As some of you know, I run both this site, and MakeWoWGold.com, where I give free advice and strategies on making gold in the game.

Recently I went back through emails that I had received from MWG members and visitors and conducted a study on which published gold guide they found most helpful.  I decided to do that because with all the feedback I'd gotten I detected a trend and wanted to verify it.  Sure enough, there was one guide that everyone liked the most.  So I did a review of it on MWG.

The long and the short of it is this:  There's a guide called Gold Secrets that members raved about.  It has a fantastic guarantee, and a ton of very useful bonuses.  It is the total package of gold-making guides.  He is even setting up private message forums for folks to share information about.

I try to give out as much information as I can for free on MakeWoWGold.com, but he goes into more detail than I have time to do.  (Between tracking optimal mage strategies and gold-making strategies, I could make a full-time job of it!)  So, I sincerely recommend his guide if you're going to go for one of the published ones out there.

I frequently get asked about the best way for Mages to make gold.

I have compiled a list of several guides below that I can recommend:

World Of Warcraft Gold Secrets

One of the most thorough gold-guides out there. He provides lots of useful bonus products, a private forum, etc. He offers a very good guarantee, so it's worth trying.

World Of Warcraft WoW Valkors Gold Making Guide

A large guide, updated regularly. Lots of lists, and a lot of emphasis on the Burning Crusade.

Warcraft Riches

A new WoW Gold Guide! This guy has compiled a lot of the strategies from many of the other guides...also with a strong guarantee.

Ultimate World of Warcraft Guide

One of the things that I don't care for with this guide is that he has some exploits. Most of the 'hacks/cheats/exploits' that people advertise are old ones that won't work, or can get you banned. In addition to the gold guide (which is really well done, with tons of interactive links), he offers a list of CURRENT exploits that work. Not my thing, but if you're interested, check it out.

WoW Wealth

There are two great things about this guide: 1) it's the most current one on the market and 2) it comes with some really cool Video Tutorials.

Running daily quests is something that all serious WoW players ought to do as a habit. It earns you needed rep, and it is a great way to make gold, especially for folks who have non-gathering professions or classes that don’t kill fast enough to make farming profitable.

The advantage of daily quests is three-fold:

1) completing them earns faction reputation, which usually provides high-level rewards (some are even best-in-slot),

2) they are a consistent way of earning a known amount of gold (and the gold earned is usually at a higher rate for the time invested in it), and

3) they are repeatable (obviously), so you can master the techniques needed to complete the quest quickly, and earn good gold (and rep rewards) over and over.

Technically there is a fourth advantage: many of the quests can be lumped together and done at the same time. This REALLY ups your gold-per-hour rate.

There is a new Daily Quest addon that tells you exactly how to complete each quest. It provides map waypoints to point you in the right direction, and it teaches you how to group the quests so you can run them concurrently.

If you find yourself either needing to farm up some reputation for a reward you’re after, or you just need good, consistent gold at level 80, you need this addon.

It literally puts a waypoint arrow on your screen when you select the dailies for a given zone (or for a given faction), and you simply follow the on-screen instructions. It is as close to automatic gold as you can get without using a bot (and getting kicked out of wow!).

Here’s the Daily Quest Guide/Addon download link.

The theoretical min/max DPS for you does depend on the gear you have. Frostfire specs were optimal at early levels of Naxx gearing, and before Blizz fixed Torment the Weak to work on Thunderclap and other combat slows. At high levels of T7 gear, 57/3/11 arcane theoretically outpaces frostfire, and 18/53/0 deep fire also outpaces frostfire (assuming you can get enough hit rating on gear).

With arcane, it is definitely theoretical... Arcane specs take a lot of planning to play well. You need to know how long a fight is going to be and adjust your spell rotation accordingly to max your damage and ensure good mana longevity so you can last for the entire fight without going OOM. Most mages either can't plan well or don't put the time into it to do it right.

That said, if you do a fair amount of PVP, arcane is probably a better option than frostfire. Cast times are just too long with frostfire to be terribly effective. Arcane has more instants and short-cast burst damage.

Arcane is also very fun to play, but at the same time you need to be very engaged in it. Managing your AB buff stack with procs and stuff is a real challenge. But once you get the hang of it it's fun as h311.

Lastly, you always want at least 1 fire mage in a raid for scorch for optimal raid dps. The personal dps difference between arcane and fire or frostfire will never outweigh the raid dps of 10% crit. This will be easier in 3.1 when the crit debuff is nerfed and warlocks get the 5% crit passively from shadowbolts.

For rotations, you just have to develop a feel for how much mana you can burn given the length of the fight.

Here is a nice table of DPS/DPM tradeoffs for the various rotations.

Generally, the best standard rotation for mana conservation is:
Arc Blast, Arc Blast, Arc Barrage
OR if Missile Barrage procs during that, you change it to
Arc Blast, Arc Blast, Arc Blast, Arc Missiles

Never wait to cast a spell, but when you see MB proc, get that AB3MBAM fired off.

Also, don't change your spell choice based on clearcast or potency. It's not worth messing up the rotation.

When you fire all your cooldowns, you use a burn rotation:
AB spam, when MB procs use AM at a 3 stack of AB

You can get through 20 seconds of AB spam pretty easily. The MB procs will reset the AB buff enough to keep some of your mana. But if you're unlucky with MB procs you can fire a ABarr in the middle to reset the buff if you're worried about mana.

PVP is tough... generally speaking, I run around firing off arc barrage on every cooldown and channeling missiles when missile barrage procs. Depending on the class you can sometimes pop your cooldowns and ramp up AB spam to take someone out.

In BGs, I tend to try to hang back and use a AB-Abarr-AB-Abarr, with arc missiles on MB proc.

Judgement of Wisdom
Now restores 2% base mana per proc instead of 1% max mana.
No info on proc rate/cooldown yet.

Torment the Weak
Is now triggered by attack speed slowing as well. It also affects Arcane Blast now.
It should be up all the time on bosses now without casting Slow because the tank has an attack speed slow.

Arcane Overhaul
Arcane Blast debuff is now a buff and lasts 10s. It's stacked by chaining Arcane Blast and removed when casting any other Arcane spell.
It increases damage of your next Arcane spell by 15% and cost of Arcane Blast by 200%. Arcane Missiles get the damage increase for all 5 volleys.
A new glyph increases the damage bonus of the Arcane Blast buff by 5% per stack, up to 15% at 3 stacks.
Arcane Blast is now affected by Torment the Weak as well.

Arcane Playstyles
Early simulations gave the following recommendations:
AB-ABar is your normal DPM cycle.
It might change to AB2/3-ABar when you get haste capped at 33%.
AB*3-ABar is your DPS cycle.
AB spam is your burn cycle, however with a bad mana conversion.
Use MBAM as soon as it procs. Use Molten Armour.

Spec Performance
Without the glyph, it's about 4% behind Fire/Frostfire specs, with more mobility.
Fire with Torment and Frostfire as usual are now neck-to-neck.
Evocation
Cooldown down to 4 minutes, 2 minutes talented with 2/2 Arcane Flows.

Elemental Precision
Is now 3% hit to all spells. No more double-dipping for Frostfire.

Dispel Resistance
Talents now only affect the dispel resistance of buffs and DoTs.
Winter's Chill and Polymorph are not protected by Arcane Subtlety anymore.

Procs items
Many items that procced on spell cast were changed to proc only on damage/healing spells.

Pyromaniac - 10% spirit regen instead of mana cost reduction per point.
Improved Blizzard - down to 20%/40%/50% slowing.
Arcane Flows - added -1/-2 minutes on Evocation.
Slowfall - castable on others now.
Blast Wave - Minor Glyph for -15% mana, no knockback.
Glyph of Arcane Blast - +5% damage on the Arcane Blast buff. Unknown whether it stacks to 15% with 3 stacks.
Illustration of the Dragon Soul - down to 20 SP per stack. About 10% better than Sundial/Embrace now.

It is an incredibly complex question, though.  For example, the answer depends on your spec, the length of the the fight you will be in, the enemy target (bosses have a higher resist rate than non-bosses), your current levels...and so much more.

It's amusing to watch the discussions on the WoW forums to see some 10-year-old with the need to prove himself talk about how uber he is and that he knows that Spirit is really all you need because he has 1000 spirit stacked and can take down Hogger with a single Arcane Explosion.  OK...I exaggerate a bit, but you do see the argument back and forth: "HIT CAP", "CRIT IS ALL THAT MATTERS", "SPELL POWER FIRST"...etc.  (all in caps because I find that people that know the least about something usually yell their opinion.)

Knowing that the answer is so complex, do not lose hope!  There is an answer.

Once again, I defer to the awesome goodness that is RAWR.

If you don't know what RAWR is, you haven't been reading here very long.   It's a free tool that has built in all the calculations and forumlas that are needed to determine your damage output.  Every possible variable, from buffs, fight duration, spec, spell rotation, gear, etc, are taken into account.

So...if you want to know how much Hit vs. Crit is worth to YOU, do this:

1. Download RAWR.
2.  Upload your toon to it.  That brings in talent spec and gear, etc., from the Armory.
3. Tweak your toon as necessary. (maybe armory doesn't have your latest gear or you had something funky equipped when you logged out.)
4. Configure the Options tab.  This includes things like your Glyphs, the level of the target mob (83 for bosses), your level, fight duration, and what buffs you will have on you in the case of a raid.  It is important to do this step, because the bonuses that come from raid buffs have an incredible impact on your DPS and on which stat is the most valuable for you.  Also, for example, if you make the fight length too long, you might see INT creep up because you'll need the mana pool.
5. On the Comparisons section (right side), where it says Gear > Head, choose from the dropdown list (you may have to scroll down), and select 'Item Budget'.

That will give you the definitive answer as to which set is best.  It shows you how much each stat increases your DPS based on the actual details that matter.

So, ignore all those loud people with their ignorant opinions.  And don't bother confusing them with the facts...their minds are already made up.  With RAWR you can REALLY know the answer without having to guess.

Math = WIN!

* Inscription +37 spell power, +43 spell power in the first 2 months when not Exalted with Sons of Hodir (daily grind)

* Herbalism offer something in the +33-40 spell power region via Fire Seeds if you can properly stack cooldowns.

* Enchanting +38 spell power, Leatherworking +37 spell power, Alchemy +37 spell power

* Mining, Skinning, Tailoring, Engineering are currently not competitive options for Mage DPS.
Lightweave Embroidery isn't better than a regular cloak enchant, and the Engineering gimmicks are only situationally useful.
Keep in mind that players choose their professions for differing reasons.  The details above are ones that relate the Mage professions directly to the Mage's DPS.

It's not a gimmick, and it's not a cheat.  The toon is, in fact, a mage, but it has to do with using the right combination of addons with the right professions:

http://www.makewowgold.com/1000-gold-per-hour-thats-fast-gold/

Under the category of "Tips and Tricks", It's been brought to my attention that combining and reforming Eternals (and presumably primals) is instant, has no global cooldown, and, most importantly, counts as a spell cast. This means it can be macroed as a way to instantly and quickly *Force* "on spell cast" trinkets like [Embrace of the Spider] to proc (assuming their not on GCD). Furthermore, I'm fairly sure (though I have no way to test) that this could also be used to *instantly* stack your [Illustration of the Dragon Soul] to 10 stacks.

The downside to this approach is that the macro must be spammed, because there's a momentary delay before the Eternal or component parts are "created" and thus you can't simply combine and recombine the same eternal all in one macro press.

The following macro works if spammed:
/use Eternal water
/use Crystallized Water

You can of course just do the whole Slowfall thing, but that costs mana and GCD's. This is something you can do as you're actually running in for the pull.

Spellpower is easy.  I can see the impact of spellpower every time I cast a spell...I see bigger overall damage numbers when the spell lands.  Crit is somewhat easy...enough crit and I can start to 'feel' that I'm getting more crits, which is rewarding.

So when I gear up for HIT at the expense of some of these other stats, it makes me feel weak, lame and gimp, with a bit of wimp mixed in.

If HIT gear doesn't appeal to you, there are two things you can do to convince yoruself of its value: start tracking your raids and examining WWS, and use RAWR.

WWS (wowwebstats.com) is a service where you can upload combat logs from a raid and it parses out the information for you.  You can compare yourself to other mages, and check fight-by-fight how your DPS looked.  You can drill down to the details of how many spells of which type you cast, etc.  And you can see what percentage of your spells were resisted or missed!  WWS can be a bit technical (and clunky) to use, but if your guild uses it, take advantage of it!  The thing that helped convince me of the value of HIT back in Burning Crusade was comparing my DPS to other mages.  There was one guy who was way ahead of the rest of us...even though we were casting similar number of the same spells.  AND we had higher spell damage gear!  But he was geared for HIT, and when we looked at the resist percentages in WWS, we noticed that he was landing a lot more of his spells.

RAWR is a program that you can download to help you understand gear choices.  It is generally considered an authority on how all the WoW stats work together.  It integrates with the armory, so you can upload your character, and start examining what pieces of gear would be an upgrade.  (And it integrates with wowhead, so you can easily click on an item to find out where to get it.

The trickiest part about RAWR is configuring it.  It is important to configure the options to closely represent the fights you want to model.  Remember, for raiding, trash mobs don't matter....trash mobs will go down even if you aren't going full out...it's the bosses that require the maximum effort from your character.  So you have to set things like fight length and what raid buffs you will have.  Some people get confused as to why RAWR might, for example, value INT gear so heavily...but if you have a default fight length of 5 minutes and your normal gear has you running out of mana, RAWR will calculate the best gear for you for that fight.  Even if it's gear with lower damage but higher INT, it will figure out if the lower damage over greater time will be better than higher damage but having to stop DPS to evocate, for example.

That being said...once RAWR is configured, it is AUTHORITATIVE.  It is programmed by very smart statistician/gamers, and is reviewed by people who, it seems, their only job is to figure out the statistics around World of Warcraft.   I have seen many people try to build a spreadsheet or do the math to figure out what spec is the best or what gear or what spell rotation, etc.  And they all fail to account for one factor or another.  RAWR gets it all, for the most part.

One of the cool tools of RAWR is an 'optimizer'.  It lets you select all the gear that is available to you (in your bank, from the Auction House, craftable, etc.).  You pick which pieces you want to choose between, for each slot.  You input the fight parameters, and you input your priorities (survival, DPS, overall, HIT, etc.), and it will compile the combination of available gear that does the best.  It's pretty cool.

AND you learn something about the value of HIT.  Generally speaking you want to HIT cap...BUT  you don't want to do it at the sacrifice of too much damage.  If, for example (these are not real values, though they may be close), HIT is worth 2 points for every 1 Spellpower point (until you are HIT capped), you will want to gear up HIT as much as possible...but you wouldn't trade out a piece of gear with 50 spellpower for a piece of gear with 20 HIT just to get you closer to cap.  You'd actually lose DPS by giving up too much SPow for the HIT.

So, how to answer the question, "Should I gear for HIT Cap?"  Yes and no.  Yes, as long as your overall DPS won't suffer.  After all, you want to DPS, right?  That's what it's all about!  Your DPS will generally increase by upping your HIT, but there are many factors to consider.  RAWR can help you consider all those factors and make the best balanced choice.