Ember Shadowspirit Diamond for Arcane Mages??

[Andefico 1]

Hello Icy Veins,

First, I want to thank you for putting up this arcane mage guide. It has helped me.

I have one question. In the guide, you advise to use a burning shadowspirit diamond. Is it possible to use a ember shadowspirit diamond instead? Ember shadowspirit diamond increases your maximum mana (very beneficial to arcane mages) and burning shadowspirit diamond only increases critical strike damage (doesn't seem so important).

[LCSscallywag 57]

I'd see the recommendation for the Burning Shadowspirit is due to an increase in actual mana doesn't really translate into a DPS increase as well as the crit bonus.

Yeah, the logic is more mana means you can cast more spells but the mastery for arcane is when your available mana is at max you get a damage bonus. Not if your mana pool is larger then the other guy.

Hope this helps clear some stuff up.

[PhatLewtsGold 1]

@LCSscallywag For arcane, mastery scales with what percentage of your mana pool you still have. Having a larger pool would make each cast of AB slightly more powerful, because you'd be consuming a lesser percentage of your mana pool, but I'd imagine that the 3% crit would end up being more beneficial, as crit should be your next highest secondary stat after hit/mastery.

3% base mana pool means each cast costs 1/1.03 or about 97.1% of what it would with the crit gem. I'd imagine that once you get past your initial burn phase that this would pretty much be irrelevant, so it may be a dps bonus for 5 mans, where you can get to full mana all the time, but I can't imagine it would be for a raid boss with a 10 minute fight or something.

Also note that your crits do 100% extra damage already, so instead of 200%, it'd be 206%, which is in reality a 6% increase when you crit rather than the 3%. Again I haven't done the math, but I'd imagine elitist jerks has and they suggest Burning for Arcane Mages.

[Damien 1,514]

I remember that someone once asked a similar question in the comments of the Arcane Mage guide.

The benefit of an Ember Shadowspirit Diamond is the increased mana regeneration it provides (more mana yields a higher mana regeneration). For Arcane Mages, this is something to consider, especially with a very low critical strike chance (where the benefit of using a Burning Shadowspirit Diamond is weak, as pointed out by PhatLewtsGold).

The main drawback of this meta-gem is that it requires 2 yellow gems and with the socket bonuses of the gear in Patch 4.3, Arcane Mages will mostly be stacking Intellect with Brilliant Inferno Rubies and Brilliant Queen's Garnet.

In my opinion, the bottom line is that you can opt to use an Ember Shadowspirit Diamond if you feel that you need more mana regeneration and if your gear has at least 2 yellow sockets.

[Andefico 1]

Thank you all for your answers. My critical strike rating is very low at the moment (around 10%) and I always find myself having mana issues. I think I will try this ember shadowspirit diamond. I have enough yellow sockets on my gear to activate it.

[PhatLewtsGold 1]

If you're having mana issues make sure you're using Mage Armor and glyph of Mage Armor.

The main point of arcane isn't to spam AB till you're at 0% mana, if you're doing so you're approaching it the wrong way. If it's a gear thing by the 378 heroics, you shouldn't really have an issue with regen.