What would she be raiding at 65 anyway? ZG?

The math is very simple Hit > Haste > Damage > Crit

Hit has no value once capped.

Haste has no value if you drop the cast time of the spell you are using under the GCD.

That's the whole thing.

Why does damage > crit?

It's based on itembudget values. You get roughly 12 damage for 10 crit rating or 10 hit rating in terms of item budget values. Thats why hit rating is so valuable (when below the cap) since it only needs 12.6 for each percentage point. It's also why crit rating is so low in value since it requires 22.1 per percentage point. Oh and in case you are thinking about the whole less then 70 aspect, sure it is less crit rating per point at level 65, it is also less hit rating per point at level 65. However it is also less damage to get 1% more overall dps so the equation stated above is constant during the leveling process. If you could have level 70 damage on a level 60 mage then maybe you would be able to argue that crit rating is better then damage but that is the reason why they scaled the ratings the way that they did when TBC came out in the first place.

Items with more varied stats get higher overall value, thats why some crit it a good thing. But to stack for crit is simply retarded since you are stacking something of lesser overall value then anything else you could have chosen to stack. While leveling the easiest way to compare gear is to think about crit rating as if it was worth 1/2 a damage per rating point. Then say that 1 hit rating is worth 1 damage and then should keep you safe until you hit level 70 and then you can break out one of the nice scripts that people have created to determine the real values of items in regards to your specific dps.

As for the stack 5 rank 1 Frostbolts aspect. Current raiding starts with the warrior getting misdirected by a hunter on the pull. That means he is starting with a lot of initial aggro. Used to be that we would have to do a 5 count before starting which was a good time to stack rank 1 frostbolts for WC as frost. Now the only issue is getting 2-3 crits in a row before the tanks aggro is firmly established. Even so with blessing of salvation that isn't an issue anymore, but if it was lacking then seeing a crit and dropping to a rank 1 frostbolt and then back to max rank isn't a horrible concept its just that it isn't maximizing mage dps in a raid setting and that's what this thread is about.

I really think you should be posting in that Help mage thread and honestly think you should focus more on completing your leveling and getting some real raiding experience before coming here and posting questions with theorycraft based on....well.... I'm really not sure what its based on.

BTW Lhivera has a great thread on the WoW mage forums about mage mechanics and has posted actual numbers for the idea of stacking WC with either rank 1 or with Ice Lance in the past and proved mathematically that it is a definitive loss in overall dps for that mage and simply not worth doing.

If switching from dmg gear to crit gear nets you 6% crit for the loss of merely 20 +dmg, then yes, that is a good tradeoff.

Regardless, gear itemization will change once you hit 70, and esp. once you start raiding. So keep that in mind, and read the threads that have been suggested for you. You have stated yourself that you're very new to the game, so take the time and learn. I have a couple of alts, and I can safely say that the mage class is one of the more complex ones. That what makes it so much fun to play.
All those hit > dmg > crit rules, are basic rules of thumb, and one needs to know the values of those stats and when it's worth trading an item with more crit for one with less of it.

I'll also take this chance to ask a question about spell haste and arcane blast. I have a spreadsheet that I maintain for some time now that tries to model the different stats and talents and predict the DPS value of changing stats according to one's talents. It's not like Vontre's sheet (not calculating cycles for example), but something much more basic.

Anyway, when modelling Arcane Blast with spell haste, is the new cast time based on the original cast time or the debuff modified cast time? (I've seen this asked, but didn't find the answer)

I tend to say it's the latter, but would like to know whether anyone knows for sure.

EDIT: I could not test it for myself since I lack enough spell haste to be able to take a decent measurement.

Ok, I'm going to throw this in the 2.3 thread, since the issue came about after the release of 2.3.

I think the new casting mechanic has created a bug. Countless times, my cast has been stopped when the previous mob I was targetting dies. Here is how it plays out most of the time:

Begin casting Frostbolt at Mob 1
Target Mob 2
Cast Frostbolt at Mob 1
Begin casting Frostbolt at Mob 2
Previous Frostbolt hits and kills Mob 1
Current cast stops

At first I just thought I wasn't switching targets correctly and my second frostbolt was really aimed at Mob 1. However, this has happened way too much recently, and I have even been able to reproduce the issue at will. The only explaination I can up with is that the some sort of targetting variable isn't correctly switching when the cast requests are sent to the server before the end cast is sent back to the client. Everything is fine if I wait a split second on the cast, which is why I think it is only applied if you begin casting before the current one is finished.

I posted a thread in the WoW bug reports forum, and bumped it, but was unsuccessful at getting much feedback. I haven't found any other information about it anywhere else, so I'm asking here: Has anyone experienced this issue? While not particularly important for raid bosses, it frequently occurs on trash and soloing providing a non-trivial loss of DPS as well as ruining the casting strategy I plan on using during the fights.

Sounds like you're using some weird frostbolt macro.

I have the same problem. When I posted about it on the official WoW Forums, everyone thought I was mad..

I found no solution other than simply waiting a bit more before casting the next spell when switching targets.

I've seen the exact same issue with Scorch and Fireball. No macros involved. Definitely doesn't occur 100% of the time and haven't seen it often enough to worry about reproducing it.

Another annoying thing is your casts no longer cancel when the target runs out of your (real, not ui-displayed) range. Normally spells have a bit of leeway when you're nuking a target, so just because they go out of, say, 41 yards with Fireball, doesn't mean it won't hit.

Previously, your spell would simply cancel if they ran out of this "extended range"... now it just finishes to completion, and then gives you out of range. This is extremely annoying since there's no way to tell when you should cancel your spell because the target is really out of range.

Lol.

Yes, I believe this is a solution. It's just annoying that doing your best to minimize time between casts can sometime back fire with the new cast system.

I've noticed this as well. I've always seen some margin of error after Quartz turns silver but before your cast will fail. If this is a set range, maybe Quartz can be edited to compensate for this so you'll at least know when to cancel your cast.

That is all I have been able to do as well. Worst time it has happened has been after sheeping a mob, only to end up hitting it with a fireball. Took me a while to figure out what had happened and i blamed another mage for the fireball dot until i checked my combat log.

Thanks for raising this - I've noticed some inexplicable fireballs/frostbolts being cancelled, but never understood why, and it never seemed to be consistent - other than it being mostly on trash.

This behaviour could explain it.

When I'm doing my dailies, my Shadow Bolts frequently get cancelled when switching from one flayer to another. I've never seen it happen when switching from a ravager to a flayer or vice versa. I think the issue has to do with mobs that have the same name.