spellpower only appears on weapons, and it's there to make up for the fact that a 1:1 intellect:spellpower conversion will leave a caster a bit lacking in the damage dealing / healing throughput department, when compared to melee / physical dps. Outside of weapons, spellpower isn't a consideration.

and under the new system what is int doing that spellcasting isn't?

Well, right now Intellect provides a tiny bit of extra crit, making it superior to SP, so I assume it would continue to do that under the new system. Judging from what they're saying, they'd just make it so that Int doesn't increase mana and there's not that complicated algebra equation with how Int interacts with spirit; otherwise, Int and SP would remain largely the same.

Ya this is what I don't get...

I'm worried that intellect won't feel like a primary stat after this...they want it to be a sheer thoroughput stat, which is fine, but it seems like it is going to be just like spellpower and won't be as powerful as other primary stats (if they keep the boost to crit it may help this??)

Also it seems like they really want spirit to be more important than it is now...would it be beneficial to just make it a primary stat so intellect and spirit are on the same level of importance and therefore can be balanced against each other??

It seems that this change could make the other (thoroughput) secondary stats much less important than spirit and intellect, which is fine, but it feels weird to me that spirit would stay as a secondary stat and be balanced against haste/crit/mastery

Just a thought...hopefully someone can help me understand this better :-)

Regarding Spell Power on weapons. You have to remember why it is there. It is there as a substitute to the lower swing damage from caster items.

Everything on an item (except for the default swing speed) is based on ilvl. The damage range on a melee item is affected by the ilvl. Since the damage range is reduced on caster items (to make them less desirable to melee), spell power is added as a direct replacement.

It's to make ilvl and stat distribution conform across the board. There would actually be nothing wrong with a caster weapon having all that spell power thrown into the intellect stat, but Blizzard recognise that a caster item with 611 stamina and 2645 intellect would look exceptionally odd next to a melee item with 611 stamina and 311 Strength.

The issue of that much intellect causing us to have silly manapool in the currect version of the game would be solved by reducing how much mana you gain per point of intellect.

In case people are unsure about what I mean regarding why spell power is on caster weapons, take the DPS value of a two hander and multiple it by 3 (the base cast speed a spell has to have in order to gain 100% spell power co-efficient) and then compare it to the spell power value on a staff.

One handers make it harder to work out because you can't dual-wield caster items, and the disparity of the off-hand damage reduction, but if you take the DPS of a one hander and multiple it by 1.5 (the total DPS, at base value, when dual-wielding), then multiple that by 3, then you get...well, very similar, but slightly higher values. I assume at that point they take into account the intellect spell power of a caster off-hand, but I am guess at that point. It might have more to do with very few special attacks being affected by off-hand swings, so DW-melee get a slight buff.

Either that or I defuncted myself.

"You have to remember why it is there. It is there as a substitute to the lower swing damage from caster items."

Not exactly. It's there to make weapons an upgrade for casters the way it is for physical classes. And while it's not as big of a boost to get the next tier weapon for a mage vs. warrior, it's still a larger boost than any other piece of gear.

It IS true that Blizzard replaces weapon DPS with spell power, but your statement has cause and effect (mostly) backwards. Mostly, because sure as anything there were some folks who snagged caster weapons despite otherwise-useless stats; it's also why caster weapons have wonky swing speeds, too.

"but it seems like it is going to be just like spellpower and won't be as powerful as other primary stats"

Err... you mean as powerful as strength, which does nothing for damage aside from adding attack power? Or do you mean as powerful as agility, which does nothing for damage aside from adding attack power and critical chance? Because right now intellect does the exact same thing as agility, only it ALSO gives more resource (and as a consequence, more regen), and only that last bit is (known to be) going away.