Astrylian

Not sure, but I would think that since it wouldn't be considered.

I believe +12dmg is still greater than the new gem for the red slots, and +10 spirit is as you say, better than it as well, so that's it out for blue slots.

10int is also better than that gem, so that's it out for all 3 colours.

I could be wrong about the +12dmg though, so it still is possible...

It'll be a bit crazy for mages to start using healing gems though XD

It'll be like mages going for [Shroud of the Highborne]

Well like I said, it'd only be in situations where you couldn't get epic blue gems (since those are in such high demand by tanks and healers). It's certainly not optimal, but at least it's better than the Dazzling or the Sparkling Star of Elune that some of us used due to our guilds having tons of greens and no reds/blues (and depending on whether or not we got iDS or not; we don't, so Dazzling was better).

Currently for me (this will vary alot by character/buffs/fight duration, but this is for a gnome arcane mage in T5/T6/2.4Badge gear, on a 360sec fight)...

With no DS:
Sparkling = 6.76 dps
Purified = 6.44 dps
Dazzling = 5.98 dps
Sparkling Star of Elune = 5.53 dps

With iDS:
Sparkling = 7.80 dps
Purified = 6.96 dps
Sparkling Star of Elune = 6.38 dps
Dazzling = 6.19 dps

Running all this stuff through Rawr and playing with different gems I can't see why you would want to equip an spirit gem over a damage gem. The Int gem is a bit up in the air (especially if you are a gnome) but I would still rather equip a haste/damage gem over a int gem just because spec viability changes whenever a blizzard developer gets the sniffles and the haste/damage gem will be good under every circumstance possible while the Intellect gem will only really shine under very specific circumstances.

To be more specific about the Spirit gem versus a Damage gem. I'm playing 40/0/21 and I use a glowing shadowsong in my legs for the meta gem requirements. If I changed it to a sparkling sapphire it would give me all of 0.11dps additional on Brutallus, which would be a 0.00487% increase in overall dps or basically so insignificant as to mean absolutely nothing. Which all seems to imply to me that for a mage you should still gem for damage and haste instead of int, spirit and mana/5 even if you are specced 40/0/21.

Rounced

Haste and Arcane blast don't go together too well if you combine AB with further haste cooldowns. It just means that you go under the GCD which means wasted haste.

So yes, for socket bonuses, if ur arcane and are haste capped the int and spi would be better I believe.

I'm surprised I've yet to see any discussion on these boards regarding a 0/40/21 build that seems to be gaining popularity within the raiding Mage ranks. Dropping 1% damage, 1% crit (3% for Scorch) and a few useless (during a boss fight) talents enables the user to pick up Cold Snap allowing for an extra Icy Veins.

Icy Veins .. 20 seconds .. Cold Snap / Icy Veins during the last 20% of an encounter significantly increases a Mage's DPS assuming the player can time things just right to get the full use out of both.

I haven't done the math, but at first glance this spec seems to beat 2/48/11 in a DPS race. Thoughts?

This spec has been mentioned in this thread and every other thread that has the word "Mage" in the title. The fact that you're surprised just shows you didn't bother looking.

Damn those Mages for trying to get what is arguably the best item in a slot for them otherwise devoid of possible sidegrades.

Astrylian, have you considered [Fluorescent Tanzanite] ?

I know farming heroic blood furnace is a pain, but I'd rate it over the new gem. In fact Rawr has that gem marginally better than a +9 dmg gem for me(7.24 v 7.21).

Edit: Checked Rawr, it doesn't automatically add the +damage from +healing gems, and adding in Purified shadow pearl (9 heal 4 spirit) initially doesn't rate highly, but editing it to have the 3 damage from the + healing, Rawr rates it over glowing shadowsong amethyst, although not as good as a sparkling star of elune.

Further edit: Rawr actually rates [Brooch of Nature's Mercy] as the best amulet for me (arcane/frost) pre pendant of sunfire. Went through and added some of the better healing/spirit items in slots that don't have equivalent damage items (neck/ring/offhand/wand/back) and I couldn't find anything else where the healing item was better, except shroud of the highborne, which rawr rates the best for every mage build (this was just eyeballing changing my current spec without changing gear).

I do wonder how much better arcane would be if there where items available to them for amulet/ring/weapon/wand/cape with better stat balance for the build (ie native spirit).

Ah, good point. But it's 4dmg, not 3. Whether it's better than Sparkling Star of elune, as I said a post ago, depends on if you have iDS (and probably other gear as well, and fight duration, etc)

EDIT: Added [Item not found!]. Great idea! That's indeed the best blue gem, even better than Sparkling Empyrean Sapphire for me, but almost a whole dps (without iDS).

Some additional information on the Magic Absorption oddity a couple of pages back. Did Zul'jin tonight, and during the Dragonhawk phase, MA was going off very, very often. I don't have a WWS, because I didn't think about it and we don't bother with ZA WWS, but I do have a small screenshot that managed to stay in the Eavesdrop buffer showing chain procs with no resists:

http://img301.imageshack.us/img301/6...8223821pv6.jpg

Because the tornadoes tend to change targets quite often during this phase, and I would be getting these procs when there were none around me, I'm partial to the theory that it involves resisting some targeting mechanism and causing the talent to proc. I'll WWS it next time we run it, if I remember.

I'm still conflicted over the value of haste for a 40/0/21 build.

There are two arguments commonly used against it:

1) It will reduce you cast times below the GCD when stacked with other cooldowns
2) It involves sacrificing dpm, as all other stats give improved dpm while haste does not

The first one is, as far as I can tell, not a huge issue for relatively low amounts of haste. To determine the effective haste cap, you would need to figure out how much haste is required to reduce the spell casting time to the GCD. For arcane blast spam, this is roughly 33.5% haste. Assuming haste is additive, this gives you a leeway of 3.5% haste (or 54 haste rating) until haste is lost during bloodlust. If you have drums active on a regular basis, however, all of the benefit from haste rating is lost during bloodlust. Icy veins (assuming its not stacked with bloodlust, because it generally should not be for arcane) gives you a cap of 13.5% haste, or 8.5% with drums up.

(Note that spell haste may be mutiplicative rather than additive with outside modifiers such as bloodlust. This would change the numbers a bit, giving you a leeway of 5.5% haste during bloodlust, or 0.5% haste with drums and bloodlust up).

So how significant is the lost haste during bloodlust? How does it effect the relative value of haste as a stat? Assuming that an average fight is 5 minutes, you would lose thirty seconds of the benefit of your haste rating, or one tenth of the fight. So ignoring dpm issues for the moment, any time 1 haste > 1.1 damage or 1.1 crit, haste would still be the preferred stat.

As far as the dpm thing goes, I'm not sure what the best way to model is would be. Anyone have any thoughts?

It's 50% haste to get to 1 second GCDs spamming Arcane Blast. Remember that %haste does not equal %reduction in casting time.

Also, percentage-based haste effects stack multiplicatively with each other and with haste rating. Under just Bloodlust, you won't lose any haste up to ~15.4%, or 241.5 rating.

Although it increases DPS more than majority of other stats.

All this discussion of haste can get technical, however, there is one thing you can quickly and easily establish:

Fully debuffed and with BL and IV, AB drops to 0.96sec cast. Some prefer to switch to Fbolt at this stage, however on the premises that my 214ms latency and 13fps will probably inject more than 0.04sec latency anyhow I stick with AB. Let alone the fact that even with 4% wasted, ABdebuff-SCB-Hex-AP-IV-Destro-T5 AB is massively more compacted in terms of CD stacking than Fbolt could ever be. Not to mention fantastic DPM (for arcane). And I consider T5 a Cooldown in terms of altering game mechanics purely in DPM terms; the cost increase given the damage increase is pathetic and so is AP's. 1sec casts that hit for 3.8k and crit 6700? at circa 1140mana/cast. Given 33%crit rate (added 3 for clearcasts). Unless my math is flawed makes for 4.14dpm. Decent for AB.

The 0.96sec issue effectively means you are getting zero from any haste during CD stacking. Granted, for Brutallus this may not be that-much of an issue for you, but remember a lot of fights have phasing and a lot of fights have aggro issues. Not every boss is Terron, meaning CD-stack is often a larger chunk of your actual dps-time than sims would have you believe. Off CDs, it's a DPM hindrance in that it could have been providing more manaregen/damage/evocate/crit/innervate via int/spi or more efficiency via pure dmg, or even the pathetically unworthy crit. Even the most favourable sims have haste as a teensy-weensy bit better in only dps terms for fire, which is optimal for haste. I'd be amazingly impressed if anyone managed to prove haste being any good at all for arcane.

As far as I'm concerned, haste is a brilliant idea if you (a) are fire, (b) do not have to drop damage consumables for mana consumables because of it, (c) have enough to make your Skull-IV-BL+other CD stacking give you some funky ignites (refer to appropriate thread for aprox. amount) and (d) have such gear that it's unavoidable and even assuming 1haste = 0.95dmg (as a worst case scenario) you're still better off than your previous gear. Like swapping say, a Vestments of the Sea Witch for a Sunfire Robe.

CD stacking and haste lead to some strange things in Rawr.

I tested some stuff in 2/48/11.
1247 dmg, hitcapped, 4T6, Hex/SCB, 94 haste give me 1760 dps over 300sec
and haste gems ~= +dmg gems

Switching to increase haste rating to 110
1244 dmg, hitcapped, 4T6, Hex/SCB, 110 haste give me 1812 dps over 300sec :p
and haste gems ~= 3x +dmg gems

It looks like SCB and another cooldown to stack is the reason of that, as switching to Skull instead of SCB is showing again almost equally powerful haste and damage gems.

According my experiments with Rawr and ingame, I still have difficulties gemming haste instead of +dmg, even for fire spec. If the slot is yellow, I go dmg/haste, thats all.

I have been playing with the 40/10/11 build lately. We run 3 mages minimun with an ele shammy and shadow priest. Two mages are 40/10/11 and one is 2/48/11. The two arcane mages do like 40 less dps then they did when they was 40/0/21 with a wc mage. The deep fire mage has a 120 dps increased dps as fire compared to deep ice. We call him the scorch biatch now.

Basically we sacrificed some personal dps for overall raid dps. This has worked well. With the new spirit/int changes we have to cast very little fire. We cast fire when we have bloodlust and icyveins. The arcane mages have been stacking whatever gems rawr recommends for the most dps over a 300 sec fight. I managed to cast arcane blast on the majority of the supremus fight last night for a grand total of slightly over 500k last night. I am very pleased as an arcane/fire/frost mage with the 2.4 changes. I think I need to research the 0/40/21 build more for our deep fire mages though.

Haste Rating is all added together and then multiplied by all haste effects.

Quoting the wiki

I’ve been messing around over the past few days with haste vs. spell damage, trying to retool my gear. The main question I wanted to answer was: When does a [Quick Lionseye] add more dps than a [Runed Crimson Spinel]?

I did a lot of math and worked with Vontre’s spreadsheet a lot, and after a lot of experimenting here’s what I found. My numbers may not be on the nose, but should work as a rule of thumb.

Intellect, Spirit and Spell Crit have a very, very minimal impact as to whether 12 Spell Damage or 10 Spell Haste provides better dps. I also assumed for my calculations that the mage is 2/48/11 and hit capped, as well as raid buffed (Flask of Pure Death, Basilisk, Wizard Oil).

There’s effectively a “haste cap”, at which point 12 SD and 10 Haste are equal in terms of DPS. That cap varies based (almost entirely) on how much spell damage you have. The below equation applies to Fireball spam only, and because of Empowered Fireball giving more weight to SD over Haste, for all other spells (scorch, fireblast, etc.) haste becomes more valuable at lower levels of spell damage (I believe).


(SD – 1138) * 0.8 = Haste Cap


SD here is your unbuffed Spell Damage. If your total spell haste is below the haste cap, 12 SD gems will be worse than 10 spell haste. If you’re above it, 12 SD is better. Now trinket usage and Wrath of Air Totem change this, so I experimented with some different trinkets, and you can modify your “SD” number in the above based on the following:

Wrath of Air Totem: Add 101 to SD.

[Darkmoon Card: Crusade]: Add 77 to SD.

[Hex Shrunken Head]: Add 35 to SD.

[Serpent-Coil Braid]: Add 28 to SD.

[Icon of the Silver Crescent]: Add 25 to SD.

[The Skull of Gul'dan]: Subtract 48 from SD.


Example: Say my mage is at 1027 Spell Damage unbuffed. For most raid bosses, I use the [Serpent-Coil Braid] and the [Darkmoon Card: Crusade]. Without Wrath of Air Totem:


(1027 + 28 + 77 - 1138) * 0.8 = -4.8


So if I don’t have Wrath of Air, 12 SD is better for me than 10 haste. If I do have WoA:


(1027 + 28 + 77 + 101 -1138) * 0.8 = 76


Here, once I reach 76 spell haste, [Quick Lionseye] and [Runed Crimson Spinel] provide about the same DPS. Depending on whether I have WoA, the “haste cap” varies by 80.8. Some other notes: Haste is better than crit for dps by a wide margin, so any hybrid gems that had crit should now be the haste versions with the new gem cuts out. Heroism and/or Drums lower the effectiveness of haste (compared to spell damage) slightly, as well. Also, there are other passive differences that should be taken into consideration when gemming for hit. Remember that other spells have a different "haste cap". And while haste may give you more dps, you can’t go as long before you go oom, etc.

Anyway, please feel free to add anything I’ve omitted or to amend anything I’ve said in error.

To expand on the notion of haste and how it works/doesn't work with a 40/0/21 spec I ran some numbers to check on things.

With Bloodlust active you need 244 haste to get AB down to a 1 second cast.

With Icy Veins active you need 393 (392.5 to be precise) haste to get AB down to 1 second.

With Icy Veins and Bloodlust active you need 384 to get Frostbolt down to 1 second.

So even if you have the Skull of Gul'dan you would be able to make use of Spell haste up to a rating of 209 in regards to stacking cooldowns.

How about [Wand of Cleansing Light] and [Ring of Harmonic Beauty] for arcane mage?

I had seriously considered taking these in some SWP farming runs(resetting the 3rd group).

The [Wand of Cleansing Light] comes in ~4-5dps behind the [Wand of the Demonsoul] with my current gear level, fully raid buffed. Give your gear level it seems like it would be a massive upgrade though.

The [Ring of Harmonic Beauty] came in behind most other rings in Hyjal onward. Mainly due to it's lack of dmg.

This is all based off my gear, and the 40/0/21 spec.

Well as arcane [Sunshower Light Cloak] has a very high score being the best upgrade until [Cloak of the Illidari Council] and also if you are not a jewelcrafter and don't have access to SWP to get the design for the neck, then [Brooch of Nature's Mercy] is the best in slot. And the list can go on with alot of healer items being alot better due to better itemization favorable for an arcane mage.

Looks like the combination of heal->dmg integration and int-spi made blizz shoot themselves in the foot! How ironic we're now at a state where many mages seriously consider healing gear as an at least comparable and occasionally preferable item.