Pantless Pants for president!

It's probably because T9 pants have spirit on them.

Sockets, if purchased from the AH, are considerably more expensive than reforging gear.

As such IMO, if you already have decent gear and are fairly close to hit cap you should:
Gem out with int, crit or haste. (ignore the hit cap rule for a moment)
Reforge any gear that has spirit on it to hit to cap out.
If you are still not quite at cap, convert other stats.
If you reach or are at hit cap after reforging any spirit items, convert any remaining spirit to mastery or another preferred stat.

Now if I get a new piece of gear that has hit on it, rather than switching out a 100g gem, I can spend 15g to reforge.

Andy, while that works best for gold reasons, it's not best for stat reasons. Swapping out your spirit gems for hit ones, regardless of the cost, will work better for stats. This is because there is no better gem for a blue socket for mages than a int/hit gem. So those sockets MUST get that gem. If this puts you over the hitcap, that's fine, because then you can reforge that hit into something beneficial.

Whereas with your method, you'll still retain 60 percent of that spirit from the purified dreadstones which is 100 percent useless in combat.


The question is, is gold more important? Or stats?

Just wanted to point out that line of reasoning.

@S31Ender

I don't think I got my point across. You DO want to switch those spirit gems out.

However you do not want to prioritize your gems to hit rating. Get the hit/int gems for your sockets. the Veiled Dreadstons. If you are not at hit cap, reforge all spirit gear to hit till you are. After that convert spirit to Mastery.

That way if you get a new item of gear that pushes you over the hit cap, you spend gold to reforge, not to switch out gems.