Int or Spirit for Priest and Mages.

Between Intellect and Spirit, which is the more important attribute for Priest and Mages?

Int builds a larger mana pool and adds to spell crit rate. But Spirit increases mana regeneration rate.

So some priest and mages i've met online say that a larger mana pool allow you to last longer in fights...while others say you can last longer with more spirit because of faster mana regeneration.However, while you are in a fight, you dont regenerate mana because you are constantly casting spells. Though i suppose it would decreasse your downtime between fights.

Just looking for some opinions from those who have played caster classes..My dranei priest is my first caster toon..

Well I don't play a priest or mage but as a balance druid I know your dilemma, and I'd say that intellect is more important than spirit. If I do the right rotations and use my pots and innervate wisely I will not run out of mana in a fight. Sure spirit makes downtime less but when you're raiding you should always have plenty of food and water to make that go quickly.

edit: When you're just starting off leveling I don't think gear in general is that important so usually you don't need to worry about these kinds of things for a while.

For a priest, it depends on what spec you are, and what specific talents you have in the trees which one is actually better. In the Holy tree, there's an ability that makes 35% of your spirit into bonus spell damage and healing. If you've got a high spirit, like most healing priests will have, that's a whole lot extra healing. Also, talent abilities such as Meditation, in the Priest's Discipline tree, or Spirit Tap, in the Shadow tree, which allow you to regenerate a specific percentage of your mana regen while casting also boost the usefulness of spirit.

For shadow, Int is probably more important, just because they don't get quite the benefit from mana regen as the other specs do, because of their ability to constantly generate mana through their abilites. All of their damaging abilities will generally be supplying them with more mana, so it takes a long time to run out.

While the ability hasn't been added in yet, in WotLK, Shadow Priests are also getting another bonus for spirit, which is a talent called Twisted Faith. This increases the shadow priest's spell damage by up to 30% (with five talent points in it) of the priest's spirit.

So for a priest, its kinda hard to say which one is better.

For a mage, I'd have to definitely say that Int is better. With an ability like Evocation, its kinda hard to see the need for in battle mana regen, where if you run out, you simply spend a few seconds evocating and bam, mostly full mana again.