I. AM. SO. EXCITED. RIGHT. NOW!

Hehe

_Misa

@Twekki: You make good points, and yes the Spellweave IS better raw dps, but as I’m sure you probably get sick of hearing, you do exactly 0 dps when you’re dead. Of course, you can skew the odds in your favour by not being an idiot and knowing when to “move out of the fire”, but there are times where your odds of surviving are vastly increased by having a decent amount of health. You’ve also got to take into account the dps implications of having to break your cast and move right NOW because you have such a limp health pool versus being able to wait that last second on your 3 sec FFBolt cast and then move because you’ve got 20k health raid buffed. I guess I simply prefer to have a margin of error built in to my gear, which is why I just can’t find it in me to recommend Spellweave, plus the fact that it has haste instead of hit or crit, which is really of more use to Frost Mages.

Having said that, if you like living dangerously and know you have the knowledge of the encounter and reactions to get away with it, don’t let me stop anyone using Spellweave. It’s just not for me.

Regarding the excellent point you make about Lightweave Embroidery, I should probably amend my post to acknowledge the mana and DPM issues you mentioned. This is definitely an issue for Heroic Dungeon and 10 Man Raid Frostfire mages, but I don’t find it a problem at all in 25 man raids due to the amount of replenishment buffs flying around, and the 2pcT7 bonus positively encourages you to chomp your mana gems any time they’re off cooldown. It will obviously vary depending on the make-up of your own raid, but most 25 mans are going to have at least 1 person who can replenish.

Thanks for taking the time to write such a long and detailed comment, looking forward to hearing from you in future.

That being said, I have a few comments for you about Tailoring.

Let’s start with Lightweave embroidery. When it comes down to it, there’s a benefit others miss here. Though it’s actual DPS value is about equivalent, if not a little under that of greater speed, this brings with it efficiency … DPM. It proc’s damage on a normal cast that you would have performed anyhow. While the haste reduces your cast time enough that in the long run, you’ll cast extra, that extra casting COSTS you mana, and as of right now, raiding mages DO have mana problems.

Next up was the mis valuation of Spellweave Robes. Yes, you will feel, well, awkward with that spirit. Yes, you will be more squishy missing out on that 50ish stamina. But you miss both those stats and INT on your Deathchill, which is agreed as the current end all, be all of cloaks. When it comes down to Pure DPS, Spellweave robe beats out Ebonweave by a few dps.

One thing I think many mages have missed is that with Wrath, level 75+, and Frostfire bolt builds, the tides have drastically changed on stat worth. Whereas in BC, it was reliably Hit (until capped) > Haste > Spellpower > Crit, it’s been completely re-arranged to Spellpower > Crit > Haste > Hit. The reason for this is that, where a crit in BC was worth a total of ~ 210% damage (150% for crit, plus 40% of that in ignite) a Frostfire crit is now worth somewhere in the vicinity of 325% damage ((150% + ~50% from frost talent + ~25% from fire talents + ~8% from Metagem and 4pT7) + 40% of THAT in ignite).

A rough estimate for a pre-Naxx geared mage would be somewhere in the vicinity of:
1 Spellpower ~ 1 dps
1 Crit ~ .85 dps
1 Haste ~ .65 dps
1 Hit ~ .55 dps

(For reference, my approximations come from theory crafting / gear optimization sites like ElitestJerks and MaxDPS).

Again, great post. Keep up the good work!

~Twekki (Baelgun)