Season of Discovery Arcane Mage Healer Stat Priority

Before we begin, it should be said that gear in Season of Discovery, such as Extraplanar Spidersilk Boots, tends to be very unique. Thus, you will often be chasing very specific items, rather than simply following a stat priority list. Still, a more detailed explanation on relevant stats will help you understand why those pieces are so sought after.

1. Generic Spell Power (affects all of your spells);
2. Spell / Arcane Damage (affects your damage and Temporal Beacon damage to healing conversion);
3. Spell Hit Rating (16% is needed to cap hit against Molten Core bosses, see below for details);
4. Spell Critical Strike (damage can be further increased by passives like Spell Power);
5. Intellect (grants spell critical strike and increases your maximum Mana);
6. Spirit (minor Mana regeneration with Arcane Meditation);
7. Spell Healing (affects your direct healing from spells such as Regeneration);
8. Mana every 5 seconds (for Mana regeneration while you are casting).

• Resistance (strongly reduces Magic damage taken of a specific element, great synergy with Magic Absorption);
• Stamina (more health per point);
• Agility (dodge);
• Armor (less physical damage taken).

Items that increase damage and healing done by magical spells and effects are favored, as they benefit both your damage (and thus converted healing) and direct healing spells.

Spell Damage is applied to each spell based on its casting time, and is converted to healing for Mage healers through the new Temporal Beacon mechanic in Season of Discovery.

The damage coefficient is calculated by dividing the cast time of a spell by 3.5. This is because a 3.5 second cast benefits from 100% of your gear's Spell Damage. For example, if you have 20 additional Spell Damage from gear, then this will simply affect your spells as follows:

• Damage Increase per spell cast = n * 20
• n = spell's coefficient

Instant single target spells typically only get around 43% of the benefit, with area of effect spells having an even greater penalty, while a cast time spell like Frostbolt gets roughly 81%. Meanwhile, a longer cast spell such as Fireball gets 100% of the Spell Damage in your gear as added damage.

This means that 100 Spell Damage on your gear would cause Fireball to deal 100 extra damage per cast, but Frostbolt would only deal 81 extra damage, using the same gear. A table with the exact coefficients for all spells in WoW Classic can be found in this reddit thread, by u/RobertVests.

Spell Healing increases the strength of your healing spells by a flat amount. This is a very weak stat for Mage Healers, as it only affects direct healing, such as the one done by Regeneration and Mass Regeneration casts, but it does not affect any Temporal Beacon healing, which is the vast majority of your healing!

Spell Hit allows your spells to land more often, which is a huge DPS increase, but has no effect on direct healing spells. Also, keep in mind that you will always have at least a 1% chance to miss with spells. Depending on the level of your enemy, you might need more, or less Spell Hit to reach this 1% cap:

• For an enemy of the same level as you, 3% Spell Hit is needed to cap.
• For an enemy 1 level higher than you, 4% Spell Hit is needed to cap.
• For an enemy 2 levels higher than you, 5% Spell Hit is needed to cap.
• For an enemy 3 levels higher than you, which is the case of raid bosses, 16% Spell Hit is needed to cap.

Arcane at Level 60 has access to Arcane Focus and Arcane Specialization, which lower the Spell Hit required against Molten Core bosses from 16% to 0%, making Spell Hit virtually useless for Mage Healers.

Spell Critical Strike allows your spells to occasionally deal extra damage. Unfortunately the only critical strike damage multiplier available to Arcane is Spell Power, and critical strike is inherently less reliable for healers than DPS, as they are much more likely to overheal the targets.

Intellect is a good stat for Arcane Mages, as it increases total Mana pool and spell critical strike. The Mana pool gain is very significant during leveling and while AoE grinding, but not so significant during raids, where Mana regeneration and Mana consumables will typically play a bigger part in your sustainability.

For Mages, Spirit provides Mana regeneration, mostly when outside of combat, which is very useful while leveling but not so much for maximum level content.

Resistance, while inherently niche due to different bosses dealing different magical damage types, can be very useful while progressing specific bosses. Wearing resistance gear of a type makes you take less damage or even completely avoid damage when hit by that type of magical damage.

Stamina is the only stat that will help you survive all types of attacks, and as such, should always be valued. Do keep in mind that due to Mage's low armor, your HP will tend to be depleted very fast by physical attacks.