Don't bother with Rochester... they're mostly low powered and don't offer anything that Buffalo doesn't already have. Really, a couple degrees can make a difference in reception of distant stations, so you're really going to need to have someone fine tune the antenna while someone else sits there watching the signal level (assuming you're going for HDTV - otherwise you'll just have to watch the ghosting).

Amplifiers are only really useful for overcoming loss due to signal splitting (to multiple TVs). More practical would be a preamplifier, which amplifies the signal right close to the antenna where it's as good as its going to get - but remember that you can't amplify something that isn't there or isn't strong enough to be improved any by amplifiing. And depending on the quality of the amplifier, you can overload it with close stations and make things worse.

Finally, if you're trying to get stations from cities in different directions, you're really going to have to get a rotor.