[CLASSIC] Mage BIS lists - no consistency - Need answers

[chaseg22]

Hey everyone,
I've been looking everywhere for mage BIS lists and it appears every website has DIFFERENT values!
This is getting really annoying as we are raiding and different mages have different "BiS" items.

Our guild is saying that 1 spell damage = 8 intellect. Is this factual?
If so how is ANY Tier 1 piece bis even worth it even with the set bonus?
Considering you can get 21 frost damage from wrists, 40 from the head, and 30 from the feet, how does Tier 1 even compare?
These three pre raid BIS items have 91 total spell damage. Where as the T1 set of the Wrists-head-feet have a total of 43 spell damage + 18 3 set (61 total).
This is a difference of 30 spell power! (NOTE the 3 set would also include a 1 % hit and 1% crit - but is that worth 30 SP???).

On top of this looking at Phase 2 BIS lists it seems to get even worse. Most lists saying the T2 helmet is BiS - this helmet has 32 SP + 26 int.. which seems worse than 40 SP from the phase 1 BIS list. Also the PVP feet seem to be listed as BiS and the math is the same story with those..

So im looking to clear some things up.. do mages want ANY Tier 1 raid gear... and whats the math behind it?
Is there a trusted BiS list somewhere that is consistent and has all these answers?

Thanks guys

Cheers

[tikcol]

Most t1 pieces suck for pve. You'll want the helmet for sure and 2 other pieces for the 3 set bonus. Most people go for boots + bracers. But this depends a lot on what other gear you have available.

Our guild is saying that 1 spell damage = 8 intellect. Is this factual?

No it isn't factual. It's absurd.

Don't even try to compare intellect with spell damage. Spell damage is always better. I've seen a few mages that think intellect gives them spell damage (probably coming from BFA).

There's a reason why most of your pre-raid BiS or even BiS lists for mage are filled with frozen wrath greens with spell damage without any additional stats.

In a raid scenario you want to stack spelldamage + spell hit. You don't care about intellect. You use mana potions and get other buffs/runes.

Also the PVP feet seem to be listed as BiS and the math is the same story with those.

They have spellhit and you can pair them with shoulders from rank 10 and have the 2 set bonus which adds even more spell damage.

[zEmini]

I do not remember the exact numbers but in the longer raid fights I think it turns out to be 7-8 int per 1 spell power, and like 50-70 spirit per 1 spell power. Most gear will not give you enough to justify INT/SPR over damage so just go for higher damage when you can. You still need some healthly stamina to survive the basic raid encounters however.

It has been so long since I have raided vanilla but my old guild cleared most of AQ40 and about half of Naxx and I got buy using hardly ANY raid sets. Most pre raid blues are better than arcanist other than boots/wrist combo AND most raid non set epics are better than every raid set.

Finally, Spell hit is the most important stat for PvE. You always cap that out first but I do not think you can reach that cap till ZG.

[ronkkrop]

The trouble with spellpower vs int vs crit vs hit is that it's not linear at all. so you simply can't make a statement like 8 int = 1 sp without knowing where your stats are currently.

Contrary to what zEmini said above, spellhit is not like it is in other expansions. it's actually less important to be hit capped. For my mage which is around ilvl 60, 1% hit is worth about 13 spellpower, and it's better to swap out an item if you get more spellpower than hit equivalent spellpower.

[Akraen]

Get Rank 10, only raid if you really enjoy raiding. Re-evaluate when AQ/ZG come out. It really makes little sense to take Classic as seriously as so many do. I've nearly given up on Altered Time's discord trying to tell people to stop worry about it. Just. Stop. Worrying. About. It.

If all you care about is raw DPS, your best DPS is to not even raid right now.

[malm123]

hi everyone. just wanted to ask here about full T2 vs BiS - it seems the difference would be about 40 spell power, 2 crit and 2 hit. on the private servers people used to say that the proc from 8/8 t2 was good enough to offset the extra stats. but resources for classic dont seem to talk about it very much. Icyveins suggests keeping full t2 in your bags incase your gear breaks. lol.

do we know any data on the proc rate? it seems to me if it were 5% or under, it wouldnt outweigh that many stats, especially while %hit is so valuable to us. do yall concur or is it viable for me to tell my GM i want to go full 8/8? (i am arcane frost not WC spec)

[Tanduita]

hi everyone. just wanted to ask here about full T2 vs BiS - it seems the difference would be about 40 spell power, 2 crit and 2 hit. on the private servers people used to say that the proc from 8/8 t2 was good enough to offset the extra stats. but resources for classic dont seem to talk about it very much. Icyveins suggests keeping full t2 in your bags incase your gear breaks. lol.

do we know any data on the proc rate? it seems to me if it were 5% or under, it wouldnt outweigh that many stats, especially while %hit is so valuable to us. do yall concur or is it viable for me to tell my GM i want to go full 8/8? (i am arcane frost not WC spec)

the difference in spelldmg is about 80 spelldmg (if you calculate crit and hit into sd), i did the math with an average fb-hit of 1000 and 20% crit, BiS-gear was ahead about 3%. remember, the t2-proc won´t save you a full 2,5 sec but just 1 sec since it still needs the gcd