Hello friends! Could use some help with a spec recommendation.
I’m the raid leader for my guild, and I’m looking for an easier class to raid on than what I’m currently playing (affliction warlock). Trying to watch everything that’s going on in the raid, call mechanics, monitor raid frames, plus maintaining my own personal rotation has been… difficult. It’s not that im doing poorly, but I’m not happy with my own personal performance. So, I want something that’s a bit easier to pilot while I raid lead.
Had some people in my guild tell me to check out evoker since Dev and Aug are both relatively straightforward. However, now that he’s 80 and I’m working on gearing, there seems to be a split amongst people I ask about which spec to play, some saying aug is easier and others say dev, so im struggling to decide. I know Aug can be sweaty with getting everything super duper optimized, but I’d be most likely going the “smart cast” route with the buffs Aug offers if I played it.
So, I’m curious if you’ve raided on these specs if you found one particularly easier than the other? I dont have a stronger affinity for either spec, i honestly want to play the one that will be easier to perform well on while raid leading.
Thanks!
I would highly recommend Aug. I have played both in raids, with aug using smart cast. I have found that aug is far more forgiving and the cheat death is fantastic. That said, the damage is lower.
When people talk about optimising aug, they mean a lot more than just your personal play. The whole raid has to plan and work things together. I have used the smart cast and just ignored thinking about anyone else’s cooldowns and I’ve managed parses as high as 97 as scalecommander.
The good thing is that if you go largely crit / haste / mastery, it works really well for both scalecommander and dev, so you can literally try swapping between them whenever you feel like it.
100% Aug. Playing dev well takes concentration and precision. Playing Aug well means remembering to not afk during the fight. Just about everything dev can do, Aug can do as well but with lower stakes for messing up.
Great thanks for the feedback guys! Aug it is 
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Yea. If you are already the air traffic controller for your raid you will intuitively know how\when to maximise aug.
Playing Aug (well) is infinitely more difficult than devastation. Devastation has a very simple rotation.
If you’re just going to yolo Aug and not focus on who you’re buffing and when (nothing wrong with that if you don’t care), it will be comparable to dev in terms of simplicity and more forgiving, but you’ll do very poor damage.
Devastation is incredibly simple and you only need to think about where you need to be, not where everyone you are buffing is.
The basics are smooth, the damage is decent (on logs, they get gimped on in-game damage meters), and if you play well your performance will show.
Aug, on the other hand, will feel awful if you aren’t getting good buffs and breaths out or if the players you are buffing are playing suboptimally. If your group is good, you’d be looking at 40% personal damage 60% buff damage (which also only looks decent on logs) but if the group or buff alignments aren’t as great and you start seeing more personal damage than buff damage, might as well have played Dev.
Yeah I just played both specs tonight, and dev to me at least felt extremely smooth and straightforward. I can see where the “floor” of Aug is and how it’s easy for the basics, but I can definitely see what you and some others are referring to where to squeeze higher end performance, you gotta really be paying attention to what is going on our ebon might will fall and dmg will plummet.
I think dev feels similar to BM hunter in the sense that it just does dmg easily, and that’s what I’m honestly looking for- basic gameplay so I can focus on raid leading. Might actually give it the first run when it comes time to raid
If it wasn’t for the fact that we sometimes have to push Hover before disintegrate and have cast bars to deal with, most would honestly say Devastation would be the easiest ranged DPS in the game if BM hunter didn’t exist.
There are small tricks for things but those come with practice and asking questions, the only tricky part I had to get used to was how to best use Deep Breath and canceling it as soon as the targets were hit by it rather than continuing to fly off to the moon.
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Makes sense, and yeah I definitely felt similar after the first night of really playing it. I leveled as preservation so tonight was my first night actually trying both Aug and Dev
Thanks again for the feedback!
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