Intro -
Hello, I wanted to give my thoughts on Augmentation Evoker in Rated Arena PvP. I have been one of the few Evokers adamantly holding out and testing Augmentation through record low participation on this individual spec in Rated PvP. My Credentials: I have been playing Aug since it was first introduced to PTR. I have 4 max level Evokers, 2 of which I got 2640 rating in 3v3 arena on. I was also the #1 Highest Rated Solo Shuffler in NA on my Aug I’m posting on.
My Thoughts on the Current State of Aug -
My first bit of testing lead me to believe Aug was not far off being viable. Since the 10.2.5 patch and recent hotfixes to increase the HP of all players, I now know with STRONG Conviction that Aug Evoker is the worst performing DPS Specialization in Rated Arena.
- This is due to an obvious lack of offensive pressure, we have far too much global cooldown usage bloat due to having 2x prescience charges, ebon might to cast in super fast paced melee games, fire breath to cast for inferno’s blessing buff, then we gotta land a sleep walk on healer to generate any sort of pressure.
Lets Break Down the Problems:
- Tier Set for Season 3 is horrible in PvP: I’m extremely concerned, because this tier set won the Voting Poll for Season 4 Tier Set as well.** You could probably argue this tier set alone is a large reason for Augmentation underperforming so heavily. I love the idea of hoarding fissure damage for our next setup, but the fissures only last 15 seconds, and the cooldown of prescience is 12 seconds. Because Prescience is on the GCD, we have a 3 second window when prescience comes back up to refresh our fissures with it, or all previous fissures fall and we lose all of the pressure from those wasted prescience globals. 6% crit is almost a non factor for a GCD spent in arena, and there is far too much CC preventing us from reliably refreshing fissures in arena. This needs reworked without question, if Aug is to ever return to a viable state in Rated Arena.
- Upheaval undertuned, it does no more damage than Eruption: Upheaval was our bread and butter, 40 second cooldown which is long compare to most specs for a casted spell. This spell received a 10% damage nerf in a somewhat recent hotfix, as well as a 15% damage nerf from losing Season 2’s Tier Set. This lead to a massive 25% drop off in damage for Upheaval, where now, it does very similar damage to Eruption which has no CD, making a 40 sec cooldown “empower” spell feel very unrewarding. It legitimately feels like an Eruption cast that doesnt cost essence.
- Ebon Might is more of a Personal Buff than Team Support Buff: With an emphasis on buffing and supporting teammates, it’s quite ironic that Ebon Might increases our personal damage by 33%, but our teammates by 6.5%. I feel this tuning is way off the mark, and ironic to the identity of the spec and spell. It makes it so us as Augs do no damage without the 33% increase, and our teammates can hardly notice a damage bump with just a meager 6.5% primary stat increase. Augmentation Evoker buffs power fell off nearly 50% in PvP from S2 after multiple nerfs to our mastery, and the Ebon Might nerf from 10% to 6.5%. I feel something must be done here, and this is a huge reason for our lack of offensive pressure is our buffs feel meaningless in rated 3s when we only buff 1 single dps dealer.
- Our Mastery is basically worthless in Rated Arena: Because Eruption casts are soooo long, we have 1 Volcanic school to cast from that locks us out of everything, haste stacking is far and wide the winner here. Why commit all my stats to buffing my teammates versatility by an extra 6% when i can legit have 20-25% more haste to cast quicker. Haste is usually the winner for wizards to begin with, and the power difference here is astronomical.
