To the Fire Mages Gemming Intellect

[Urmydinner]

I've noticed some mages are still stuck in the old ways of gemming! This is just a public service message saying that you should not be gemming for intellect and instead you should be gemming for Crit and Hit.

Why?

If you are familiar with stat weights and what they mean I'd have a look at this.


Now if you scroll down a bit, you'll see that the stat weights for a normally geared Fire Mage is

Intellect
4.55

Haste
2.17

Crit
2.72

So what does this mean? For each point of a stat you gain that number in damage per second. Obviously, Intellect is going to win out because of how high it is rated when we're comparing it point for point with Crit and Haste. It has always been that way in the past, but now that MoP has introduced gems that have twice the amount for the secondary stats (everything but intellect) we now find ourselves in an odd position.

So, Brilliant gems have 160 intellect on them while Smooth Sun's Radiance has 320 Crit. That means according to these stats you gain 728 damage per second with the Brilliant gem in and 870 damage per second with the critical strike gem in making the Smooth Sun's Radiance the optimal choice by a pretty significant margin.


Smooth Sun's Radiance (+320 Crit) For yellow sockets
Potent Vermilion Onyx (+80 Intellect +160 Crit) For red sockets
Piercing Wild Jade (+160 Hit +160 Crit) For blue sockets



*If you're curious where this information came from, feel free to visit the source. simulationcraft.org

[Chrispotter]

You get double the secondary stat from a gem, than you would form gemming intellect.
160 int
320 secondary stat.

With your stat wieghts you posted, surely that prooves that int is better? ( btw i dont even have a mage so i dont know the stat wieghts). But from the stat wieghts you gave me, it would seem that int is marginally better to gem? as it is OVER 2x as good.
Correct me if im wrong.


EDIT: Sorry was only comparing the haste number to the int number. Didnt see crit.

[Shinrael]

I've always gemmed crit and enchanted crit on Fire Mage....ever since I started playing Mage I've been fire and I've played it like this. Ever since hot streak was introduced my critfire mage became viable.

[Urmydinner]

I've always gemmed crit and enchanted crit on Fire Mage....ever since I started playing Mage I've been fire and I've played it like this. Ever since hot streak was introduced my critfire mage became viable.

Viable and optimal are quite different. Arcane is viable in raids, but in general Fire will always be optimal.

[Deleted]

Why gemming hit? Gemming Crit and reforge Mastery/Haste to Hit brings nearly allways better results. Only if u have crit/hit on every piece and no "bad" stats it would be better to gem hit.
With mixed equip gemming hit is in most cases not optimal. Especially since expertise works with hit and u can even reforge hit/mastery-pieces and u should have no problem with the hitcap without gemming hit.

[Fifty Snakes]

Stat weights fluctuate based on your gear!

Later, tater!

[Urmydinner]

Stat weights fluctuate based on your gear!

Later, tater!

You are correct however any person that has decent gear (normal/lfr) the stat weights are not going to fluctuate in such a way that two points of crit are going to be worse than one point of intellect. It would change if they were closer together, but as of now they are not.

Why gemming hit? Gemming Crit and reforge Mastery/Haste to Hit brings nearly allways better results. Only if u have crit/hit on every piece and no "bad" stats it would be better to gem hit.
With mixed equip gemming hit is in most cases not optimal. Especially since expertise works with hit and u can even reforge hit/mastery-pieces and u should have no problem with the hitcap without gemming hit.

You are gemming hit to match the socket bonus for a blue socket. In MoP there are very few negligible socket bonuses, so you probably should attempt to get all of them.

[Spectral]

A few reasons why someone might gem differently than what's indicated as optimal in Simcraft:

1. I'd guess the most common reason is that people play different specs. If someone desires to play Frost, their stat weights will change greatly. I just simmed my mage, and while the weighting for Fire is basically what you lay out in the OP, Intellect is about three times as valuable as any secondary stat for Frost.

2. Some people don't enjoy the increased standard deviation in DPS than comes from gemming crit; even if they know they'll get less average DPS, they prefer the tighter margin of error that comes from Intellect. I can't see this as being either right or wrong, it's just a different approach to solving the problem.

3. Along the same lines as #2, some people simply don't enjoy relying on a stat that isn't guaranteed to be helpful on every single cast. If your goal is to produce the absolute maximum possible average DPS, this point will seem silly, but the reality is that a competent player can reasonably choose to gem/play in the way they find the most aesthetically pleasing without really hurting their raid group.

4. While it's a tiny marginal return, Ice Barrier scales with Intellect, but Crit does nothing for it. I bet the number of players basing their decision on this sort of thing is very small, but non-zero.

5. Some people might just have no simmed their character and are basing their plan on the old model, in which primary stats are always correct.

Personally, I don't find any of these a particularly good reason to not just gem Crit (my PvE gear, such as it is, is gemmed Crit). Just saying, people do have reasons.

[Urmydinner]

Personally, I don't find any of these a particularly good reason to not just gem Crit (my PvE gear, such as it is, is gemmed Crit). Just saying, people do have reasons.

Well my original post was to inform people who did not know about the better gemming option. I'd wager that a majority of the mages who gem intellect do not have many other reasons than just being uninformed.

[Spectral]

Well my original post was to inform people who did not know about the better gemming option. I'd wager that a majority of the mages who gem intellect do not have many other reasons than just being uninformed.

You're probably right. I think there's a pretty significant minority that match the first reason though. Some people really like switching over to Frost, and gemming Intellect isn't that far behind as Fire, generally being something like a 1K DPS.

[Urmydinner]

You're probably right. I think there's a pretty significant minority that match the first reason though. Some people really like switching over to Frost, and gemming Intellect isn't that far behind as Fire, generally being something like a 1K DPS.

I was actually Frost before I switched to Fire for progression and it was frustrating having to change literally all of my gems. Although, it isn't all that bad because the gems were very cheap comparative to the outrageous prices that the intellect gems tend to go for on my server.

[Brewswami]

Agree with those who said that you should gem [crit] > [hit]. Unless you need more hit then accessible by reforging haste/mastery.
http://www.wowhead.com/item=76641 Is imo what people should use to match the blue socket bonus.

[Aphrel]

wow, i already knew 2crit>1int but damn, never thout crit was this much better. 2bad we dont have 640crit gems as jc :<

[Deleted]

I find it hard to believe that gemming for RNG is better than more spellpower.

[deadman1]

I find it hard to believe that gemming for RNG is better than more spellpower.

Depending on your stat weights, it actually is, this is not an opinion this is a mathematical fact.

[Spectral]

I find it hard to believe that gemming for RNG is better than more spellpower.

This depends on how you define "better". If you define "better" as "more likely to provide higher DPS in any given window", then gemming crit is better.

[Imnick]

I find it hard to believe that gemming for RNG is better than more spellpower.

But there's more RNG if you have less crit?
You're gemming for less RNG.

[Xorn]

I see many people using Int/Crit gems for red sockets, but I reccommend the following instead:

Crafty Vermillion Onyx

It's the exact same as a hit/crit gem except it can go into a red socket instead of a blue.

[chrisnumbers]

Hit/Expertise in reds.
sup.

[Erolian]

int/crit or expertise/crit is a little more complex of a decision and really comes down to how your reforging plays out but eventually it will be int/crit pretty much always