Here's what I can think of off the top of my head as a mage:

- Non-unique improvement to Swift Starfire Diamond (like how Swift Skyfire Diamond is a non-unique upgrade to Swift Windfire Diamond. It's going to get real annoying having to farm up 8 Spirit Shards AND a different meta gem to move it from one helm to another if this isn't dealt with, especially if your side has trouble getting the Auchindoun buff

- Non-epic, non-unique gems with spell hit (I mean, what the fuck. Even common gems have melee hit and you're telling me that spell hit can only be had on unique epic gems? This seems like a huge oversight)

- As a corollary to that, cloth caster items with sockets and nontrivial spell hit (look at this list. Of that, mages can use... a T5 shoulder we won't be seeing for a while, gloves with no stats, pants with no stamina, a robe with no stamina, and blue gloves that are inferior even when gemmed. That leaves an okay blue robe, a decent pair of gloves and expensive BoE epic craftables. Way to go making sockets useful for us PvE magi)

What else jumps out at you as lacking?

Do unique gems retain their 'unique' property after socketing?

yes

- Enhancement Shaman belt while leveling. I wore my AB girdle to 70 in beta.
- Ditto two-handed axes and maces. The Ring of Blood axe is really the only one you can pick up before 70.
- Lack of a BoE +dmg 1h sword before 60, there are plenty of daggers with that suffix but in weeks of watching the AH I've never seen a Paladin-usable +dmg sword for sale that was usable by 61. The first one you get with +dmg is at the very end of HFP, and it's got a whopping 11 +dmg.

Assuming you keep the old helm around after getting a replacement. Vendor or DE the helm and the uniqueness issue is solved. The reason you're farming a new meta gem is because you got an upgrade anyway, right?

Mail bracers with +spell damage. I'm still wearing my Zandalar Augur's Bracers.

Your response highlights one of the fundamental problems of this itemization: you cannot get a socketable sidegrade. While this is not as much of an issue for mages as it is for some other classes, the fact remains that having multiple sets of gear is intergral to WoW endgame, even if the gear is only used situationally. The uniqueness qualifier on that meta-gem, coupled with the lack of suitable non-unique alternatives, means that any secondary helms with sockets will take a significant hit, which is not true for the melee DPS counterparts.

This is because its DPS was not cannibalized to give it more spell damage. (Alliance Horde)

There's only one upgrade from that DPS-wise and it's off a vendor at the Stormspire

I haven't taken too close a look at the list of meta gems, but if you're talking about situational gear sets, shouldn't you be looking into situational meta gems as well? I find it hard to believe that one particular unique gem is going to be the most desirable for every one of your sets.

Forgive my ignorance, but what was the "typical" T3-level (assuming clown-suit instead) +hit value on a mage? My understanding was that the spell-hit-cap for +3 level mobs was 16%. Melee miss rate for dual-wield against the same mob is ~24.6%. My fairly-well-geared warrior had/has like 12-15% hit depending on setup, but I couldn't imagine a mage stacking spell hit that high. (I also don't understand fully the interplay between +hit and +crit for an ice shards or ignite mage, sorry for that)

This sounds like the bigger problem to me, honestly. I haven't started to level my mage past 60 to see this though.

Kinda the point: all the 'real' +dmg stuff around that level is a dagger or staff and thus not Paladin usable :) The first one I can find is in Terokkar.

The problem is just there are no +spell hit gems, put them in and the problem is solved. Some +spell hit +spell crit gems would be nice.

Healing bracers (Cloth & Leather) are basicly non existant untill MoV, or TKI in heroic - both of which are sadly cloth... wtb leather healing bracers before the black temple or so please..

A lack of tanking gear (plate or leather) with +hit on it is something I've noticed/had guild warriors comment on. It's a really useful stat for threat generation, particularly in high range situations/on a pull when you can't afford have abilities miss but seems to be remarkably hard to find on tanking items. Some options to make up for this socketing gems at least. not much in the way of enchants though. Getting some as a more common base tanking stat would seem entirely reasonable to me compared usual dose of strength instead.

Some major itemisation issues with a range of the hybrid specs as well which are still poorly itemised, particularly in raid drops seen so far - that's been well discussed elsewhere though and would be something of a derail.

The one that has me a bit miffed is the Mystical Skyfire Diamond requiring more blues than yellow. There isn't a DPS caster out there that's gear will allow this, even say a warlock who is affliction spec'd who doesn't use nukes anyway; DPS caster gear just has yellow inherently in it. As such, it seems that the gem is being pigeon holed to healers who's biggest gem color is typically blue (for the mp5). Pretty shitty, I think it 2% instant cast would scale out better than the 12dmg/move haste gem from spirit shards.

There are drops in instances in HFC and CFR if he wants BOP +damage sword/maces.

http://www.wowhead.com/?item=24361
http://www.wowhead.com/?item=24384

As to BoEs, I could swear I some DPS-sacrificing green swords as randoms.

Excuse me but the unique gems are a very very small upgrade in comparison to their non-unique siblings. Save the unique gems for the set you will be wearing most of the time, and your sidegrade sets for specific situations can handle just fine with the non-uniques just barely under them.

What irritates me right now is the plethora of spell penetration on the caster gear. I firmly believe they have yet to convince the knowledgeable crowd that this stat makes any more of a significant impact in PvE outside of heartbeat resists on CC.

Tested it just now the Halaa gem, doesn't work.

In the case of the Notched Deep Peridot and the Polished Chrysophase its the difference between (+X sta and +Y crit) vs (+Y crit). In my eye, the spell penetration is worthless (as you point out) and my brain just blanks it out when I'm mentally working out the value of something.

Although I haven't seen much in the way of spell penetration on our regular gear. But being a chief component of non-unique green gems annoys me - especially when blue gems = stamina and yellow gems = crit.

How about some non epic gems with resilience on them? They give us this new stat for pvp, but then the only way to get gems for it is 500(lol) halaa tokens, or heroics, where they often have +dodge or +parry to go with resil, which is perplexing. Would it really be so bad to have some blue gem patterns at least that include resil?

- More plate with +hit. Tanking plate and pvp plate is completely lacking +hit for the most part. You don't need that much for pvp, 5% ish is fine, but you need 8% for pve at least, and it's a real challenge getting there with gear i've seen so far.

I think the thing that irks me the most is that any gems at all are unique. It really puts a crimp on what you can do with them IMO, having to worry about replacing old gear as someone mentioned, and not being able to stack stats with the best gems available just goes against the whole spirit of gems - choice -

I think the reasoning is the Mystical Skyfire Diamond is more PvP than PvE oriented, and the the stamina gems are blue. Though I do agree that it is still much better than +12 damage in 95% of any situation.

If you plan on PvPing and PvEing with different helms (what I'm doing), slap the Mystikal on the PvP and +12 damage on the PvE, since it's easier to meet the +12 damage gem requirements if you're maxxing for damage. Get +12 stamina on your PvE boots instead of Boar's Speed since the run increase won't stack.
If you don't plan on PvPing in a different helm, well :( . You're gonna have to do some math to figure out if changing your sockets to match the requirement is enough of an upgrade to warrant doing so.

Edit: +14 != +12

Actually belt was the one piece of gear I was really satisfied wearing as an enhancement shaman

http://www.wowhead.com/?item=24360

Still using it at 70 and I'll take my time replacing it. Would be better if it had more hit and less crit but to have 4 good stats with a nice spread on one item is great and quite rare. Technically I'd like it if there was str on it, but there is just about no mail with str in game apart from shaman-only sets. Ironically some leather itemized with lots of str for feral druids (as opposed to rogues) can be quite nice for shamans when you don't need armor.