I've seen a few thread about melee DPS scaling, but what about caster? I'm 65 now as a mage, and I was mostly in ZG/blue/MC gear. I replaced 3 items: chest, cloak, neck. My +dmg went up by 30. So my frostbolts are pretty much the same as they were at 60. I know a full tier 2 mage would not upgrade a single item by 65, based on everything I've seen drop. Does it get better by 67?

New ranks of spells and gear and talents affect your damage output. Enpowered frostbolts should mean you are doing more than (81.4% of 30) damage alone. I think level 62 and 68 is where you learn your next frostbolt ranks. So you should have an upgrade by now.

Plus there is icelance and such. At end game all of our additional damage comes from gear, seeing as you (nor anyone else) are not level 70 and deep in the raids I think it is a bit early critique caster DPS scaling.

Well, the first mob that I killed in outlands dropped better lvl59 req green shoulders than my Netherwind ones... So I wouldn't count on that. +10sta, +3 int, -3dmg -4mp5... ok, better for pvp atleast.

In general I agree, most items I've seen don't seem to be worth upgrading to that easily, but some slots just have so shitty itemisation on live, that any green rag in beta seems much better for that particular slot. (I'm running with full T2 and few AQ40 drops+misc dmg items)

I was geared in BWL/AQ40 and I've replaced a good portion of my gear going to 65. In Hellfire there's an elite quest which is easy to solo as a caster that rewards shoulders better than the Mantle of the Blackwing Cabal. I use the Kris of Unspoken Names and, while not the best weapon in the game, was a little sad to see something better than it in every single regard as a reward from Nessingways camp... that was green.

And don't forget damage isn't everything, you will need to phase out some of your damage gear for stamina gear. That word was need. I had a Hunter do 8k damage to me, through a tree (though, that goes without saying) without using his pet, and kill me in about 6 seconds. It seems to me the increase in stamina doesn't even comphensate for the increase in damage via talents/abilities, so be prepared to drop stuff for it.

I've replaced 8 out of 16 items at 66, and gained a total of about 3 +damage, and sacrificed a lot of crit (I play Affliction, don't need the crit), but in turn I'm now running with 8.5k hp with only Blood Pact. Our damage isn't increasing massively, but our HPs sure are.

I had naxx gear/FM gear going into the beta, pretty much shelved about half of it. Lost about 100 dmg and 5 crit, but now have about 6500 unbuffed hp at 67, and I can see how you could give up the FM bonuses, and maybe another 1-2 crit to gain another 1-1.5k hp easy.

One thing that has happened is that damage output for a lot of classes come from talents (or talent changes) and not so much from their gear.

If you're going to be PvP focused, as a mage, I would wager that even at 70 with balanced dmg/stam gear, you're not going to have more +dmg than a fully geared naxx mage currently. (720ish, 25-30crit etc) You will gain some dmg from talents if you go heavy fire and you gain nice upgrades in fireblast damage for sure -- it's too early to say but my instincts tell me the raiding fire mage of wow 1.0 (with huge dps, decent dpm because of MoE and high crit rate) is likely a thing of the past.

The aim of the Blizzard team is to curtail the mudflation their current loot system was heading down. I doubt very much that you'll be anywhere near as powerful relative to the jump from t1->t3 as you go from t3->t4/5.

They're trying to slow the game down a bit, not speed it up even further.

See that's what I don't agree with. If it's really Blizzard's intention to force us to lose +dmg so we upgrade to higher sta it wont work. Any mage that does mainly PvE won't change a dmg piece for a sta one.

I would never lose 100 dmg, even if I could gain 4k hp from it. Right now I'm at 3400 unbuffed, which is barely 100 more than at 60, and I don't have too much trouble killing mobs. For PvP, right now our dmg is the same as it was at 60, yet some classes like locks and hunters have increased by a huge amount. So in the little pvp I've done I've been less than impressed, but if it means I have to sacrifice my PvE role just to get higher sta and survive in PvP, then I just won't pvp with my mage.

That's really dependant on the encounter design. If we take Anub'Rekhan as example, but increase his Impale damage so it easily hits for 6000 or so, you'll need the higher stamina to be able to deal more damage. It's hard to judge whether stamina will be important in PvE before we know what to expect from the encounters, but it's not unlikely that if player health is expected to increase, that incidental damage will increase as well.

Of course, there'll also be encounters in which incidental damage is trivial to none, but I think even some of the current 5-man expansion content makes having a fair amount of stamina important; even if you're not the tank.

What shoulder are you using? Because I'm pretty sure I've seen 2 61-62 shoulders that are better than anything from ZG/MC. Their is also a +80dmg, 30stam/int lvl 61 (or 62) green staff which is also once again better than anything from zg/mc.

Also you should be able to get this very soon http://www.thottbot.com/beta?i=756

You're 100% right.

http://www.thottbot.com/beta?i=853
http://www.thottbot.com/beta?i=3805

My gear is pretty low, let's see:

The Hexxer's Cover: +41 dmg.. So far I've seen nothing even close

Zandalar Illusionist's Mantle: +12 dmg

Zandalar Illusionist's Wraps: +12 dmg. While it's true both of those are pretty gimp, the set bonus gives +12. So far I'm still wearing both. I do expect to replace them by 70.

For chest I upgraded to that very nice +41 dmg one from the hellfire quest.

Flarecore leggings is +41 dmg, nothing better in BC so far except perhaps when you count in gems. Haven't counted that in yet.

Ringo's Blizzard Boots. +40 dmg.. again, nothing close.

Sandworm Skin Gloves: +27 dmg.. and that's a blue item from an easy quest, yet I'm still wearing it.

I had Sapphiron Drape which is quite bad so I upgraded that. But if I get Hakkar's cloak, that's gonna be hard to replace.

Mana Igniting Cord.. +25 dmg.. again still wearing that.

Again if I had to compare with Naxx stuff, it would blow the BC items out of the water. The main reason I can see upgrading those high +dmg items is for more crit and hit, since they changed the way it works to make sure 60 gear becomes obsolete. But I don't consider a +30 sta an incentive for me.