Nostalrius Begins - Quality wow vanilla realm (1.12)

I am putting together my BiS gear and coming along nicely. As I start to raid MC and Onyxia, I will be getting my hands on Arcanist gear. The bonuses on Arcanist are crap for Frost., but do the combined stat increases or the piece bonuses balance any of that out?

There's a huge item revamp coming that will make many items better, arcanist set included...Right now the Arc robe and bracers are garbage compared to the BiS items for those slots.

Arcanist gear was never good when i raided MC, but we cleared it very early on. I didn't use my dkp on a single piece. How I geared my mage in MC = 2 rings of spell power, Robe of the Arcane or something, ToEP, choker of the firelord, tier 2 leggings, and a bunch of BG rewards - i remember mage blade, the offhand, etc.

+Spell Power = King
+Stam for PvP

Only issue is going out of mana. Just mix and match as you see fit. But Arcanist is garbage in general. In fact, I don't think i bothered with a single piece of tier .5 either.