"Infinitely" Stackable Mage Spellsteal Buff, High Damage For Short Duration (Patreon)

There are many buffs on many NPC's with interesting properties that can be acquired by using the "Spellsteal" ability mages have. Unfortunately for most purposes these abilities have some countermeasures associated with them, usually:

1) They don't work outside of the immediate zone and/or they don't survive a teleport. This is by far the most countermeasure and it is the first thing you need to check if you find something interesting.

2) They are very limited in duration to the point that effectively, as with 1), they can't be used outside the zone.

3) They may not be effective for high-level players or at all.

4) The effect is not strong enough to make a meaningful difference in any other context eg raid or battleground. No spellsteal buffs can be used in arena: there are no exceptions to that rule. 

None of the above applying to the following ability: 

NPC: Altar Warden  Buff: Whirling Winds

Zone: Zul'Dark, Northrend  Sub-Zone: Altar Of Quetz'Lun

This buff has a one minute and thirty seconds duration, it increases cast and attack speed by 10% and increases movement speed by 25%. This stacks infinitely, now I put infinitely in inverted commas in the title because there is an obvious cap in that you can only cast so many spellsteals in one minute and thirty seconds, but the buffs do not overwrite as they do with many spellsteals. 

Newer exploiters may wonder whether a one minute and thirty minute buff is enough to make a meaningful difference in any kind of warcraft content. In fact, with more than half a dozen buffs and some excellent timing it is quite possible to do game-breaking parses which trivialize high-level instanced pve content. The exact explanation for this is complex but broadly speaking the way damage optimization works in wow is to focus all cooldowns into a short period which provide a disproportionate amount of damage, so any increase from an external buff is multiplicative rather than linear.

 You can also destroy battlegrounds (more often than not by the time the buff fades half the enemy team has quit, such is the nature of modern pvp). 

To actually maximize the number of stacks is not trivial. The time-honoured of doing this is to aggro each altar warden with a no-damage attack (for example spellsteal itself) , and move only relatively short distances before stopping to avoid losing the aggro. You should acquire as many mobs as is practical. With random battlegrounds it is best to use the /timer command and enter the battleground just before it fades, which is precisely one minute and thirty seconds after it appears.