That is irrelevant. The same coefficient gained from having excess spell power will apply when having lacking spell power. Say your spell gains 81.4% of your spelldmg, a base dampen will reduce it by (120*0.814) 97.68. Whether or not you had spell damage is an utterly pointless question.

I've been using dampen magic on myself on Archimonde and I can't for sure whether it helps or not. Using amplify on the tank seems to be good, however, since he takes a lot less doomfire damage compared to how much heals he's getting against melee damage.

I've gone through our Archimonde logs, and the fire damage isn't affected by Amplify Magic at all. Possibly the dot damage, but if so by a completly trival amount. Curse only did ~20 more damage per tick. In other words, it would make a lot more sense to amplify the whole raid rather than casting dampen magic on anyone.

There are (rare) situations where you can use Amplify Magic offensively - namely when you charm/mind control a mob (which is often considered the "pet" of the controller). While there are fewer gimmicky fights such as this in BC, it's worth keeping in mind.

If was fun on Razorgore! Amplify Magic while he was MCed clearing eggs, then enjoy the higher numbers in phase 2.

Shield Slam removes it though, and it's a 100% proc in 2.3

About Archimonde - I amplified the tank (as always), warlocks, and some squishies. I think the Inital 2400 Doomfire ticks became 2430 and the Soul Charge seemed unaffected.

It's very minor though, and amplify always helps unless you're in a situation where someone dies without healing. Which shouldbe avoided in first place anyway.

Also, on Hakkar, I once tried Dampen Magic and it reduced the poison cloud damage from 100 to 90 per tick.
So, DoTs usually gain very little from Dampen, and Amplify should be the better choice.
(Exception: Illhoof's sacrifice.)

Here's a thread I wrote on Amp/Damp magic for our guild mage forums. Any objections/additions?

Amplify Magic is probably the most underused buff in the game. Which is pretty silly considering it's one of the most powerful buffs in the game. It just goes forgotten far too much.

A totally untalented Amp Magic gives +120 damage taken / +240 healing taken.

Even if you have no points in this, applying it to the main tanks or even the entire raid effectively gives every healer 240 +healing. If there was any potion that gave 240 healing, healers would be lined up for it. Now with one point in the talent it goes up to 150/300, and with 2/2 in the talent it goes up to 180/360...

360 +healing to every healer in the raid..... we should be using Amp Magic.

The only time Amp Magic should not be used on the main tanks, AT THE VERY LEAST, is in a fight where there are constant small elemental attacks. Basically if a tank gets hit by 3 elemental attacks to every 1 heal, you're losing healing. 1:1 attack to healing gains you half the buff, 2:1 breaks even like you never used the buff and 3:1 makes it worse. The only fights in BC before Hyjal/BT where it is recommended not to use Amp Magic on the main tanks are Shade of Aran (lolkarazhan), Hydross, and Solarian.

We should be amping the tanks before every boss attempt and as much of the raid as we can for most bosses. Even untalented +240 healing to every healer is a huge buff, but if one of the mages can fit 12 points in arcane into their spec, 360 +healing is an amazing raid buff.


As far as Dampen Magic goes, it sucks. Very situational and should pretty much never be put on a main tank unless elemental damage is 4-5:1 heal which is pretty much no fight ever if our healers are awake. However dampen magic can be used on fragile classes such as mages or priests in situations where you're going to be taking incidental elemental damage with limited raid healing going around. In most cases these classes will be overhealed even with the damp buff up, so it helps. I tend to use it on myself on Void Reaver for example when I manage to remember.

In conclusion: PUT AMP MAGIC ON YOUR ACTION BAR AND START USING IT.

Would Dampen Magic be actually beneficial on the Malacrass encounter? I would guess so, since the 'Spirit Bolts' AoE effect consists of something like 20(?) seperate casts over 10 seconds.

We found it to have a very large impact... it may not be benefical over the whole encounter, but it affects these 10 seconds very favorably.

Last night I tried out dampen and amplify on the fight.
First few attempts I dampened the raid. Damage was not reduced by dampens.
Few more attempts without using dampen. Damage was the same.
2 more attempts I tried dampen again just on myself I just didn’t believe my previous combat logs. Once again damage was not reduced.
2 more attempts I put amplify on me. Damage did not increase from spirit bolts. Though spirit bolts there was never a problem keeping me topped off.
I was allowed to amp the ranged for 1 attempted. For spirit bolts it worked great, but not for the rest of the fight. One of our healers with 8000 hp buff… was hit with frost nova then ice lanced, that was the end to playing with amplify.
Our last couple attempts/down we didn't use either.

I'll confirm that dampen/amp have no effect on spirit bolts.

The first thing I thought when I saw "450 damage per bolt, one bolt every 0.5 seconds" was to give damp a shot, but no such luck.

Some nice stuff to know in here guys.

My guild has only recently cleared Kara, and i'm trying to soak up as much info as i can so we can hopefully start speeding things up.


When we fight Prince Malc our raid leader has adopted the tactic of tanking prince at just under the max healing range of where the grey area is just outside the doorway.
Rest of raid stands there, tank / melee on prince.

When we are hit with an unlucky Infernal drop that is within range ot the Tank we tend to keep him static and just heal through it.

Would Amplify magic be a benefit or a curse in this situation? I realise the damage would be slightly increased from the Infernals consecration like attack, but would the constant stream of improved healing he receives be a worthwhile trade off. My gut feeling is yes, but I'd like to have my facts straight before i suggest it.