Stat Priority & Gearing
Stats change in value depending on what content you are doing as well as what other stats you currently have. I don’t have stat weights for you, or a pawn string you can use. Anyone who does is misleading you. You don’t really need stat weights anymore since our gearing tools have evolved such that they do all of that work for us.
Want the Quick Answer?
Intellect >>> Haste >= Mastery > Crit = Versatility
You can get pretty close to optimal by just strapping on your highest item level pieces.
Ready to optimize?
Run your gear through Questionably Epic Live. It has full support for stat diminishing returns, item and set effects, and how your current gear influences how much each stat is worth. The HSW addon doesn’t work in Dragonflight and won’t be updated.
Some notes on stats:
- Intellect is once again our best stat and will remain so for the foreseeable future.
- Each secondary stat goes up in value the more you have of the other secondaries, which when combined with the strength of intellect makes just picking your highest ilvl gear particularly strong.
- All of our secondaries are great. Enjoy it! Other specs are not as lucky as we are.
- Stats start to have diminishing returns at 30% though Haste in particular holds quite a lot of value even past that. QE Live’s Top Gear module automatically includes them.
So why is gearing for item level so much better than aiming for specific secondaries?
There are a couple of things that makes picking your highest ilvl gear a strong strategy. Firstly, our secondaries are all close in value and your best secondary will often change from fight to fight. A fight with heavy debuff and tank damage will make mastery look a little better and a fight where the damage is spread will make it look a little worse. Secondly, the more you get of any secondary stat the more valuable all of the others become. Third, you get a huge helping of intellect when you increase your item level and because your secondary weights are so close together this int increase outweighs everything else. Optimizing your secondary stats is a tiny throughput increase and you’re always better off spending that time and effort improving your playstyle or looking through logs to optimize your rotation.
Stats in Mythic+
Mastery and Haste are stronger in Mythic+ where you tend to have larger HoT stacks because of the smaller party size and frequent opportunities to drink however Mastery offers no increase to our DPS. If you think of it as your most powerful healing stat, and least powerful DPS stat, you can make a decision from there based on your playstyle. Gearing for item level is still a strong and sound strategy. You can read more about gearing for Mythic+ here.
Reagents
There are cheaper versions of a bunch of these, and I’d encourage you to use those until you get gear you’ll wear for a longer time. Enchants also come in three different ranks now. Lower ranks give lesser effects but are much cheaper.
Flask: Phial of Elemental Chaos / Phial of Versatility
Regular Gem Sockets: 1x Fierce Illimited Diamond. The rest Keen Ysemerald (somewhat flexible). While you’re in this early gearing period, feel free to use cheap gems in every slot until you get more permanent items.
Potions: Potion of Chilled Clarity. Note that the cast speed reduction doesn’t apply to instant cast spells.
Weapon Rune: Howling Rune.
Enchants
Weapon: Sophic Devotion
Cloak: Regenerative Leech
Chest: Waking Stats
Bracers: Devotion of Leech
Legs: Temporal Spellthread
Ring: Devotion of Haste
Trinkets
You can get custom, personalized trinket rankings at QE Live. It also lets you compare trinket at specific levels, and is always the most up to date information available.