're trying to get the MT another Thunderfury since the debuff is still quite valuable on raidbosses. Basically run through MC and kill Garr and Geddon quickly during dog respawns. Makes MC a bit exciting again, I suppose.

Silya , lets say some day you get 800+ damage/healing. What would you rather be wearing ? 2 crit or 33 damage ?

Hangman, why don't you ever look at the math? Please visit the link I posted.

Not to be simply contrarian, because this position is closer to the truth than the other, but +crit will also scale with increased base spell damage while +damage will not. I think this is closer to what people mean when they say +crit will scale while +damage will not. I could be wrong, though. You are right to point out that +crit doesn't scale much better than +damage with respect to other gear.

+crit is great for AoEs though. Well, assuming the AoE you are using in the raid setting can actually crit , which it probably can't.

As to whether that will turn into a relevant consideration in actual practice remains to be seen. It all depends on future spell itemization (will there be spell drops?) and how quickly the level cap increases relative to how quickly Atiesh becomes obsolete in a raid setting.

What's my crit rate?

Of course damage doesn't scale with damage. Damage scales with crit! And crit scales with damage. You can't scale with respect to yourself.

+crit is great for _mage AoE_. It's completely useless for warlock AoE which is all channeled and cannot crit.