Roywyn

It all depends on the mechanics of the spells used, which may be changed/hotfixed.

A prime example are Malacrass' Spirit Bolt. They used to be affected 100% by amplify/dampen, and with the 9 non-tanks dampened the raid took a lot less damage. It was changed to not affect the Spirit Bolts, and now you can/should amplify the whole raid.

Curse of Recklessness - Imp. Demo Shout and Screech from a bat pet brings even a CoR'ed boss to 0 AP.
So, you should CoR everything unless you can't get the debuffs up *and* the boss gibs your tank on a regular basis. Which doesn't usually happen. Exceptions are:

Reliquary Phase 1 - It has zero armour in that phase, nothing to gain.

Maybe Azgalor - our tactics is to have melee kill Doomguards, and only go on Azgalor at ~35%. So we only CoR under 35%. Come to think of it, with tank/hunters and the Tauren Warriors on Azgalor, we should have CoR up about full-time.
I also think that this tactic is rubbish, but hard to change what works

Dampen Magic - no clue when I used that last time in a raid.

Amplify Magic - always amplify tanks. Also flame tanks on Illidan, since they have 365 FR gear. I also amplify tanks on Hydross, but it's a much closer call since they used high resist gear and get a damage multiplying debuff. Also on Mother Sharaz, SR reduces shadow damage taken from stuff and she hits rather hard.

Raid-wide Amplify Magic - you could probably alway amplify the whole raid, but it usually isn't worth it when there is little raid wide damage.
I do quite often amplify the melee group since they tend to take more damage.

Netherspite - his attacks don't seem affected by amplify, so feel free to amplify the whole raid if healing is tight.
Hex-Lord Malacrass - Spirit Bolts are unaffected, so it helps healing a lot.

Void Reaver - amplify melee. Not sure if it helps, but big numbers make shaman happy.
Leotheras - put it on those of whom you know they'll catch whirlwinds. Like melee.

Naj'entus - Tidal burst is unaffected, so amplify the raid to help healing.
Gurtogg Bloodboil - We always take the minute it takes to buff the whole raid, it helps bloodboil healing a ton. And bloodboil is unaffected.
Archimonde - last time I checked, Doomfire was increased only by tiny amounts by amplify (spread due to being a DoT). So, maybe amplify melee, and others who seem to get doomfires more often.

 

Enquillion

A few observations that might help us understand the mechanics of Amplify/Dampen Magic.

If the debuff tooltip says it causes x magic damage *over* y sec, then the damage increase from Amplify Magic is probably going to be 120/150/180 (depending on talents) in total.
If it on the other hand says that it causes x magic damage *every* y sec, then the damage increase from Amplify Magic is going to be added to each tick (with 100% coefficient).

Same with Dampen Magic. It's just an observation of mine that I haven't gone out of my way to confirm, but perhaps we can all keep an eye out to see if it's true.

 

Aeonesti

None of the warriors in our raid group currently are specced imp demo shout. Does this make a difference on when we should use curse of recklessness?

We are currently in the meat of tier 5 content, working on Alar and Tidewalker.

From reading the thread:

Hydross is an obvious yes for CoR even without imp demo shout

Tidewalker is an obvious no for us on CoR (we still have tanks instagibbed) even if we have imp demo shout.

Other bosses seem more questionable and most of the discussion has been on BT/Hyjal bosses so i'm a bit in the dark about the tier 5 content.

 

Anedris

For learning, I would use CoR on Hydross, Lurker (his melee damage is not tank-threatening assuming healers are awake), Leotheras (again, low melee damage), and Vashj. I would avoid Morogrim due to his very real capacity to simply destroy a tank and I would avoid Karathress because DPS is far less important than survival and healer mana on that fight (you could CoR the priest though since it's not like she hits for anything).

In TK I would recklessness all of them, since nothing hits notably hard.

 

Roywyn

A mob with untalented demo shout hits harder than a mob with curse of recklessness and talented demo shout.

Ask your warriors if they rather want unbridled wrath or 800 armour penetration. Give them some advice if they don't know what to reply


And yes, what the others said. CoR on everything that doesn't gib your tank.

 

Selun

I've been using Amplify very often these past few weeks and noticed that almost all the magic dmg that bosses use won't get amplified. Mostly from what I've seen so far is that the small dmg (0-1.5k) gets amplified but it seems that the bosses do have coefficient on their spells and also bonus spelldmg since you'll get hit with 30-40 more dmg not with 180 more. Maybe I'm wrong but so far don't have the means to see how much dmg exactly is increased/decreased.

Also I've tested in dungeons (that is where I could tell the healer to let someone take some magic dmg ) with the schools of magic and seems that the bonus spelldmg and coefficient of the spells the mobs are using are categorized by school of magic and by effect (AoE, DoT, direct dmg). AoE effects from Frost and Fire aren't amplified, though frost seems to be unaffected by amplify even for direct dmg spells, but Arcane is very sensitive to amplify/dampen, getting alot more/less dmg from Amplify/Dampen.

I suspect that binary spells used by the mobs aren't getting amplified/dampened at all (that being Frost and Holy), aoe effects and direct dmg being a little increased/decreased with the only exception being Arcane school. I've tested the Arcane sensitivity that mobs using it have, at Solarian but I didn't get the expected results (using amplify will do about 500 more dmg per hit, while dampen will reduce it by 500) and don't know, but might be that bosses don't fall into the same rule as normal/elite mobs that use spells and their magic can't be influenced by external factors like Amplify/Dampen.

Anyone has more info about this, never found a guide for when to use amplify or dampen? Or it would just be that Amplify is the PvE buff and Dampen the PvP buff?

 

Inkm

Isn't Maiden's consecrate a holy school spell? Because that's most definitely affected by dampen at least.
e:

Horrible research

It is holy and is called Holy Ground:

Holy Ground - Spells - World of Warcraft

 

Selun

Well for example the Holy Nova the Mace from Kael'thas fight is doing doesn't get amplified. Since I didn't do Karazhan in a while now, I didn't test how magic dmg done in there reacts to Amplify/Dampen and I'm sorry for that, but as I've seen in dungeons (Mechanar, Botanica, Steam Vaults) and SSC/TK, the dmg that is in the 0-1.5k range does get amplified and at Maiden fight since she'll be using that all the fight the healing:magic dmg ratio will be more in the favor of the dmg so Dampen should be good there if it is affected by it. I can't remember now what mobs use Smite or other holy spells to test and see how DD is reacting to it.


So basically AoE done through DoT-type of dmg does get amplified for Holy, but not the AoE done through direct dmg. Basically a table for each school of magic with it's effects (DD, AoE-DoT, AoE-DD, DoT) and dmg range is what blizz might be using for determining whether it is or not affected by Amplify/Dampen.


Anyway more input to improve the knowledge of what to adopt in the encounters is nice, thx for the info.

 

Agrimat

Do folks use CoR on Archimonde? Especially if the MT doesn't have Imp. Demo Shout? He seems like another boss that would have a high chance to gib the MT if you're using the 4 point strategy and have a lot of healers out of MT range.

I suppose we could just try it tomorrow and see what happens.

 

Illundai

We use a 4 point on Archimonde and we use CoR. It's maybe not a good idea while learning, but hey it's melee fight and might as well improve their DPS.

Yes, Death Knight tanks are/were too good in 3.0.x. Having 38k HP, 76.81% Avoidance (Miss incl.) and not gimping your threat in the first tier of gear is broken. (Yes this is clickable)

 

Zaran

We use it on Archimonde. Sometimes we have imp demo shout sometimes we don't. To be honest I've never noticed a difference healing it. If anything it makes the fight that much shorter and lesses the room for "sorry I cratered, I was microwaving a pickle"

Sadly that excuse was used when we were learning the fight a few months back... /sigh

 

Selun

I've got to Karazhan yesterday night and so I've tested if the mobs have a different mechanic on Amplify/Dampen. It seems not and so for Frost (AoE-DoT-type and DD) amplify does not work (tested at Aran -Blizzard, Frostbolt-), also Fire is as expected amplified (as higher the dmg the lower the coefficient for the spell or viceversa) with a very low dmg increased at Shade of Aran (Fireball). At Ilhoof Dampen was affecting the imp hits by the same rule (as lower the dmg, the higher the coefficient for the spell) since their hits are from the Fire school. At Curator on the flares turned out to be exactly how I found in Mechanar and Botanica, and that is the Arcane school is very sensitive to Dampen/Amplify and used Dampen raid-wide and Amplify on tank. The dmg was significantly reduced giving a good slack to our healers. At Prince I got into an infernal while having Dampen on but it didn't seem affected at all, and might be that fire AoE-DoT-type isn't affected as I found at Al'ar while going into a Flame Patch.

 

deneba

I'm still struggling to identify where Amplify Magic makes sense. Taking just SSC, what I've gathered so far is:

Lurker: Amplify tanks. (Rest of the raid should not need much healing.)
Hydross: Amplify no one. Too much elemental damage.
Leotheras: Amplify people likely to get whirlwinded. Don't ever amplify the warlock tank.
Karathresh: Amplify no one. (Things like Cataclysmic Bolt are made even more deadly.)
Morogrim: Amplify everyone. No magic damage.
Vashj: Amplify no one. Too much magic damage flying around.

 

Anedris

Looks more or less good, although you could amplify the tanks on FLK and Vashj - the key metric is whether the person will be receiving more instances of magic damage than heals or vice versa. Personally I would only amplify the whole raid where there is a ton of raid healing to be done (Gurtogg), since it's such a pain for the mages to keep rebuffing it all the time.

 

Roywyn

I always amplify tanks. More tank healing is always good.
If tanks get gibbed without healing in between, it's not your fault. They should get some heals into spikes (3-lifeblooms should be up), and amplify magic increases those heals that bring the tank back up.

On Morogrim, I amplify just tanks. Amplifying the whole raid seems overkill.
On Leotheras, you basically decrease your warlocks HP by 180 (i.e. the point where he gets oneshot) for +360 healing on him.

 

racy

Thank you for that little bit of info. I didn't know that changed. Looks like we have made it harder for ourselves lately then, hehe.

 

Selun

Vashj's Forked Lightning isn't affected by Amplify. I've never kited the strider to really see if it's Mindblast is amplified but as my warlock friend that kites is saying, that Mindblast from strider isn't amplifed. So far didn't manage to track the poison bolt from the tainted elemental.

At Hydross I did some tests using Dampen on one of the add tanks and it effectively reduced the average dmg taken by almost 400 so I guess here is one of those Maiden/Curator fights where Dampen is good on some people, while amplifying the rest since they won't take the same number and/or magic dmg.


Also at Karathress it's something really weird in regards to that Cataclysm Bolt. Don't know why a 12k+ hp lock would take a 8k hit while having Amplify and at another raid there he took the same 8k hit while having Dampen. As I used Amplify/Dampen on myself there lots of times to see the effects, the Cataclysm Bolt was always doing the normal 50% dmg on me .

Anyway the Bolt isn't influenced by Amplify/Dampen, the Frost Volley the priest is doing isn't affected either, the only thing that gets amplified is the dmg from the Spitfire Totem.


Is the beast within ability that he gets from the hunter improving the Cataclysm Bolt, and that in fact making that weird more than 50% dmg, or might be a "gets bugged" if Amplify/Dampen is used?


If in fact Karathress has a coefficient of 400% and +350 bonus spelldmg with base dmg from the Bolt being caped at 50% of the target's hp, then Amplify (+180dmg) might have caused this (Amplify/Dampen breaking the cap, just like crit breaks the cap for AoE mechanics) but after I used it more than 10 times there on lots of people and combined it with Dampen to better see the difference and get no difference at all then I'm inclined to say that this might be a "gets bugged" situation.

 

Roywyn

You just replied to youre question. I once got nuked by Karathress for 8k as a mage when I wanted to be extra careful and put PvP gear on.
The beast within does affect it, making for some funky spikes

On Hydross, it effects elemental melee damage. Like on any elemental mob (you do put up dampen when farming primals, don't you).
When amplifying, the additional damage gets amplified by Hydross' aura, and reduced by resistance gear/buffs.

When in doubt, I just amplify. Tanks don't get gibbed there, and big number make healers happy

 

Aeryn

I'm one of the ones with no hope, as I couldn't convince my raid leaders of the merits of amplify and dampen magic, try as I might. Apparently amplify is evil most of the time and dampen is even more evil. So now we continue to only use amplify in encounters with absolutely no magic damage (Attumen, Gruul, Bear boss in ZA).


For anyone trying to convince their guild too, maybe this could help too:

The problem, I think, is partly that there's different negative parts in the tooltip descriptions of both buffs. Increases damage on tank? Baaaad. Reduces healing on tank? Baaaad. So let's put everything into perspective.

Assume dampen on everyone as the starting point. Now removing dampen (read: having no buff) has, for all intents and purposes, the same effect as amplify (+240 healing, +120 damage taken). Amplify increases this effect by 100%.

What people have to realize is that as soon as there's a mage in the raid, they must choose one of three options for an encounter, namely dampen, no buff or amplify. They can't "not choose". Even not buffing either of the two buffs is making a choice in a certain direction:

If, in a given encounter, incoming magic damage is infrequent relative to incoming healing on a player, and they say "don't buff anything!", what they are actually saying is, "buff dampen". Because by not buffing amplify the magic damage and healing is decreased by the same amount dampen would decrease it.

Likewise, if there's lots of magic damage relative to the amount of healing received and people don't buff anything, they are actually buffing amplify by not buffing dampen, because the net result is the same as amplify magic. And in this scenario amplify is bad.

Only if the frequency of incoming magic damage and received healing are about equal or unknown, it would make sense to stay in the middle of the road and not buff anything.


If spike magic damage could really kill a player and that's the main reason people don't want amplify, dampen would be the logical choice, because it decreases spike damage by the same amount not buffing amplify would, but most of the time, when people don't want amplify nor dampen, they are just being lazy to really think about an encounter.

 

galzohar

On leo since healing is so trivial and the only thing that is an actual problem is the warlock getting gibbed, putting dampen on him can actually be a good thing. By the time the debuffs are stacked high enough to matter you will usually have killed all inner demons already and have all healers on that warlock (heck, you could have all healers on that warlock in the firstplace if you assign 1 healer to be in a good place to heal everyone with inner demons by himself, but obviously healers need to kill their inner demons quickly as well). Anyway main point is that lack of healing doesn't kill the warlock, taking a huge hit does. Then again taking 2 hits in a row without helaing all the way to full in between (which is hard with ~2s between shots) can also kill him, but I find 1-shot more common than 2-shot kills if you make sure to wake all your healers up when the debuff is about 4 lower than the "max" (1-shot) debuff count (max would be 8 for a 13k HP non-SL warlock, for SL it's quite a few more debuffs than that).

 

ayriya

Feel free to cut this up if I made any errors… but I’d been looking for actual numbers on this and hadn’t found any. To the poster quoted, your numbers seemed to be for a level 70 Mob, I used your same format and adjusted them for a level 73 mob. I rounded all numbers to the nearest whole percent, giving a 1% margin of error (or skew) which is relatively trivial once you look at it. I also used the increase % of damage taken by the mob instead of the % increase in the players output, since comparatively, that’s what CoS & CoE are – it should keep things level when deciding which debuff to use.

My understanding is that bosses in BT/Hyjal have one of two armor values, one in the 4k range (4500 was close enough) and 6600. That’s why I used those values.


% mitigation = armor/armor+400+(85*(73+4.5*(73-59))) = armor/(armor + 11960)


4500 Armor
4500 armor --> 27% damage reduction --> 73% of potential damage = 100% of damage done
subtract 800 from that (CoR)
3700 armor --> 24% damage reduction --> 76% of potential damage = 3% increase

With Sunder/Expose(untalented)
4500 armor --> 27% damage reduction --> 73% of potential damage = 100% of damage done
subtract 2600 from that (Sunder)
1900 armor --> 14% damage reduction --> 86% of potential damage = 13% increase
subtract 2050 from that (Expose Armor)
0 armor --> 0% damage reduction --> 100% of potential damage = 14% increase


With Sunder/CoR
4500 armor --> 27% damage reduction --> 73% of potential damage = 100% of damage done
subtract 2600 from that (Sunder)
1900 armor --> 14% damage reduction --> 86% of potential damage = 13% increase
subtract 800 from that (CoR)
1100 armor --> 8% damage reduction --> 92% of potential damage = 6% increase


6600 Armor
6600 armor --> 36% damage reduction --> 64% of potential damage = 100% of damage done
subtract 800 from that (CoR)
5800 armor --> 33% damage reduction --> 67% of potential damage = 3% increase

With Sunder/Expose(untalented)/CoR
6600 armor --> 36% damage reduction --> 64% of potential damage = 100% of damage done
subtract 2600 from that (Sunder)
4000 armor --> 25% damage reduction --> 75% of potential damage = 11% increase
subtract 2050 from that (Expose Armor)
1950 armor --> 14% damage reduction --> 86% of potential damage = 11% increase
subtract 800 from that (CoR)
1150 armor --> 9% damage reduction --> 91% of potential damage = 5% increase

With Sunder/CoR
6600 armor --> 36% damage reduction --> 64% of potential damage = 100% of damage done
subtract 2600 from that (Sunder)
4000 armor --> 25% damage reduction --> 75% of potential damage = 11% increase
subtract 800 from that (CoR)
3200 armor --> 21% damage reduction --> 79% of potential damage = 4% increase

CoR creates an increase of 3-6% when applicable. CoS/CoE create a 10% increase (untalented).

After looking at the numbers, a couple things are easily discernable. First, that which curse to use is most dependent on two conditions; your raid composition, and the natural armor value of the mob in question. CoR itself is comparatively weaker then CoS or CoE, so you need more melee then shadow or Elemental users for it to receive priority over either of the other two. CoS has the added benefit of increasing returns generated by the Shadow Priests, which is something else to be considered.

Another important factor is the specific encounter. As was mentioned previously, CoE on Supremus has added value by offering added spell penetration, but as caster DPS on Mother Sharaz is much weaker compared to melee, CoR is a clear choice in that instance.

Further, CoS & CoE can receive a 30% added benefit (3% additional damage) through Malediction, where as CoR has no comparable buff. If you have fewer then 3 locks, all of these things need to be taken into account.

Selecting a DPS curse like CoD or CoA over CoR is a bad move if CoR can generate actual increased melee damage. It only take 2 shadow or 2 elemental users in the raid (generally speaking) to equal a DPS curse when using CoS or CoE instead, when at least 3 users are present the advantage is clear. CoR generally has a smaller benefit per user, so you would need more melee to compensate; but it would be a safe bet that if you had 3 or more melee in the raid then CoR is a much better choice as long as it’s actually reducing armor.

 

Chirality

You need to include Faerie Fire to make this a more reasonable calculation. There's almost always a Feral Druid keeping it up in a raid...and Faerie Fire makes CoRex more valuable. Furthermore, the value of CoRex is further increased by the prescence of Armor Pen on Rogue, Hunter, and especially Warrior gear. I have nearly 1k Armor Pen passive, for example. The value of CoRex is slightly less for Retribution paladins and (very very slightly) less for Enhancement Shaman, for whom Seals, Judgements, and Shocks do not benefit from Recklessness.

The number of tanks (one, possibly an additional tank keeping high on threat) also can increase the value of Recklessness, although somewhat trivially. It does, however, increase a tanks threat cap relative to casters.

Also: Sunder Armor and Expose do not stack....and Expose is not really usable with warrior tanks.

Edit: This thread (Curse of Weakness), specifically posts 55 and up, seems to indicate that bosses have about a 320 AP and a damage multiplier of about 50 (based on Lurker Below, see post 58). Thus, for a boss that has 320 Base AP, with Improved Demo Shout (-420 ap) and Curse of Recklessness (+135 ap), the boss's attack power increases by 35. Using Spline's formula of AP*Modifier / 7 = damage change per hit (assumes a 2.0 attack speed), the bosses damage thus increases by 250 (premodified).

Assuming a warrior has 65% damage reduction from armor (fairly reasonable), he will thus take

250*0.9 {defensive stance}*0.35 {after armor} = 78.75

That is to say, your tank will take roughly 80 more damage per hit. Note that the damage range for Lurker, per that same thread, is still nearly 5000, or 1575 after mitigation. Thus, CoRex increases the damage a tank takes by five percent of the boss's effective damage range.

CoRex + Improved Demo Shout increase the damage of a boss, for sure... but it seems to me like the downside is almost completely negligible.

 

Fafhrd

You also have to take into account that all the damage melee does NOT take armor into account, so you can't take raidwide melee damage from the damage meters and multiply it by 1.06.

 

Jarlyn

If you're pretty comfortable with Azgalor on farm, CoR is a fairly safe bet. We switched to using it a few weeks back and haven't noticed any substantial difference in tank healing, but have been consistently breaking RDPS records on him since.

What are your thought on using CoR on Council? The last time we tried it on Gathios, he promptly raped our MT's face and our healers demanded it come off. I think it was likely due to an errant parry moreso than CoR, but we generally just run CoS with everyone else on CoD during Council.

 

Vidofnir

We used CoR on Gathios every time so far, even on the first kill. We have a Druid, Shaman (Chainhealing of him to keep Melee alive) and Paladin keeping him up, and they don't have a lot of problems with it.

Come to think of it, I think we always use CoR, even on bosses we didnt't kill before.