Same goes for Counterspell.

I'm currently using Quags Eye and the heroic trink. ~900 Fire raid buffed, 22-28% crit, 12-14% hit. Quags Eye is a really nice trink because you just equip and forget, I'm glad I picked it up. The haste really shines in short fast fights (kazzak). I've been trying to get the Lightning C. but it's failed to drop for me, if only for the coolness factor. I can't decide if I want to try and get shiftars. Honestly I wish I had Nefs Tear and I wouldn't have to worry about it (for bosses anyway).

or detect magic, CS, polymorph etc :P one of the best trinkets out there

For what it's worth in non-empirical observations, I see the same on both accounts. Frequent crits and a decent number of procc'd bolts hitting for over the specified damage range. I'd be curious of the findings of any non-shaman casters out there on these two points to see how they compare.

In trying to analyze Quags eye, I'll try to rephrase the bonus as:

15% chance to proc +20% cast speed for 6 seconds on a 18 second cooldown
at level 70.

With zero lag and 20 fireballs / minute in the best case you would have
the buff up 3 times. So you save 20% casting time for 6 fireballs, which
gives you 0.6 * 6 extra time = 3.6 extra seconds / minute of casting time.

3.6/60 = 6%.

Thats a pretty insane damage booster.

In the best case, thats a 6% extra damage bonus. Clearly, the analysis
is based on assuming that the 15% proc would happen just as the timer
wears out and no lag.

Conservatively, one could tone down that 6% to be a 2% damage bonus at level.

Using a mage calculator to pull up what level of +damage 1 hit rating or
1 crit rating would be at a decent damage level ( say 1000 fire damage for
example ), I get about per 1.6 per hit rating and less than 1 per crit rating.

Its great how hit rating scales so well, maximizing hit is a great way to make
the most of the itemization budget to boost dps against bosses, and lets face
it, a serious raider should only really care about bosses.

So for comparison:

Quags eye: 37 damage, 2% casting speed bonus
Tear: 16 hit rating, 44 damage passive
Sextant: 35 crit rating, at best 58 damage
Icon: 43 damage + 25.5 damage on an average if you use it when its up
Mark of Defiance: 33 damage + 450 mana over an average of 3 fireballs / 20


With your fireballs hitting for well over 2k at that damage level, 1% extra dps
would come out to be at least 20 damage ( with the caveat it doesn't affect
your damage per mana ratio ).

Come out to be:

Quags eye: 37 damage + 2% casting speed bonus =~ >77 damage
Tear: 25 damage equivalent from hit rating + 44 damage passive =~ 69 damage
Sextant: 30 damage equivalent from crit rating + at best 58 damage <=88 damage
Icon: 68.5.
Mark: 33 damage + 37.5 mana/5 seconds.

I'm using Quag's Eye + Icon as a 42/0/19 warlock. +1128 shadow with Fel Armor, ~16% crit, but only 2.5% hit from my gear, roughly (10% hit to affliction spells via suppression though). I would probably use a nelth's tear over the Eye if I had one, just because I spend so much time casting spells that are either instant or 1.5 seconds that I end up not making good use of the Quag's Eye haste proc. More +hit is definitely something I'm looking at too, but not really at the expense of losing a lot of +damage.

I think the Bangle of Endless Blessings ( http://www.thottbot.com/i28370 ) is worth considering for mages. For mages, the spirit divisor is 4, so the +130 spirit use gives 32.5 mana per tick. With 4 ticks of 16xregen during evocation, that's 2080 additional mana from evocate.

...and the proc basically doubles Meditation.

Interesting, our numbers are fairly close.

I tested it through a spell cast simulator I made with specific stats and such. (here)

Came up with 48.1 +dmg equivalent

AFAIK the Mark of Defiance doesn't proc its spell-regen off of SWP/VT/MF/anything that doesn't have a DD component to it. I would probably pick up a different trinket.

It has some real potential for long fights, yeah. The trick to using it would be having a large enough mana pool to not waste any of the Evo regen and having enough spirit on gear to make the proc worthwhile. As for the first point, Evo only seems to regen maybe 4k in 5-mans, so it'd be great there. Usually it restores like 6-7k in raids though, which is getting close to my mana pool. The second thing is a larger problem since most gear is light on spirit and gear that has good spirit tends to have worse damage/crit/hit.

After using it for Evo, you could probably trinket it when it procs to maximize the utility. It isn't much, but if you have Imp Divine Spirit on you, the active effect is +15 damage that you might be able to stack with Quag's Eye or some other burst damage buff.

As for the Eye of Magtheridon, my opinion is that it's intended for either a crit-heavy caster (maybe a fire mage that ignores +hit beyond 5% or so) or that it's intended for AoE, where you'll get a resist fairly often due to the lack of CoS/CoE and so many chances to resist. If it stacks, it could be a really nice AoE trinket. But then again, AoE is usually very short-term, so building a set just for AoE might not be so useful.

Since this thread has covered most of the non-class trinkets, how about lets delve into the class trinkets from Serpentshrine Cavern.

First off we have the mage one: http://www.wowhead.com/?item=30720
It seems very displeasing since the comments for it suggest it puts a cooldown on your other trinkets when used, and probably a 20 second cooldown on your mana gems when you use a different trinket. Basically an on-use 150-300 mana restore, +22(?) spell damage trinket.

Next we have the shaman one: http://www.wowhead.com/?item=30663
For shamans and their inability to last a long time as elemental dps, this seems as a nice boost to keep them going.

Then we have the priest one: http://www.wowhead.com/?item=30665
Now for a priest this seems sort of, bad, even at a 15% proc rate.

And the druid one: http://www.wowhead.com/?item=30664
3% passive proc chance, doesn't seem to good, but for each blessing it adds, its moderately good.

To bad the warlock one hasn't been found yet.

But as a general comparison for the quality of these trinkets, it's a very underwhelming sign to see what is intended for the job of class's now.
While the shaman one kicks ass for elemental, it doesn't work on healing spells.
The priest one just seems...bad all around. Is it intended for a spirit tap farming shadow priest?
The mage one is just a severe slap in the face since it procs cooldowns when a mana gem is used.

Someone with lots of time able to compare these trinkets with the ones mentioned before? I know that some of the comments on wowhead show the individual stats for each trinket, but no cross-comparisons to other trinkets, and I don't have the time to do them myself right now.

Has this been tested? Our healing spells are nature also. If an earthshock or CS can lock out all our nature spells, I'd be pretty peeved if I picked this up and it didn't proc off healing. Perhaps it's bugged right now?

The main issue is that if we dont have a nelth's tear, Mark of Defiance still has one of the highest passive +dmg component of any trinket so just by that it's useful for shadow priests.

Yeah, this fact is really annoying. MoD's proc works out to about 20mp5 on a full rotation (assuming there's no hidden cooldown . . . hm . . . anyone know if there is one?), which makes it preferable to Quagmirran's Eye under most circumstances. Eye of Magtheridon is actually the only post-TBC upgrade to Mark of Defiance for that second trinket slot, and somewhat unfortunately, the benefit it gives to mages and destruction warlocks is substantially larger than to the benefit it gives to shadow priests. I'll be doing the correct thing for the guild and passing on it until our mages all have one. So, yeah, barring some sort of miracle, myself and every other TBC-rerolled shadow priest are forever stuck using a random blue trinket we picked up while leveling. Really terrible itemization, imho.

As of at least yesterday, Quag's Eye seems to have lost its "cooldown" and I've seen the haste buff refresh back to full while the buff was ticking several times over the course of 3 gruul pulls (call it at least 25 minutes of all-out spam DPS). Has anyone else experienced this?

Hm, how do you figure on that 20mp5 number? When I raided as a shadow priest (oh, those were fun times), I used Scryer's Bloodgem + Talasite Owl.

The proc averages 150 mana, on 15% of MB/SWD hits. In a 60 second cycle, one will average 6 MB and 5 SWD. 11 casts * 0.15 chance * 150 mana over 60 seconds -- about 247.5 mana or 20.625 mp5.

How about some rankings?

We have

Neltharion's Tear
Icon of the Silver Crescent
Xi'ri's Gift
Scryer's Bloodgem
Mark of Defiance
Eye of Magtheridon
Lightning Capacitor
Shiffar's Nexus-Horn
Sextant of Unstable Currents
Vengenence of the Illidari

I'm not speaking for mages or any other warlocks, but as an Affliction lock, I'd have

1. Neltharion's Tear
2. Icon of the Silver Cresencet
3. Quagmirran's Eye
4. Mark of Defiance
5. Eye of Mag

as my personal top 5.