Focus Magic: Buffs And Debuffs

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In this edition of Focus Magic, OMF talked about Buffs and Debuffs relevant to us mages!

Intro

It's Sunday, June 28th, 2009. I'm Dahkar, but you all know me as the Old Man Franks. Welcome to Focus Magic, the AIE Podcast Mage segment of indeterminate length, this is Episode 9!

Hrm....Maybe copying Buzz Out Loud's introduction style may have been is a bit bland without cohosts for the segment. Oh well, lesson learned.

It’s all About Guildies Helping Guildies!

On this week's AIE podcast, we are all about the AIE and how being in AIE makes playing a mage different and awesome. Well what makes AIE awesome? The people. AIE is only as awesome as the people who're in the guild, and they don't come any better than the folks currently displaying the guild tag!

One of the best qualities about the membership of AIE is the willingness to help each other out! It's one of the reasons I do this segment, and today, in the spirit of helping each other out, we're going to cover what you as a mage can give to other classes to help them out! We're going to cover the buffs and debuffs that the mage provides!

How We Help Others

Arcane Intellect and Arcane Brilliance

Let's start the most famous buff a mage provides: Arcane Intellect. This buff increases your intellect score, which in turn increases your mana and spell critical strike chance. It lasts for 30 minutes. Any mana using class is going to want this, for sure, but just because a class doesn't hurl spells with wild abandon doesn't mean they don't have a use for an intellect buff!

There are some subtle ways it can buff other classes that you might not know about! For example, did you know that an enhancement shaman with the Mental Dexterity talent also gains attack power from intellect? By buffing that score, you just upped his damage, even though he's a melee class!

The lesson here: Buff everyone in your party, even if they don't have a mana bar. You never know what another class may get out of an ability score. Luckily, once you get the Arcane Brilliance spell at level 56, this becomes trivial, and lasts twice as long! Just keep a good supply of Arcane Powder handy!

Tips for using Arcane Brilliance effectively: It will buff everyone in your party or raid. The person you are casting it on (if not yourself) must be within range and within Line of Sight. However, the rest of the party or raid must be within 100 yards of the spell's target or they won't receive the buff. However, they do NOT have to be within Line of Sight.

Also, directly buffing someone who's PVP flag is active will turn yours on as well. So if you cast Arcane Intellect on a flagged player, you will become flagged as well.

However with Arcane Brilliance, if you are not flagged for PVP, but some group members are, when you cast Arcane Brilliance, those flagged members will not receive the buff! Be aware of this, and if need be wait for their PvP flags to expire before buffing. Don't feel bad about this, all of the other buffing classes are likely to feel the same!

A little side note: Once you get to level 80, you can buy an alternate version of this spell. Tomes that teach Dalaran Intellect and Dalaran Brilliance can both be purchased from the Sister Sorcerous shop in Dalaran for the cost of 475 and 500 gold, respectively. Essentially, these do the same thing as Arcane Intellect and Brilliance, but with a different graphic, very similar to the effect of hitting an enemy with Arcane Blast. The buff icon aslo looks different, a more stylized purple version of the old "eye" icon. Otherwise they function identically as the max ranks of Arcane Intellect and Arcane Brilliance. They do look cool though!


Focus Magic

Next up, lets cover a buff that requires a talent point to get, but once that will be a key feature of pretty much every build a mage could use, except Frostfire. It's called Focus Magic, and for a mere 11 points in the Arcane Tree it can be yours too. You only cast this on one specific person in your party/raid. Once you do so, the person will get a 30 minute 3% buff to their spell critical strike chance, and every time they crit, you get that same buff for 10 seconds.

Now bear this in mind: Focus magic only works with Spell crits, not melee or ranged. Tell that hunter to stop asking for it!.

So to get the most from this buff, you want to put it on a caster that has a naturally high chance to critically strike with spells. Bear in mind it works for healers too! So who's an optimal target? I like to give mine to Elemental shamans, Boomkin druids, and holy paladins. Non-affliction warlocks and Resto Shammies are good targets too. Resto druids and affliction locks are poor choices, as they won't typically have much in the way of crit, so you won't see the buff come back to you.

If you have more than one mage in your raid/party that has Focus Magic, be aware that the actual buff and the proc both stack, so cast it on each other, and you could get as much as 6% critical strike chance from this. If you've got 3 or more mages, work out a rotation with each other! Have Mage A cast the buff on Mage B, Mage B buff Mage C, and Mage C turn around and buff Mage A. It works wonders. The more you all crit, the more the buff will spillover to the other mages!

Critical Strike Debuffs

Finally lets take a look at our last major contribution to a party or raid: Our critical strike debuffs.

Provided by fire mages (via Improved Scorch) or Frost Mages (via Winter's Chill) these stacking debuffs increase the chance that spells will critically strike the mob affected by the debuff by 1% per stack, up to 5%. The only other class which can provide this debuff is a warlock with the Improved Shadow Bolt talent, a talent usually only taken by Affliction or Demonology warlocks.

Improved Scorch is provided by applications of the Scorch spell, a low cast time but fairly weak spell. You'll need to cast it 5 times obviously to get the 5 stacks up, unless you have the glyph of Improved Scorch, in which case you only need cast it once. Once it's applied, you can refresh the stack's duration by simply casting another Scorch. However, if the debuff's 15-second timer runs out, you'll need to reapply the whole stack, so unless you're glyphed for it, a fire mage will have to stay on top of that, making sure it's up at all times.

Winter's Chill, by contrast, is provided by ANY frost spell a mage casts, and it lasts 30 seconds. And since any damaging spell will apply it, a frost mage can use a single Blizzard to quickly apply all 5 stacks of the debuff, and every cast of Frostbolt and Icelance afterward will easily refresh it. Mages leveling frost will have a great debuff ready to constantly provide to their groups, and the debuff is excellent for PvP purposes as well. It is a rather big shame that Frost DPS in endgame raiding is so bad compared to Fire, Arcane, and Frostfire builds, this debuff's ease of application would make it welcome among raiders. Let us hope Frost is brought up to par in 3.2, fellow mages!!

Please note that these two debuffs do not stack with each other, neither do they stack with the Improved Shadow Bolt debuff. If you're a fire mage, and one of these other two classes is present, they will be stacking this debuff as part of their normal DPS efforts, leaving you free to remove Scorch from your rotation.

Minor Debuffs

That's the major things covered, lets take a look at the minor debuffs we usually bring.

Slow requires a talent point deep in Arcane, but it slows Movement and attack speed by 50% as well as casting time by 30%, and lasts for 15 seconds. Sounds great right? It is, especially for soloing and PvP purposes. The spell will activate the Torment the Weak talent, and help keep you alive. In groups, however, it suffers a number of drawbacks: the short duration, the relatively high mana cost, the relatively high number of bosses/mobs immune to it, and the fact that other classes provide similar slows which do affect mobs and activate Torment the Weak.

I'd pick up Slow if you're leveling or PvPing as Arcane for sure, but for a raid-focused mage, Slow's not worth the talent point, you won't be casting it enough.

Mages are also one of the best sources of roots in the game too. We provide them via Frost Nova and via the Frostbite talent, which has a chance to activate off of any frost spell with a snare element to it. The major problem here is that many bosses and some higher-powered trash mobs are immune to roots. Luckily thanks to Fingers of Frost mages still get the bonus critical strike chance when Frostbite would have normally procced, even if the mob is immune. However, that's only a benefit to us, not the group.


How Others Help Us

Aight, we've talked about what we can pass on to our group members, what about what they can give to us?

Elemental Shamans

Caster shamans, especially Elemental ones, might just be your best friends in a group. Three of their totems directly benefit you. Mana Spring Totem increases your mana regeneration. Wrath of Air Totem will increase your Spell haste. And Flametongue Totem will increase your spellpower, as long as you remain within 30 yards of the totems of course. If your shaman is Elemental, he'll likely drop Totem of Warth instead of Flametongue Totem. Totem of Wrath is gained via a talent point deep in the Elemental tree, but it offers far more spellpower than Flametongue Totem, AND it provides a debuff on all enemies within 30 yards of the totem, increasing their spell critical strike chance taken by 3%, a debuff which STACKS with Imp Scorch/Winters Chill/Improved Shadow Bolt! And as if this wasn't awesome enough, Elemental Shamans are likely to have a talent called Elemental Oath. Fully talented, this will increase the spell critical strike chance of the shaman and any nearby targets by 5% every time the shaman crits for 15 seconds. Elemental Shamans crit often, so this debuff can have a nearly 100% uptime. And yes, it stacks with Focus Magic! This is what makes them excellent targets for that spell!

Balance Druids

Who's your second best friend? A boomkin, that's who. Boomkins do a TON for a mage when they're in a group as well. First of all, there's Moonkin Aura, which inceases the Spell critical strike chance of anyone within 30 yards of the druid by 5% (and sadly does not stack with Elemental Oath). If the druid has Improved Moonkin Form, you also gain an additional 3% haste AND 15% of the druid's spirit as spellpower (which will not stack with Flametongue Totem or Totem of Wrath). Secondly, there's Earth and Moon. This is a deep Balance talent applied by their wrath and Starfire spells with increases Magical Damage taken by 13%. Thirdly, there's Improved Faerie Fire, which longtime listeners will know reduces the amount of Hit rating you need against a mob by 3%, and it's something that Boomkins will always try to keep on a target. Druids themselves can apply Mark of the Wild to you, which aside from increasing all of your attributes, is one of the three buffs that directly increases your spirit, a must have for Molten Armor!

Warlocks

Warlocks are the only other class which can provide the critical strike chance debuff, but they can also provide Curse of Elements, a debuff which has the same effects as Earth and Moon above. They don't stack, so your warlock needn't bother applying it if there's a boomkin present. A Warlock with a Felhunter pet out provides a "Fel Intelligence" buff that adds Int and Spirit. Both of the values are less than AI or Divine Spirit, and they don't stack with them either. However, if you have a mage with AI, a warlock with a felhunter, but no priest, the Spirit buff from Fel Intelligence will still be in effect, even if the intellect part is not. Finally, a demonology warlock with Demonic Pact grants a portion of their spell power everytime the Demon crits. This does not stack with the shaman totems or the improved Moonkin form mentioned earlier.

Death Knights

If you have an Unholy Death Knight and they've got the Ebon Plaguebringer talent (most of them will), that disease has the same effect (and doesn't stack with ) Earth and Moon and Curse of Elements: increasing magical damage taken by 13%. So as you can see, for a lot of these cases, you've got multiple sources for the debuffs you need. Speaking of multiple sources, a Death Knight's Frost Fever disease is yet another slowing effect which allows Torment the Weak to activate.

Paladins

Paladins are a good source of buffs. In addition to the two blessings you want (Blessing of Kings, which increases all your stats by 10%, especially your int and spirit, and Blessing of Wisdom, which inceases your MP5), a Retribution Paladin talent called Heart of the Crusader allows all Pally Judgement spells to Provide a debuff that increases the spell critical strike chance against that target by 3%. Sound familiar? It's the same debuff provided by Totem of Wrath. And yep, you guessed it. Don't stack. Ret Pallies with Swift Retribution can also add 3% haste to any aura they generate. This does not stack with the haste provided by Improved Moonkin Form's Aura. Sanctified Retribution also adds 3% more damage from any aura as well.

Priests

Priests give you the all important Power Word: Fortitude and Divine Spirit buffs (this is the last of the spirit increasing buffs, and this one is the one that will not stack with scrolls), but also Shadow Priests provide the second +hit chance debuff in the form of Misery.

Others

There are plenty of other debuffs and temporary buffs that other classes can provide, I've tried to cover the most important ones to us mages, but I couldn't hope to cover everything. If you want to see what various combinations of 5-man, 10-man, or even 25-man groups provide which buffs, there's an excellent tool at MMO Chamption. It's called the Raid Compsition Tool, and you can find it by going to MMO-Champion.com, and clicking the Raid Composition link in the Upper lefthand corner. Play around with it. A Small part of building a successful raid group is determined by what buffs and debuffs you all can bring to share.

Outtro

That's it for this weeks Focus Magic, guildmates. Go forth, help out, and buff each other up!! This has been Dahkar, aka OLD MAN FRANKS, reminding you: Help control the gnome population, Roll a Troll today!!