How can I determine how much spell damage/crit/haste would I need in order to make up the ~5% crit difference? Does rawr have a comparison ability? Should I just take 5% of average critical strike damage and reverse calculate the spell damage?

On the INT vs. SPI debate:
Rawr values Intellect roughly 3 times a high as Spirit for Arcane specs, for 5 minute fights as well as for 10 minute fights.
For 3 minute and 12 minute fights, Intellect is valued 8 times as high as Spirit even.
All those numbers are without Judgement of Wisdom, because Rawr still has the old 1% max mana model which would inflate the value of intellect.

Reconjuring Mana Gems
It's currently always worth doing for long fights where you use up all your gems due to 2T7.

Without 2T7, Reconjuring Mana Gems in 12 minute fights (to give you time to use all 3 of them), it looks rather odd:
Arcane and Fire reconjure them because they need the mana.
Frost reconjures them for the purpose of not using Evocation.
Frostfire does NOT reconjure them and prefers using Evocation for mana.

The difference between Frost and Frostfire planning seems very odd to me, any idea what's going on?


I use the big comparison window and some calculations.

Select Buffs/All Buffs to find the DPS value of Frostfire Garb 4 Piece in the list.
The calculate the DPS value of 1 spell power (or whatever other stat) from Gems/Normal or Item Budget.
Now divide one by the other to find a spell power equivalent for 4T7.

Just for reference in 3.0.8 Best-in-Slot Frostfire gear:

Spec	2T7	4T7	CSD	4T6
Frostfire	37 SP	34 SP	151 SP	0 SP
Fire	41 SP	33 SP	102 SP	103 SP
Frost	42 SP	36 SP	131 SP	65 SP
Arcane	67 SP	44 SP	128 SP	57 SP

2T6 has values of at most 20 SP, it requires not having JoW, a long fight and an expensive spec.
2T5 also is never worth it because the gear is bad and you can't use 4 Wrath tier pieces with it.

Thesy are particularly hilarious on the Four Horsemen, as they often seem to choose a boss at random...

Maybe the two that ran heard that Feugan does AOE damage!

This is a bit of an odd question...

I was looking at stacking haste effects today and noticed that with icy + lust/heroism + embrace of the spider + base haste (around 12% for me), Pyroblast gets down to 1.7s cast time. There's other stuff that could happen also, like PI and totem of wrath, so purely in the interest of theory, is there a cast speed where the 6% extra crit on Pyroblast makes it more efficient dps than FFB during the duration of the stacked buffs?

This question intrigued me, so I trew it in rawr, gave myself 200% haste (the value at which ffb becomes a 1 second cast, pyroblast is 1,53 seconds) and FFB + pyro on HS is almost 10 k dps at that haste lvl, while pyroblast spam gets no higher then 7 k. Pyroblast spam will in the end overtake FFB if you keep adding enough haste (at 400% haste pyroblast is a 1 second cast and about 700 dps higher then FFB +hs Pyro).

So, untill you hit the GCD with your pyroblasts stick to FFB+ hs pyro.

Probably around 1500 spell power and being hit capped would be what you want. Hit cap for current FFB spec is 290 hit rating with a moonkin or shadowpriest in the raid.

Maybe around 1500 damage is fine, but there's hardly any need for being hitcapped. As mentioned several times, hit is just a regular dps stat like everything else, it's not a magical stat that makes you instant pro when you're capped.

Also, I notice the one asking is Night Elf, so It would be really weird if they didn't have at least 1 Draenei in the 25 man raidgroup, lowering the hitcap another 1%.

The thing is, you shouldnt go for hit if it gimps something else. If there's a belt with 40 dmg, 40 haste and 40 crit, it's alot better than a belt with 40 dmg and 30 hit, even if the latter would make you capped. So just go for whatever best piece you can get your hands on in your current content.

I'd have no problems bringing a mage with 1500dmg, 25% crit and 100 hit, but of course, the more, the better.

I've pugged both OS and VoA before and they are very easy as long as you don't invite people in greens. It's more important to teach them to not stand in the fire.

Mana Sapphire and Potion of Speed do not share cooldown. Mana Sapphire shares cooldown with Flame Cap however, and Potion of Speed shares cooldown with Potion of Wild Magic, but you can use Mana Sapphire and Potion of Speed at the same time.

Enthorn writes that flame cap gives an increase of 1.51 dps for frostfire spec in optimal gear compared to Mana Sapphire, but naturally no mana, so with the 2x T7 bonus, it is seldomly worth using.

There may be some gear sets where wild magic gives better output but they would not be common ones if they do exist. I find speed pot to always give a higher return on dps, not by a huge margin but always higher (30dps +). Also ideally you always want to use the speed pot in conjunction with your other c/ds.

You would need at least 5 draeneis, since the buff is partywide, not raidwide.

And I doubt there is a viable reason to not be hitcapped, if your gear aint sufficient then you should use enchants/gems/foodbuffs for hit wich should always get you capped.

Enchants, gems and foodbuffs won't come anywhere near hit-capping many mages who are starting Naxx, particularly if they don't want to waste gold on gems that will soon be far from optimal. Put damage/hit gems in yellow sockets by all means, but hit gems are unlikely to be cost-effective elsewhere.

I'd wonder about a mage starting Naxx who had only 100 hit, but 200 or so would be in the normal range. When I say I'd wonder, I mean I'd wonder about whether he knew about how to gear, not about whether he could perform in Naxx.

Also note that the advantage of hit over spellpower when it comes to boss damage is less in WotLK than it was in BC. A point of hit (under cap) is worth maybe 1.4 points of spellpower now, whereas in BC it might have been worth 2.0.

re: reconjuring mana gems with 2T7 in 12 minute fights.
How I make sense of this is that Frost does not need a full evocation at 6-8 minutes, so reconjuring the mana gem gives enough mana, at less dps loss than using evocation. OTOH, frostfire, just a bit less efficient, tends to require more mana in the 6-8 minute range to avoid wanding, or using mage-armor for the fight. Reconjuring isn't enough, and evocation is required, and I guess there's just enough mana that once you evocate, it is no longer worth reconjuring.

Maybe in an even longer than 12 minute fight frostfire would evocate, and then still reconjure the mana gem later, while frost uses reconjuring to completely avoid evocation.

so i been searching everywhere.. alo to f different mage theorys have popped up in our guild recently. and we all started focusing on spell crit (after we made hit cap of course) and atm most of us are ffb spec.. anyways.. i heard thers diminishing returns above 34% crit.

i do use rawr and it told me to push spell power so i put myself at about 32% crit self buffed and 1775 spell power. i havent tried this in a 25 man raid setting yet but i was trying to find out if theres truth to this diminishing returns.. (basically to back myself up when my RL says why arent u stacking cir t =/ ) oh and i tottaly get rng pwed every raid on my hot streak proc >.< (but other then lothab) i am around 38 - 39% crit and thinking this is could be why )

plz set me straight if i am wrong

I am fairly certain this has been posted multiple times. 1 point of spellpower is worth more dps than 1 point of crit. Choose your gear accordingly.

Also - Rawr. Download it, use it.

Can anyone give me a verdict on wild magic potion vs haste potion; I performed a few searched and found the question asked a couple of times but with no conclusion.

Dmg/Hit/Haste/Crit Scaling

I have just started using RAWR to compare the scaling of these damage stats for my gear level (a function I didn't notice existed until I started reading through this mage forum recently). I'm assuming the "scaling vs spell damage/crit/etc" charts are where I would get this information, but I'm at a bit of a loss of how to interpret them.

What does the x and y axes represent exactly? Any other tips on how to read and utilize these graphs for somebody fairly new to theorycrafting?

Thank you.

EDIT: I've also started looking at the "custom > item budget" tab. Can this section be used for a similar purpose as the scaling charts? I realize its probably simplified and only gives a picture of scaling at your current gear level, rather than showing change.

Item budget will show you for your current gear how much dps the stats are worth. The scaling graphs are basically item budget graph charted against different stats. So Scaling vs Spell Power for example shows how the item budget chart changes as you change your spell power (but leave other stats fixed). The black vertical line shows you where you are currently and is identical to the item budget graph.

Thanks for the reply! But I suppose I need a couple of things to be further clarified (or perhaps just have somebody tell me if my assumptions are correct.

So, when I read the chart for item budget, the top line looks like this (albeit looking more like a graph):

So, is that saying 11.7 additional spell power would be a 17.34 dps increase for me? And, although its probably not the most important question, is there any reason why "11.7" was chosen as the unit for spell power while the other damage stats have the nice round number of "10" as their unit?

Thanks again!

Yes, the number in the bar represents the dps gain per 11.7 spell power added. I believe the first number is the amount of spell power per item point. For example, compare [Quick Lionseye] to [Runed Crimson Spinel].

That is correct. It's 11.7 spell power because that uses the same amount of item budget as 10 rating points. It is similar to gems except that gem values are rounded so for those it is better to use the gem chart. I guess this isn't as interesting since on items you're not usually trading spell power, but for example comparing spirit and mp5 (while largely irrelevant for todays specs) gives more meaningful results when you compare appropriate values of each stat as they would appear on an item.

Got prob the dumest question atm... But -
How do you use a wand? I just started my Gnome Mage and i got a wand and i cant attack anything with it, and it has a slot of ammo, it uses ammo? Atm it does Shadow damage if that makes a dif. Again sorry for the dumb question.. lol