just getting into hyjal, i'm wondering if it's worth it to drop tailoring for leatherworking for the drums. I already have bracers and mantle of nimble thought. the 2.4 patch is probably months away and even then who knows how long it'll be before enough of the robe patterns drop for me to get one. Should i hold out or are the drums good enough to drop tailoring and skill up LW immediately?

Any Ideas on the new Items allready?
And the new manareg mechanism?

Maybe spamming Arcane Blast can become a valid Raid Specc. Non of the new gear has any spellhit on it - not needed for Arcane in large style. Arcane blast in 2.4 will benefit from Haste. The DPS should be ok i guess. Any calulations for this - including 200-300 Haste reducing GCD.

What about the Mana:
Arcane Mages have a lot of Int. In 2.4 Int will increase your Manaregeneration.
T6 Set has some spirit.
We have an armor and a talent for Mana in FSR.
Could this be enough for Arcane Blast spam?

Im sorry for my poor English and the lack of calculations, just some basic ideas on 2.4 and the "no hit items".

Pantaloons of Arcane Badge Wasting are so shit it's unreal. What you need is a pair of spellstrike pants asap and an Icon to replace that abysmal green trink. If you're coasting on excess badges, get the bracers but whether or not you get them you should get a bracer enchant. Swap your 15hit glove enchant for 20spell. Subbing in Spellstrike Pants will give you plenty of leeway in terms of hit so you can afford to drop a number of hit gems for more spellpower.

You are wearing what I assume to be a heroic gem with +spell and int. Drop it for something more suitable. The same goes with the gem in your helmet, you should use a spell/stam instead of flat stam gem. Shoulders are a bit of a problem, the epics off aran are terrible and barring those there's nothing else except Maulgar's which aren't exactly Stellar. Many prefer to go for S1 so if you don't mind the grind they're a decent choice. Failing that, you could always aim for the new heroic Sunwell 5-man pads which look quite potent.

Try and replace the Coral Band with Ring of Recurrence from chess and your offhand with either flametongue seal if you're low on badges or the new haste offhand if you can. Other than that, your spec is fine, most of your gear is fine and that's about it. A little spit-and-polish is what you mostly need and to get rid of those pesky last items which are holding you back. You'll be at 900 spellpower in no time.

Edit: You didn't mention how deep in SSC/TK so I assumed not much. If you feel confident that you're well past the first 2-3 bosses in each, your choice broadens: T5 pants are a charm and T5 pads are cake to get, as are the pads off TK trash and off Morogrim. If you nab yourself a Belt of Blasting and a pair of the glvoes from badges then either the robe off Hydros or Vashj will be an ideal set to get rid of spellfire, though many keep the whole set till MH/BT. Both trinkets from SSC are good, with SCB having the advantage of being able to trigger two +spell effects as it can be combo'd with Icon.

After reading these forums for a while, i cant really get the answer im looking for and im not exceptionally well at maths. My dilemna is that im a little gear limited at the moment, and i produce about 1163 dps non buffed with my 2/47/11 spec, compared to my 40/0/21 spec which sits at around 1050 unbuffed. My arcane spec does include two piece tier 5 bonus, and i and redone all my stats if i were to switch to arcane (lowering spell hit etc).

The great thing i love about arcane (and becuase im horribly bored with deep fire playing it for 9 months), is that you do not rely on a debuff essentially to be always maxising your dps, unlike deep fire where you need to constantly have your scorch debuff up. Since half the time im the only deep fire mage, sometimes i just miss my scorch debuff completely, meaning 5 more scorches. In cases like FLK, i will have no choice but to continue reapplying scorch, since i have to change targets. So finally coming to my question, how much dps is really lost everytime i have to reapply my 15% debuff? substantial enough that raiding arcane maybe the way to go? (by the way i have a shadow priest 95% of the raids i attend) Or am i just dreaming?

My dps calculated using Lhivera's Script.