Reflections From The Pond

Of the five base stats Agility, Stamina, Strength, Intellect and Spirit, the last is the one I have the most conflicting feelings for.

Quoted from WoWWiki:

The source book for WoW Roleplaying game defines Spirit as the following: Spirit relates to common sense and the ability to perceive the environment. It gives a character the ability to look at a forest and find the tracks of a creature; at the simplest level it allows a character to know not to put his hands in the fire, else they will get burned. Any creature that can perceive its environment in any fashion has at least some Spirit. Those who survive by wit and intuition, such as healers and scouts, have high Spirit.

In the World of Warcraft computer game, Spirit is much more mundane. It regenerates Mana and Health. In most cases, health regeneration is suspended while in combat, while mana regen is interrupted after expending mana (usually via spellcasting).

So how do you feel about Spirit?

My holy priest Jools, she loves it.

Her mana regeneration is not suspended during combat due to her Meditation ability, her Spiritual Guidance boosts her spellpower by 25 % of her Spirit, her Spirit Tap is a godsend when leveling and grinding, even at 80, and her Holy Concentration gives yet another Spirit based mana regen boost.

So Spirit is indubitably her most favourite stat.

My warlock Paynne, she does not like it at all.

She is an old-school warlock who grew up mostly in vanilla WoW and no matter what she wore she never equipped any clothie drops that had Spirit on it – Spirit were for those sissys that stood in the back in their, eh, sissy robes. Real warlocks wore Intellect and Stamina gear, and would not be seen dead in anything else.

When her Fel Armor was changed in WotLK to include a spell power increase by 30 % of her Spirit she wept dark tears as she realised that spell power boost was just to big to ignore, and that she would be dressing up in those most hated of gears – the sissy ones, especially when she got the Spirit-dependant glyph of Life Tap, and she still cringes a bit every time she equips a new shiny purple drop with that horrible stat on it.

My shaman Larúe, she loathes it.

She gets absolutely no benefits at all from Spirit. She has no talents that increases her Spirit-based mana regeneration so she relies solely on mp5 for that. She has no talents that increases her spell power based on her Spirit. To her, it is a totally useless stat.

She has now reached a point where she is geared enough to actually look for gear without mana regeneration because she does not ever need it, and what does she encounter then? Spirit! It is a totally useless stat for her and yet she seems doomed to have to equip it. It is a choice between getting even more mp5 that she might conceivably have a use for once in a crescent moon, or having to suck it up and get a bit spiritual along with that coveted haste and spell power.

Even a few of the items on lists of the so called Best in Slots for her have Spirit on them, like the Emblem ring and a ToC25 back or a pair of ToC25 wrists. Not at the top of those lists, mind you, but at 4th or 5th place, which is about as far up those lists as she can get at the moment.

She does not mind (very much) wearing leather or even cloth although she of course prefers her micromail chain mail – smooth and supple and it doesn’t chafe! – but she abhors wearing something with a totally useless stat. She would actually feel better wearing some pvp stuff with resilience rather than that Spirit crap.

So, I have heard vague rumours about customization of jewellery and possibly other gear as well come Cataclysm, and I can tell you this – it would make one happy shaman! (But then I have also heard vague rumours that Spirit will be governing mana regen for all classes, and that the pure mp5 stat will go the way of the dodo, so perhaps she will have to get used to the loathed stat after all.)

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