Everything you need to pick up for a Mage should contain Spell Power, Critical Strike Rating, Hit Rating, and to some extent Haste. The most important thing when you’re gearing up for raiding is to focus on your hit rating. Hit rating, until the cap, is the biggest DPS boost you can have because it removes the chance to hit. When you have a lengthy cast time and miss then you lose A TON of DPS.
Gearing Up – Gear
While gearing up you’re going to want to focus on Intellect, Spell Hit (you can find the cap in our basics guide), Critical Strike Rating, and Haste. Spirit is a concern too, because Molten Armor gains a benefit from it and mana regen is important, but Spirit heavy items with Haste go to healers because they gain much more of a benefit from it than you do. Never stack Spirit. However, don’t be adverse to Haste, just look for it on critical strike heavy pieces.
You can get 4 pieces from tier 9 by grinding dungeons and find yourself at an excellent starting point. You can get the trinkets from ToC and The Frozen Halls along with some offset 219 pieces. So there isn’t a lot to worry about when you first hit 80. With four pieces of 232 tier 9 gear and the rest 213s you can easily get into 10 man Icecrown or 25 man Trial of the Crusader.
Gemming Up – Gems
The best gems are red spell power gems. That simple huh? If you’re in full epics and don’t hit the hit cap then consider gemming for hit. You can also gem Haste, which is close to spell power, but not quite there.
Chaotic Skyflare is the best option for your meta.
Reckless Ametrines are pretty popular giving 12 spell power and 10 haste rating.
Trading Up – Professions
Jewelcrafting: 39 additional spell power
Blacksmithing: 38 additional spell power
Enchanting: 38 additional spell power
Leatherworking: 37 additional spell power
Alchemy: 37 additional spell power
Inscription: 37 additional spell power
Tailoring: Lightweave Embroidery – 295 spell power for 15 seconds every now and then
Engineering: 340 haste for 10 seconds every minute at the sacrifice of 28 damage.
Skinning: 32 critical strike rating
Mining: 50 stamina
The best profession, in my opinion, is Tailoring with Lightweave. The rest all offer the same benefit. Of course, Jewelcrafting comes out on top but Enchanting doesn’t require any sacrifices. You can go to our basics page to find out more.
Enchanting Up - Enchants
Head: Arcanum of Burning Mysteries (Requires Revered with The Kirin Tor)
Shoulder: Greater Inscription of the Storm (Requires Exalted with The Sons of Hodir)
Cloak: Haste
Chest: Stats
Wrist: Spellpower
Hands: Spellpower
Legs: Spellthread
Feet: Tuskarr’s Vitality
Weapon: Spellpower, or Black Magic can be considered for a 1-hander.
That’s pretty much it for enchants. Nothing too difficult to work out here since you’ll just need Spellpower where you can get it.
Consuming Up – Consumables
Flask: Flask of the Frost Wyrm
Food: Fish Feast or Firecracker Salmon/Shoveltusk Steak
Potion: Potion of Speed
You can use a mana potion if you’re having mana issues, but speed potions are the biggest DPS boost. Wild Magic potions work, but not nearly as well as speed potions.
Glyphing Up – Glyphs
Arcane: Arcane Blast, Arcane Missiles, and Molten Armor (Arcane Power competes as well)
Fire or Frostfire: Living Bomb, Fireball or Frostfire Bolt, and Molten Armor
Frost: Molten Armor, Frostbolt, and Water Elemental
It’s important to note that you can pick up the glyph for Improved Scorch for your weakest Glyph if you raid, have scorch, and are expected to keep it up. If you don’t raid, don’t have scorch, or don’t have to worry about it then these glyphs should be sufficient.
Spell Penetration – WHERE IS IT? Or
Gearing Up for PvP
Most melee classes focus heavily on armor penetration. The reason is because enemies have massive amounts of armor and armor penetration is the only way to beat through their scaly skin. Magic users though do not compete with armor. They instead compete with resists. Luckily, most bosses have little in the way of resists. As a matter of a fact, the theory goes that every boss has 15 resistances to all schools. That isn’t affected by spell resist.
So, where does spell penetration come into play? In PvP of course, where players will stack resilience and spell resists in order to negate your damage. So for PvP, stacking Spell Penetration is like stacking Hit Rating for PvE.
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