I know to many this is going to sound like a hot take, but the sheer nature of Augmentation’s buffs makes so Devastation Evoker gets marginalized similarly to the Moonkin/Feral Druids situation.
I think having it’s own unique buff, let’s say 3~5% magical damage increase for the group would at least make them desirable to a group to an extent where you don’t get pressured into swapping to Augmentation.
Before anyone says anything like “We don’t need more incentive for more Evokers” remember that the game already has precedence from Paladins having multiple Auras, the point is not to stack even more Evokers, but to balance things out so people can actually play Devastation, especially in M+
Same could be said for other specs with the same issue. Hunters, ele sham, and feral druids to name a few.
My two cents is I think raid buffs is hurting the game more than helping it.
The biggest issue im seeing between aug and dev is not the damage or buffs they bring, but rather the utility. The difference between the two is pretty big. I’d wager aug would still be brought even if they did half the damage of dev.
I’m not sure if dev having its own group/raid buff is exactly the right way to go, but something does need to change. My experience thus far trying to do m+ as Dev is “You’re not Aug?” “Have you tried it, its busted!” “Guess we’re not timing the key…”<-(and this one on a 17 when we +1’d it when the other dps kept dying to avoidable damage)
I think the big thing is just Aug needs a handful more nerfs, its CRAZY powerful right now, both in terms of buffs and the sheer amount of utility it brings.
Don’t think all of these need to happen can kinda mix and match, but handful of example nerfs I’d like to see
Fate Mirror has different values for damage and healing, so right now it’s 15% for both. I’d like to see something like 15% for damage and 7.5% for healing. Maybe even turn it into a choice node, so Fate Mirror either does 15% for damage and half for healing or 15% for healing and half for damage.
Dream of Spring could probably stand being brought down some, 25% instead of 35% seems like a lot but something in that range.
Ebon Might itself could probably stand a slight nerf, either being brought down to 9% or 9.5%
Breath of Eons temporal wounds could probably stand being brought down to 10% of damage accumulated.
Like I said, I don’t think all those need to happen all at once, but like any 2 and Aug starts to be in a lot healthier place. None of those really address the utility on top of everything else is the thing though, not really sure what to do about that without taking a lot of stuff away.
A big change I’d really like to see is removing Bestow Werynstone from the Aug tree and moving it over into the Evoker tree, being a choice node between it and Rescue with the followup Twin Guardian doing the same thing but affecting whichever you choose.
It’s not as simple as tuning Aug down, if you check WCL you will see Aug overperforming at 95th percentile, but that happens because the interactions of Aug buffs with the inner workings of each different spec (looking at you Unholy DKs and Demo Locks) has different outputs.
Aug performance is directly related to whoever they are buffing, not themselves. If you want to nerf Aug, you need to nerf their prime targets(whom are balanced for a pre-Aug environment) which now are present in an environment where Augmentation exists. This is Power Infusion all over again.
Which is why its better to nerf Aug over everyone else. Some nerfs and it becomes a nice but not required addition, or nerf everyone else and it becomes required for balancing thus repeating PI all over again.
You don’t seem to understand my argument, the gap between a good Augvoker and a bad Augvoker is ridiculously high. Augvoker is at the moment the most Schrödinger spec in the game, being the highest and one of the lowest DPS specs at the same time.
If you nerf the ceiling of the spec the floor is going to plummet along with it to the bottom of the chart.
The only way damage wise to tune Augvoker is to go after the specs that feeds Augvoker high ceiling, which are only a couple specs.
I understand your argument just fine, if its really going to be a support class that expects most of its damage to come from other people then the risk of a bad Augmentation Evoker is always gonna be high. That’s just the risk of it and the nature of the beast.
Nerfing Aug doesn’t drop the floor at the same rate the ceiling drops, the main difference between a bad and good one is knowing when to use abilities same as always for any other class. Just this hurts the bad ones even more cause, their damage primarily comes from everyone else so you do it wrong and pop cooldowns at the wrong time then you just significantly reduced your own and your teams output.
At the high end they’re hitting everything right. Right time, right cds, right everything. And since its main thing is buffing people, doing that correctly buffs everyone to the stratosphere.
Ideally, a good nerf is narrowing the gap between the two ends more then anything. The above proposals might drop the low end like 4% (wouldn’t even notice) while on the high end it’d drop 15-20%. Keeping it useful, while not mandating its inclusion. Or at least, that’d be the goal.
If any lesson can be learned from PI, its that nerfing other classes because of its inclusion just feels bad all around.
How is this the message you’re getting from this conversation?
No, nerfing top end interactions with the main beneficiaries of our buffs does this. Nerfing the spec enough actually just makes the skill floor irrelevant because the spec will be useless at those brackets.
You could technically have different weights to each spec on Ebon Might, or just nerf it’s effect for pets, but that could lead to a gameplay where Evokers avoid such classes to buff, which is just as bad.
But then again the initial point was to make Devastation more enticing to be part of your group, especially for M+. Devastation is the black sheep of the class right now, even though it’s decent on the damage front, both Aug and Preservation bring EVERYTHING that a Devastation brings. People would rather stack Augs than have Devastation, that’s just how bad things got.
Because my preference is a healthy game with freedom of choice not balancing it around one spec thus requiring its inclusion.
Which is exactly what I want to avoid. Nerfing beneficiaries I mean. And useless is a bit hyperbolic, it’ll work plenty fine it just won’t make things a cakewalk.
Not a bad point, both for different weights and making Aug avoid certain classes. Not sure what to do in that regard.
True, the main thing I was saying was just to make Aug the less ‘locked in’ decision. Devastation certainly could use something, part of why I want Werynstone on the Evoker class tree instead. Allows for some interesting play, and it would be a shared utility spreading the benefit of Evoker around.
Doesn’t solve it, but a step in the right direction. Just, straight up buff auras cause problems.
I’m not a designer so I can’t speak to how they would best do it/balance, but an example would be not applying the crit from prescience to certain abilities, like killing spree from fdk. Or changing how much of certain spells DMG can copy over from fate mirror, or having pets receive less DMG, etc.
The are a multitude of ways they could probably achieve it without actually nerfing the specs themselves.
At the end of the day we just will likely continue to see a shift in the personal dps: buff DPS ratio of the spec because it’s an easier knob to turn and blizzard is lazy.
I think, as the example that I used before, 3-5% magic damage amp is really interesting. Right now on M+ you will see lots of Augvoker + Mage + Priest, because all of these classes have good buffing synergy.
Aug is kinda locked in, Mage brings Intellect buff which increases efficiency of everyone but the tank and Priest brings many dispels + power infusion.
the only spot you can really take here is the mage, but then you need to offer something similar or of equal value.
Having Weyrnstone in the class tree does absolutely nothing to help Devastation because first it’s a niche talent, second Augment and Preservation can bring it too.
If I give you two options, you can have either 20 dollars or 50 dollars, which one would you take? unless you are crazy you are taking 50 dollars. Devastation needs to bring something that is worth 30 dollars extra (lol) or nobody will want it.
At this point, you may as well do away with Aug’s identity overall and rework it into a DPS class.
Aug is usually chosen over Devo is mainly because of the lack of group utility Devoker has in comparison to Aug. The biggest outlier being blistering scales and the damage window Breath of Eons provides.
The only thing Devoker has is high damage and high fragility. The amount of damage you put out does solve problems but at the same time you’re also one-two mistakes away from doing 0 DPS in high keys. Aug has scales and cheat death to help keep it alive in the waylay of pulls in case things go awry and Devo’s best bet at existing is crossing your fingers each time you pick a spot to chain disintegrate.
In my own opinion, Devastation does not have much of an identity of its own because its just high damage and nothing else. I tend to prefer Augmentation over it for this reason alone since the rotation doesn’t put me to sleep. I say this because at least I can make use of Deep Breath/BoE and alternate if I want without feeling like I’m wasting a GCD. You don’t get that kind of feeling with Devo because you never bother using your 1min DB in ST since it’s just not worth it.
Heck, reading the description for Devastation is misleading overall. You’re not picking between one or the other, you’re just using both.
I’d rather see Devo reworked overall to do more than just big damage (again, in my personal opinion). Maybe it can have High CC as well for what it lacks in durability? Aug has access to two stuns overall if they talent for it. Maybe Distintegration can be more of a suppression spender that prevents movement and slows casting? It’s really hard to say what can be done since Red and Blue are not that flavorful together and shine better on their lonesome.
Heck, even thinking about it a little more. If they were to bring the aug playstyle to Devo with buff-upkeeping that would be pretty great since mastery is another thing that holds it back.
TL;DR dev needs more unique utility to be comparable to aug. Damage is not the issue.
I agree with the devo rework, at least on the utility front. It’d need at least 2-3 extra utility buttons to make up for what aug can do. But in doing that could break other parts of the game, such as PvP. Like you said, dev has no identity of its own other than doing damage and being a good PI target.
The tricky thing about coming up with new utility is do you want it to be exclusive to dev, or allow it for one or both of the other specs?
If I were to brainstorm utility to make up for dev’s shortcomings, it would need to focus on what they’re currently weak at (in comparison to aug): personal survivability, mob control, and team-focused utility.
Not saying they need utility in all those areas because it’d likely make them pretty busted. But its a good place to start. Anyway, here’s some personal ideas if you’d care to read them.
Survivability: Honestly I cant think of one that would be both unique and follow the red/blue dragonflight theme. Will edit this post if I do.
Mob control: Add a talent that involves an empowered skill-shot version of disintegrate. It would disorient all targets hit (unbreakable by damage), with higher empower increasing the beam size slightly and disorient duration. Damage would remain the same regardless of empower rank.
Team-focused utility: Add a talent that causes you to create an image of an enemy you’re fighting at a targeted location. Anyone can contribute to damaging the image up to a certain amount. All damage inflicted to the image is then dealt back to the target.
I was thinking of Khadgar’s images and maybe could use that idea in a way to harm enemies.
Another random idea is to breath a poof of smoke into the air, obscuring you and anyone standing in it.
probably been said, but too much walls of text. Imo stop nerfing classes unless it is an outlier. buff classes that are outliers… Aug > devastation because of utility. instead of nerfing aug, why not buff Devestation to be like a shadow priest with an AoE heal while dpsin, or to stop being so squishie. I loved being devastation, but hated dying to being 1 shot out of scales.