This past week, Blizzard finally unveiled what the World of Warcraft combat design team has been working on for the game’s upcoming expansion, Midnight, and oh boy, have they been cooking. Along with a brand new Demon Hunter specialization and major changes coming to the game’s UI, every one of the game’s existing 39 class specializations can expect major changes when the expansion drops early next year.
In World of Warcraft: Midnight, Blizzard is tackling approachability and accessibility in combat as a top priority. This is being addressed by reducing buttons across the board, simplifying cooldowns, and reworking rotations with overlapping conditions largely solved by WeakAuras. With this in mind, and while some specializations can expect massive changes to their playstyle, I am quite pleased with what’s we’re seeing for Augmentation Evokers on the Midnight Alpha.
Unlike other specializations, Augmentation players should not expect major changes to the base rotation, but at least one of the changes coming for Augmentation has massive implications for how players will approach the specialization in the upcoming expansion. Here are some of the big changes coming for Augmentation Evokers in Midnight!
Ebon Might now affects all players in your raid
Since Augmentation Evoker first released in Patch 10.1.5, one of my biggest design critiques involved how players select buff targets in a raid setting. In the Live game, Ebon Might applies to up to 4 DPS players, starting with those with your active Prescience buff, with the rest determined by their proximity to you. In practice, this means achieving an optimal buff spread involves carefully pre-selecting targets using your Prescience buff far in advance of casting Ebon Might, and positioning carefully among your allies whenever possible. Augmentation’s gameplay encourages extending Ebon Might duration for as long as possible, but optimal gameplay encourages you to ensure it occasionally drops at key moments in order to choose new targets, rather than extend the existing buffs.
Official Midnight Alpha Patch Notes
- Ebon Might now grants 8% primary stat (was 5%).
- Ebon Might is now applied to all damage dealing allies within 100 yards.
- Ebon Might now splits its effect when applied to more than 2 other allies and is no longer is limited to 2 maximum applications.
- (Breath of Eons’ debuff) Temporal Wound now reduces its effect when Ebon Might is applied to more than 2 allies.
In the current Midnight Alpha, Ebon Might now applies to all DPS players in your raid, splitting the total value of the main stat buff across all players. Additionally, Breath of Eons will also scale according to the number of targets affected by your Ebon Might.
This single change is absolutely massive, and will go a long way in both making Augmentation raid gameplay feel more approachable. Also, this will reduce the massive potential output gap across players of varying skill and group compositions, making future balance tuning will be significantly easier for the team at Blizzard. Finally, you can use Prescience as an active buff rather than a setup tool for selecting Ebon Might targets, and this essentially removes any need for players to intentionally drop Ebon Might.
While I am generally optimistic about this change, there are a couple of things that I would like to keep an eye on. With this change, Prescience becomes Augmentation’s only targetable buff, which certainly now limits skill expression through target selection. There is also no way to direct Shifting Sands towards specific players, meaning one of your largest buffs will still be applied purely by proximity. This change also naturally removes the cap of two Ebon Might buffs per player, and further testing is needed to understand exactly what that means for groups with multiple Augmentation Evokers. All said, suffice it to say I am solidly excited for this change.
New Apex Talents: Summon a Duplicate
In Midnight, all class specializations will receive new talents to the capstone section of the specialization talent tree called Apex talents, which are are separated from the rest of the tree, and are generally quite powerful.
Official Midnight Alpha Patch Notes
- Apex Talents: Duplicate
- Breath of Eons summons a version of you from the future to assist you in battle, lasting 20 seconds. Your duplicate casts Eruption, empower spells, and Living Flame.
- Any time you extend Ebon Might, your duplicate is also extended, equal to 50/100% of the amount you extended Ebon Might by.
- While your duplicate is active, your Ebon Might is 100% more effective and Upheaval and Eruption deal 25% increased damage.
For a total of 4 points, casting Breath of Eons will summon a Duplicate, a “version of you from the future” that lasts for a base 20 seconds and casts your main rotational abilities. Extending Ebon Might will also extend your Duplicate‘s uptime, and having your Duplicate active will empower your Ebon Might and Eruption.
Fans of the current Scalecommander tier set should certainly be excited by the prospect of recruiting yet another ally to the cause, and at least this time they will cast Augmentation spells instead of Pyre and Disintegrate. It should be noted that your Duplicate does not currently copy your exact spell casts, instead casting its own rotation of abilities; it’s also not clear at this stage which, if any, of your talents affect the Duplicate‘s damage output.
The Augmentation Evoker Apex talent, Duplicate, and the Shadow Priest Apex talent, Void Apparitions.
Interestingly, unlike many other Apex talents, Duplicate currently appears in the middle of its supporting talents, allowing you a bit more flexibility in how you allocate your talent points. While the Apex talents are generally strong enough to warrant the point spend, I still appreciate having the choice.
These talents currently look to be a tad stronger for Scalecommander than Chronowarden, given additional uptime afforded by Breath of Eons. That said, on the whole these talents look to be a fun and flavourful addition to Augmentation Evoker, and I expect fighting alongside another “me” should prove to be rather amusing, to say the least.
New Hero Talents: Borrowing from the 11.2 tier sets
Fans of the Manaforge Omega tier sets, designed around the Chronowarden and Scalecommander hero talent trees, should be happy to see these next changes. Midnight is bringing big changes to the existing hero talent trees, including three new talents for each tree, and for Augmentation Evoker, the team was not shy in drawing inspiration from our latest round of tier sets.
Official Midnight Alpha Patch Notes
- Chronowarden
- New Talent: Chronoboon – Tip the Scales’ cooldown is reduced by 30 seconds.
- New Talent: Overclock – Chrono Flames’ maximum damage or healing is increased by 40%, up to 350%.
- New Talent: Energy Cycles – Temporal Burst grants Essence Burst every 6 seconds.
- Golden Opportunity has been redesigned – Now increases the effectiveness of Echo by 10% or the duration of Prescience by 15%.
For Chronowarden, we’re essentially getting a toned down version of the 11.2 tier set, except notably reducing Tip the Scales by only 30 seconds rather than a full minute. I do find this to be a bit of a surprising choice; having Tip the Scales on a 1:30 base cooldown will cause it to desync from Breath of Eons, which seems less than ideal for Chronowarden given the additional power being afforded to both Temporal Burst (through Overclock and Energy Cycles) as well as Breath of Eons (through Duplicate).
Golden Opportunity no longer randomly causes Prescience to double in duration, now simply buffing every cast of Prescience by a fixed amount. This is a less impactful change when taken alongside the change to Ebon Might targeting, but will provide some additional consistency to the rotation.
When it comes to Energy Cycles, additional Essence Burst is always welcome, but players will need to be careful to not overcap, which will be harder in Midnight without the assistance of a dedicated WeakAura. Perhaps Essence Burst provided by Energy Cycles could simply ignore the existing cap of 2 stacks, which would certainly make this much more manageable… just a thought, Blizzard!
Official Midnight Alpha Patch Notes
- Scalecommander
- New Talent: Command Squadron – While flying during Breath of Eons or Deep Breath you are assisted by a squadron of Dracthyr who assault enemies with Pyre, dealing Fire damage to nearby enemies up to 8 times.
- New Talent: Concentrated Power – Mass Disintegrate or Mass Eruption strikes 1 additional target.
- New Talent: Refined Essence – Essence abilities deal 15% more damage.
- Slipstream now grants a charge of Hover instead of granting full charges.
For Scalecommander, Blizzard has also borrowed parts of the 11.2 tier set, as your Dracthyr squadron will make a return in Midnight. It should be noted that this squadron only flies alongside you during Breath of Eons, and will not stick around afterwards to cast Disintegrate. Some players on Live servers employ a WeakAura to help track the number of Pyres remaining, as it can be tricky to stare at your buff bar in the midst of combat. Hopefully there will be a good way to track these stacks with the UI changes coming in Midnight!
At least we have this super helpful buff…
In the space of things that were too good to last forever, Slipstream is finally getting nerfed to only provide one charge of Hover, rather than refreshing both charges. This will still be quite a good talent to take, but obviously not providing quite as much value in Midnight. Rest in peace, pre-nerf Slipstream, you will be missed.
What else is new?
While that covers the biggest changes coming to the specialization, there are a whole bunch of smaller changes coming to Augmentation that you should definitely know about before diving into the new Midnight expansion.
Official Midnight Alpha Patch Notes
- New Talent: Clairvoyant – Motes of Possibility may now grant Prescience to allies and have a 10% increased chance to activate.
- Inferno’s Blessing now only targets you and 1 nearby ally (was all allies with Ebon Might). New visual of a flame sprite added to represent the blessing. Damage increased to 350% spell power (was 88% spell power).
With the changes to Ebon Might, Prescience is now free to be applied randomly to targets, and the new talent supporting Motes of Possibility makes your motes even stronger by allowing them to also provide Prescience. Coupled with the buff to Inferno’s Blessing, Motes of Possibility can now provide three reasonably strong damaging buffs, with only one defensive buff in the form of Symbiotic Bloom: a big buff to a talent that is already quite popular on Live.
Official Midnight Alpha Patch Notes
- Ignition Rush has been relocated to Rockfall’s location and now increases the damage of Eruption by 20%.
- Rockfall has been removed.
While Rockfall is, of course, a must-take talent on Live, the talent was only recently added to the game in Patch 11.1; it’s fair to say that the talent had a short, but good run. Ignition Rush is, for all intents and purposes, a much more impactful talent, which has a meaningful and noticeable effect on your moment-to-moment gameplay. The additional damage to Eruption is basically icing on the cake: a good talent made great, and moved out of the capstone area of the tree, making room for choices like Clairvoyant.
Official Midnight Alpha Patch Notes
- Regenerative Chitin has been redesigned – Blistering Scales no longer loses charges and deals 20% more damage.
- Molten Blood absorption increased by 30%.
Last but not least, we’re actually getting some changes to Blistering Scales for the first time in a while. On the Midnight Alpha, Blistering Scales now lasts one hour, matching Source of Magic and other similar player-targeted, persistent buffs. The change to Regenerative Chitin essentially makes Blistering Scales completely set-and-forget, and the additional damage will definitely help make the talent more appealing: as it stands on Live, many players have opted out of taking Blistering Scales, especially in raids, given its minimal impact overall. The buff to Molten Blood is also appreciated, but it remains unlikely that this talent will be chosen for PVE content at this level of tuning, given how it compares against similar effects like Twin Guardian.
And that’s it for now! What do you think of these changes? You can let me know in the Community Discord. And of course, be sure to check out the Official Midnight Alpha Patch Notes for the full list of changes.
Cheers, and see you in the next one!