So I get asked what my opinion is on stat priority for mages a decent amount. To that end I thought I’d put together a post containing my thoughts on the matter. It’s not cut and dry for sure. A lot depends on your spec and what you value. I’ve touched on it in previous posts, but only discussing priority of the big ones (hit cap first!). But there are two stats that are fairly ambiguous in their value to a mage. Hast and Crit. So here goes.
Haste
Haste, simply put, decreases the casting time of your spells. At lvl 80 you need 32.79 Haste rating to give you a 1% casting time decrease. Now this gets a little wonky. 1% is a nice number, but 1% of a 3sec casting time spell is a lot more time off that a 1.5sec cast time spell. So typically Haste is a little better for rotations that include longer cast time spells. To that end it is perhaps a little better for Arcane and Fireball/ Frostfire specs.
This also comes with a bit of a caveat. More haste means you eat through your mana pool faster. That being said, when you get to higher tiers of gear your mana pool is going to get larger and larger. That means that the better gear you have the more the benefits of Haste become clear. It’s all well and good to be casting nearly instant Frostbolts because you stack tons of haste, but it does you no good if you run out of mana in a minute flat.
I think Haste really shines in Arcane builds. Arcane Blast is just long enough that you will see a nice benefit from Haste. It is perhaps the best stat (short of Hit until cap) for Arcane mages. It is super valuable for Fire mages as well, Fireball and Frostfirebolt have very long cast times, but the 2 major Fire specs also have a heavy reliance on crit, so that should be priority one, but haste is a close runner-up.
Crit
Crit is the best stat for new mages. At lvl 80 you need 45.91 crit rating for 1% of critical strike chance. Crit is a straight up dps increase without Haste’s extra mana cost. If you are just starting out as a lvl 80 mage of ANY spec Crit is king. It will hands down give you more bang for your buck. As an early raiding mage you will probably have a lot of issues with your mana pool. It comes with the turf. As you progress to higher and higher tiers of gear you will have less problems with running OOM. But even then Crit is super important. Especially if you are deep into the fire tree (for whatever reason) Crit is important. The more instant cast Pyroblasts you can knock out the better. And who doesn’t like to see those big numbers popping up all over? It’s probably the most satisfying stat.
Summary
I would recommend stacking Crit until you are rolling in mostly ilvl 232 and up gear (which should be quick in 3.3). Then go for a balance of Haste and Crit. So here is the TLDR version:
- New Mages should focus on Crit untill you are able to last a long time without mana issues on a raid boss
- Fireball/ Frostfire Mages always like Crit best, though Haste should never be ignored
- Arcane Mages like Haste best, but Crit’s large numbers popping up on your screen are so pretty (especially a missle-barraged AM with a crit on each missile. Nothing. More. Satisfying.)
- Frost Mages like Crit best, but should have a liberal amount of Haste sprinkled in.
