Quick discussion on Mage trinkets--I don't think there's specific talk on this in the Mage Megathread. And I haven't gotten around to running the numbers myself.

Right now, I have Neltharion's Tear and Xi'ri's Gift. I also have Bangle of Endless Blessings to play around with, when I think the 2-3k mana is worth wearing a non-DPS trinket.

I'm trying to decide whether to buy an Icon of the Silver Crescent. Basically, I have the Badges for it now, but I don't want to sentence myself to more future Badge farming if it's not necessary.

So, firstly, if I do buy it, it is likely to wind up in the bank in any reasonable amount of time? Is anyone who has it very frequently not wearing it?

Second, what do people think about two timered trinkets? Useful, or annoying/inefficient?

The only time Icon goes in my bag is when I'm tanking Krosh Firehand and need the hit from Scryer's Bloodgem. I don't have Quagmirran's Eye yet so I can't say for sure that Icon is better than that, but it's the only thing I've seen that might come close.

I tend to stay away from two activated trinkets. I just find that it's annoying. Perhaps it would be better than my setup:

I tend to run with Xiri's gift and the Nexus horn. They don't share cooldowns and will stack. With the nightbane robe you can get get the stars to align and have 505 +damage just in buffs and launch a nice AP+pyroblast on a clearcast. Maybe not the best dps choices but certainly the most fun i've had since netherwind 8 piece.

That being said I probably will swap my xiri's for a icon once I get the badges.

I'd love to see some data and/or serious calculations regarding Quagmirran's Eye. There was a caster trinket thread which touched on this, but all the conclusions people were making were based on guesses, or that's the way it seemed to me.

Silver Crescent seems like it would continue to be useful on trash pulls since you can increase your ratio of active/inactive during combat.

It's probably best to keep in mind that this post is coming from a guy with a white quality trinket equipped.

I have:
Lightning Capacitor
Nel's Tear
Icon of the Silver Crescent
Xi'ri's Gift

I use:
Lightning + Icon when I have elemental shaman to hit cap me or I'm farming.
Nel's + Icon when I need to be hit capped on bosses with no elem shaman.
Lightning + Xi'ri's when I'm AE'ing.

If I had Quag's eye, it would most likely be icon + eye all day, every day.

I can throw all sorts of numbers at you for a deep frost build, and those numbers would be close to accurate for a deep fire build (in both cases, the Gift stays on the vendor or in the bank). Unfortunately, I haven't modelled deep arcane specs yet. Either way, my gut feeling is that 32 crit rating won't hold up to 44 damage in any build, and you'll be better off going with Tear and Icon.

(For reference, Xi'ri's Gift would need over 65 crit rating before it would pass the Icon in a 10/0/51 build.)

I'd like to see your numbers for the eye. My girlfriend is 18/0/43 and uses tear/eye. She really would like to know if she should bother with the heroic badges trinket.

I don't know what to tell her... I only have 37 intellect, I can't figure out which trinket is better.

As arcane mage I'm using Icon of the Silver Crescent, Mark of Defiance and The Lightning Capacitor.

That's a problem and I'm not sure how much my numbers will help. All three are similar amounts of damage, and then the secondary effects are difficult to quantify. My numbers are more along the lines of "at 141 hit rating with 35% to crit, one point of hit rating is worth 2.5 crit rating". The Eye, Icon, and Tear are all dependent on the application where number crunching doesn't help.

The general theme of my time spent in Excel this week can be summed up as: "Deep frost mages should get gear with both +hit and +damage until they're hit capped, and then fill in the gaps with gear with +damage and +crit".

On a hit capped frostmage chain casting frostbolt with a 5% half casting time metagem, the secondary effect of the eye is equivalent to X "+damage."

The effect has a 10% proc chance, 6 second duration, and 18 second cooldown (I think). If you start casting while the haste buff is up (even .01 seconds remaining), you'll get the decreased cast time for that cast. I don't know how quick it makes your cast. If I were modeling it, I would use ~0.3 seconds cast lag and probably assume it proc-ed on the 5th or 6th cast after the cooldown ended.

Edit: I guess I should be looking at Haste (magical) and DPS which is more related to spell haste.

The other thing with the Eye--how easily is it integrated into an Arcane Blast rotation?

It'll muck your cycles is all you can say. Quag's Eye is mostly suited for spam. If I want to play with 1.5 spells (Scorch/AB) I usually equip Shiffar's Nexus-horn. Oh and the Icon trinket is worth it's weight in gold. 5 seconds is an tangible difference between the Icon and the rest. With my current 10/48/3 I usually equp QE and the Icon.

I'm having the same difficulty as most of the other people here, trying to decide what in the world to do for my trinket situation (and failing miserably).

I'm (my warlock) currently using the Scryer +hit gem, and Shiffar's Nexus Horn, for my 0/40/21 build (not ideal, I know, but since my guild's Main Tanks are quite weak in terms of aggro production, along with the huge scarcity of raiding paladins, having the -threat from a master demonologist imp is almost a necessity). I know that Quagmirran's Eye would be a huge upgrade (especially if I stick with this build, guessing it would be somewhat gimpy for affliction, due to all the instants, if I was ever able to respec), but I'm also considering the Icon of the Silver Crescent as a possibility also.

However, I'm not really sure if I should try for either, as I'm really hurting for +hit as it is, and most of the gear available to me doesn't seem to get me close to the 16% cap (I'm at about 10% hit, 25% crit, 800 +damage, with my partial tailor set and unenchanted gear), and Shiffar's Nexus Horn is pretty sweet for my relatively high crit rate.

Basically, like everyone else, I'd really like to see in-depth math on Quagmirran's Eye, Icon of the Silver Crescent, and Shiffar's Nexus Horn, to decide precisely how worthwhile each are, and if they are worth losing the +hit from the Scryer trinket (is the additional damage gained from each and their procs worth being under the hit cap?).

I guess I could just switch to heavy affliction and pick up some points in suppression, but I'm already threat-capped as is, so it really wouldn't do me much good...

I went back to using Icon + MoD instead of quagmirran's eye because the regen it offers is just amazing and lets me chain cast fireballs alot longer, if I have shadowpriest I use the eye but doesn't happen alot.

My paper napkin calculations on the Eye proc were as follows.

Assumptions:
-My own spec, 40/0/21
-The eye has a 10% chance to proc
-The cooldown is 18s
-The haste time is 6s

Given a 2.6s cast including lag(generous given my 50ms ping), it will proc once, on average, every 26 seconds. It will then be on cooldown for 18 seconds, making it proc once every 44 seconds, on average. When it procs, it takes your frostbolt from 2.5s to 1.9s. In this time you can get off 3 frostbolts. Therefor, it "saves" you 1.8s of casting time, every 44 seconds. Essentially, it saves you 4.1% of the time you would have been casting, which can be considered a 4.1% increase in dps.

For me, using a rotation of ABx2(or 3)/Frostboltx2/Scorch, if I proc a spell haste somewhere in the rotation where I can get off 2 hastened frostbolts, I'll be able to make it a 3bolt cycle, which is a big jump in dps for the cycle it occurs in. However, if I'm doing 3ab, and proc it during the frostbolt side of the cycle, I'll hasten the already 1.5s AB under GCD and essentially waste the proc for that one spell. Ups and downs. Luckily I don't use 3ab very often.

Modelling it for a 10/48/3 spec.
Given a 3.1s cast, including lag. Same as above mostly. It hastens fireball from 3.0s to 2.3s cast. You'll now proc it once every 49 seconds. You still get 3 fireballs off hastened, so "save" 2.1s of casting time every 49 seconds. This ends up with 4.28% dps increase.

One interesting thing to note, is that originally the Thottbot spell data showed the Eye proc at 15%, but now it's shown as 10%. Maybe they nerfed it. I don't know.

Any input on my very rough calculations is appreciated, as always.

Has anyone got a screenshot of an eye proc within 20 seconds of the previous proc. In 10 minutes of dr boom searing pain spam I never got the eye to proc in under 50 seconds. People in the spell haste thread experienced similar things.

I too am having a hard time in selecting trinkets for various play situations. I am 33/28 and thus am crit heavy and rely on crit damage and crit items a lot.

I have:
The Lightning Capacitor
Quagmirran's Eye
Scryer's Bloodgem
Xi'ri's Gift
Argussian Compass

plus a few older ones or less effective ones that dont seem worth considering

I also have the badges to buy the Icon of the Silver Crescent, but I am hesitant as a warrior that bought his heroic trinket indicated that while the buff time was longer, the cooldown was equivalently longer, most use trinkets cooldowns being 90 seconds, his heroic trinket he reported as having a 120 second cooldown. In the end doesnt this make it a wash over a 90 second cooldown trinket? I use frequently use macros (except vs bosses and in pvp) that auto use my trinkets whenever they are up.

I love the lightning capacitor and very infrequently find myself not wearing it.

Here is what I've been using in different setups:

Full DPS against level 70 or lower mobs: Capacitor + Quag's Eye
Vs level bosses: Scryer's Bloodgem + Xi'ri's Gift ( no capacitor as it does not use your +hit) [ 142 hit in raid gear with the bloodgem on]
Trash in raid dungeons, 71-72: Capacitor + Scryer's Bloodgem
PVP: Capacitor + Xi'ri's Gift (though strongly considering the Argussian Compass for the +sta)

Any comments on these trinkets or the right places to use them? Is it worth it to buy the Icon of the silver crescent? According to the Mage_dps.xls spreadsheet with my build and gear i get the same damage increase from 15 crit than i do from 20 spell damage. so the crit on Xi'ri's vs the Icon's spell damage is pretty much a wash.

Thanks!

All of you are talking mostly about
The Lightning Capacitor, Quagmirran's Eye, Scryer's Bloodgem, Xi'ri's Gift and Icon of the Silver Crescent
I wonder where Shiffar's Nexus-Horn gets into it all...

especially in a heavy crit Arc/Fire spec (33/28/0)
with 20% proc of crits it give you about 6%-8% proc rate for +215 dmg for 15 sec.. much better then both Xi'ri's Gift and Icon of the Silver Crescent on use ability
the problem is that like Quagmirran's Eye its an on use item.

been thinking about it alot since I dont want to farm Arcatraz for a trinket I wont use
(note dont have The Lightning Capacitor or Icon of the Silver Crescent)

thanks.

I tend to use Shiffar when I'm doing cycles. Quag is very sexy for 1-spell spam. But if you're trying to pull of Scorch/AB cycles, Quag becomes an annoyance due to "that spell is not ready" errors, and messing your cycles up.

I carry 4 trinkets in my bags at all times, Quag, MQG, Shiffar and Icon. I usually raid with Icon and Quag. Swap to Shiffar when I'm grinding (and I tend to Scorch more when grinding). MQG is limited, but I've found uses for it many heroics, so I still pack it. When I was 33/28 I had a 50/50 chance to either "feel like" Fireball spam, or AB/Scorch cycles. I swapped Quag/Shiffars depending on mood

Personally i'm using Icon + MoD because I'm generally not grouped with a Shadowpriest and MoD helps quite a bit with Scorch spam. Quag's Eye also just refuses to drop for me so i'll be sticking with this combo for a while it seems.

As for your question, I entered your stats in Vontre's spreadsheet and the difference going from Icon to Xi'ri's Gift is -14 DPS :P So, was definitely worth it that you grabbed it!

with the nerf to haste rating, it feels like nef tear might just be back up to worth equipping over quag's eye, along with the scryer's bloodgem... anyone have a good spreadsheet that can compare thoses 2 ? (for a 10/48/3 spec i should add)

Just a couple notes:

Shiffars was nerfed again to 30 crit rating instead of 32.

Sextant of Unstable Currents has the same cooldown as Shiffars(45 seconds).

You can use both and have both proc at the same time and they DO stack but shiffars still has 50 more damage on its proc, lasts the same time but procs 20% versus the sextants 50%.