I think it's disappointing mages don't have group buffs for Amp/Damp magic. They really are underutilized. Thanks for posting this informative thread and for the discussion, I've learned alot reading it!

My guild is a big believer in CoR, and use it on all fights with the exception of 3:

Azgalor (melee don't DPS the boss), Illidan (haven't tried it yet, saw a video where they did run it on him, might experiment next cycle), and more than anyone else, Mother Shaz. The differance on mother was HUGE. We have our DPS warriors with imp demo (5/5).

Mother with CoR up vs. not having it was a huge differance (more than I have seen before). Her average hit changed probably 1800-2000 less damage.

I'm usually the CoR lock, and I keep it on him (and the flames) until close to the 30% transition. I don't have a reason for taking it off then except for superstitions caution in case of a bad enrage or whatever.

Have you observed much of a difference on damage with and without?

We use it on Mother till her enrage. It really helps to have the fight shorter and melee still are dominating the fight.

I haven't done any post-fight damage comparisons, hence the superstitious reason instead of a scientific one. Even with such comparisons however, I'd take if off at the transition at least, just to give a little more leeway for the healers to get back on the ball after their hots run out. It's just risk-management.

The general idea is that if the damage incoming is consistent and moderate hitting (read: Concreation, Imps on Illhoof, ect) the person would want Dampen (especially if they are non-MT) to lessen the healing required. If the damage is periodic and high, then it makes sense to Amp Magic as you will be reactive healing anyways.

Hydross is a special case because his damage is MAGIC based (which is why your tanks are in resist gear)and you have the Mark of Hydross multiplying your Amplification. So the damage incoming from the Amp Magic is getting up to a 400% increase. Same thing with CoR on Gruul with his growths.

I think you really have to look at it from the healer perspective to fully see why this works. Sometimes just raw numbers don't tell the whole story. Giving healers the ability to downrank heals to save mana it just one of the many things a raw number won't tell you. In most cases though, Amp Magic is a very nice buff that is grossly under utilized by most guilds.

How do you convince people about the mechanics of Amplify Magic? My mage has been trying to keep this on tanks since the MC days and unless it's a melee only fight (Sartura) they bitch and moan like the tank will die to spike so the healing buff isn't worth it. Why don't they understand that:

1) Mob spells will never crit so the damage taken will never double its value from the buff (edit: though considering hydross, do we know if the spell damage taken considers the neg part of amp before amplification is factored in?)
2) Healing spells can and will crit so the +healing benefit is going to end up being more than advertised (unless the healing spell coeff doesn't take the buff's +healing into consideration)
3) It's long enough to last the fight, and cast outside of the raid, so it doesn't matter what the mana cost is
4) Spells are usually to infrequent for the neg part of the buff to outmatch the number of heals inc the tank

Amp magic seems to be one of the least understood abilities in the game by anyone who isn't a mage. It's really frustrating how tanks keep clicking it off like I misclicked the buff.

Ask them if they would prefer dampen instead. If they would prefer neither, then you explain how since neither is in the middle of the two there is no point where it is preferable to either (c.f. optimization of a linear objective function in a convex region) and make them pick one. If they say they don't know which one, simply say you do and give them amp.

If they fail at maths (not just being able to perform arithmetic, but understanding mathematical logic) then you basically have no hope, and have to live on the comfort that it's probably too small a benefit to matter.

afaik amp and dampen get full effect on some (or all?) mob abilities, but for player abilities they get multiplied by the heal's coefficient, making it quite more complicated to figure out which is useful and wether there exists a situation where you'd be best off with neither.

I have seen reference to ~5 melee dps (doing at least 600 dps I think I read) outweighing the dps of a single Curse of Doom. I'm wondering what the magic number of melee dps would be required to out weigh a CoS/CoE. I understand this obviously depends on all the SPriests/Locks/Arc Mages or the number of Fire/Frost mages in the group. But I'm wondering if anyone has found a point or knows how one could be calculated.

We usually run with 2 warlocks and they usually do CoS/CoE. If we did have a 3rd lock along, it would be a no brainer to use CoR as the third curse, given the parameters defined in the previous posts regarding when it should/shouldn't be used.

Use CoS+CoR first in general and tell your DPS warriors (or at least one of them) to spec 5/5 imp. Demo Shout to remove almost any attack power the mobs have.

I'd say use CoS+CoE on Supremus/Rage Winterchill if you have fire/frost mages, it's an additional 20% boost for them since those two bosses have innte resistances to overcome. CoE should be better than CoS if you have at least two mages who get their resists lowered.

CoE should be your third curse if you have at least two mages.

In theory it seems that either amplify or dampen would be useful in almost any situation. In practice it's not quite that straightforward. For example a mob which does a magic damage attack for 9000. If you got 9050 max health you probably don't want to get amplify magic. On the other hand, dampen is probably not a good idea either if you can be certain that you are maximum health before taking damage. It isn't always quite this straightforward either, it might be the sum of 3 separate AoE attacks which can kill you.

Most importantly though: if you are talking minute differences, it's probably just not worth the hassle trying to debate which one to use. It's also simply easier for healers when they don't sometimes heal for less than they expect (dampen) or waste mana on overhealing (amplify).

You also probably shouldn't be allowed in that raid. In no real sense should that situation ever happen, and thus is moot to ever eliminating the use of the spell.

The only basic concept that hurts the use of amplify, is a case where the "afflicted" is taking more magic hits than heals. It doesn't matter how hard each spell or heal hits, only the quantity matter.

Now, tell me a fight where with 4+ healers a tank is going to be hit with more magic damage abilities/attacks than heals per minute.

I never would put dampen on anything that is taking more magic hits than heals. I always use dampen as a mage with the exception of taking AoE aggro.

As far as overhealing on amp, the simple concept is that you only should be taking a heal when you need it. With amplify on, heals can use LESS mana to heal you since this spell effectively improves their HPM.

I think the main difference here is that mobs' attack power scales damage differently than spelldamage does to their spells' damage.

There are countless attack power buffs and debuffs applicable to mobs compared to amplify, dampen, and the odd mob-ability like Curse of Nazjatar. This is probably because spell resistance is (was?) expected to supplant abilites that directly affect spell damage. However it came to be, I think that dampen magic would act as a direct damage reduction rather than going through a series of coefficients based on the mob's original spell damage/casting time/AoE potential that players' +spell damage is subject to: that dampen acts as a Limited Invulnerability Potion would for normal physical attacks. This is probably why elementals' elementally-charged melee attacks seem further affected by dampen or amplify rather than more 'spiky' damage spells. Anecdotally, using dampen against non-elite elementals while farming for primals significantly reduces my damage taken, to the point where the damage reduction hits the 50% limit.

At the very least, it seems that healers benefit from the +healing as they normally would from gear - a direct addition would be better, of course, but I wouldn't expect it works that way.

Since the damage modification is always half that of the healing modification, one must heal half as many times as one is hit with magical damage for amplify to be viable, and one must be hit with magical damage twice as many times for dampen to be viable.

So in most cases, amplify seems to be the better choice.

Due to coefficient, you need to modify the generalized rule above to multiply the "number of hits"and "number of heals" by their "coefficient". Most mob spells seem to have a coefficient of 1 but as far as I know heals take amplify like +healing from gear which is multiplied by coefficients (this needs testing! Especially if talent multipliers are affecting this!).

It's just a rough guideline. Even in raid situations, you're not likely to see twice as many magical hits versus heals unless it's the main tank or it's an aura, but as said before - at least in the case of netherspite - we're not sure auras are affected by dampen or amplify.

And if the +healing acts as any other +healing rather than a flat bonus, the only difference is that you then have to compare the time healers are healing any given target divided by 3.5 to how many magical hits are taken.

And if talents further modify heals, that only further proves that amplify is preferred, which is most nearly always the case.

To revisit this thread, last night we were experimenting a bit while clearing BT and realized that Gurtogg's bloodboil DoT is listed in the combat log as a physical ability, not magic. Realizing that we immediately amplified the raid on the next pull. (had some unfortunate aggro issues so we had several attempts to think about this stuff)

That said, one thing that's missing from this discussion is a good list of encounters for which should use Amp and which should be use Dampen, as well as CoR. A few edge cases have been talked about where its iffy or 'not at all' such as CoR on Mother/Azgalor/Phase1 RoS, but not a real comprehensive list other than that. I'd like to get our guild using it more, so for those of you who use these on *every fight*, can you provide a list for BT and Hyjal?

What do you mean? Amplify magic always goes on the main tank, exception would be if the main tank is tanking Illidan AND a flame, in that case he can click it off during p2.

Dampen magic we never ever use.

CoR we use on every mob in the game except Gurtogg, Mother, Azgalor, Illidan, I however yell if demo shout falls off for even one second.

Well I mean: Najentus - amp or dampen the entire raid? Amp the tank only? Supremus isn't really an issue, nothing to gain either way really, not worth the time spent buffing the raid, same for Akama. Gorefiend though, amp or dampen?

Oh. Well, given that amp/dampen are fairly expensive single target only buffs, we don't bother doing 'raid-wide' buffs, though we probably could for something like Gurtogg.

Tipically Ampen on the main tank always, on Gurtogg we ampen the offtanks too. We never use damp, we never amp the entire raid.

We amp the entire raid on Gurtogg, since the bloodboil groups get so many targetted heals, and it's so easy for things to go downhill if a few people die. In general it's just amp magic on the tank when the mages remember or someone pesters them about it.