Augmentation Evoker

Classes Evoker
1

Now that were at the end of the expansion, i think it makes sense to provide some input for augmentation evoker from someone who has played the class through mythic raids since its been released.

In mythic plus, the class functions much better than it does in raid. I would like to focus on how it plays in raid as its the main pain point of the class.

Currently, to play it at a high level, you have to go through logs and figure who the best buff targets are for every 30 seconds. For me, i generated a personal note for every boss and used it in conjunction with a weak aura that hi-lights the raid frames of individuals im supposed to buff. If you dont do this work, the class actually does negative damage and is only useful as a raid wide DR.

So i have been thinking about what makes the class bad and i think it boils down to a few things:

  1. Buffing individuals can never be balanced as it will always be reliant on how good the person is youre buffing and not the evoker. If the person being buffed is top tier, the evoker will have massive impact, if not, the evoker will be useless.

  2. Defensive benefits are too high. This is more of a class design issue over multiple classes, but its worth noting that aug is arguably the most durable “dps” class in the game and its not close. This means that outside of mechanics that 1 shot, it trivializes a lot of tuning in boss damage and artificially inflates what can be lived through and what can’t.

  3. There are talents that are considered never takes because the key stone talents are too imbalanced or niche. Some of them sound like they could be really cool, but they can never be balanced. For example theres one that reduces the CDs of other classes, but that can never be balanced because classes like unholy DK burst windows are not the same as enhance shaman burst windows.

I do have some suggestions for improvement that i think could help.

  • The design idea of buffing individual players is not the correct direction. Instead of augmenting players directly, we should be augmenting player damage via debuffs put on the boss. This would allow the rotation to be the same and open up the possibility to add new interactions while eliminating the spread sheet requirements to perform at a high level.

Example, you could make ebon might apply a damage taken debuff that applies to a set amount of mobs. Similarly, you could use prescience to pick which mobs receive ebon might etc.

  • Create unique combos and interactions between spells that make it worth bringing evoker outside of damage or defensives.

Combos like upheaval+landslide becoming seismic slam is super cool, but the talent point gets lost because theres no way to take it and it uses 2 abilities that are impactful on their own and arent always good to use together.

However, if you made it so eruption followed by upheaval created tiny volcanos that spammed living flames for reduced damage but could generate essence bursts for you sounds really good, and always a good combo to do. You could even use it so the living flame heals or deals damage. After all, we know how much you devs love meaningful choice!

Even making something that makes blistering scales no longer provide defensive or offensive capabilities but instead creats an aura around the buffed target that reduces attack and cast speed by x amount. Call it something like temporal sanctuary as it would be the bronze counterpoint the black dragon scales.

  • re-evaluate the way healing is intended to work for the class. If its supposed to be a hybrid then we need to lean into that. If not, then make them 2 clearly different builds. Not just a sprinkle of 1 or 2 talents.

  • explore the notion of augmenting cooldowns without reducing cooldowns. Maybe make it so that they can make all abilities bypass the GCD for a duration.

  • figure out a good way to show what the impact the evoker has on the group. Its very hard to know what the impact is currently and it results in some really frustrated players because.no one wants to feel like they dont do damage or that they have minor impacts. Please fix this.

All in all i really support the idea of a support class. I think its an area of untapped opportunity. But, i also think the fact that even though its a very high perfoming spec in raids, top players from top guilds are not only not wanting to play it but refusing to play it because of how bad it feels currently shouldnt be taken lightly.

2 Likes
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I think “better” should be replaced with “easier” here. I don’t disagree that the micro of raid Aug is super niche and less players tend to enjoy it, but I personally like it a lot better than how brainless it feels in keys. Hopefully they can strike a balance that gives a little extra performance for really discerning the right buff targets without needing to write ERT/MRT scripts to do it.

I suspect they left this idea intact for another potential support spec (warlock/dh maybe) and have potentially abandoned it since. At any rate, I doubt there’s a redesign coming in this way at this point.

I personally don’t feel that this spec, while I’ve enjoyed getting deep into the theorycrafting of it, is viable in the long run.

Imo, the only way to create a modicum of balance is to shift a ton of the power into the personal DPS, and making the EM/sands portions considerably smaller.

This accomplishes keeping the playstyle intact, while giving someone playing at the skill floor (or with poor dps) way more agency than they currently have over their impact.

If, say, 15% of our total DPS came from buffing others, there would still be top end skill expression for those of us that like min/maxing, and a clear way to have that skill show up in the results, but at the same time not feel atrocious to play with subpar DPS or for new players/solo players in general.

I know that’s a jarring idea for people that feel like it loses the support feel, but it actually gives you the ability to be more impactful to your group than you currently are now. Things like totems on vol’kaal, or in throne, or Brack, etc will feel so much better and less burdensome.

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The notion of shifting power into their personal dps while only a portion of their power is in buffing allies removes the reason for it to exist. With this approach, the evoker becomes essentially a shadow priest but with more movement and defensives. I don’t think this approach is viable and it removes identity of the spec.

For the class to be a success we need to find a way to allow the class to augment allies as its primary playstyle but not be so cumbersome in raid and not so overpower in dungeons.

Maybe the approach should be reducing the potentcy of ebon might and making it raid wide instead, but becomes more potent the fewer targets hit. For example, spread 2000 primary stat across the raid of 20 yields a flat increase to primary stat of 100 amongst all players. Maybe later in the fight, 10 people die leaving only 10 people up and now it increases to 200 amongst all players. This would allow scalability to the group in m+ without being immediately overpowered. The problem with this though is that it reduces the urgency to get your rotation correct and doesn’t solve the problem of what to do with prescience.

I don’t see a way to keep it buffing individuals and make it not overpowered or underpowered or make it a pain to figure out the best buff targets.

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They aren’t overpowered in dungeons, they fall more out of favor every day lol.

Shadow priests derive 0% of their log dps from PI (on others), so this is an inaccurate comparison.

The identity of the spec is tied to its utility, not its ability to leech damage from other players. Shifting the ratio doesn’t change anything besides how self sufficient the aug evoker is.

It’s a dps support. Its only reason to exist is to provide dps through primarily buffing others. Making it a 50/50 personal/buff split (or even 70/30), for instance, changes nothing about how we play or what we contribute to a group whatsoever.

The only thing that would change is how much evokers have to focus on performing well themselves instead of being at the mercy (or being carried by) the ability of other players. If the spec plays in raid how it plays in dungeon, it will become a completely braindead spec and will be miserable to play for other reasons than the micro required now.

Hero talents are also an incredibly simple way of doing this without affecting the feel for anyone. You could literally have a talent point that buffs your personal EM buff by a ton while weakening it for others. You would be able to swap to it to do an 18 where you outgear people, or for a dungeon where personal dps matters (again, most totem examples).

A balance has to be struck if the spec is going to be homogenized and made far simpler in raid. You can’t take away the bulk of the skill expression by making it a ‘beacon’ style of play as has been suggested by some, and not shift any of the expression back into the kit somewhere.

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Their defensive capabilities are absolutely over powered in dungeons. Currently, you’re correct that their offensives capabilities are not over powered, but their defensives are. What I’m saying is there needs to be a way to balance it so that they aren’t super strong in one form of content and super weak in another, or vice versa.

The only difference is that it’s harder to derive the damage gain from PI versus not. This is not an inaccurate comparison. This is 100% valid and it’s the reason that shadow priest hasn’t been buffed for a while. You can’t view them as a standalone spec without considering thier impacts on others via buffs.

I agree, with the notion that this changes nothing and that is why it’s a problematic approach. The problem is not the performance of the evoker, it’s that the playstyle is not fun for the majority of the playerbase, and the skill ceiling is super high while the skill floor is also very high. Put simply, its inaccessible to the majority of players despite it being a role that many find appealing.

Frankly, I don’t think you and I are going to agree on how to approach this - and that’s ok. You would prefer to keep the playstyle the same but modify numbers, and I believe that the playstyle is not viable so number tuning isn’t going to help. I firmly believe that the playstyle needs to change or the class will always be over powered or underpowered. There will never be a possibility for it to be balanced with the current playstyle.

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TBH if they want raid aug to have less micromanagement all they would need to do is have it so ebon might and auto-targeted prescience will prefer players in your immediate group. Your raid leader can decide who gets augged from there.

Ebon might could still follow prescience, so the people who really love micromanagement could still have the same level of play, but a more passive approach to playing it would not be terrible either.

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