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WoW Rookie: All you needed to know about stats, part 3

Elizabeth Harper
Updated ·15 min read


In today's continuation of our series on what the various stats in World of Warcraft do for you, we're going to be discussing caster stats. And, while a long-time player probably knows everything I'm talking about here, someone who's newer to the game might find spelling all of these things out to be handy. Curious as to how gear with +spell damage helps you out? Not quite sure how useful gear with mana per five seconds on it is for your class? You're in the right place.

However, before you keep reading, it's well worth it to check out part 1 (covering the five main game attributes) and part 2 (covering statistics effecting physical damage). Coming up our next installment we'll talk about defensive statistics (armor, dodge, parry, resilience, etc), so stay tuned!



Applying +damage and healing to spells: Before we get into different types of spell damage and healing, it helps to understand how those numbers are applied to your spells. (It works the same way whether it's simple +spell damage, +frost damage, or +healing.)

  • Spells with a cast time of 3.5 seconds or greater receive 100% of your +spell damage gear. (The extra spell damage or healing is added directly to the spell's usual damage or healing.) Spells with a cast time of less than 3.5 seconds receive a percentage of the benefit from gear -- this sort of scaling prevents spells with a short cast time from becoming more appealing as you gain more spell damage.

  • Damage over time spells (and heal over time spells!) are given 100% of your +spell damage or healing, spread out over the duration of the spell, so long as they're 15s duration or greater. (Less than 15s, less spell damage/healing is applied.)

  • Spells with secondary effects (i.e. they do things other than pure damage) have their usual +spell damage bonus cut in half. Examples: Warlock's Drain Life also heals, Priest's Mind Flay also slows.

  • Lower level spells (level learned compared to your level) get less bonus from spell damage or healing. In general, you can expect to use your top two or three ranks of a spell without penalty. But if you want to know specifics...


Spell damage: Spell damage improves the amount of damage you do with all damage and healing spells.

  • Several classes have talents that will increase the bonuses given by spell damage:


Spell healing: Spell healing improves the amount of healing you do with all healing spells. While you may be inclined to look for gear with +spell damage on it for its bonuses to both damage and healing, you will find that you'll get more overall healing on equal level +healing gear. (With gear of equal level and quality, you can expect to find about twice as much +healing as you would +spell damage -- so be aware if you take the +spell damage route, you're sacrificing quite a bit of healing power.

  • Several classes have talents that will increase the bonuses given by spell healing:


Arcane/fire/frost/nature/shadow/holy damage: As with straight out spell damage, any of these will improve your damage with spells -- though only spells within the indicated school of magic.

  • Why choose a specific school of damage over +spell damage?


Mana per 5 seconds (MP5): Grants you X amount of mana every 5 seconds, regardless of whether you're in or out of the five second rule.

  • For most casters, MP5 is the preferred way to regenerate mana. Though the amount it regenerates is usually small, it works constantly and you don't have to worry about taking breaks during casting in order to regenerate more mana.

  • If you're a healer and have a style of casting in spurts and then taking a break -- you may find spirit similarly appealing. Spirit can regenerate a good amount of mana (and with the right talents, can provide some regeneration while casting!), but you have to stop casting to get its full benefits, so it depends on your casting style as to whether you'd rather stack MP5 gear or spirit gear.


Spell critical strike rating: Spell critical strikes are special attacks that do 150% normal damage (though most casting classes have talents that can improve that). You can improve your chance to get spell critical strikes by equipping gear with intellect on it or by equipping gear with spell critical strike rating on it.

  • Several classes have talents that improve their chance to score a critical strike with spells:

  • Several classes have talents that improve their critical strike damage with spells:

  • Several classes have other interesting abilities that are triggered by spell crits:

Spell hit rating: The higher your chance to hit with spells is, the more likely you are to hit (instead of miss) your target. (Though the message on a spell miss is "resisted," I'm going to continue referring to spells that don't hit as "misses" in order to avoid confusion with spell resistances as discussed below.)

  • Your chance to hit is based on the level difference between you and your target:

  • Regardless of gear, you'll always have at least a 1% chance to miss -- so if you're fighting equal-level monsters, more than +3% to hit is wasted.

  • Several classes have talents that improve their chance to hit with spells:

Binary spells: To fully understand how spell hit rating (discussed below) works, you need to know the difference between binary and non-binary spells.

  • A non-binary spell...

  • A binary spell...

Spell resistance: Now that you know what is and what isn't a binary spell, we can discuss spell resistance.

  • The average number of resists you'll get = (your target's resistance / (caster level x 5)) x 0.75.

  • If your non-binary spell successfully hits, a resistance check is then applied. Depending on your target's resistances, it can resist 0%, 25%, 50%, or 75% of your spell damage. (There are no in-betweens.)

  • Eyonix provides us with this example of spell resistance and hit rating:

Spell penetration: Spell penetration rating will reduce your target's chance to resist your spells (based on their resistances -- as opposed to spell hit rating, which will reduce your target's chance to resist your spells based on their level). Very little is known about how spell penetration actually works and how much of it is needed to counter different levels of spell resistance.

  • If the monster or player you're attacking has 0 spell resistance, then any spell penetration gear you're wearing is wasted (resistances can't go into negative numbers).

  • For PvP, a spell penetration level of 40 seems to be enough to counter the benefit given by Mark of the Wild.

  • Some players say spell penetration is worthless in PvP and PvE. I say it's just very situational -- you don't know how much resistance an average monster or player will have, so you can't predict how much spell penetration gear you need, in general, to overcome resistances. Try some out, and see if it seems to help -- but your mileage may vary.