When to use CoR, Amplify/Dampen Magic?
 

So I was telling my guild about pDebuffList - an addon I've been using since I first saw it here a month or so ago. Since we started using it, we've been MUCH better about always keeping demo shout, thunderclap, etc. up with little to no downtime between debuffs.

But the discussion turned to Curse of Recklessness. When should we be using it? Why don't we use it more often? That sort of thing. Amplify Magic and Dampen Magic also came up.

My guild is still in early progression (Lurker and Tidewalker down in SSC and Void Reaver down in TK), but I'm wondering where and when other guilds use CoR, AM, DM.

From searching these forums there've been a few, short discussions, around these abilities, but not much in the way of sharing information about which encounters they are beneficial.

Some of my thoughts...

Maulgar CoR on the healer add, AM on the Maulgar tank maybe?
Gruul... No CoR, at least not in the later growths. Yes Amp Magic

Magtheridon: Amp Magic on the tank AFTER the channelers are dead?

Lurker: CoR should be fine
Tidewalker: CoR seems like a bad idea to us - at least at this point in time, he still hits our MT pretty damn hard from time to time.
Hydross: CoR no... bad idea for 100%/250% moments? Dampen Magic? Not sure...?


Void Reaver: CoR seems like it'd be fine here? Would DM help with all the arcane damage?



Just curious where other people have found CoR, AM, or DM useful.

Thanks

Amplify Magic - talented, on the tanks on every single fight we have done so far apart from Hydross. 360 extra healing for every healer in the raid is a huge, huge buff, and the tiny amount of extra spike damage doesn't mean anything except on fights with tons of elemental damage flying around all the time.

Amplify Magic: Always cast on the tanks unless they are taking heavy elemental damage (currently just Hydross, Aran, and Solarian). Cast on the whole raid if there is little or no repeated magic damage (eg. Gruul, Void Reaver, Lurker, Morogrim), especially if the only magic damage happens once every 30 seconds or less.

Dampen Magic: Never cast on the tank. Cast on raid when there is a constant amount of small magic damage. I can't think of fights like this in TBC, but Vaelastraz is a great example from classic.

Curse of Recklessness Only use if it won't cause the tank to die from spike damage (ie. not on Morogrim or if Gruul has 12+ growths). I've heard you get more raid DPS from CoR over Curse of Doom if you have 5+ melee DPS and hunters total, but I haven't run the numbers. Basically you usually want this curse up.

We use(d) in on Curator for easier time with adds, and on Illhoof, to negate both Imps and Chains damage. Beyond that, haven't seen much use. Maybe if it worked on Wrath of the Astromancer per each tick and not spread over all 4 and before damage increase, but I doubt it does.

The only time Curse of Recklessness isn't worth it is when the mob in question has some serious weapon-damage special that it's using. Examples: Broodlord Lashlayer (Mortal Strike), Emperor Vek'nilash (Unbalancing Strike). If the mob is just auto-attacking with the occasional fixed-damage special you might as well keep it up. The impact on your tank will be negligible. Gruul is an exception, as after a certain point the effect will be multiplied enough to really add up.

While Amp Magic on the whole raid can be useful, it takes quite a bit of mana, so many don't use it. It is worth putting on a tank except on Hydross and Solarian.

While CoR is a large raid dps increase and tank threat increase with only a small boss dps increase, if you only have 2 Warlocks it is likely better to use CoS/CoE, but that depends on class makeup really.

Amp on the raid for Gruuls is nice if your mages are up to it.

Eh, I wouldn't really put CoR on, say, Azgalor, Mother Shahraz, or Morogrim. They don't have multipliers, but they're all really fights where you're much much more likely to lose because of tank death than you are because your DPS was a bit too slow.

The other major factor for CoR: Mob armor pre-CoR. The lower it is, the better CoR will perform, because armor reduction has increasing returns. Going from 750 armor to 250 armor is a much larger damage boost than going from 3750 to 3250, to say the least. Mobs with little or no armor thus become natural candidates for CoR (Teron and RoS come to mind here, though I definitely wouldn't use CoR on p1 of RoS because it's counterproductive).

I'm not sure CoR has any effect on P1 - I'm pretty sure that it's affected by it's own aura and so has 0 armour and 0 defence (which is backed up anecdotally by never being able to remember a dodge, block or parry while in my tanking gear which has ~20 hit rating and 0 feral skill). I'm not sure it's counterproductive as such - control over who it hits is pretty easy to work with and it's not like you can't (technically) work your way through the entire raid (barring enrage). We normally only get through 3 rogues and 3 tanks with 1 or 2 paladins stepping in to use up a shield + bubble just for control and to shorten weakened soul times for tanks.

I would also avoid CoR on anything really hard hitting or where you only have 2 warlocks and it's a marginal case. I would avoid it on Teron dependant on how healer-heavy you are and who gets shadow of death.

As has already been said - amp magic is good, dampen is pretty much bad.

Edit: just checked WWS for the last RoS and it was definitely parrying/dodging, so there goes that idea. It does have ridiculously low armour though, and I don't think CoR would be that bad as long as you control it well.

The benefit of amplify magic is rather amazing. However, somehow it is still the buff that I never remember to check for.

Before TBC, I believe there was a patch where they changed Damage Magic so that it never reduces damage below 50% damage taken. I believe this change remains on live.

It seems to stand to reason that exactly one out of Amplify or Dampen would be ideal on any person in nearly any situation.

No-Recklessness bosses at the moment are Morogrim, Fathom-Guard Tidalvess, Maulgar, Magtheridon depending on tank gear, the last little bit of Gruul (you should certainly be using it for most of Gruul).

This has been my thinking for a long time, but 600 mana per cast is a great impedance to using it much. I use it on the main tank on select fights, but no more. I still get derided for taking improved dampen/amplify.

We've used Amp on nearly the whole raid dating back to Naxx days. Specifically I can recall amping the entire raid on Sapphiron. We've always been slightly mage heavy, compared to other guilds at least. I see other top end guilds with only 1 or 2 mages, where we normally have 4 in a 25 man (until lately, we have 3). Amp has always had amazing gains for healing, and can be used on almost all fights. The thing people forget, is many boss abilities that are considered "ae" (not necessarily ae, but the spell acts differently) are often not amped by amplify.

I've always dampened the tanks on Hydross, especially the add tanks. Every other encounter in SSC you can use Amp on the whole raid, and I do when I can. TK: You can use it on VR/Al'ar but Astromancer I'm not too sure about. I'd never use it on the whole raid, infact I believe I dampen myself on it, but I've asked the "wrath tanks" what differences amp and damp had, and they weren't sure. I've put both amp and damp on the "wrath tanks", heh. No real difference in outcome for us.

A lot of abilities don't gain from amp/damp, but if you mistake one to not be affected by it you can be dominated by that mistake -_-. I'm afraid to use it on certain encounters just because of the sheer damage the spells do.

I make sure to Amplify all the freaking time. It's awesome.

Dampen is actually really useful on Netherspite and Illhoof (reduces Sacrifice ticks by the full amount, so 260 or whatever less damage per second on the sac'd player). Haven't progressed past KZ/Gruul yet so can't say about other fights.

Surprised nobody's mentioned melee (non tank) for Maiden of Virtue - damp helps a ton there for lessening the amount of the consecrate damage.