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Arcane Brilliance: Cast fast and hit hard
Every week, Arcane Brilliance strives to make us all a bit Mage-ier. This week, we shine our spotlight on two stats every Mage should have, but far too few of us know enough about: Spell hit rating and spell haste rating. Last week we saw that patch 2.4 has made these two ratings a bit easier to obtain on gear, and this week we'll find out why that should make the Mage nation a happy place.When I wrote up the list of shiny new Mage gear the patch delivered to us last week, I couldn't help but notice a strange preponderance of two stats I was relatively unfamiliar with. Currently, I have a whopping 53 spell hit rating on my Mage, from the Scryer's Bloodgem and the Gladiator's War Staff. None of my current gear gives a single point of spell haste rating. When I saw those stats reflected on so much of the new 2.4 gear, I became very curious. Why is Blizzard pushing these two ratings? Where's my spell crit and spell damage?I broke out my most scholarly looking pair of glasses, perched them upon the end of my nose so that I could squint down through them at my computer screen, and did some research. I may have scribbled some complex formulae upon a chalkboard, and it's entirely possible that I muttered the occasional "astonishing!" or "brilliant!" under my breath in a faux English accent as I conducted this study.What did I learn? Well, two things really: first, both of these ratings are important to Mages, and in PvE you can make the argument that spell hit is the single most important end-game stat for a Mage to have. And secondly, I fricking hate researching things. I mean seriously, my mind pretty much shuts off when I see a decimal point. After the break, I'll try to save you the trouble of doing what I did this week, and break down what these two ratings mean in layman's terms. Don't worry, math nerds, I'll link you to the crazy numbers articles too, so you can go make out with your calculators or whatever.
