The existing rotation is not complicated. During EM windows, you fb, upheaval, eruption, fill with lf. Outside of EM windows you cast living flame until your keybind wears out. To the point, it’s one of the simplest rotations out there, right down the list with BM hunter.
The skill factor for the class comes from maximizing EM uptime, casting Prescience on high value targets (which means tracking raid OCDs) and using BE at high value times (again tracking party/raid OCDs).
I’m not saying it SHOULD be done this way, I’m replying to the person who things having it pandemic is bad game design.
I didnt say it was complicated.
BUt if someone wanted to simplify it more, thats the talent they would take.
The pandemic window is not rewarding gameplay. It’s a superficial internal restriction that adds no benefit to gameplay, and having to pay attention to a pandemic window due to a lack of having anything else to do that is impactful outside of maintaining uptime in Augs kit is not “great design.”
For a relevant anecdote, I used to main frost mage in Shadowlands. While testing on dummies, I noticed that, with the right legos and timing, I could reduce the CD of Icy Veins to the point that it would be available again before its effect was over. IIRC, pressing the ability again before the buff was up gave the full effect of the ability, but cut off the remaining value of the previous buff. It wasn’t additive, it simply reset the buff. Whether it was additive or reset isn’t specifically important.
I was experiencing the result of good game design: skillful play rewarded me with resource abundance and the choice of how to use it. The fun was in attempting to make it work in competitive situations. Having the resource and holding off was beneficial. If used incorrectly, I simply wasn’t afforded the benefit, but I still could expect that my abilities were going to have their full intended effects. Sometimes I would hit Icy Veins again prematurely because an external situation required more of my attention.
Skillful play rewarded me with an abundance of resource without increasing limits on choice, allowing me to stay in a state of flow and focus on what I was playing (pvp, dungeon, etc) and not how I was playing. Outside limiting factors made it so that skillful play was required to implement the reward, but I could always count on my abilities working to their full potential otherwise, and when I could make it work, it was rewarding emotionally. When I couldn’t make it work I had other effective abilities to which I could turn my focus. That is great design.
This is where the pandemic window on Ebon Might falls short of great design. I’m not saying Ebon Might is not strong or effective. I’m not proposing that players aren’t getting used to it the pandemic window and working around it. I’m not saying the playstyle isn’t intended to be lackluster outside of Ebon Might. I’m saying the pandemic window provides no benefit to gameplay. It is a superficial limit of resource/choice in its current implementation and interrupts player flow. Playing well actually punishes the player by reducing resources. It’s an annoyance, not a reward.
This could perhaps be alleviated somewhat by having the choice to focus on something else impactful outside of Ebon Might. But in its current iteration, if you aren’t maintaining uptime, Augmentation has nothing to add that feels impactful or useful in its kit. That may well be intended: having nothing worthwhile to add frees up the players attention to focus on the pandemic window. Except that still takes players’ attention away from the actual game.
You can call that a skill issue. Players can get used to it, work around it, and the class will still be powerful. That doesn’t mean it’s “great design”. That means it’s missing something to the point the designers implemented a superficial limitation that players must work around in order for the class to feel engaging.
That doesn’t make me bad. And it doesn’t mean the class fails to ever be fun. It makes me a regular player who just thinks the class could be smoother and more fun, and my experience is not an isolated one.
Aug is still fresh out of the oven. In time the designers will find new ways for players to experience this class. I’m looking forward to see what they decide to do. In the meantime, I’ll focus on prevoker and level my other alts.
I mean, it is a skill issue which is why it’s being called that. The pandemic window is very forgiving if you’re paying even a modicum of attention.
This is the same as almost everything what similar in the game works, and has worked well, for a very long time.
If you read my reply at all, you’d see the points you just made were all accounted for and proven wrong.
The only thing you proved wrong is the notion that you understand the game.
I’m not reading a novella about pandemic because it’s easy and it works.
You have very little experience playing the class as a whole. Is it not conceivable to you that your problem would be resolved by practice, instead of an impractical redesign?
It’s not the same as everything else as I’d just proven with Icy Veins.
It’s not a skill issue because I never claimed to have any complications using it.
It “working” doesnt make it great design. It means players work around it despite not being rewarding gameplay. There is simlly no point to it.
The point to it is not to have a button that you can press and keep going for an absurd amount of time without pressing it, since the spec is balanced around periods of downtime.
If it stacked additively, it would be completely broken and wildly boring.
If it was already stacked additively then chances are the numbers around it would be balanced accordingly, players might be complaining less about clunky gameplay, and you’d have nothing to be contrarian about.
Having even less to do doesn’t make the spec less clunky, it makes it more homogenized, boring, and lacking a way for good players to differentiate from okay ones.
The spec is already insanely simple and you want to remove one of the two core gameplay loops of the spec because you are struggling to track a buff and can’t wait for the sub five second mark.
If you don’t like this, you can just spec interwoven threads because without time skip, you don’t hit large overlaps ever. Even with it, it’s only happening two times a fight or so that you have to wait.
It’s far better in m+ anyways, which seems to be your content of choice.
They’ve offered you a talent that removes the issue you’re having, why not take it?
I clearly stated I wasn’t struggling. I said it was bad design. This is just trolling on your part at this point.
The pandemic window is superficial tedium, period. Removing it wouldn’t add any extra time - it’s the same amount of time regardless, we just must instead babysit a countdown instead of having something better to do. That’s on the devs, and my inability to accept tedium as “great design”, and your decision to not read doesn’t change that.
I mean if you think having ebon might be additive is the same in terms of strength as having it require the pandemic window, now I know why you don’t have the basic cognitive understanding to avoid making this asinine post in the first place.
Continue your “you can’t read” ad hominem approach to this argument, and best of luck to you.
If it weren’t pandemic, adding 10 seconds at the 10-second mark versus adding 10 seconds at the 5 Second mark would still be adding 10 seconds. Nothing you have said changes that. Talk about asinine.
You’re actually wrong.
If I time skip with 12 seconds left and add a full ebon might to that one, now it’s cooling down immediately again and available to chain yet again, while pumping it up with even more eruptions/empowers.
If I have to hold my ebon might until that 12 second buff is under 5 seconds, it’s been sitting there for 7 seconds unused even though it was cooled down from the time skip.
How do you not understand that this creates an insane positive feedback loop and arguably permanent EM uptime, especially at high mastery levels?
Time Skip has nothing to do with the merits of whether or not a pandemic window is “great” game design. It’s like you’re not even having the same discussion. Good luck to you.
This is an odd way to respond to being proven wrong.
Without time skip, pandemic doesn’t even become an issue for Aug.
You clearly don’t understand the spec, or even the game, enough to be worth my time.
Wait…are you arguing against the concept of Pandemic windows in general, or just in the case of Aug’s Ebon Might+Time Skip? Because arguing against Pandemic windows in general would be…a take…
I hate to be the bearer of bad news an expansion after the fact, but I’m uhhhh pretty sure you were supposed to use Icy Veins right away even it it was still active, due to the Rune of Power that got automatically placed and so you could continue to benefit from the CDR.
I’m with you–this dude is either a brilliant troll or blissfully delusional for sure.
without time skip, I can run into issues with ebon might duration when it’s back up again. Crits would do it.
Happens occasionally with interwoven threads.