Trinkets -- Opinions, please...

[Vaelkder 6]

Hello,

I was trying to discover what the opinion of most people who play Arcane Mage is, regarding trinkets.

I have four in my bags from which to chose:

1. Blossom of Pure Snow, ilvl 489 (equipped)

2. Essence of Terror LFR version, ilvl 483 (equipped)

3. Light of the Cosmos LFR version, ilvl 476

4. Relic of Yu'lon, ilvl 476

From the askmrrobot.com website, it states that both Light of the Cosmos and Relic of Yu'lon are rated more highly and are better to have equipped, rather than Blossom of Pure Snow and Essence of Terror LFR.

I would like to know what others think, as the Light of the Cosmos and Relic of Yu'lon do not give any stats, but have a "chance" of increasing Intellect for 15 and 20 seconds, respectively, whereas the Blossom of Pure Snow has a fixed Intellect addition of 1,079 with an on-use Critical Strike increase for 15 seconds, and the Essence of Terror LFR has a fixed Intellect addition of 1,021 with a "chance" of increasing Haste for 20 seconds.

To me, it seems counter-productive to rely upon a "chance" of a temporary Intellect bonus versus a static gain in Intellect, but as I am still comparatively new to WoW and have only played Arcane, I would enjoy hearing the opinion of those who have experience and skill with this Class/Spec.

Thank you!

[DubbaCV 2]

So just a bit of correction is needed for your presentation of the trinkets as they all have static stats:

Essence of Terror

Raid Finder

Item Level 483

Upgrade Level 0/2

Binds when picked up

Unique-Equipped: Essence of Terror (1) Trinket +1021 Intellect Equip: Each time your harmful spells hit, you have a chance to gain 6121 haste for 20 sec.

Requires Level 90

Sell Price: 25 9 39

Dropped by: Sha of Fear

Drop Chance: 0.58%

This isn't your worst trinket by any means, the static 1021 intellect with the haste proc isn't bad. However, with an uncontrollable large haste proc you'll have to be more mindful of mana management when the trinket does proc.

Blossom of Pure Snow

Item Level 489

Upgrade Level 0/2

Binds when picked up

Unique-Equipped: Curios of the Shado-Pan (1) Trinket +1079 Intellect Use: Increases your critical strike by 3595 for 15 sec. (1 Min Cooldown)

Requires Level 90

Requires Shado-Pan - Revered

"A gift from Snow Blossom, Destroyer of Men"

Sell Price: 25 39 83

Again, not a bad trinket; however, crit is currently the lowest rated stat for arcane. While it is technically a free throughput increase, the lack of any other significant amount of crit and randomness of crits makes this one of your less desirable trinkets when comparing it to the other 3.

Relic of Yu'lon

Item Level 476

Upgrade Level 0/2

Binds when equipped

Unique-Equipped: Darkmoon Card of the Mists (1) Trinket +956 Intellect Equip: When you deal spell damage, you have a chance to gain Blessing of the Celestials, increasing your Intellect by 3027 for 15 sec.

Requires Level 90

Sell Price: 24 73 87

This is a fantastic trinket and, contrary to your original presentation, it does offer a stat 956 intellect. The average uptime on this trinket is mathing out to be ~28% of a fight. However, lets say you're not so lucky with procs and have closer to a 25% uptime. This would technically earn you an additional 765.75 intellect throughout the entirety of a given fight. However, the consideration is that intellect is no longer worth what it was before Mists. As secondary stats have become more powerful, this trinket could technically math out to be lower.

Light of the Cosmos

Raid Finder

Item Level 476

Upgrade Level 0/2

Binds when picked up

Unique-Equipped: Light of the Cosmos (1) Trinket +956 Haste (2.25% @ L90) Equip: Each time you deal periodic damage you have a chance to gain 2866 Intellect for 20 sec.

Requires Level 90

Sell Price: 24 73 87

Dropped by: Elegon

Personally, this trinket doesn't rate very well for me. Static haste with the ability to reforge to mastery isn't awful. However, as Arcane or Frost, the only periodic damage effects you have are Living Bomb or Nether Tempest (frost also has the FFB dot). This will return a much lower uptime than say if you were to play Fire or what it would for a boomkin, lock, or s.priest. Additionally, given that it's LFR the proc value (not to be confused with uptime) is very low compared to the proc/on-use of all your other trinkets.

So personally, I'd recommend Yu'lon and either Essence of Terror or Blossom of Pure Snow. But this is just looking at the trinkets at face value as you didn't link your armory or provide an overview of your current stats.

To get the best bang for your buck, you should do a couple of things. First, upload your character sheet to Simcraft with the various trinket combinations (6 total). You can then see which math out the highest dps and get a good idea of your stat weights. Plug those weights into AskMrRobot (AMR), reforge accordingly, and then run a few 6-8 minute logs of you on a target dummy with higher mathing trinket combinations to see what you personally do the best with. However, in any case, I'm pretty confident in the fact that any combination of trinkets involving LFR Light of the Cosmos, even upgraded (if you were to upgrade all trinkets evenly), would probably result in the lowest dps. I can't really get comfortable with AMR rating Light of the Cosmos so highly for Arcane Mages given the proc mechanics.

[Mit213 20]

To just comment on what DubbaCV said, here are a few things:

1. The haste proc shouldn't really change anything if you are using Rune of Power in terms of mana consumption, so you should be fine there.

2. As for the Blossom of Pure Snow, I'm almost 100% sure it is going to be a lesser choice just because how crappy crit feels while playing arcane.

3. As for the LFR version of Light of the Cosmos, I agree, I really feel this will be your worst choice.

In my opinion, I love the proc for the EoT just because it is a noticeable proc, and it lasts a good amount of time giving you a very good time to pop your arcane power and such during the up time. The Relic of Yu'lon just feels like a really solid trinket, I have no complaints, especially because of the stats.

[Damien 1,514]

As Arcane, I would go for Relic of Yu'lon and Essence of Terror any day :)

[Vaelkder 6]

I have to apologize for not putting in all of the data/information necessary to give people the most comprehensive numbers with which to work. Being relatively new (read: TOTAL noob! lol), there are so many things about which I'm uninformed.

I did make the mistake about the Relic of Yu'lon, in that it does give an intellect boost, so I'm glad that it was pointed out. Thank you to DubbaCV for his amazing analysis and comments!

My Arcane Mage character is VAELKDER, which is on the US Hellscream Server. I haven't been able to discover how to link the character to my Icy Veins profile, and I'm not sure as to how to link the Armory URL, as I have been relying upon Ask Mr Robot and have been focusing on learning to play my character. I need to learn more of the technical side of things, but that will come in time...

As far as I can tell, on the askmrrobot.com website, my Armory link is http://www.askmrrobot.com/wow/gear/usa/hellscream/vaelkder

I'm going to attempt to use the SimCraft website and see what happens, rotating out the different trinket combinations. With luck, I should be able to come to a practical decision, but I'm thinking that going with the Relic of Yu'lon and Essence of Terror LFR will be my best bet, after reading the comments.

Thanks to everyone who have given their opinions and suggestions, as I'm sure that they'll help me tremendously!

[DubbaCV 2]

Hi Valk,

After looking you up on wowarmory.com it looks like you've implemented whatever changes MrRobot suggested and your gear/reforging/gemming appears to be in relatively good shape.

SimC (simulationcraft.org) is fairly straight forward to use once you've downloaded it. Just input the missing variables (ratings, gear, etc.) and use the default arcane mage profile for priorty/actions. This should give you solid stat weights for your current gear to double check your reforges. As an aside, if this question was instigated by more than just personal curiosity (e.g. low dps) then I would also recommend registering for WorldofLogs and hitting a raid dummy to see how you are doing or could improve. Zagam posted an excellent WorldofLogs and You guide here:

Also, in spending additional valor points, I highly recommend upgrading Yu'lon first. You're going to hold on to that trinket until you have heroic versions of the caster dps trinkets.

[Dannemmar 0]

MrRobot puts normal Essence of Terror and Light of the Cosmos slightly above Relic of Yu'lon.

I'm very doubtful about that for Light of the Cosmos.

[Midtcwboy 0]

What is recommended for frost dps out of the 4 trinkets above.

currently using essence and blossom

Edited December 17, 2012 by Midtcwboy

[DubbaCV 2]

MrRobot puts normal Essence of Terror and Light of the Cosmos slightly above Relic of Yu'lon.

I'm very doubtful about that for Light of the Cosmos.

AMR does in fact rate Light of Cosmos above Relic of Yu'lon, with absolute rankings. When you're in AMR, to get the best gearing optimization suggestions, you need to select the relative options after editing the stat weights to be appropriate for you. This will cause AMR to recognize the values of trinkets based on your spec and relative EP values (stat weights).

At the same time, AMR is determining gear on best case scenarios where you have 100% of the possible uptime of proc/on-use trinkets. Understand that classes with less periodic damage ticks (classes with little to no dots) are going to get inferior results from periodic damage proc based trinkets. Hence why Yu'lon is so valuable for nuke casters over Light of the Cosmos until you have a heroic Light of the Cosmos to equip.

What is recommended for frost dps out of the 4 trinkets above.

currently using essence and blossom

If you read through my high-level, napkin math analysis of the trinkets, I would conclude that Yu'lon and Essence will be the best trinkets for Frost as well. However, Blossom's on-use crit could technically crit cap you for FoF procs to get you to that 26.5% crit chance. However, the value of 100% crit chance on a maximum of 2 Ice Lanes versus the uptime of a baseline Intellect proc doesn't seem very competitive. But, as always, run it through SimC.

[BrightBrown 4]

My seat-of-the-pants tells me that the relic and the blossom should be the two best trinkets for me as a FireMage. AMR tells me to use the relic and my Zen alchemist stone... Not so sure about that. Oh this is based on tier 14 LFR spec.