How much more EM uptime does aug really need though. We already get close to 90% on some fights. Hell my M-Fyrakk kill I had 81% and thats not even considering the downtime of holding DPS in P1.
At a certain point EM uptime matters less than who/when you are buffing. You need EM to fall off at certain points in order to change targets. Aint no way I am buffing an UH DK much past their opener
not every tier set is going to interact with EMs uptime
S2 didnt, and we still had ~80%
so to answer your question.
20%
We wonât have the same tier set, which is contributing a ton of that uptime.
And why wouldnât you want as close to 100% as possible when thatâs the lions share of augs damage?
Honestly pretty poor tree, this coming from a mostly Devastation perspective.
Mass Disintegrate - ok, good start.
Might of the Black dragonflight - so 1 spell? and bombardment? 1 out of 10
Bombardment - im SUPER concerned that this will be low proc or will be the same effect as fate mirror, where it will feel SUPER weak and super rare unnoticeable. So, really iffy on this. Id much rather see balance that with every disintegrate we get a guaranteed bombardment and balance whatever you need to balance around that.
Onslaught - so 1 insta living flame per fight? for a full talent? Like once per raid boss, and once per pvp arena? We have 1.8 second cast? Wut? Seems ridiculously weak and quite a waste to take, id genuinely feel bad taking this. Would rather see something with quality of life or something else, because this is pretty poor damage talent. The only feasible scenario is M+, but in every other gameplay its REALLY weak. Please make it better for non M+ users.
Melt Armor - same concern with bombardment, but an extra layer. I use Deep Breath, then I have to disintegrate, then i have to attack and hope that Bombardment procs? Not a fan.
Wingleader - meh. Not a fan of having to use Deep Breath much in its current state.
Unrelenting Siege - now weâre cooking. This has a good impact, but compared to Onslaught, it makes it look even worse than it is. This makes you actually want to use fillers more as the fight goes on, finally some change of gameplay.
Hardened Scales / Menacing Presence - fine.
Extended Battle/Diverted Power - hard to judge.
Nimble Flyer/Tailwind - Feels rather underpowered.
Maneuverability - you get to turn left and right with Dragon Breath? Really? Thats our capstone talent? Using âaâ and âdâ? The final piece of being a Scalecommander is turning on an ability most people dont use? So let me get this straight, when we cast Deep Breath and we see we might die because of the design it has, we would be able to strafe away from dying and not doing the damage? Im sorry, but how does that compare in terms of capstone with " Calls down a demon infested meteor from the depths of the Twisting nether and summons Wild Imps". We get âgets to turnâ.
My closing points and this is also from reading other people.
Please fix Deep breath usage, make it like Landslide and not make us fly all over the place to die or be in a terrible spot and waste time flying instead of positioning/doing damage. Make an avatar that flies in that direction and do the damage for us freeing us from being locked in that action.
Few too many âheroâ talents that feel worse than regular talents.
What exactly is the Scalecommander fantasy here? What are we commanding? I feel no connection between the talents and âScalecommanderâ. Weâre not commanding anything, nor are we the bulwark that leads the way.
Thatâs exactly what will make pyre pretty much irrelevant.
They should add mass pyre, if the idea is to make scale the disint build, and ruby aspect the pyre build, itâs most likely not gonna work, and scalecommander will be the choice 99% of the time.
Iâm guessing the Scalecommander fantasy comes from âBombardmentsâ and it would need a very good visual to convey this. Personally though, I feel weâre going to get some fireballs raining down on the enemy when it procs or something like that which isnât very exciting imo.
Unfortunately, given the description of the Scalecommander, a melee spec would have worked much better with the theme (which we donât have).
The overall tree honestly doesnât feel like itâs cohesive. Itâs a bunch of cool stuff thrown together to make up the âScalecommanderâ. Iâm eager to see how it evolves based on feedback though (if it does change).
The problem i have is mostly with scalecommander not giving mass pyre too, mass disint is awesome, especially if it procs causality and scintillation.
The issue is not just one of âflavorâ itâs also one of versatility, i donât just wanna throw out disint 60% of the time in aoe too. I actually would like to press pyre once in a while, especially in mass aoe.
So the only major issue i have with this tree is not having mass pyre, aside that, i think itâs actually very good.
You will always press Pyre once in a while in aoe, as long as Charged Blast exists. Charged Blast might also make a âMass Pyreâ (Not counting the one we get just for pressing Dragonrage) very strong.
For the Scalecommander tree there are a few things that need to be reworked.
1st
Onslaught. Entering combat grants a charge of Burnout, causing your next Living Flame to cast instantly.
Sounds cool to mitigate some of the rng Devastation has with burnout procs early in the dragonrage. However, for 99.9% of the remaining encounter in a raid this is now a dead passive. This passive is also anti-synergistic with the talent below it Unrelenting Siege where you want to stay in combat. Maybe this talent just needs to have an extra line that also gives you a burnout proc after X amount of Essence spent.
Which brings me the 2nd.
Unrelenting Siege. For each second you are in combat, Azure strike and Living Flame deal 1% increased dmg, up to 50%.
Few problems here. It takes nearly a minute until it is full power. Does the % decay overtime out of the combat or does it immediately clear? If it doesnât decay and immediately clears then everytime you drop combat in a Mythic + keystone or Arena/Battleground you will have to re-ramp this buff over another 50 seconds. Like I mentioned with Onslaught, this talent is anti-synergistic with it. If you have to maintain combat then Onslaught is a dead passive. One suggestion like I made for Onslaught is to maybe have this stack up with essence spent rather than overtime. Have it be a buff you maintain so dropping out of combat doesnât immediately clear.
3rd
Might of the Black Dragonflight. Black spells deal 10% increased damage.
Deep Breath is our 1 and only Black damaging spell for Devastation. Like Onslaught, this passive will be nearly useless for the majority of any gameplay. Assuming no talent tree rework for Devastation, 2 points in our already tight tree will now have to be devoted to 20% more damage on Deep Breath and 1 min cdr for Deep Breath. With Wingleader reducing the cd ofr Deep Breath more, maybe the cd gets down to 40-45 seconds. Seems bad to have a passive talent that only gets used maybe every 45 seconds or 1m 30 seconds if you do not take the 1 min cdr talent.
The rest of the tree we will have to wait and see how often Bombardment procs and how steering Deep Breath works. But for now Onslaught, Unrelenting Siege and Might of the Black Dragonflight need to be looked at.
Well bombardment damage will obviously benefit from this too, which is the whole gimmick of the spec.
I donât disagree that itâs uninspired, but it could still be strong depending on the tuning.
Copy to my post on the original release forum
This is an augmentation evoker tree, not devastation. Increases black dragonflight damage, mass disintegrate doesnât make a lot of sense since we have better uncapped AoE spells, etc. and I agree with a lot of the comments above. Making deep breath a part of the core rotation seems like a really odd choice.
Maneuverability should just be standard in the kit - the reason people donât risk using deep breath is because you cannot cancel it mid flight and occasionally go right into the swirlies. This MIGHT make deep breath usable as a single target ability, but I donât want to have to fly in a circle around the boss to use it.
I donât fully agree with this, considering that mass disintegrate will stack charged blast absurdly quickly. It could make our aoe loop very strong.
It seems more like a dungeon/mass aoe spec then anything, especially since we donât know the tuning of bombardment and with deep breath talents and having it for every pull with this build, it could be very strong. It really just depends on tuning.
I am not sure how this breaks out damage wise, but standard pyre will almost certainly be better with Volatile talent wouldnât it? Standard 5 essence M+ builds would have you do mass disintegrate, into pyre. 9 stacks of charges blast optimistically means that your pyre will do 45% more damage vs 2 pyres, with 1 essence left over and a 30% proc chance for it to explode again.
So, 1 disintegrate+ 1.45 pyres or 2 pyres and 1 almost charged. In a stack of 10 mobs I. Going double pyre every time.
The split beam from disintegrate would be so niche and really only good during 5 mobs packs, but it is rare to see pulls that small with the current state of the game.
In my post I suggest Command: Disintegrate and volcanic attunement which would allow a separate channel of disintegrate to occur every 3 spell essence abilities - maintains the single target increase in damage and could work in conjunction with charged blast, though certainly not to the extent of the triple beam. Volcanic attunement changes the damage of disintegrate to black dragonflight volcanic damage.
Even if just those 2 changes occur this becomes a viable devastation tree.
I mean this is all complete conjecture until we get into final builds on the tuning. It also very much matters how scintillation interacts with MD.
I personally feel like thereâs an outside chance dev mastery gets reworked into obsidian shards (S2 tier) which would make this spec make a TON more sense. Especially if they made deep breath apply it too.
I still think it feels uninspired and I find the capstone talent confusing (literally never going to care about being able to steer breath if youâre using it well), but weâll see. Maybe we will just giga nuke packs with breath and itâll be fun af.
Isnât that why we are posting at all though? Our conjecture is that the design of this talent tree centered around deep breath and black dragonflight abilities as well as it being uninspired is a problem. This is a ScaleCOMMANDER and aside from a loose attempt at incorporating aerial combat I honestly donât want this iteration making it to test servers let alone live servers.
I agree with your point in regards to Scintillation, but mass disintegrate is the least of my worries with this tree.
Yeah I mean Iâm not disagreeing, Iâm simply discussing, which as you stated is sort of the point of this thread.
I think at the very least they need to scrap maneuverability. This should be a baseline change for evoker if anything. Quality of life on a sometimes inconsistent spell should not be the height of the hero talents, lol.
For real, lol
Mass Disintegrate sounds awesome, so Iâm glad weâre getting that. Kind of a shame the rest of the tree doesnât use more of what we saw in the Sarkareth fight, but I guess itâd be weird if we got void powers, too.
I like the idea of Bombard, but I think it would be cooler/more rewarding if instead of just a random burst of damage it triggered a free and instant Pyre/Eruption from me onto the target, especially since Pyre gets absolutely 0 love in the current tree. Ideally it would interact with all the effects that Pyre and Eruption do: extending EM, Volatility, Causality, etc. This might even make Feed the Flames and Firestorm useable for the first time ever, which is awesome because these are really cool talents/abilities that have yet to be worth it. This also makes the Deep Breath focus of the tree make more sense because weâd be picking up Imminent Destruction, which has great synergy with Melt Armor.
Speaking of Deep Breath, I donât hate the treeâs focus on it, but I think the capstone needs to change a bit. Instead of Maneuverability letting us control Deep Breath, have it call in an NPC Evoker (similar to Collective Anguish from the DH tree) and send them out on the Deep Breath run, leaving me free to continue casting/not dying from errant ground affects. This solves basically every problem Deep Breath has, though you would probably have to change the name of the spell. Sure, it kills the fantasy of doing a strafing run as a flying, fire-breathing dragon but it adds to the fantasy of being a commander of flying, fire-breathing dragons, which I believe is what a Scalecommander is. Oh, and have the NPC Evoker do a little salute when theyâre done before they fly off.
I have similar gripes about the rest of the tree as everyone else. Onslaught is basically a wasted point if it doesnât have some way to refresh it during the fight (make Fire Breath refresh it, giving us those sweet, sweet instant Leaping Flames buffed Living Flames), Might of the Black Dragonflight does next to nothing for Devastation, and the left and right choice nodes are kinda lackluster (except Tailwinds, more Hover charges is always welcome).
If you donât replace Bombardments with Pyre/Eruption, please at least have a cool animation where an NPC Evoker, like, flies by and blasts the target. I really want to take this tree for Mass Disintegrate alone, so at least give it some hero class fantasy I can feel cool about while Iâm lying dead on the ground from Deep Breathâing into a swirly for the Nth time.