It’s outrageous, it’s absolutely unprecedented, and it’s real: there is a new Evoker damage specialization coming mid-expansion in Patch 10.1.5, and it’s called Augmentation.
While considered to be a damage dealer for the purposes of queueing for group content, the Augmentation Evoker marks the first official entry into a long-awaited support archetype, trading individual damage output for indispensable buffs and group utility.
Since its launch almost 20 years ago, World of Warcraft has proudly sorted players into one of three distinct roles for group content (tanks, healers, and damage dealers), defining what would affectionately be described by fans of the genre as the unwavering “holy trinity”. Since Vanilla launched in 2004, we can certainly point to various examples throughout the game’s history of specs being chosen for group content for their unique group effects (like Shadow Weaving, Windfury Totem, Demonic Gateway), and in recent years the Blizzard team has become more vocal in defending design decisions which tilt more in favour of sharing power, such as Power Infusion, or Blessing of Summer.
The Augmentation Evoker is something else entirely. With its gameplay fantasy firmly rooted in supporting others first and foremost, casting spells seemingly inspired by the likes of the Dancer from Final Fantasy XIV and even Lúcio from Overwatch, this spec is nothing like anything we’ve ever seen in the game up to this point. Frankly, with its current level of strength and versatility on the 10.1.5 Public Test Realm, it has the potential to completely upend the group meta and become the cornerstone of any serious team composition, particularly in PVE content.
Let’s start by taking a look at the spec’s core gameplay.
The Main Idea
Occupying the top spot of the Augmentation talent tree and representing the cornerstone of the spec’s core gameplay loop is Ebon Might, a powerful buff which increases your damage, but more importantly provides up to four nearby allies with 10% of your Intellect as their respective primary stat, preferring damage dealers. With the help of a new player frame UI element just to help you track its duration, your main goal as an Augmentation Evoker is to maximize the uptime of this potent ability.
This is primarily achieved through the Sands of Time passive, which causes your Essence spender, Empower spells, and primary cooldown to all extend Ebon Might. This lays the groundwork for the spec’s core spell rotation, combining actively dealing damage with extending buff duration on allies: the more often you cast your spells, the more buffs your allies will receive. One important note is that Sands of Time can critically strike so as to further increase the duration of Ebon Might by an additional 50%, making Critical Strike an interesting secondary stat option for the spec.
Mastery: Timewalker doubles down on dealing damage vicariously through your friends by applying Shifting Sands, a potentially massive Versatility buff to two nearby allies every time you cast an Empower spell, preferring damage dealers. Investing in Mastery not only increases the amount of Versatility shared, but also increases the base duration of all buffs and auras that you cast, firmly establishing Mastery as an incredibly valuable secondary stat for Augmentation Evokers.
Finally in order to somewhat normalize Augmentation Evoker performance across raid and dungeon content, the passive Close as Clutchmates causes Ebon Might and Breath of Eons to be 40% more effective outside of raids as compensation for swapping two damage dealers with a tank and a healer. This simply serves as an additional tuning knob to help balance performance across content, and can easily be adjusted through hotfixes as needed.
A Simple Rotation With A Big Impact
After opening with the spec’s cornerstone ability Ebon Might, Devastation players will find in Augmentation a familiar basic rotation focused around casting Empower spells Fire Breath and Upheaval roughly on cooldown, spending Essence with Eruption, and filling downtime with Living Flame and Azure Strike. In place of a traditional personal cooldown, Augmentation replaces Deep Breath with Breath of Eons to provide yet another layer of group damage amplification on-demand–and that’s it! Well, for the most part.
Similar to Devastation, Augmentation has a deliberately simple core rotation–perhaps even more so, seeing as the spec has only one Essence spender for both single and multi target, as well as no major personal cooldown to significantly alter the optimal rotation. This boils down to the fact that Augmentation also presents itself as a relatively simple spec to pick up and play, while mastery of the spec comes down to strong awareness and effective use of Hover to overcome the spec’s 25 yard range, turret-like cast rotation, and positional requirements to maximize buffs on nearby allies.
Elevate Your Group To New Heights
Of course, that’s not quite all that Augmentation has in store. Prescience adds an additional rotational ability which buffs an ally’s Critical Strike, and can be enhanced to provide you with additional Essence Burst through Anachronism, and even more throughput buffing potential with Fate Mirror.
Draconic Attunements provides you with two unique supporting stances that can be swapped at will, with Black Attunement providing maximum health, and Bronze Attunement providing increased movement speed. When enhanced by Aspects’ Favor, casting Obsidian Scales and Hover will cause you to automatically swap between their respective stances while granting significantly increased effects for a modest duration, essentially matching the utility of staple spells like Wind Rush Totem and Rallying Cry but on a much shorter cooldown.
Blistering Scales is not quite your bog standard tank external. This ability provides your target with high uptime passive Armor equal to 30% of your own, and as a mail-wearing Evoker with the Tempered Scales passive, you are certainly no slouch in that department. Moreover, the shield deals considerable damage to nearby enemies when struck by melee attacks, further enhanced by Reactive Hide. As if that weren’t enough, the Molten Blood talent also applies a large shield to the target for the same duration, making this button particularly flexible to act as both an additional layer of tank survivability, or a standard external for anyone in a pinch.
I’ll wrap up this section up by highlighting the talent Chrono Ward, which further enhances Breath of Eons to provide all allies with a shield at the end of its duration based on the amount of damage dealt by the allied player. While this effect suffers slightly from the fact that major incoming damage does not always necessarily coincide with damage cooldown windows (somewhat like Shadow Priest’s Vampiric Embrace), it still represents a fairly considerable buffer to incoming damage on a relatively short cooldown for the cost of only one talent point, which definitely makes this a great pickup for most content. And of course, if all else fails, you can always Defy Fate.
So What Do I Think?
Augmentation Evoker genuinely has me the most excited I have been in a while about the prospect of a new class or spec, and I have no doubt that I could keep rambling for days about the new skills and talents if left unchecked.
There are of course a number of concerns that will likely need to be discussed and addressed prior to the spec going live in 10.1.5, including balance tuning, combat log enhancements to help measure performance, and most importantly the question of why Timelessness is not available to Devastation Evokers (it’s like they’re taunting us).
Ultimately this spec combines an already wide array of Evoker class utility with an equally impressive spec talent tree full of tools to bring out the best in your teammates and make them shine. Not unlike early concerns around Devastation, Augmentation does ultimately feature a fairly static and simple spell rotation at its core, which admittedly not every player will find entirely fulfilling, especially if feedback with respect to personal performance is limited. That said, this spec is particularly well-positioned to usher in a new era of support gameplay in World of Warcraft, and assuming the major concerns are considered before the spec goes live, I’m beyond excited to play Augmentation Evoker in 10.1.5.
Join the Discord!
Have a question that wasn’t covered in this post? Looking for an inclusive, tight-knit Evoker community to call home? Be sure to check out the Jereico Community Discord Server for a place to ask your questions, share your thoughts and achievements, and post pictures of your cute pets.
Have an awesome day, and see you in the Dragon Isles!
