Spell Stealing and You: A Guide to Magister’s Terrace
- Posted by Walkere on July 3rd, 2008 filed in Mage
Lately, I’ve been spending more time on my Mage. This is usually for one reason - to help other members of the guild run Heroic Magister’s Terrace to pick up the trinkets and/or JC recipes that they need.
I came to a sudden realization tonight - Magister’s Terrace is probably the best place in all of BC to make use of Spellsteal. When I first trained Spellsteal, I thought, “Ooh, that’s a nice novelty. When am I going to use that?”
There aren’t that many mobs that have steal-able buffs, outside of special situations, and it mainly has (great) uses in PVP. Today, I realized that the majority of mobs in Magister’s Terrace have a stealable buff… and they are awesome.
With that in mind, here’s a guide to the different mobs and spells that you can look forward to stealing. (Note: I’m unsure if any of these values are different in regular mode, since all my recent experience comes from Heroic MgT)
Sunblade Warlock (Warlock)
These guys have one of the best buffs in the entire instance. Like most Warlocks, they have a form of Fel Armor. Their awesome Fel Armor (Rank 2) offers a straight up buff of 250 Spell Damage!
It also gives you a nice 30% boost to incoming heals. That’s mighty useful considering some of the AoE damage that gets thrown around in MgT. This spell has a long duration (30 Minutes), so it should last for a full 2 minutes after you steal it.
However, Patch 2.4.3 is going to make Mage Armor and Fel Armor undispellable on players. I wonder if that’ll alter the way that magical armors work on NPCs.
Sunblade Magister (Mage)
The Magister casts Enchancement of Spell Haste on himself. Unfortunately, this is not steal-able.
However, each time the Magister casts a spell he gains another great buff - Spell Haste. You can steal this, and it grants you a base 10% increase to spellcasting speed. It stacks each time you re-steal it, and this also resets it to a 30 second timer.
The Magister will refresh his own Spell Haste each time he completes a cast, and sometimes you can see him with 2 or 3 buffs on him. By stealing it, you’re helping improve your groups survivability and you’re giving yourself a nice boost to DPS.
Note that his permanent aura and the temporary buff have the same icon - so it’s only stealable if you see two of those Arcane Blast icons.
Sunblade Blood Knight (Paladin)
The Blood Knight will buff himself with Seal of Wrath fairly often. It only has a duration of 30 seconds, so you won’t get it for very long. However, he does re-buff himself every 30 seconds or so. Be alert, and steal it again.
This is a great damage buff for you. The damage (1131-1269) seems to scale in some way with Spell Damage. If I remember correctly, mine was hitting mobs for an extra 14-1500 (~1000 spell damage).
This is also a really important buff to steal for your tanks survivability. If you leave it up, he’s hitting your tank for an additional 1200 with each swing. Without it, and if Judgement of Wrath is dispelled, he’s pretty puny and you can focus on more dangerous targets if his heal is controlled.
Sunblade Physician (Priest)
I actually don’t remember if the Physician’s buff is steal-able. I’d assume that it is.
The Physician casts Prayer of Mending on another mob. This leads to ~3k healed on various mobs throughout the fight. If you’re quick enough to steal the heal in time, this’ll help shorten the fight for your group. It’ll also help heal you, taking pressure off your healer.
Priestess Delrissa (Third Boss)
Out of all the adds on the third boss, I think that Priestess Delrissa is the only one that has a steal-able buff. I could be wrong… but hers are important to snatch up.
She casts some heals, and like the Ogre Priests in Gruul, you can spellsteal her Renew. In Heroic, this ticks for a total of 3k damage - so it’ll definitely help bring her down quicker if you clear it off of her ASAP.
The key to that fight is quickly killing enough adds to make it manageable, and spellstealing her heal is one way to make it go much quicker. I think you can also spellsteal the Power Word: Shield, but I’m not positive about that.
Watch the Mobs, Steal Anything
There really aren’t any buffs in there that you don’t want to steal. You’ll quickly get used to who has what, but until that point… pay attention to the mobs’ debuff bars and steal anything that pops up!
You’ll be helping your group out, and you’ll be buffing your DPS immensely. Plus, it’s fun to blast things for an extra 1500 Holy Damage with each spell!
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