To kick the last nail in...

*Edit* Here's something to read....

Who's this? Why, it's Benjamin Disraeli! The father of modern conservatism, at least the political side of it. What's he doin in our neck of the woods?

Well, back at the Congress of Berlin, circa 1878, Bismark said of Disraeli... "The old jew, ah, THAT is the man!"

In like vein... Ripper, that old troll... ah, THAT is the mage!

Anyway, Ripper has a neat little post up on some very sensible changes to mage talents to make spirit a useful stat for mages. Cuz, let's face it, when they made evoke a flat mana pool regen ability, rather than an enhanced (spirit based) mana regen ability, mages pretty much lost interest in it.

Here's my take... BURN WORLD, BURN!

Screw it. What the world needs now, is hate sweet hate.

Let us not forget the ultimate mage poem by Robert Frost...

Fire and Ice

Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I've tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.

Or, in the other interests of anarchy... what we need are more esoteric drops that allow for off the wall *functional* specs.

Look... Ima fire mage. I want crit, sweet crit. Gots to have it.

Ima frost mage. Screw crit, give me spell power and haste.

Ima arcane mage. I wanna be kidnapped and beat bloody by a dozen mimes wielding nerf bats...

No one set of items will satisfy all mages. Or all priests. Or all locks. But that's pretty much what we've been getting. A dozen freaking epic cloth bracers with the same damn stats, just a different name. Gemming to spec really doesn't help enough. Nor do enchants. I think blizz really dropped the ball on some of this. I mean, theres no reason for a faction to only have ONE freaking epic mail reward, and that be enhance. Or even one caster mail reward... I know blizz wants both dps and healers to use the same gear... but theres no reason not to offer three different caster mail items, with different stats emphasized. What does it cost them?

All I'm saying... is that first, blizzard is trying to do too many damn things as far as itemization, and failing miserably. I mean.... Unbound has almost as many epics in her enhance off set as she does for her resto set. Caster mail? None to be found...

Remember the original class sets? Remember mages all rollin on lock items cuz locks got sexy sta and int, and mage gear had all this crappy agil and spirit?

It hasn't gotten better. Blizzard gives us what they think we should want, even if, in the case of mages, not even an ice troll mage would want spirit.

We should have drops heavy on crit, on spell power... even a few hard core spirit. Instead of a managerie of stats on every item... let people specialize...
Myself, I'd like to take cause against Ripper's favorite punching bag, mana shield...

If you got enough spirit on an arcane mage... I'd love to see what mana shield could do with a 600mp5 mage build. Just freaking weird enough to be fun to play... like all those survival hunters runnin around back in the day with 80% dodge...

All I'm saying here is that the problem isn't that spirit is useless for mages. So is strength, and no one would call for talent changes to make strength a useful mage stat...

The problem is that the bulk of caster gear has spirit on it, whether you want it or not. And this is all blizzard's freaking fault. So.. two responses... first, the when blizzard gives you lemons, make lemonade. That would be ripper. Me, Ima more a "when blizzard gives you lemons, show up at their office with a chainsaw and a dead squirrel, screaming.. 'WHERE'S MY PIE!'" type of guy.

Anyway, Unbound broke 2k +healing/spell damage last night with shammy cast buffs. Ima really, really, really well geared right now.

If only I could get some damn rings and necklaces that didn't have freaking spirit on em...