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Most often, a buff refers to a temporary beneficial spell or effect placed on a player. Buffs can range in effect from simple personal shields to buffs which augment almost every category of stats a given player may have for their race or class.

Buffs can be of two types: those that expire over time (simple buff like Arcane Intellect) and those that are dependent of the environment around you (like the AoE effect given by totems).

You can dismiss either buff by right-clicking on its icon.

Most buffs do not stack with other similar buffs. One prominent exception is heal over time spells, heal over time spells from multiple characters and different heal over time spells from the same character (such as a druid's Regrowth and Rejuvenation) will stack with eachother.

Buff can also be used as a verb, i.e. "to buff" means to apply buffs.

Buff is also used to represent a change to a class or ability that makes it more effective or useful. It is the opposite of a nerf.

Buffs by Effect[]

Combat based buffs[]

  • Strength, Agility, Stamina, and Intellect increased by 5% and increased magical resistances.
    • Druid [Mark of the Wild] Lasts 1 hour.
    • Paladin [Blessing of Kings] Lasts 1 hour.
    • Note: the casting of Kings cancels MoW. If your group has both a Druid and Paladin, the Paladin should not cast Kings!
    • Drums of Forgotten Kings is crafted by Leatherworkers. Increases Strength Agility, Stamina, and Intellect by 4% and all magical Resistances by 52. Lasts 30 minutes. Recommended for Level 80.
    • Drums of the Burning Wild is crafted by Leatherworkers. Increases Strength, Agility, Stamina, and Intellect by 4% and all magical resistances by 78. Lasts 1 hour. Recommended for Level 85.
  • Mana (+5401 maximum Mana at Level 85)
  • Haste - Increases group's melee, ranged, and casting speed by 30%

Non-combat buffs[]

By class[]

Death Knight Death Knight[]

Druid Druid[]

Hunter Hunter[]

Mage Mage[]

  • Arcane Intellect - Increases maximum mana and spell power.
  • Focus Magic - Increases the target's chance to critically hit with spells by 3%. When the target critically hits your chance to critically hit with spells is increased by 3% for 10 sec. Cannot be cast on self.

Paladin Paladin[]

  • Auras - Auras affect the Paladin's party/raid.
  • Blessings - Blessings affect everyone in a paladin's party/raid. Only one blessing can be active on a party/raid per paladin at a time. Blessings can also be put on single targets only if the target is not in your party. All Blessings last 1 hour.
    • Blessing of Might - Increases attack power by 10% and restores mana based on level.
    • Blessing of Kings - Increases Strength, Agility, Stamina, and Intellect by 5% and increases magical resistances by level. Note: Kings is exactly the same buff as a Druid's Mark of the Wild.
  • Hands - Hands are very short term buffs that affect only a single group member.
    • Hand of Reckoning - A paladin's taunt. Usable against mobs to get them off others in the group.
    • Hand of Protection - Target is protected from all physical attacks for 10 seconds, but during that time they cannot attack or use physical abilities.
    • Divine Protection - Target takes 20% less damage for 10 seconds.
    • Hand of Freedom - Target is granted immunity to movement impairing effects for 6 seconds.
    • Hand of Salvation - Target has their total threat reduced by 2% every 1 sec. for 10 seconds.
    • Hand of Sacrifice - Target transfers 30% damage taken to the Paladin. Lasts 12 sec or until the Paladin has transfered 100% of their maximum health.
    • Beacon of Light - Direct heals from the casting Paladin also heal the Beacon if the target is within 60 yards. Not affected by Line of Sight.
  • Seal - Seals grant bonuses to the Paladin and allow the use of Judgement.
    • Seal of Righteousness - Grants each single-target melee attack additional Holy damage.
    • Seal of Insight - Gives each single-target melee attack a chance to heal the Paladin and restore 4% of the paladin's base mana.
    • Seal of Truth - Causes single-target attacks to Censure the target, which deals (additional Holy damage over 15 sec. Censure can stack up to 5 times. Once stacked to 5 times, each of the Paladin's attacks also deals 15% weapon damage as additional Holy damage.
    • Seal of Justice - Causes each single-target melee attack to limit the target's maximum run speed for 5 sec and deal additional Holy damage.

Priest Priest[]

  • Power Word: Fortitude - Increases Stamina for group. Lasts 1 hour.
  • Power Word: Shield - Shields a target from some damage. Lasts 30 seconds.
  • Power Infusion - Increases spell casting speed by 20% and reduces the mana cost of all spells by 20%. Lasts 15 seconds.
  • Shadow Protection - Increases Shadow resistance for group. Lasts 1 hour.
  • Fear Ward - Wards the friendly target against the next Fear attack. Lasts 3 minutes.

Rogue Rogue[]

  • Tricks of the Trade - Redirects all threat caused by the rogue's attacks to the targeted raid member for 5 seconds, and increases their damage by 15% during this time.
  • Master Poisoner - Increase the critical hit chance of all attacks made against any target you have poisoned by 1,2,3%
  • Savage Combat - all physical damage caused to enemies you have poisoned is increased by 2,4%

Shaman Shaman[]

Warlock Warlock[]

Warrior Warrior[]

Racial buffs[]

DraeneiDraenei Draenei

  • Heroic Presence - 1% increased chance to hit with all spells and abilities. Affects all group members.

List of notable buffs from environment[]

Lordaeron's Blessing[]

Increases stamina by 5%.

Lasts: 30 min

How to get: Take control of the northpass tower in Eastern Plaguelands, click the altar that appears outside the door.

Notes: Persists in Scholomance and Stratholme, and persisted in the original Naxxramas.

Fire Resist[]

Increases fire resistance by 83.

Lasts: 1 hour

How to get: Mind Control (either by the Priest spell or the Engineering device) a Scarshield Spellbinder, found in Blackrock Spire.

Notes: Sometimes the tooltip will say differing amounts of Fire Resistance, but the buff always provides 83 resistance. Stacks with Paladin aura.

Rallying Cry of the Dragonslayer[]

Increases critical chance of spells by 10%, melee and ranged by 5% and grants 140 attack power, for characters below level 61.

Lasts: 2 hours

How to get: When the head of Onyxia or Nefarian is returned the players located in (or nearby) Orgrimmar or Stormwind are buffed with this buff.

Spirit of Zandalar[]

Increases all stats for a value depending on level for 2 hours.

(Old Effect: Increases movement speed by 10% and all stats by 15% for 2 hours.)

Duration: 2 hours (As of 1.11, this buff no longer persists through death)

How to get: When the Heart of Hakkar is turned in to Molthor on Yojamba Isle as part of The Heart of Hakkar quest, players on the Isle and in Booty Bay will receive the buff.

Warchief's Blessing[]

Blessing of the Warchief: Increases health by 300. 15% haste to melee attacks. 10 mana regen per tick.

Lasts: 1 hour

How to get: When the head of Rend Blackhand is returned after a player completes "For the Horde!", the end of the first part of the Onyxia prequest chain, all players located in Orgrimmar are buffed with this buff.

Songflower Serenade[]

Increases critical strike rating and spell critical strike rating by 70 and all attributes by 15.

Lasts: 1 hour

How to get: Cleanse a Corrupted Songflower in Felwood.

Buffs, debuffs, and raid stacking in WotLK[]

In the Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'Module:Inlinegfx/img_link_data.json' not found. expansion, buff stacking and whether buffs affected the raid versus only the party were significantly changed. Here is the official release of this change from Blizzard on the forums:

Blizz
2008-08-29 00:20 | Vaneras
With the release of patch 3.0.2 players will see a change in the way we allow buffs and debuffs to stack exclusively in a raid. For the most part, what this change means is that many buffs and debuffs that were previously allowed to stack together no longer can, and that many buffs and debuffs that only a single talent specialization could bring can now be brought by multiple different specializations. The philosophy behind this change shows up in many of the changes we have made in Wrath of The Lich King, such as when we made almost all buffs raid-wide. We want players to be able to form raids and parties based on who they want to play with, rather than who has the correct talents and abilities to min-max their raid performance.

Raid composition will still matter to some extent, but without this change, it would have overwhelmed every other aspect of raid planning (as we added new capabilities to each of 30 different talent trees). You no longer need to rigidly control the melee/spellcaster balance of your raid, or make sure every group has all the critical buffing classes, etc. This change has many class balance implications.

IMPORTANT! Before we are done, we will thoroughly test the performance of every class. It should not be assumed that one class' current performance relative to others in beta is final. Some classes (and specializations) will need to be reduced in power and some increased. Many may feel the change has more impact on class X than class Y. We will address all of those concerns via our internal testing and community feedback.

There are thirty or so different categories into which buffs and debuffs fit. Here you will find a comprehensive list of the changes made broken down by category and which spells/talents are in that category.

In each category, you can only benefit from the most powerful spell granting that effect. For example, Fel Intelligence grants spirit and intellect, both weaker than Arcane Intellect and Divine Spirit. If a player has Fel Intelligence and receives a stronger Arcane Intellect buff, he will gain the intellect value from Arcane Intellect and the spirit value from Fel Intelligence.

In most cases, fully-talented players will have exactly equal power on the strength of these buffs and debuffs. Fel Intelligence is an example of where one ability is weaker than others. The buffs in the "Increased Spell Power Buff" category are also not all the same potency, as they scale and grow in radically different ways. In virtually every other case, however, the buffs are equal. This means, for example, that fully-talented Battle Shout and Blessing of Might now grant the exact same amount of attack power.

In addition to this change, we also needed to address the "mana battery" roles in a raid. The mana regeneration effect they grant is no longer limited to their own party, and it no longer depends on the amount of damage they deal. Each time they trigger the mana regeneration effect, 10 people in their raid group will receive a buff which causes them to regenerate 0.5% of their maximum mana each second. This buff, Replenishment, will be given preferentially to raid members with the lowest mana, but will re-evaluate which raid members receive it each time it is fired. Replenishment is provided by Shadow Priests, Survival Hunters, and Retribution Paladins.

Finally, we have modified Heroism and Bloodlust to affect the entire raid. However, all affected raid members will be unable to cast or benefit from Bloodlust/Heroism for 5 minutes.

Below you will find a list of the changes to abilities which exhibit new behavior regardless of the exclusive categories. The changes usually mean the old behavior was removed and replaced by the new behavior. Numbers listed are for maximally-talented versions. Here is that list of changes:

  • [Improved Scorch]: Increases spell critical strike chance against the target.
  • [Winter's Chill]: Also increases spell critical strike chance against the target.
  • [Elemental Oath]: Grants 5% spell crital strike to raid members.
  • [Improved Moonkin Aura]: Grants 3% haste of all types.
  • [Earth and Moon]: Increases spell damage taken from all schools by 13% on the target.
  • [Misery]: Causes spells cast at the target to have +3% spell hit.
  • [Shadow Weaving]: Buffs only self.
  • [Improved Shadow Bolt]: Buffs only self.
  • [Expose Weakness]: Buffs only self.
  • [Shadow Embrace]: Buffs only self.
  • [Blood Pact]: Grants health instead of Stamina.
  • [Fel Intelligence]: Has replacement ranks that grant flat values of Intellect and Spirit.
  • [Frost Aura]: Excludes properly against all other resistance buffs.
  • [Grace]: Reduces damage taken by target by 3%.
  • [Rampage]: Increases melee and ranged critical strike chance by 5% for the raid.
  • [Improved Faerie Fire]: No longer benefits melee and ranged hit chance, only spell hit.
  • [Hunter's Mark]: No longer increases attack power bonus from attacks against the target.
  • [Improved Hunter's Mark]: No longer grants melee attack power.
  • [Sting (Hunter pet)]: Now acts as a minor armor debuff.
  • [Waylay]: Attack speed reduction changed to 20%.
  • [Icy Touch]: Only slows melee attack speed (not ranged or spell).
  • [Tree of Life]: No longer grants healing based on spirit, grants 3% increased healing received to raid.
  • [Demonic Pact]: Now buffs raid instead of debuffing monsters.
  • [Focus Magic]: Now buffs raid instead of debuffing monsters.
  • [Totem of Wrath]: Now grants a flat amount of spell damage, and all enemies in its radius have an increased chance of being struck by criticals.
  • [Heroism]: Cannot be recast while caster has Exhausted debuff, and those with Exhausted debuff cannot be affected by it.
  • [Bloodlust]: Cannot be recast while caster has Sated debuff, and those with Sated debuff cannot be affected by it.
  • [Vampiric Touch]: Grants Replenishment mana regeneration buff to up to 10 raid members on dealing damage.
  • [Hunting Party]: Grants Replenishment mana regeneration buff to up to 10 raid members on specified shots.
  • [Judgements of the Wise]: Grants Replenishment mana regeneration buff to up to 10 raid members on Judging.

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See also[]

External links[]

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