I mean, it’s literally accurate though. If you’re playing with bad players and you’re a bad Aug, you’re gonna be getting particularly bad results.
That doesn’t mean that Dev is a particularly good spec right now, though; Blizzard keeps on buffing it massively and it’s still largely a throw pick when the far superior spec that if played even remotely well with an even remotely competent group will contribute more meaningfully to your group, even beyond buffing extreme damage profiles even further.
There’s nothing to disagree about here. Aug is quite literally just the superior spec and Dev has no purpose as long as Aug exists in its current form.
You are literally disregarding the fact that as long as Auvoker does not have the personal DPS capability of Devastation (which it doesn’t and I know it doesn’t) that if one of the other party members whose a full DPS dies, it has a much bigger impact then having the Auvoker die.
Picking Auvoker trades a genuine DPS for someone who can buff the party’s damage instead to make up for the fact you are missing one of three genuine DPSers. Having the Auvoker die would be no different then having a genuine dpser die because now the Auvoker is dead and can’t buff the party. But if one of the two genuine DPSers dies there is nothing the Auvoker is gonna be able to do to make up for that missing damage.
Yes Auvoker is a strong spec, even I recognize that. But I’d rather be the one who dies if I’m the Auvoker because I know for a fact if one of the two genuine DPSers dies there wont be anything I can do to compensate for that. It is factual that Auvoker’s personal DPS is inferior to a genuine DPS.
Also telling someone there is nothing to disagree with, is arrogance plain and simple. If you have your own personal preferences for party composition that is fine, but personal preference is simply that, personal preference. You want to feel that an Auvoker contributes more, fine that’s up to you and whomever else agrees, but implying that anyone who feels differently is wrong is just arrogant and just comes off as you trying to shoe horn your opinions on others.
And my argument is, if all you need is Damage, Dev is better than Aug. You of all people should know that you don’t need an Aug to survive in low 20 keys, so if it is a choice for Dev or Aug for Bloodlust/rescue skips/handling affixes like Afflicted or just the third DPS in a pug, between equally-rated/experienced Dev/Aug players, Dev will be better.
It’s not an opinion, my guy. Aug is literally better if you and the people you’re playing with are better.
Use this energy for something meaningful, like pushing to get Aug deleted from the game. Dev will never be a relevant spec in any even remotely serious content so long as this dumpster fire of a spec is allowed to exist.
Lol that whole entire comment you just made is a dumpster fire. Even if Aug was removed, you’re implying heavily that Devastation isn’t even remotely worth taking in any content no matter what regardless.
Since you seem intent on disregarding the fact that not everyone shares your personal preference, how does this work for you: Take that supposedly high IQ of yours, since you just had to bring IQ into this and get a clue, you have zero right to shoe horn your opinion which is exactly what you are doing by telling anyone that it isn’t an opinion, or is that to hard for your supposedly superior mind?
Do yourself a favor, and recognize you’re not gonna convince me and I’m aware I will not convince you, and just let it go.
Then you’re not reading what I’m saying very closely. I’m implying that you have no reason to play Dev because Aug exists. Dev would be plenty viable if Aug did not exist. You just have zero reason to play Dev because Aug just outclasses it.
At what point is the cutoff for ‘better’ people? Because right now, Devastation is relevant all the way to 3.3k io in 26-27 keys and there are <400 Augvokers who gone higher than Devastation.
In raid, Devastation beats Augmentation with the only exceptions being their buffs on classes during Gnarlroot/Smolderon damage amp phases and when they are buffing triple-DoT specs on Council.
Actually, in a raid setting Aug is a lot higher than it shows on logs. They’ve been fixing some of them periodically, but Aug’s log hooks are extremely broken right now and as such Aug isn’t (or, in fixed cases, hasn’t been) getting damage from an assortment of “damage-of-damage” abilities (Soulscar and Ragefire from DHs being the big ones now, and previously all of Sanguine Blades/Shadow Blades/Blade Flurry until somewhat recently).
If these faulty log hooks were fixed Aug would gap pretty much everything on most fights.
First, thank you for the clarification, my apologies for the misunderstanding, genuine bonus points for that for what it is worth.
But ultimately I do not enjoy Auvoker as much as I enjoy Devastation and even though Auvoker is pretty straight forward and easy to understand I still don’t enjoy it as much as Devastation. Why play a spec I am not having as much fun with nor feel as satisfied or comfortable with?
At the end of it all, Auvoker does not have the personal dps capacity of Devastation, plain and simple. Yes it is a great party support but that’s all it is and I’ll only play Auvoker if I want a more relaxed play style that focuses less on personal DPS and more on supporting the party to improve their dps.
Perhaps that is the crux of the matter: Auvoker doesn’t have as much of an emphasis on worrying about your own DPS and as a result it is easier to play an Auvoker. I can see why people feel that means it contributes more, cause a DPS who isn’t DPSing properly will contribute less then an Auvoker whose even remotely trying.
I think we’re in total agreement on most matters here, honestly.
I’m a huge Aug hater. I was a huge Aug hater from day 1 and I absolutely think Devastation needs some meaningful buffs (which it’s absolutely been getting, FWIW, albeit mostly at the cost of its Mastery being gutted). But the biggest buff Devastation will get by a huge margin would be Aug getting removed. I think the spec just fundamentally doesn’t work in WoW and if it’s tuned to be reasonable by top-level players it’ll still be mandatory at that level and will just be kinda bad when played badly and with players playing suboptimally. Yet even then it still offers so much in the way of group survivability and extreme tankiness on its own to the point where even if it isn’t amazing DPS-wise it’s gonna be able to make up for mistakes other folks are making.
Avoidable things that kill you in a +22 become livable a whole key level or two higher when you have an Aug, and unavoidable things that kill you in a 28 become survivable in a 29 with an Aug. When keys effectively don’t have timers and are just survival checks from start to finish, Aug’s value is kinda bonkers and Dev can’t replicate that no matter how hard it tries, even when its own personal survivability now is surprisingly good after a few buffs over the past several months or so.
Honestly I do not personally hate Auvoker, I actually find it fun. My beef however is that Devastation’s Mastery has been nerfed twice and our spells buffed to make up for it, but ultimately we’ve lost a total of 4% damage if my math right. I used to have a Mastery that gave me 80% more damage that I can use to blast enemies as long as I had Dragonrage+Tyranny (Tyranny is a talent that, if you didn’t know, allows Devastation Evokers to get the full power of their Mastery while Dragonrage is going no matter how low the target(s) hp gets) and I was exploding stuff, but now due to all the nerfs to my Mastery the extra damage I’m getting from my mastery is 31%, this is due to a combination of my Mastery being nerfed and due to those nerfs the secondary stat priority of my spec has changed from favoring a lot of Mastery to more Versatility now x.x
I’ve had people tell me that the nerf isn’t all that substantial because our spells have been buffed, but I definitely feel like my damage has gone down by way more then 4%, yeah I still explode stuff, but yeah…
Anywho, there is still a limit to how many Auvokers you should bring to content, Blizzard even made that apparent. So in a 5 man party for example I can see there being an Auvoker AND a Devoker, cause why wouldn’t you? Not like you need more then one Auvoker in a 5 man anyways.
Yet we’re talking about the general playerbase, not people pulsing 29-30s and getting Week 2-3 CE because almost no one who frequents GD is at that level of play.
The argument that Aug invalidates Dev is kind of a vast exaggeration because the difference between Dev and Aug is effectively one more AoE disruption, a fort buff, and a mass barrier that comes at the cost of priority damage, especially in situations like Waycrest Manor with Soul Thorns or Black Rook Hold with the stinging swarm.
If players don’t make mistakes and aren’t taking fatal amounts of avoidable damage, the survivability gain of Aug is mostly wasted which means you traded damage for little to no value and lower damage done means more damage taken overall and longer kill times so if the damage is survivable in a key without aug, you are adding safety rails and a tighter timer for no reason.
The Aug problem that it is the best choice in the top 1% of content when utilized by the top 1% of players alone does not invalidate every other spec simply because most content done is not at that level because a lot of specs do not appear in the top 1%. There are no priests except discipline, no rogues except for outlaw, no monks except for mistweaver, no hunters except for beast mastery, no warlocks except for demonology, etc etc etc.
There’s always a “yeah, but” with a statement like that…people absolutely will look at that and demand it in lower keys, raids, etc. since it must be “the best way to do it for the easiest and fastest win”.
Hundreds of threads about that. Ad nauseum.
Yes, there are people out there who ignore stuff like that.
No, there aren’t enough of them to make a difference to enough people who watch groups decide to sit and wait rather than waste their time with obviously inferior choices.
In a guild, if there’s any seriousness about progression, it’s the exact same thing. Highest possible potential full stop…even to the point of pulling in someone from outside the guild rather than stoop to deviating from that perceived ideal.
If they would get the classes into a position where the delta wasn’t >30%, then the arguments behind this would mostly evaporate.
Can be done. Why they won’t do it is a completely different discussion.
tinfoil hat
I think they’re using targeted meta evolution to drive play time and token sales. I can’t imagine any other reason for the power disparity between, for example, my Druid and my baby VDH. Baby VDH is an unstoppable tanking god. There’s zero chance someone play tested this and thought it was ok. Ditto for the introduction of Aug, a class so transformational that the entire back half of season 2 will forever have an asterisk after it.
Though that is a case of perception diverging from the reality because Augmentation evokers do not present the best, easiest, or fastest win in the content 99% of the playerbase engage in no matter how much they think it does. Augvokers don’t immediately make guardian druids gods anymore like in S2, for example and for some fights as already mentioned, an Augvoker makes the fights last longer or make them incredibly more difficult by focusing more of the group’s damage into two players instead of three.
The ‘highest potential’ for raid damage would never be aug with an exception being for the three fights already mentioned where you could even attribute an extra 10-20k DPS to an Aug as an over-exaggeration of ‘missing log hooks’ and Dev would still be beating them outside of the three outlier fights.
Then again, I’m just a pug player who applies to 18-22s and just go with whatever I get into first when finishing my weekly 8 for the vault and tends to work out with a ~90% success rate (Mostly accounting for the number of bricked keys in Week 2/3) and of all the groups I’ve joined, only one (1) kicked me after inviting me for playing Dev instead of Aug so I usually haven’t seen many groups demanding Augvokers and the ones that did were rarely the ones worth trying to get invited for (Those 0 timed 20 key holders trying for 21-22s or groups with obvious carries).
Anecdotal, sure, but GD seems to be a bit more wrapped up in the perceived power of Aug (even after the S3 nerfs to Aug and the buffs to Dev) than people running keys, and people running keys without evokers (aug or dev) still claiming how powerful Aug is.