Yet it must in order to be useful or accurate, as slots cost itemvalue points, whereas you can safely ignore enchants as enchants are equal regardless of gear. I would generally assume +8 damage slotted in every single slot(that's the blue quality red gem), as it's somewhat unusual there's a socket bonus good enough for that not to be the best option.

Note that in that case, [Eyestalk Waist Cord] is nowhere near as good as [Girdle of Ruination], which comes to 46 damage and 26 crit rating vs 41 damage and 14 crit rating.

Honestly, it never was, except maybe before Mage Armor existed, but I honestly can't even remember which was added first. Spirit is almost always superior to mp5 itemvalue vs itemvalue except when it's stacked pretty high vs adding a small amount of mp5.

Regarding T4, I'd say that it(along with T5, for that matter) are both weak for the same reason our sets are typically weak: Improper stacking of stats relative to the value of +dmg. Now that crit rating is as expensive as it is, the best mage items will have reasonably good stamina, moderate intellect and spirit and good +dmg, with a little +dmg overflowing to hit and crit rating when increased +dmg becomes cost prohibitive.

Of course, we'll probably never see Blizzard give up spiking Int, because they love doing it despite the fact that it's pretty much the most incompetent thing you can do to Mage-targeted items, Mind Mastery not withstanding.

Crit stacking at 70 is pretty inefficient use of item budget. +hit and +damage seem to be much more efficient, unless the item already has a massive quantity of damage on it (spellstrike hood and the spellfire stuff, for example). It seems like crit rating scales down in effectiveness much more quickly than hit and damage, while remaining a very expensive stat.

With our new spell options (and nerfing of our old spells) this will be a very valuable tool for mages. Would love to host it myself, but don't have the bandwidth available. Just curious, are any scenarios for spell selection and mana pool suggesting more than 2 Arcane Blasts before another spell?

Well, the thing is that efficient itemization should have both spirit and mp5. Spreading stats is better than stacking. Plus unless im mistaken point-to-point in item budget cost mp5 gives better return that spi even with 45% incombat regen.

Bad wording on my part. I meant "have only spellhit".

Yeah, i realise that sockets have some cost in item budget. Its just that working with gems and sockets in a big list of items is tedious work, that i wanted to avoid :)
I wanted to maybe play with mixing pure damage and damage/crit rating gems. But i think your suggestion while simple, is very close to optimal - just stack on +damage gems. Unless of course there is a penalty for stacking same gems, long time i heard a rumor like that.
They are +9 damage btw (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=24030).

Though everyone will socket things differently, when it comes to comparing items, looking at the new armor without factoring in sockets is a little doom-and-gloom. Just shoe-horning in the +5 dmg vendor gems onto the [Incanter's Robe] (thus going without the "amazing" +4int socket bonus) gives an item that is comparable to [Frostfire Robe] Is it as good? Not quite, no - unless you are factoring in the +22 spirit on the Incanter and are figuring very long boss battles. But without sockets it is something I wouldn't wear over my quested [Goldweave Tunic]. With the +9 dmg red gems, it has these stats:

Incanter's Robe
Binds when picked up
Chest Cloth
156 Armor
+25 Stamina
+22 Intellect
+22 Spirit
Durability 80 / 80
Requires Level 70
Equip: Improves spell critical strike rating by 10.
Equip: Increases damage and healing done by magical spells and effects by up to 57

And that is pretty amazing for a item that drops in a non-lockout non-heroic 5-man dungeon, especially if you can make up for the loss of spell-hit in another way.

[Item not found!] is quite nice.

Here's an exercise in maximizing crit to take advantage of 4 piece Tirisfal:



Gems used are Destructive Skyfire Diamond, Potent Ornate Topaz, Gleaming Ornate Dawnstone, Red Telasite, Potent Noble Topaz x3, Runed Ornate Ruby, Glowing Tanzanite and Brilliant Dawnstone. There are a couple of items which hopefully will have epic replacements we just haven't seen yet (like in the neck slot).

With full raid buffs (AI, Mark, Fort, Spirit, Molten Armor, Kings, Elixir of Mastery, Adept's Elixir, Flask of Supreme Power, a +23 damage food and Brilliant Wizard Oil) up, and a full fire spec, spell damage will be exactly 950 and fire crit rate will be ~40.4%. You'll probably be in practice at +1020 spell damage with the crits, spiking to +1245 depending on how often the nexus-horn procs and with a theoretical maximum of +1395 if you activate the burst trinket (+1460 fire if you throw in Major Firepower, +1496 with Improved Divine Spirit, +1597 with Wrath of Air).

That's a lot of damage.

The obvious downside: only +3.5% hit (6.5% if you count 3/3 Precision).

You're mistaken, because Spirit affects Evocation as well. When you are doing this calculation you must include Evocation, as it is extremely significant. Without Evocation, however, you are quite likely correct.

It's Evocation AND Mage Armor that makes Mages want spirit over mp5, either one alone is not enough.

Does your cycle calculator include lag? Lag hurts Arcane Blast pretty bad :/

What amount of hp do you think will be a "minimum" for mages begining TBC raid content?

According to wowwiki, it's 2.4 spirit for every 1 mp5 that's equivalent for the purposes of item budget. Assuming a tick is once every 2 seconds, that's .625 mana every 5 seconds per 1 spirit outside the 5 second rule. So 2.4 spirit is 1.5 mana per 5 seconds. Multiplying that by .45 (mage armor + meditation) gets you only .675 mana every 5 seconds, not accounting for evocation and time spent outside the 5 second rule.

Accounting for evocation (lets assume a 5 minute fight where we pack the value of evocation into that 5 minutes) you get an extra 36 mana per 2.4 spirit over 300 seconds, which is an extra .12 mana every second, or .6 mana (notice it's almost half the total contribution) every 5 seconds to bring the total to 1.275 mana per 5 seconds. That's better than 1mp5, obviously. If we stretch the figure out to 8 minutes, it's only .375 and 1.05. Of course, that still beats 1 Mp5, but we need arcane meditation at that point to do it.

And all of that, of course, assumes no time spent outside the 5sr (which is often an unrealistic assumption).

Long and short of it is if you are using mage armor, spirit is almost always a better use of item budget than mp5. If you have arcane meditation and mage armor, you can remove the 'almost'.

Rather than going ideal numbers let me shift to practical, everyday play for one sec. I'm opting to try out a 46 arcane/15 frost build. This is pre-raiding and no instance runs until tonight. I put some damage points and frostbite in frost to give me a little pulling power since that was my main concern.

Does a frostbolt, arcane missles, nova, arcane blast finisher sound about right? So far I've been pleasantly surprised at single target non-elite mana efficiency. I'm not certain at all about even a couple pull fight in an instance. I'm assuming cast AB when it's "powered down" to get that extra mana efficiency from it. I'm also not convinced at all about it's power to handle AE; it's lacking alot of tricks the other trees have.

In a raid setting you have to also consider improved DS, which gives your more spell dmg. Then, even if you don't use mage armor or evocation, spirit is still better.

Edit: Not mage only - making a thread.

I've been doing this myself, but 43 arcane/xx frost (65 now, so er ... 13? frost.) Finishing up the build by maxxing out frostbite and arctic reach. Arcane has all the damage and AM talents (including Arcane Blast crit, whatever it's called.)

Yes, you don't have the "tricks" of deeper fire or frost, but what I've found is more useful (at least in my own little world) is that the arcane specialty boosts every tree. You never feel like you're using an "unspecced" spell (except fireball, but you can PoM it and hey, still get 100% spell damage on it, since it's untalented!)

I usually start out (this is for instances) with 2 arcane blasts (the 2nd one is still pretty efficient) then missiles, scorch, 2x AB, missiles, etc ... If I'm solo grinding I might cast a few frostbolts, then AM, fireblast, whatever. You have a lot of choices. I'm looking forward to Frostbite procs and ice lances next level.

I didn't think Shatter was worthwhile to drop the heavy damage talents in Arcane to pick up. And in instances you'll pretty rarely get off a cast before it gets broken (if they're not immune to FN anyway.)

I think a similar 44 or 43 arcane / fire build would work about as well, it's just preference. I was deep fire for sooooo long that I thought I'd check out frost for a bit.

I honestly don't think I will ever spec out of shatter again now that I have Ice Lance, and I couldn't bear to be frost before 66. Now i'm stuck between arcane/frost (33/28) and fire/frost (38/23) for arenas :(

With a deep arcane/fire build, focusing on Scorch >> ClearCasting then Missles >> scorch. The mana conservation is great, with horrible gear (ZG quality stuff). The single target dps is good. As for AoE situations I find Flamestrike, POM + flamestrike, Frost Nova, Flamestrike(if no ranged or resist targets), CoC, AP, IAE. Is more than sufficent for the instances I have seen (lvl 63)

Though Ice lance certainly has my attention.

Has it been mentioned yet that you can cover your Invis fade-in with an Ice Block?

Hmm, you mean you can start the invisibility fade then hit iceblock immediately, and you'll still fade out? That's handy.

On builds - I've tried both deep arcane / scorch and deep arcane / frost shatter, and I have to say for instances I'm loving it. My damage is up according to our parsers from my deep fire / frost builds, and most importantly - it's a hell of a lot more fun. I have 5 spells I'm regulary casting, I have to watch for clearcasting procs and manage my mana with Arcane Blast. and you're required to make a *lot* more decisions about what you are doing than mages have ever had to before. Mana management suddenly becomes extremely important and fun to play with - doe I have enough mana to ramp up Arcane Blast and full burn before the boss dies? I definitely think deep arcane / scorch will be my final build simply because it's so enjoyable.

I went back to deep fire after a Sethekk run last night just to have some more tricks/utility but I enjoyed the arcane nuking/actually having to pay attention while it lasted. Definitely something I might come back to once raiding starts up. I can see the low threat being a big deal; all those threat reducers lying around aren't there by accident. I don't think I can do scorch as the basis due to lag issues screwing up my CC but frost or fireball may do the trick.

Hit Invis, then hit Ice Block as soon as the global is up. The tricky part is that you have to click off the Ice Block right before the Invis fade-in finishes, or the whole Invis is wasted. Try it a few times and you'll learn the timing; it's right at the fade-in reads 0:01. This is a handy trick for getting out of really bad situations while soloing. You can use the Ice Block to push mobs onto your Water Elemental to give a bit more leeway.


I was looking forward to Arcane Blast and the neat new mechanics it provides for skilled Magery against raid bosses. Ultimately though, it would be really hard for me to part with deep Frost.

Even with the bare minimum requirement that I want to keep Ice Block, it's a bit too constrained to get the full meat out of Arcane. What are other Frost people doing? I'm hoping that the smaller raid size and the new design effort to friendly to specs with different options will mean I don't have to settle into the pure DPS optimization mindset of Naxx.

A few specific questions for people already doing a lot of high-end stuff: at what point does Frostbite/Shatter stop being a useful combo? I'm going to spec out of it once I'm back into raiding full-swing and no longer need the Shattered Ice Lances to make grinding really easy. What about the rooting/snaring abilities of Frost in general? Up to what point are they really valuable to the group?

Overall, what 41+ (or perhaps 31+) Frost builds are people considering for highend?

40/0/21 is a fairly effective instancing/grinding build, keeping core arcane talents for damage (no AM talents, but Blast crit can be fit in, and of course the Mind/Med/Mastery triplet) and the important frost talents (snap and iceblock, shatter and shards) - the major downside is that you miss out on some really useful talents (Reach, Channeling, Piercing, Precision) in frost.

Frostbite and Shatter is still useful in all of the 5 mans; we'll be starting Kz tonight or tomorrow, and we'll see how it works at that point.

New favorite spellsteal after last night: Greenwarders in Botanica have a giant +damage buff (295, IIRC). "Holy Fury".