Augmentation Evoker Guide
Class Changes
Here are the Augmentation Evoker changes on the Patch 12.1 PTR.
Developers’ notes: The additional stopping power created by Duplicate-cast Upheavals was more warping to dungeon gameplay than desired, and could be frustrating in some situations due to its uncontrolled timing.
Apex Talent: Duplicate – Upheaval casts by your Duplicate no longer knock enemies into the air.
Panacea healing increased by 25%.
Living Flame healing increased by 25%.
Verdant Embrace healing increased by 25%.
Emerald Blossom healing increased by 25%.
Defy Fate healing increased by 25%.
Molten Blood healing increased by 25%.
Hero Talents
Chronowarden
Double-time has been updated – The additional stats granted when Ebon Might critically strikes now last 15 seconds (modified by Mastery: Timewalker). Double-time’s functionality with Prescience is unchanged.
Developers’ notes: The behavior of an Ebon Might critical strike’s stat bonus lasting for the full duration of the Ebon Might put more emphasis on tracking Ebon Might’s critical state than desired, and created an unintuitive decision space regarding whether re-casting Ebon Might was correct.
On Patch 12.0.7 Live servers, Double-time has two major issues working against it: it is remarkably difficult to track whether or not you have actually crit with Ebon Might, and the effect inherently leads to extremely high variance outcomes where a single dice roll can determine a substantial portion of your overall damage on a given encounter. The new Double-time on the 12.1 PTR aims to address both of these issues by capping the potential value of any one critical Ebon Might, and by giving you a trackable buff when the effect has activated. The buff has not yet been added to the Cooldown Manager, but hopefully this will be addressed soon.
When playing Chronowarden with Time Skip talented, you will still want to track this buff and make sure to avoid re-casting Ebon Might too early, as you might otherwise overwrite an existing Double-time buff and lose any remaining duration. Given that the potency of the effect has not been changed, getting lucky and achieving a critical Ebon Might will still represent a substantial increase in overall throughput. When playing Time Skip, chaining two critical Ebon Mights can provide up to 30 seconds of Double-time value, covering most classes’ full burst window during an opener or other key moment.
The change to Duplicate's Upheaval is also not entirely unexpected. While it was highly amusing sending enemies to the moon throughout Season 1, it did lead to occasionally frustrating moments, including missed interrupts, or enemies leaving melee range entirely. When it comes to raid gameplay, I believe this change is a strict improvement overall. Duplicate has a tendency to cast Upheaval on random small enemies, which can be especially disruptive in encounters where add positioning is a core mechanic of the fight, such as Rotmire, or Alleria Windrunner. Removing this interaction will make these sorts of mechanics much more bearable.
The only other class changes noted are adjustments to healing abilities, consistent with adjustments to other DPS specializations across the board.
Tier Set
Here is the Season 2 Tier Set for Augmentation Evoker.
2-Set Bonus: Upheaval’s cooldown is reduced by 10 seconds.
4-Set Bonus: Upheaval magnifies your Fate Mirror effects for 8 seconds, increasing the amount of damage echoed to 45%.
When it comes to the new season's tier set, initial impressions leave a bit to be desired. Augmentation Evoker had a particularly powerful tier set in Season 1, which played a big role in supporting Ebon Might and Duplicate uptime. Replacing the Season 1 tier set will mean losing the additional extension from Eruption casts, and trading the Fire Breath cooldown reduction for additional Upheaval cooldown reduction. As it stands, a 2+2 setup is actually looking quite attractive, but sets from previous seasons are typically adjusted in such cases alongside the start of a new season.
Overall, the 2pc bonus is a fairly straightforward effect that will directly benefit both hero talent trees, with Chronowarden gaining value through effects like Reverberations and Primacy, and Scalecommander through its various interactions with Mass Eruption.
When it comes to the 4pc bonus, Fate Mirror is certainly not a talent that comes up often in conversations about Augmentation Evoker: to put it bluntly, it’s not exactly the most interesting effect in the kit. Fate Mirror is a secondary effect on Prescience that gives a roughly 10% chance for any individual damage event to “echo” and deal an extra 15% damage. This works out to a modest 1.5% damage increase on each Prescence target while active. Prescience itself generally has an average uptime of at least 200% (i.e. can be maintained at full uptime on 2 players, and occasionally on a third), which gets us to about 3% of an Augmentation Evoker's overall damage before considering this new set bonus.
As it stands, it doesn't seem like the 4pc set bonus encourages any meaningful gameplay changes. There is not much flexibility around when you cast Upheaval; you generally need to cast Empower spells on cooldown in nearly all situations to maximize value. There is a bit more wiggle room with respect to Prescience, but there simply doesn't appear to be any major benefit to deliberately playing around this effect. Adding more power into Prescience technically encourages more deliberate, manual targeting of the spell, but at this point I have yet to be convinced that this set bonus will sway anyone away from the tried-and-true smart buff targeting that most players have enjoyed throughout Season 1.
State of Play
At this point we are still quite early in the testing cycle, and it remains to be seen what will happen in terms of additional changes and balance tuning. As it stands, Augmentation Evoker was a solid performer in Season 1 raids, and one again found itself a place within the most popular Mythic+ group compositions. Both hero talents are also seeing meaningful play: Chronowarden is a popular pick for single-target focused raid encounters, while Scalecommander remains the dominant choice for Mythic+ carried by Bombardments and Wingleader gameplay in AoE. Barring additional changes, Augmentation currently looks to be largely unchanged going into Season 2, and remains a solid option for all PVE content.
There are certainly still a few rough edges when it comes to the spec overall. Ebon Might, for example, currently has strange interactions with certain phasing mechanics and would benefit tremendously from being changed into a dynamic aura-style effect. Mastery and Versatility are still extremely weak secondary stats for Augmentation, which severely limits potential gearing options. Augmentation also has a remarkable amount of power in its Apex talent, which makes rotational downtime particularly punishing, most noticeably for less experienced players. All said, none of these issues are particularly game-breaking, and Augmentation feels quite comfortable as Season 1 comes to a close. With that in mind, Blizzard does seem to be playing things a bit safe, as class changes are focused and few, and the upcoming tier set is effective but perhaps not the most exciting in terms of novel gameplay. I do think Blizzard has found its footing with Augmentation so far in Midnight, and I am quite looking forward to continuing to enjoy playing the spec in Season 2.
