More Use For Spirit For Mages?

It’s really funny that I was thinking about this issue just a while ago. A few patches ago, we saw the change that more Intellect would increase the effect of Spirit. If you look at Warlocks, they have a few more uses for Spirit such as more spell power from Fel armor and more mana from Lifetap. As for mages, there really isn’t anything else that makes mages want to get some spirit aside from the mana regen they give. Apparently Blizzard knows this and might do something about it as suggested by Ghostcrawler in his statement below.

Mage gear has a lot of Spirit on it that doesn’t help them much at the moment. We want to improve that. We are not going to turn mages into a class that stacks Spirit at the expense of all else, and we’re not going to let Spirit provide “free” dps to mages that elevates them above the average dps of warlocks — unless they are far below warlocks now, which does not seem to be the case. If you think it *is* the case, please provide some data or math so we know where you’re coming from. source

If you could help them think about other uses for Spirit, what do you think you can come up with? here are my suggestions. Of course not all of them are meant to be implemented, only hopefully the most promising and reasonable ones.

1. Modify our mana gems so that they give extra mana equal to X% of the mage’s spirit (maybe 10%?)

2. Spirit benefiting Icy Veins somehow (maybe more haste or a longer duration based on a % of the mage’s spirit)

3. Maybe spirit could increase the damage done by mirror image.

4. Maybe spirit give mana shield some extra absorption.

5. Maybe increased effects from mage armor based on spirit

These are just some ideas I came up with and they sound pretty strong or strange or unecessary but it could probably kickstart some kind of discussion about the possibilites for the use of spirit for mages.