At first glance mages seem to have relatively uncomplicated stat choices, compared to other classes. However, when you take into account the different caps, soft caps, and recommended minimums for what you need, it can be a bit difficult to sort everything out on your own (I still have some trouble figuring things out myself). So I’ll be taking a closer look at some of these stats in order to lift the veil of mystery away!

Hit Rating

Hit rating is at first your most important stat, but once you have enough it becomes the least important.

A mage needs, before any buffs or talents, needs 446 Hit Rating to hit a raid boss 100% of the time. This is because raid bosses count as Level 83 mobs, and the hit cap to hit a mob goes up with each level it is higher than the caster.

Mages do, however, have talents that can allow them to reduce the cap on how much hit rating they need.

Arcane Focus gives mages an increased 1/2/3% chance to hit with Arcane spells, and Precision grants another 1/2/3% to hit with all spells. An Arcane mage with both Precision and Arcane Focus will need only 289 Hit rating to reach the hit cap for raiding.

A Draenei’s Heroic Presence can further reduce the hit cap by 1%, so keep a draenei friend close by (Sorry Hordies, you’re stuck without ’em).

Shadow Priests and Balance Druids have talents that cause certain debuffs they apply to increase the chance for your spells to hit by 1%.

Changes to Hit Rating in Cataclysm: As far as hit rating goes, it will remain the same on gear, but higher tiers of raid content will require progressively more hit rating to keep up 100% hit on a boss.

Spell Power

Spell Power provides Spell Damage, which, simply put, increases the amount of damage your spells cause (Duh). The amount a spell benefits from Spell Power depends on its Spell Coefficient.

A Spell Coefficient determines how much of your Spell Power increases the damage or effect of your spell. For instance:

A max ranked Fireball’s direct damage component (not the DoT effect it inflicts) benefits from 100.00% of your Spell Power.

Say you’re a Level 80 mage with 2000 spell power. When you cast Fireball, all that 2000 damage is added on top of the damage already dealt by the spell, and that’s before talents like Empowered Fire come into play.

I’m not going to get too in depth about Spell Coefficients, but you can find some nice tables for all of your spells and their coefficients at this WoWwiki page.

Changes to Spell Power in Cataclysm: Spell Power will mostly come from Intellect in Cataclysm, and will be gone from gear. The one exception is spellcaster weapons, which will retain Spell Power to make weapons feel more like big upgrades, akin to melee class weapons.

Haste Rating

Spell Haste seems to be an often misunderstood stat. I’m a bit rusty in the area myself, so I’ll copy and paste a section from this excellent forum thread by Lhivera.

Haste: How It Works

Q: I have 25% haste, so why is my Fireball cast time 2.4 seconds instead of 2.25 seconds? Is haste working properly?

A: 25% Haste does not decrease cast time by 25%; it increases casting speed by 25%. What this means is that you can get 25% more spells cast in the same amount of time. With zero haste, you could cast four Fireballs in twelve seconds (12 / 3 = 4). With 25% haste, you can cast five Fireballs in twelve seconds (12 / 2.4 = 5). Five is 25% more than four.

It may help to think of the extreme case of having 100% haste (this can happen in raids with stacked haste effects). If haste reduced cast times, then 100% haste would make all of your spells instant-cast, which obviously does not happen. Instead, it increases your casting speed by 100%, allowing you to cast twice as many spells in the same amount of time.

So basically, more haste = casting faster, not shorter spells.

Changes to Haste Rating in Cataclysm: Haste rating is being made more attractive to certain classes, such as Death Knights and Hunters, allowing them to regenerate runes or focus and such more quickly.

Crit Rating and Spell Crits

Crit Rating appears pretty often on gear. Basically, stack crit rating to increase your chance to get critical hits.

For every 45.91 crit rating you have, you gain 1% crit chance.

A critical hit hits normally for 150% of the damage the spell would do normally. This can usually be increased through the use of talents such as  Ice Shards and Spell Power that increase crit damage.

Chances to Crit Rating in Cataclysm: As far as I know, not much will be changing about crit rating in Cataclysm.

Intellect

Intellect is the basic stat that all mages will have on their gear.

Each point of intellect you gain gives you 15 mana points (Except for the first 20 points of intellect which give only one point-per-point).

Intellect also increases crit rating slightly. For a mage at level 80, every 166.6667 points of intellect grant an additional 1% chance to crit.

Stamina

Stamina is the basic “moar health” stat, and also will appear on most every piece of gear a mage will get. It gives ten health points for every point of stamina you have.

Spirit

Spirit helps increase the speed that a player regenerates health and mana.

Mp5

Mana per Five is just that: you gain the amount of Mp5 you have every five seconds. The mana you gain back while in combat is much less than mana gained while out of combat.

Important: Mp5 is being removed from gear in the Cataclysm expansion, so once it comes out you won’t be seeing it anymore. This is really more important for healers though, who will be using spirit for regen, and spirit will be a healer only stat.

Hopefully, this post helped you find out more about the stat you needed help with. If you have anything else you want to know or point out, make sure to let me know!