For the sake of these numbers, I am going to use three “mages”: one in T4 and equivalent gear, one in T5, and the last in T6/Sunwell. For each, their mana regeneration will be calculated as self-buffed, and fully raid buffed.
Self Buffed:
- Arcane Intellect
- Mage Armor
- Spell Damage food (i.e. Crunchy Serpent)
- Flask of Blinding Light
- Superior Wizard oil
Raid Buffed:
- Everything in the previous list
- Improved Mark of the Wild
- Improved Divine Spirit
- Improved Blessing of Wisdom
- Blessing of Kings
- Improved Power Word Fortitude
- Shaman: Wrath of Air Totem, Mana Spring Totem
All mages are specced 40/0/21.
The T4 mage, self buffed:
7406 HP (418 Stamina), 11518 MP (637 Intellect), 1105 Arcane Spell Damage, 18.71% critical strike chance, 296 Spirit.
The T4 mage, raid buffed:
9216 HP (599 Stamina), 12913 MP (730 Intellect), 1270 Arcane Spell Damage, 19.88% critical strike chance, 407 Spirit.
Yes, these stats are had with gear out of Karazhan. I am not kidding. No badge gear or tailored epics were used.
Mana Regeneration disregarding Spirit: 50 mp5 from the Mana totem, 49mp5 from BoW.
And now to the Spirit portion of things. I’m going to assume that this mage, being a mage, is never outside of the FSR, and so will only have mana returned according to the 60% she gets from Arcane Meditation and Mage Armor. And so, her mana regeneration from spirit is…
A wopping 308 mp5! Adding in BoW and the Shammy’s Mana Totem, grand total is 407 mp5. Not bad for a Karazhan level mage.
Innervate will restore 10256 mana if used on this mage.
7696 HP (447 Stamina), 11353 MP (626 Intellect), 1434 Arcane Spell Damage, 23.83% critical strike chance, 2.4% haste, 315 Spirit.
The T5 mage, raid buffed:
9466 HP (624 Stamina), 12628 MP (711 Intellect), 1598 Arcane Spell Damage, 24.89% critical strike chance, 2.4% haste, 421 Spirit.
Mana regeneration is now 314 mp5, and including BoW and Mana Totem, puts this mage at 413 mp5. Not that much of a boost, but I hope you noticed the spell damage increasing by over 300. Oh yes, and this mage has that sweet 2 piece T5 bonus, too.
Innervate will restore 10470 mana if used on this mage.
The T6+ mage, self buffed (I’d advice putting on a seatbelt, these stats are horrific):
7776 HP (455 Stamina), 13153 MP (746 Intellect), 1637 Arcane Spell Damage, 28.10% critical strike chance, 28.9% haste (!!), 345 Spirit.
The T6+ mage, raid buffed:
9556 HP (633 Intellect), 14593 MP (842 Intellect), 1807 Arcane Spell Damage, 29.31% critical strike chance, 28.9% haste, 454 Spirit.
Excuse me while I go mastur… uhh, revel in these stats.
*Ahem*
So yeah, I’m supposed to be talking about mana regeneration, not totally kickass stats of well geared mages.
Mana regeneration with these stats is 369 mp5, including BoW and Shammy this gives the mage 468 mp5.
Innervate will restore 12287 mana if used on this mage.
So an arcane specced mage (well, at least 18 points in), even in karazhan level gear, will regenerate over 300 mana every 5 seconds on his own. This is not an insignificant number.
Let’s say the fight lasts 5 minutes. This Karazhan epics mage will regenerate 18,480 mana over the course of the fight. Put a shaman in his group, toss BoW his way, and that number jumps to 24,420 mana.
Toss that T5 Arcane Mage up against Supremus, assume the fight takes ten minutes to accomplish… that mage is going to regenerate 49,560 mana over the course of the fight.
And that is assuming the mage never has to move because of a volcano, and never gets gazed by Supremus (thus causing the mage to move, thus not casting, thus outside of the FSR, thus regenerating more mana).
Needless to say, that is no small amount of mana. And these mages aren’t even in min/maxed groups. They got a shaman of some sort, and everything else is standard 25-man level buffs.
There could be a shadow priest in the mages group. The raid leader could toss an Innervate his way. Hell, you could even have a leatherworker with Drums of Restoration in his group. Maybe have a Paladin toss Judgment of Wisdom up on the raid boss. Or maybe that Shaman is resto specced, and as such can toss down a Mana Tide totem. Perhaps the mage can spare 8 seconds somewhere to use Evocate.
And don’t forget about Clearcast proccing (on average) every ten casts.
Point is, even if the mage has no raid support whatsoever, s/he can still stand to regenerate a lot of mana if he bothers to get some spirit on his gear.
So to answer the old question “why is spirit so bad?”… it isn’t.
Just don’t go out of your way to get it. I personally will slap you silly if you enchant spirit or gem for it. There are plenty of solid pieces of caster DPS gear that includes spirit. Those are the pieces you want, they come with all the spirit pre-packaged.
Which doesn’t make as much of an impact as you think, on the item’s budget. Spirit is, budget wise, one of the cheapest stats out there. Remember how Stamina was decreased in budget value so the developers could put more of it on gear? Same thing for spirit.
So cheer up, mages! Spirit is better than it’s ever been, and is only going to get better from here.
Unless, of course, your specced frost or fire. Then it’s pretty much as useless as it’s always been.
Oh yes, and if you’re a gnome mage or human mage, congrats on your extra intellect and spirit, respectively.
Is there any way to get a link to what equipment was used in making these three tier sets, as far as rings, necks, backs, etc.?
I am SO respeccing Arcane when patch 3.0 hits. Fire was fun and all but Arcane is looking sexier and sexier with each beta patch and this just clinched it.
What a fantastic post!
I have posted several posts on how fantastic the arcane spec is and done much analysis myself, and it is pretty impressive what the mage can accomplish down this tree, some examples below;
Mana regen out the wazoo.
(as 40/0/21 myself i often dont even use half a mana bar in most boss fights, i think Prince and Nightbane in Kara leave me the most drained with 50%/30% mana left after the fight respectively. This is without Evocation, gem or potion consumption. It IS with a shadow priest though.)
Low aggro (If your pure arcane, the arcane missiles are nice and low in aggro, if your 40/0/21 your frost bolts get a nice reduction in aggro, if your fire… god help you! Keep that trigger finger over ice-block!)
High damage output. With all them utilities, and talents that give bonus spell damage and crit damage, it makes a fantastic utility, whatever spell you chose to fling out đŸ™‚
What did catch my eye about your post however, is seeing the stats from different tiers of gears.
I myself – self buffed, sit on about 12k mana, 8k health, 1160 spell damage, and something like 310/550 mana regen (cant remember these figures exactly) I have one item from Gruul (his sword.) a few items from Kara, my T4 helm and gloves, and a couple of low level items (cloak from Nagrand, and Shoulderpads of Oblivion.) Anyway, I rant (Youll notice I do that…) the jist of it is – aside from lacking spell damage and haste, theres not a lot out there that would appear to be an upgrade – and definitely nothing that Ill get my mits on pre-WOTLK, and I have only been further than Kara on 4 occassions. (2 Gruul, 2 Zulaman.)
Anyhow, loving the spec, loving the maging, and loving the posts. Keep up the good work! đŸ™‚
-Velk, your sub-standard scottish wower/blogger :p
Just a minor correction – spirit still has the same item budget value as Int, Str and Agi; only stamina’s value was decreased in TBC.
Wohoo! This post really increased my spirit. You are my favourit mage blogging theorycrafter all the way. Thanks a lot!
I want to see how this stacks up against a deep frost build popping water elemental every 2:40/2:50-ish, including cold snap. I wonder how the mana regen compares.
I still feel Arcane is my spec of choice. Maybe it just seems that way because so many people are Fire/Ice.
Anyway if you ever happen to listen in to Total Biscuit’s “Blue Please” podcast, he has been commenting on the state of the Arcane mage in the first 2 episodes of his 3rd Season. Good stuff. I like his magecrafting a lot. Its the only class he plays and he’s played since launch.
…anywho awesome post. Always good to look on the positive aspects of our class then to simply blow off steam and cry how the sky is falling.
The only other thing I would like to see would be a break down of a typical fight using arcane would look like.
By that I mean, if you cast Spell X every Y seconds at a cost of Z mana even with 350mp5, your still going to run out of mana. How long would that be?
Mp5 is great and all, but if a T4 mage can blow through his mana and pot cooldown in 2 mins. While 350 mp5 is going to help, mana is still going to be an issue.
You would have to take in averages of clearcasting proc’s etc. but I think a rough estimate would still be possible / valuable.
The gear is pictured, can’t you figure it out?
XD
Kidding, will post a list.
Just as a quick experiment, try adding up the stats on equal tiered warlock and mage gear. As in add up the intellect, spell damage, haste, whatever, and see what it adds up to.
Belt of the Malefic, T6 Warlock: 173
Belt of the Tempest, T6 Mage: 178
Leggings of the Malefic T6 Warlock: 217
Leggings of the Tempest, T6 Mage: 223
It’s always like this. Add it up, and all the mage gear has slightly “more” stat wise than the equivalent warlock gear.
Conclusion?
Either our gear was given a bigger budget, or spirit is cheaper.
And since the former is impossible, it has to be the latter.
Actually, the total amount of item budget points depends on the number of attributes it is spent on; this is why e.g. the Righteous Spaulders of Agility only have 15-16 Agility, while the Monkey variety has 10-11 Agility and 10-11 Stamina (this is pre-TBC stamina, so same value as the other primary attributes)… The full theorycraft, along with the formulas, is, as usual, on WoWWiki: http://www.wowwiki.com/Level_(Item)
Ahh, that makes sense.
So it’s only “cheaper” with a nudge-nudge.
I have been spec’d deep Arcane for about 6 months now, in a mix of T4, T5 and badge gear (about 1250 unbuffed spell dmg)
I went into a Kara with a ‘kara geared’ group and ended up doing 43% of the damage to Prince
Arcane ROCKS
I have been toying with trying the Arcane/Frost spec … sounds like it is better than what I have now