I’m currently leveling up my fire mage with item level 660, but I’ve noticed my damage output isn’t quite where I think it should be. A friend pointed out that fire mages really need high haste to deal significant damage—I’m only sitting at about 19% haste right now. He suggested switching to frost mage for the time being since it doesn’t rely as much on specific stats until I can boost my haste to around 30%. This got me curious—what other specs in the game see a big impact from having an improper distribution of secondary stats?
5 Answers
Almost every spec has its optimal stats—like, crit is super inefficient for resto druids, but it’s crucial for feral druids. It really ties into the talents and what kind of abilities each spec focuses on in their playstyle, so it varies quite a bit.
Marksman hunters definitely benefit the most from crit. With all the talents that enhance crit chances and damage, crit becomes the best secondary stat for them—even after hitting dimishing returns. But keep in mind, the best setups can depend on the talents and type of content you’re aiming to tackle.
Devastation Evokers struggle a lot with low haste. If you’re below 10k haste, it feels like you can’t even use Flameshaper properly, which is a bummer. Once I got more haste on my Havoc, I noticed a big difference in performance.
If arms warriors don’t have enough crit, their damage just won’t flow right. Plus, having higher haste really helps smooth out the rotation. However, it’s weird because a lot of the gear available for arms seems to skip crit and focus more on versatility and mastery instead. Most of the PvP gear still has crit though, so it might be worth checking out that gear pool if you’re aiming to optimize for crit.
Yeah, it’s strange how the gear changes over time. Back in Vanilla and TBC, crit was the absolute king for arms warriors! I guess it all depends on how things have evolved.
For Outlaw rogues, it’s all about haste. There are two main builds for Outlaw—Keep it Rolling and Hidden Opportunity—that require around 20% and 10% haste, respectively. Haste can be more valuable than agility in those setups, with ratios of 3:1 or even 4:1. But beyond a certain point, haste isn’t the only thing to focus on anymore.
True! Mastery is pretty much useless for single-target situations, but it shines when you’re doing AoE, so it really changes up how you play depending on the encounter.
I totally noticed that! After getting a good amount of haste on my Dev, my rotations drastically improved, especially compared to when I was stuck on some bad gear.