Kings vs. Wis for Mages

[• Vand]

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(EJ Mage Theorycrafting Thread)</div>

Blessing of Wisdom gives you +41mp5 or +49.2mp5 if talented.

Blessing of Kings gives you ~30 spirit and ~60 intellect.
The intellect adds +15.6 damage, +2.26 mp5 from crit, 900 mana, or 1575 mana with Evocation (+22 mp5)(and some spirit ticks), +24mp5 total.
The increased stats also add +52.6 mp5 while not casting, or +15.8 mp5 while casting with mage armour.

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Summary/Comparison

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1.60 mp5/dmg - Talented Blessing of Wisdom over Blessing of Kings without mage armour gives you +25 mp5 at the cost of -15.6 damage. (A pointless scenario. If you need the mana from BoW, you'd use mage armour first.)[/b]

I came across this interesting post on the EJ mage theorycrafting thread. It is post #3191 on the linked page if you want to read the whole thing. It gives good empirical support to the way I have been intuitively feeling recently. That is, for mages, salv > kings > wis, as opposed to how we have been prioritizing wis over kings.

As you can see from the quote above, kings gives mages dps increase equal to about 15 extra spell damage. It also increases OO5SR mana regen due to the increased spirit, and gives more mana when we evocate. Perhaps even more importantly, but harder to theorycraft, is that it increases the survivablity of the most fragile DPS class by increasing stamina.

Wisdom, on the other hand, increases our mana regen, but does so very inefficiently compared with the cost of giving up kings. As seen in the EJ post, we are better off switching from molten to mage armor rather than switching from kings to wis. In fact, the efficiency of switching from kings to wis falls near the bottom of the list in terms of everything a mage can do to increase mana regen. You can look at the original post if you want to see the whole list.

Another benefit that would come from switching to kings as our second blessing is that it would greatly simplify the paladin's job of blessing. No longer will they have to remember than mages get wis most of the times but get kings for this, that and the other fights. Instead, with one paladin, we always get salv. With two paladins, we always get salv and kings. Only with three paladins would we get wis.

[♦ Wenge]

Honestly all I care about is Salvation, so I'll defer to Vand as to what to give the mages.