Not a fan of some of the direction we’ve seen where some damage is being shifted to personal. Scalecommander leans more into that, though I guess that tree is optional for now…
But you made a dps spec whose whole idea was to buff other people. Your gameplay should involve actively managing buffs, and your contributions should come from those buffs.
I HOPE it’s not another affliction warlock case where your DOTS hit like wet noodles so that a burst spell does all your damage. At that point, why even keep the dots? Just rename the spec.
I agree. I was excited to get a dps spec where my dps depending on actively helping my teammates and managing buffs rather than just doing direct damage to the boss for my own personal numbers. I have always preferred support and healing specs, but my guild tends to be full up on healers. Aug coming in as more of a support was exactly what I wanted. Would be a shame if it became just another dps class.
Like it or not, this is where it will likely need to keep shifting.
I’d say the spec is a nightmare to balance but that would assume they’ve even figured out how to balance it yet (they haven’t).
The more they shift the ratio towards personal:
The spec becomes easier to balance (or even has the potential to be balanced).
The spec becomes less useless in keys below the ~13+ range.
The spec becomes less powerful (and less mindless) in the high key range.
The spec becomes less reliant on tedious ERT/spreadsheet playstyles in raiding, and shortens the delta between the skill floor and ceiling for lower performing players.
The only long term solution for any semblance of the spec to continue to exist is to shift damage to personal.
You still get plenty from buffing others. You’d still get plenty from buffing others even if it were only 20% of our damage. That’s still heavier support attribution than has ever existed in the game.
The only thing that changes with a shift to more personal DPS is the requirement of the player to actually know what they’re doing.
I get this, but it doesn’t make me happy. I have never been a big fan on my own personal large numbers. For me, the fun part of Aug was being able to go “oh wow, look at how much I helped others out.” Shifting that aspect to more personal damage just makes me sad because it is destroying that aspect of the class. It is making it more and more like other dps classes, when the reason I liked it so much is because it wasn’t like them.
I wish Blizz would just add more support type specs instead of gutting the one they did give us.
I get it, but this is not the reality of the situation. It’s actually more like “oh wow, look how much others helped me out”.
In the purest analytics sense, Aug isn’tactually a support --it’s a parasitic DPS.
It’s actually exactly like other DPS specs, except it has more baked in safety. From a logs standpoint (which is how everything is actually analyzed/measured in this game), it’s just like any other DPS --it just has more complicated attribution.
“I do not think that word means what you think it means”
Parasitic means I’m providing no benefit and only taking
Aug clearly provides survivability benefits and provides damage. Clearly a mutualistic/symbiotic relationship.
I think these nerfs will do only one thing. bring Aug back in line to have an actual choice for Content.
Like nowadays every pushing group needs an Aug Evoker
It won’t do much. It’s a small nerf. A slap on the wrist. Why? Because tanks, players, healers all get slapped hard. Survivability is king currently.
It’s also impossible to balance a spec around player performance. Make it good for the casual players and the high-end players will break the game with it. Make it good only for the high-end players and it becomes trash for casuals.
Aug’s in a weird spot because there aren’t any other support specs to give it competition.
It will be interesting to see what aug adjustments are made in TWW S1 and onwards, to see if Blizz will throw in the towel and push this spec into a dps with a few group defensives but less stat buffing.
They keep nerfing Ebon Might and my theory is that at some point Blizzard will eventually remove it.
I was excited for the “support” role to be added, and i really wish it would have worked, but honestly I think they are going to push Aug into a DPS spec.
You are lucky they just didn’t delete the spec and make it a tank spec because that is what I would have done. It’s ruined the meta for two years now and has been an experimental failure.
In raid a healer should focus solely on HPS output and heals while I think in a dungeon is where they can have more flexibility to DPS and buff the group as well.
Preservation can already be the support in that way. Hero spec for holy priest let’s say kind of went in a more support style far as I heard as well.
So, by that logic I think its redundant having a class that solely just buffs the group.
The meta has been ruined for two years, two years of perceived or real meta bringing augment to key when it’s hard to measure how well someone is playing the class to begin with.
For background I have never liked individual buffing play anyway like priest power infusion.
So, I think their third spec which is earth magic based anyway should or could be a tank specialization.
