Playing a Mage is lots of fun, but keeping track of your stats is a hassle sometimes. I want to help you get your numbers crunched and give you a fast overview in my WoW Mage Stat priority guide.
The guide should be viable both for leveling and raiding, but raiding needs a lot more fine-tuning as you can probably imagine. But after reading the priorities you should get the idea!
Mage Stats Explanation
The first part of my WoW mage stat priority guide is an explanation of the stats themselves. You have to know the actual numbers if you want to crunch them later on. Here are the most important stats for your Mage and how they work:
Spell Power
Spell Power increases the damage of your abilities. It’s always a flat amount, that makes calculating your bonus damage very simple. It should be obvious that every mage has to collect as much +spell damage as possible.
Critical Strike Rating
This stat increases your chance to critically hit your enemy with your spells. Critical hits deal 150% damage if you don’t have any talents to increase it.
Unfortunately calculating the bonus you get from your hit rating is not as easy as calculating the bonus from spell power. To get the actual bonus crit. hit percentage you do this:
(Critical Strike Rating) : (variable depending on level) = +bonus crit. hit chance
To make it easier for you: Once you hit level 80 you will need 46 crit. rating to get +1% crit. hit chance for your spells.
Intellect
Intellect (or just Int.) increases both your critical strike rating and your mana pool. This time it’s even more difficult to crunch the numbers. If you want to know how much your Int. contributes to your critical hit chance, you have to take into account your level and your class.
Again, I will make things easy for you. Here is the Int. you need at different levels to get +1% crit. hit chance:
- Level 60: 59 Int.
- Level 70: 80 Int.
- Level 80: 166 Int.
Stamina
Stamina gives you more health, but it’s only important while you are leveling. Face it – Mages are going to die anyway if the boss hits them.
Hit Rating
When you are raiding, your Hit Rating is important. Make sure you know how much Hit Rating you need in order to always hit the boss (or get to the point of diminishing returns). Then get the gear BEFORE you join the first raid. Nothing is more annoying than a character asking “How many XYZ-rating do I need?” right before the boss-encounter starts.
WoW Mage Stat Priority
No matter if you are leveling or raiding, here’s the priority that my WoW Mage stat priority guide highly recommends:
- Spell Power
- Critical Strike Rating
- Intellect
- Stamina / Hit Rating
Note that it’s stamina for leveling purposes and Hit Rating for raid parties.
A last advice I want to give you is this: Although some stats are more important than others doesn’t mean you can spend all your resources only on the most important stats and neglect the rest. If you do this you are going to fail. You need a certain amount of each to be successful.
Did you like my WoW Mage Stat Priority Guide? Do you have a different opinion that you like to share? Please leave me a comment with your personal priorities!
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