Mages, thoughts on these 2 augs at level 125

Still worth equipping?

How often are you out of mana (aside from death)?

I find mages fully group geared don't struggle with mana near as much as other casters, and not to an extent where I'm looking at these augs seriously.

I prefer the stats on a standard modern augs (hp, spell dmg etc), but there is a fair case for Potency/Evocation if you are frequently low on mana and looking for anything to help.

They're still worth way more mana than you'll find on any aug.

You do zero damage when your oom. A little SD or HINT can't make up for these augs.

Not worth for my mages. Both of those augs may save you about 700 mana per tick (rough over-estimation for a continuous mage cast swarm pet - spear - of many - Chaotic - FE when up.)
Just bum Focused Paragon (857 mana regen per tick) and/or Chorus of Shalowain (256 mana per tick) from your group beastlord and bard and you'll have it covered. Usually those 2 need to be prodded for that.

I prefer even miniscule extra 200 spell damage for my mages instead of mana savings from evocation aug.

What you've just done here is robbed your group of 700 mana/tick (didn't check the arithmetic on that, sounds roughly on). The other mana sources you've described exist wholly beside the potential mana savings of the spec augs. If you didn't need the Focused Paragon then it could be on the beastlord themself, adding damage at ~200:1

You can choose not to use the spec augs ethically only if you don't end up needing more support due to their lack

I fired in a generic conversion of mana:damage without even thinking. In the example of a beastlord having the mana, that mana could well be aimed at casting Dicho more often. 700/tick is the entry cost of casting Dichotomic Fury on cool down, which gives 4000 mana to the whole group. Even if that's just you & the bst partnered, 4k mana each is a net profit, with any other casters getting free mana!

No.

I suppose if you never go oom, augs with extra spell damage would add a tiny bit more DPS. But in general I'd recommend just using them and stop trying to outsmart the room. I've made a post before about how deceptively powerful mana preservation effects can be that I'm too lazy to repost, but just know that unless you're justified in being confident in your math skills, you're almost assuredly underestimating their impact.

like i would give a mage my foc paragon

I use the slightly weaker LDON version of these on Mischief (Underfoot). The value you get from them in mana savings feels better to me than a small amount of other stats you typically see on an aug.

I don't go out of mana often. But in nonstop group action without a bard it can happen. Also, I have been resed back into a raid fight with no mana and just run on a mod rod hit and fumes from sustain. Mana preserve in those situations seems especially nice.

Live may be different and I am sure opinions vary but, I don't see myself replacing them anytime soon.

agreed as a bst my foc para is for me and me only.

Honestly there are two questions you have to ask to answer the question-

1. Do I want to maximize my DPS? If you don't care about your results and where you land on a parse, then it doesn't matter. But if you do care and you are going all out, then the second question is-

2. Do I go OOM outside of a death? If you don't go OOM then you should not use the spec augs since the SD you will have from two other augs will help you do more DPS. If you find yourself consistently OOM, even after Conversion and both mod rods and feather clickie and buffs and summoned clarity clickie and MS/reclaim energy.... then sure use one or two of them.

I can say I haven't used them in years, and I don't have an issue with mana. But that is me, YMMV.

I suppose my TL;DR is:

Do you only care about raiding? Does your guild clear content without you running oom mid combat? Then use spell damage augs.

If your focus is anything else, use the spec augs.

On my raid geared (NOS) mage I use the Evocation one. I do however have the older one, the Tweyne's Stone of Evocation. It was way more useful back in the day but I still have it on because I haven't tried to eek out that list 2-3 dps on a parse. I really should go back and find the splinter one.

I do not find the Conjuration one worth using anymore, for me, most Conjuration other than shock, malo and RS are out of combat spells and mana pool is not an issue. I don't remember the last time I cast malo - SHM has that in my regular group. Even solo these days I don't tend to use it.

I have both of these in 24/7. With the way our spells have changed throughout the years, Spell Damage just doesn't provide a meaningful boost anymore. They really need to give greater benefits to spell casting from Heroic Int and Spell Damage.

Time spent monster summoning is time spent not nuking. Especially if you leave the world of short raid burns.

Time not having to cast Gather Manas, Symbiosis, etc. to actively recover mana means more nukes, which FAR outweigh the rounding error of +Spell Damage augs.

I have them but don’t equip them on raids. I rarely have mana issues unless grinding in group and I will pop them in for that. Mages are mana batteries, even dying on a raid I can get back and going without pet canni these days. That said I saw they have some of these in Type 3 coming. I’ll use them 24/7 when available in that slot.

Well this changes things:


Definitely time to finally lose the Splinter of Potency. Nice that they made the new one Type 3.