I haven't really seen any comparison on caster trinkets, so I thought I would get a discussion going ( the similar healer trinket thread had lots of insightful
comments ).

Here are the choices at 70:

Neltharion's Tear
Icon of The Silver Crescent
Lightning Capacitor
Shiffar's Nexus-Horn
Quagmirran's Eye
Eye of Magtheridon
Sextant of Unstable Currents

And for completeness, I guess I should mention:
Scryer's Bloodgem
Xiri's Gift
Mark of Defiance

I'm a fire mage, with about 1100 odd damage raid buffed, with a 28%-30% chance to crit
on fireballs and 28%-34% chance depending on which variation of 33/28/0 and 10/48/3 I'm
specced for, but I assume in most cases I would be optimizing for the cycle of
3x scorch (we usually have 2 mages in our raid with imp scorch )-> 8 x Fireball -> 1 x Scorch
[Repeat the 8x Fireball / 1x Scorch]. ( Using the Icon + the Tear at the moment )

That being said, I was hoping for starting a more general discussion of how each one
compares to the others, across any caster class.

The math behind the tear, the capacitor and various proc free trinkets seems to be easy,
take a look at how much you would get on an average per cast given your +damage level,
crit chance and miss rate, and you are done.

However, I don't really know of the hidden cooldowns on all of them to perform a comprehensive analysis.

Has anyone done any good number crunching or have a good spreadsheet to compare
the trinkets with procs to the passive trinkets ?

I've tried, but I don't know of if there is a hidden cooldown, and if so what is the duration of
the cooldown.

If it has no cooldown, then if you can land 2 crits every 15 seconds, it comes out to be
175 damage + 35 crit rating , which is godly.

With a 29% fireball crit rate ( what I would be over with that trinket ), it would come up
every 21 seconds on an average.

Since it would be up 15/21 seconds, that would make it the equivalent of
~125 damage+ 35 crit rating passive damage.

Chances are it's like Shiffar's and suffers from a duration x 3 inherent cooldown. Meaning once it procs, you have to start the chance at proc 45 seconds later.

Assuming a 30% fireball crit rate (for simplicity).

You'll see 2 crits in 6.66 casts.

6.66 casts of fireball take 22 seconds (assuming casting lag of 0.3)

This means you'll get a proc on average once ever 22 + 45 = 67 seconds, or once every 1 minute 7 seconds.

+175 dmg for 15 seconds of 1 minute 7 seconds means you have:
+39 damage and + 35 crit rating passive equivalent.

Great? Yes. Overpowered? No not really. Icon is 42 dmg + 25.5 average dmg (minimum), but it's controllable, so you can stack it on top of your combustions, AP, molten fury period, etc. Quag's eye scales better as well (and is just as unpredictable).


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This, paired with lightning capacitor, could do some serious damage though - especially with a high crit scorch build.

The same calculations, assuming 34% crit rate on scorch (super easy to get), gives 10.56 seconds expected proc.

10.56 + 45 = 55.56 seconds for each proc, resulting in a passive +dmg equivalent of 47.25

Then again, I prefer fireball spam to scorch spam... but it's nice to calculate in theory =)

As a shadow priest, +haste and anything related to crit are useless for me, so my favorite trinkets are the crescent and scryer's bloodgem/mark of defiance (depending on my need for hit).

It does, but only on cast like eg blackout.

You can just test this out by (massivly) reapplying an instant dot before the first tick start.

Nexus horn only procs from crits. Last I checked dots don't crit.

yeah that example was probably the worst he could have given. chance on cast trinkets will proc just fine from the initial application of DoT spells, but obviously something like shiffar's will never proc from DoT spells as it's chance on crit.

Quad's Eye procs off spell cast, including DoTs/Instants.

I have been using Shiffar's and Lightning Capacitor with an insane amount of crit.

I have been timing it and it seems the cooldown on Shiffar's is between 30-45 seconds. I've definately had it proc at @ 30 seconds of the buff wearing off but I'm not going to say for sure it is 45 until I get a few more ten thousand lightning bolts under my belt to be sure.

I also have Nelth's Tear, Scryer's BloodGem, and Xiri's Gift.

Anyone have some math on Quagmirran's Eye? With LC and my Elemental Focus talent I rely heavily on crit so losing 32 crit would be quite a bit of loss, not counting the proc. 37 damage > 32 crit, but the procs are where I would think Shiffar's would shine.

Haste (magical) and DPS contains some haste proc amateur theorycrafting. it's for the blade of wizardry but you can use the same methodology to apply to the quag's eye.

As an elemental shaman, I would opt for shiffars + lightning capacitor until you replace shiffars with sextant. Haste is nice and all, but the mana efficiency you gain from the crits on top of the fact that your lightning bolt talents supposedly affect the capacitor procs puts that combo over the top.

With the shiffar buff being 10 seconds, the cooldown is 30 seconds, following most proc items (10x3).

Well I see 1100+ proc crits but never 1200.

I'm 100% sure it doesn't proc Elemental Focus, or crit at 100%. I am not sure about the 5% bonus damage, it SEEMS to be @ what the numbers suggest, but I HAVE seen hits for over the max damage on mobs.

The 11% lightning crit talents I am pretty sure do affect it because the LC crits a LOT just like my normal LBs.

The problem is parsing the data because the text is identical to my lightning bolts and only the damage is different.