Augmentation Evoker GuideMidnight Overview
Augmentation Evoker Changes in Midnight
Augmentation Evokers, it’s time to get excited, because Blizzard has been absolutely cooking when it comes to class changes in the Midnight Alpha. Just about every one of the current 39 class specializations in the game is getting major changes, and this time around Augmentation is no exception.
As things currently stand on the Midnight Alpha, Augmentation players can expect a largely untouched and familiar core rotation, new additions to the Hero Talent trees, powerful new Apex talents to use alongside our cooldowns, and at least one major change to how we buff our allies in combat. Here’s a first look at some of the biggest changes coming to Augmentation Evoker in Midnight.
The big one: Ebon Might is now raid-wide
Turning heads and making headlines is the biggest change coming for Augmentation Evokers in Midnight: Ebon Might will now split its effect evenly among all DPS players in your raid, and Breath of Eons will also scale accordingly. This change has two major implications that will be immediately obvious to Augmentation players in PVE. Ebon Might will no longer require careful micromanagement or setting up Prescience casts well in advance, which is a huge change to the raid gameplay loop while keeping the core rotation relatively unchanged. This also means Ebon Might will naturally provide similar value in both Raid and Mythic+ content, a potentially big improvement to overall output and viability in both major PVE modes.
While I do expect this to be an overwhelmingly popular change, there are of course some obvious consequences of this change that should be at least considered. Being able to swap between damage profiles at different moments of a raid encounter is one of Augmentation’s biggest strengths in high-end raiding, As a result, the potential to shift Ebon Might between different players is currently one of the major modes of skill expression for Augmentation players.
With Ebon Might simplified, it’s also worth taking a look at Augmentation’s other major buffs. Prescience is no longer used for choosing Ebon Might targets and is now simply a baseline 3% buff to Critical Strike. Ebon Might was also used to direct your Shifting Sands buffs, which means that Shifting Sands is now completely determined by proximity (i.e. whichever DPS is closest to the Augmentation player). Motes of Possibility gets additional support from a buffed Inferno's Blessing along with new talent, Clairvoyant, meaning a higher average quality and quantity of damage buffs coming from your motes.
Overall I’m quite happy with what these changes mean for Augmentation’s gameplay in raid. The changes should significantly improve approachability for the spec, which is one of Blizzard’s stated major goals for specs in Midnight, while eliminating the wide skill gap that would often cause players to describe Augmentation as “unbalanceable” in raid content.
If this change leaves anything to be desired, it is perhaps worth asking the question of whether there is enough power remaining in Augmentation’s targeted buffs. Prescience, for example, might be a good target to receive buffs to ensure that Augmentation players are still able to express some degree of skill through choosing specific buff targets. Shifting Sands could potentially prefer Prescience targets to add some power back into Prescience, while reducing cumbersome positional requirements of proximity buffs. Although it’s still quite early to have a strong opinion either way, this is one aspect of Augmentation to keep an eye on as we head into Midnight.
Apex talent Duplicate will have you seeing double
New to Midnight are an additional set of powerful talents added to each specialization talent tree called “Apex” talents. These talents require at least 20 points allocated to the tree before unlocking, similar to the existing capstone talent section, but are not connected by pathing to the rest of the talent tree. With the 4 additional talent points obtained while leveling up to 90, you could put these points into the existing tree, but if the current Midnight Alpha build is any indication, Augmentation Evokers are not likely to pass on these Apex talents.
Talent tree pathing of Augmentation Apex talent, Duplicate, compared with Shadow Apex talent, Void Apparitions.
Augmentation’s Apex talents begin with Duplicate, causing your Breath of Eons to summon a copy of yourself “from the future” that also casts your main damaging abilities: Fire Breath, Upheaval, Eruption, and Living Flame. The copy casts abilities on its own, and its spell casts generally don’t interact with your spells. Pathing to the left will cause your spells to extend Duplicate’s duration just like Ebon Might, while pathing to the right will double the power of your Ebon Might while your Duplicate is active. Augmentation’s talent tree actually allows you to choose which Apex supporting nodes you want to take, but as it stands you will almost certainly want to spend all four points on these effects.
My Duplicate, casting a huge Fire Breath at an unsuspecting training dummy.
At this stage I am quite optimistic about Duplicate as an Apex talent. As it stands, Duplicate is very strong, and reinforces the spec’s existing playstyle. Being tied to Breath of Eons encourages you to further ensure you have resources available for your major cooldown windows, and its interactions with Ebon Might ensure that Augmentation players are still focused on applying and extending their major buffs.
Of course, Duplicate is quite on-brand for Augmentation Evokers, who have already been employing alternate timeline versions of themselves for quite some time (just never mind the ethical implications of Defy Fate.) Duplicate feels like a natural addition to the Augmentation Evoker toolkit, and while summons and pets can be a pain point for bugs and mechanics, I’m quite looking forward to playing with these talents in Midnight.
The squad is back in action with new Hero Talents
When it comes to Augmentation’s Hero Talents, Scalecommander has been the overwhelming favourite over Chronowarden in PVE for some time now. As it stands, this is unlikely to change heading into Midnight, but things could certainly shift with changes, tuning, or even simply further testing.
Each Hero Talent tree is getting three new talent nodes to pick up on the way to level 90, and for Augmentation these have clearly been inspired by the Manaforge Omega tier sets. While the tier sets were generally fun and well-received, these powered-down versions do leave a bit to be desired.
Chronowarden
Chronowarden's new talent Chronoboon is perhaps one of the only new talents that absolutely needs to be revisited. The original version of this effect reduced Tip the Scales’s cooldown by 60 seconds, meaning that your second use of Tip the Scales would always naturally come off cooldown at the same time as Breath of Eons, regardless of cooldown reduction effects. At 30 seconds, this alignment is gone, and given the amount of power now tied to Breath of Eons, it’s likely that you will simply hold Tip the Scales until Breath of Eons is available, making this talent effectively useless. This talent needs to either remain at 60 seconds and have Chronowarden tuned accordingly, or it should be reworked entirely.
The other new talents for Chronowarden are quite reasonable in comparison. Overclock adds some additional power to Chrono Flame, while Energy Cycles provides you with even more Essence Burst procs during your major cooldowns. Personally, I am not a huge fan of effects like Energy Cycles—they effectively require you to be extra careful so as to not waste Essence Burst, which will be even harder without combat WeakAuras to track when a proc is coming—but, as a suggestion, this could be creatively addressed by having this effect provide an extra bonus stack of Essence Burst over your baseline two stacks.
Scalecommander
The squadron is back with new Scalecommander talent Command Squadron, essentially copied directly from the Manaforge Omega tier set. It should be noted that these Dracthyr Commandos only cast Pyre during Breath of Eons, and do not stick around afterwards to cast Disintegrate. My one major concern for this talent is that this effect currently relies on watching for a buff on your buff bar that starts with 8 stacks and counts down to 0. This is the exact sort of tracking issue is being addressed elsewhere in Midnight class design, as Blizzard looks to remove reliance on combat WeakAuras. Solutions for this one could involve simply having this buff trackable on the new Blizzard Cooldown Manager, or having a HUD element or other visual to indicate when these Pyres have been cast.
How Command Squadron is currently tracked on the Midnight Alpha.
Concentrated Power and Refined Essence are simple, solid, and direct increases to Augmentation’s damaging spells. It should be noted that Concentrated Power does cause Mass Eruption to deal increased damage below four targets, a welcome change from the tier set version of this effect.
Finally, as all good things must come to an end, Slipstream is getting nerfed in Midnight to only provide one charge of Hover when Breath of Eons is cast. Slipstream is a major source of Hover uptime on Live, and you can definitely feel the difference playing with and without it, so this isn’t an entirely surprising change. That said, rest in peace, old Slipstream, you will be missed.
Taking aim at Evoker defensives
As of the time of writing, in the most recent build of the Midnight Alpha, Blizzard has made some big changes to Evoker defensives. With an eye towards reducing button count, these changes do significantly affect the defensive potential of all Evoker specs, including Augmentation.
Renewing Blaze and Twin Guardian, as we know them, have been removed. Renewing Blaze has now been baked into Obsidian Scales, and Twin Guardian has been completely reworked, no longer providing a shield effect. The real strength of Evoker defensives on Live is that these are separate effects and are used to handle different mechanics: Obsidian Scales can reduce spiky incoming damage, Twin Guardian can mitigate one big hit on you and an ally, and Renewing Blaze can essentially nullify rot damage.
It remains to be seen how Evoker will fare in challenging content, and there are a lot of moving parts here to consider. Changes to healing in raids, along with the removal of defensives from other classes, could certainly reduce the impact of these changes. Additionally, Evoker’s class defensive tools are proactive in nature, meaning players need a high degree of knowledge and awareness to make the most of these abilities. If you haven’t already pressed one of these abilities and you take a big hit, you’re in trouble. It’s not entirely surprising to see Blizzard take aim at this aspect of the class’s toolkit, but we’ll simply have to see how things shake out.
On the topic of survivability, there are two more changes coming in Midnight specifically for Augmentation. Improved Defy Fate is a new talent that will be an attractive option for players looking for a bit of extra survivability and not interested in Bestow Weyrnstone or Timelessness. Last but not least, Stretch Time has been moved to the class tree, and now staggers 100% of damage taken, up from 50%.
Stretch Time can be a useful defensive option for Augmentation Evoker, reducing some of the obvious risk that comes with casting Breath of Eons, and it makes a tremendous amount of sense to add this ability to the Evoker class tree, especially with Scalecommander Devastation Evokers casting Deep Breath even more frequently in Midnight. That said, if this effect is too strong, it could absolutely lead to players holding Breath of Eons or Deep Breath specifically for use as a defensive, which I don’t think many would consider fun or interesting. My hope is that Blizzard is able to strike a balance where Breath of Eons remains less dangerous to cast, while not becoming a pseudo-immunity that you might use to specifically cheese mechanics.
Finally, while not strictly a defensive ability, I’d like to give a special shoutout to new class talent Strike from Above which slightly improves mobility while using Glide. This talent is reasonably accessible to all DPS Evoker players, and from the looks of things on the Midnight Alpha, will probably find its way into many PVE talent builds. File this one under "unexpected, but welcome new additions".
Quick comparison showing off the new Strike from Above class talent on the Midnight Alpha.
Thoughts on the road ahead
Overall, I am incredibly excited for Augmentation Evoker in Midnight. It is still early days in the Midnight Alpha, and there is still much room for testing and iteration. For example, it remains unclear at this stage exactly how raid-wide Ebon Might will behave in specific situations, like when a player goes out of range, or dies in combat. Many Augmentation players will also be directly affected by the big changes coming to addons in combat, with things like allied buff tracking and Cell spotlight frames directly in the crosshairs.
The combination of sweeping class changes and "addon apocalypse" make this an especially exciting moment when it comes to the overall direction of combat in World of Warcraft. I am looking forward to playing Augmentation in the new expansion, and can’t wait to cover all of the changes a little closer to launch.
