Comments

Comment by 26147

One of the best gems for crit mages. Seems the points shared in crit + spell damage make up more then a flat +crit gem.

Comment by 6225

Best in-game craftable gem for a mage , and not THAT expensive.

Comment by yonie

simple math, these compared to yellow or red counterparts have more stats becuase it has 4/5 crit/dmg while the 'flat' gems would have 4/4.5 crit/dmg averaged.

in short: dont bother red or yellow gems, just use these babies for all those slots.

Comment by 17141

This gem in not that good for a mage, you need HIT not crit

Comment by 86744

From my experience with a mage (45 frost mage) crit is extremely useful even for pve. With dungeon and tier sets giving hit rating these days and being frost (many big crits often) theres no need for me to add much more to that. When my mage was arcane / fire and straight fire my crits were only hitting for 780- 890 (normal hit of 510 - 550). With frost my normal hits are lower (450 - 500) but my crits can range from 830 to as high as 1256 (normal big crit of 1100). I crit almost every frostbolt after the 2nd. Crit is definatly my preferance over hit for mages of any spec, but thats just my opinion.

Comment by Robyn

Very good for balance druids too, since they get excellent scaling on crits when you account for both Vengeance (100% crit damage bonus instead of 50%) and Nature's Grace (0.5s casting time reduction on next spell after crit) talents.

In general it's better to prefer lots of gems with multiple stats rather than gems with single stats, as the total stats you get out of your gems will be higher... just so long as they're all useful stats ;)

Comment by Jabarj

Powerstream, depends if ur PVP or PVE, for PVE (rainding mainly) one would possibly prefer the Noble topaz cut for +4 Spell Hit/+5 Spell Damage since it woud represent a larger dps increase in boss fights due to not getting resisted so much.

Great Hug

Comment by Motor

You can look at to detailed list of the rare gems : Click here

Comment by 54671

due to the fact that this is +5 damage AND healing, this gem could also be a decent choice for a paladin's red/yellow slots.

Comment by Allakhazam

waaaa

Comment by Thottbot

The living ruby caster DPS equivalent of this is only +9 damage, so if you've got a yellow and red slot, two of these would be better than a Dawnstone and Living Ruby, but just a little, With the living ruby and dawnstone, you'd get +8 spell crit and +9 damage, as opposed to 2 of these, which is +8 spell crit and +10 damage.

Small bonus, but if it doesn't cost you anything, why not?

Comment by Thottbot

Very good caster cut! Its one of the more high demand cuts for Casters. This being Orange also give you the yellow and red flexibility demands on Meta gem requirements. This sells on my server between 60g and 75g and its a pretty high demand cut. If the recipe drops for you lucky you if your a jewelcrafter and lucky you if you are not because you will get between 250g to 400g for this.

Comment by Thottbot

There are +hit and damage gems, think (don't flame me if it doesn't) it drops one from last boss in heroic mechanar

Comment by Thottbot

there is also https://www.wowhead.com/tbc/item=31878/design-veiled-noble-topaz but no idea where the recipe is from

Comment by Thottbot

Let's assume that you are a caster who gets 100% damage bonus from crits due to talents, has 1000 +dmg, and a 25% crit rate (not at all unrealistic assumptions for low-to-mid difficulty raiding gear) and a 3 second cast, 600 base damage spammable spell that provides your primary form of dps, here is a quick rundown of how much bonus you will get from the different +dmg and +crit gems.

Base expected damage:
(600 + 1000) x 1.25 = 2000

Add a +9 damage gem:
(600 + 1009) x 1.25 = 2011.25

Add a +8 crit rating (.364%) gem:
(600 + 1000) x 1.25364 = 2005.84

Add a +4 crit rating (.182%) +5 damage gem:
(600 + 1005) x 1.25182 = 2009.1711

Add 2 +9 damage gems:
(600 + 1018) x 1.25 = 2022.5

Add 2 +8 crit rating gems:
(600 + 1000) x 1.25728 = 2011.65

Add 2 +4 crit +5 damage gems:
(600 + 1010) x 1.25364 = 2018.3604

Add 1 +4 crit +5 damage and 1 +9 damage gem:
(600 + 1014) x 1.25182 = 2020.43748

OK, suppose, for the sake of argument, that you have an utterly insane, basically unattainable amount of spell damage (something on the order of 2000). Will you benefit more at that point from stacking +dmg, or from stacking crit?

Compare again, using 25% crit rate as the starting point:

Base expected damage:
(600 + 2000) x 1.25 = 3250

With a +9 damage gem:
(600 + 2009) x 1.25 = 3261.25

With a +8 crit rating gem:
(600 + 2000) x 1.25364 = 3259.464

Amazingly, even with 2000 +dmg already stacked, you would get more benefit out of adding still more damage rather than upping your crit rating.

Assuming something like these calculations hold for other builds of prior +dmg and +crit (I am not sure what it would look like, but there should be a curve where the benefit from crit surpasses benefit from +dmg at some point), it seems like a waste of time to stack crit and focus on building +dmg, EVEN IF your build is based on crits (that is, unless your crits trigger all kinds of other special abilities that cause extra dps, but those would have to be very very good bonuses to make up for lost dps from +dmg you would have stacked).

I am not sure if a DoT applied on crit or a .5 second cast time reduction after a crit adds enough dps to make up for lost +dmg; that probably depends on your build, but remember that you have to consider not the overall crit % that you have, but the amount of crit chance added by each INDIVIDUAL gem.

Adding +dmg gems appears to be by far the most reliable way of stacking damage, assuming you have reached your hit cap and all that. It appears that the benefit from stacking crit rather than +dmg does not materialize until you already many thousand +dmg, an amount that nobody in BC will ever have. Maybe when WotLK comes out, crit will be worth it, but for now, it's not.

This has all been a fairly long and wordy way of saying that this gem isn't worth it, take the +9 damage instead.

Comment by Thottbot

you forget to factor in ele shamans need BOth still simple because critcal would make lo critcal more and more mana redcded as well as more burst from normal hits and lighting overloaded hits via critcals so you NEED both for raid dps critcal and spell dam is best other casters thats a diff story

Comment by Thottbot

ele shaman will be gimped dps wise if get gets red spell dam and some hybrid gems its all the way or noway atleast until you get 40% critcal by the time you get to tier6 gear then spell dam is better not until then

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Potent Noble Topaz

	Phase 1

Item Level 70
+4 Spell Critical Rating and +5 Spell Damage

"Matches a Red or Yellow Socket."

Sell Price: 3

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