So I’m a long time healer main, and thought I’d be maining Pres at the expansion start, but ultimately didn’t like it as much as my RDruid. I’ve finally gotten around to playing Aug the last few weeks and absolutely love the spec. I expect the spec, and class as a whole, to see some iteration in the new expansion. I don’t raid mythic, but having achieved AotC and +20s in all the dungeons hopefully gives me some credibility for my suggestions.
I’ve seen a point echoed that I agree with, that Aug feels great in dungeon but a bit of a chore in raid. I’d like to see some changes to the raid play style without impacting m+, which brings me to my first point:
1: Ebon Might should target the Evoker’s group. I expect some contention on this, but I think it’s the only way to make balancing the spec feasible. Choosing your EM targets to optimize your raid’s CDs is the top of the skill expression for this class, but it means that if it’s balanced around that optimization it becomes the most daunting spec in the game, but if it’s balanced around a more “casual” play style then it makes that optimization OP. In order to retain that skilled play somewhat, I’d like to see…
**2: Prescience should be more impactful. ** Especially if we’re removing it’s purpose of setting EM targets, but even as is it doesn’t feel particularly rewarding to hit. I’d like to see it reworked into something like a 30 second cd with a 10 second duration (impacted by mastery), or a slightly longer cd with 2 charges still, more noticeable buff. I’d be immediately inclined to say a haste buff, but that would probably be stepping on PI too much. I’d like to see it amplify our EM buff on that target, as well as allow a non-party member to benefit from EM, keeping a portion of the current gameplay to optimize it on people with active CDs. Maybe it could apply Shifting Sands as a bonus.
Those are my big 2 suggestions, my 3rd and final is mostly a byproduct of thinking about the repercussions of having EM only work on your party. I’d love to see, in this design kit, Breath of Eons giving your party a pseudo-rez. The character wouldn’t generate aggro, and could only attack enemies with the BoE debuff, their damage done only feeding the debuff. Once the breath debuff expires, the players despawn.
They should give us 2 different spells for Prescience (maybe 3 with set bonus, or just rework that set bonus) And make the buff permanent. For instance, you have “Prescience: Red”, and “Prescience: Blue” But they both apply the same buff.
Both can only be on a single target, but they can be swapped at any time to another player; and, if you swap them to a different target, it will take Ebon Might with it, with whatever time is remaining on the buff, to the new target.
This would allow for a more reactive style of play. A player could ask for Ebon Might, and have it, in a simple global.
I think this would reduce the gap between the skill floor and skill ceiling (aka spreadsheets) Significantly, while still allowing players to eek out a small advantage if they want to tryhard, and be proactive.
This would also free up a lot of globals, to do stuff that is actually fun, and doesn’t feel like a chore. xD
I like a lot of the thought behind these ideas. I personally don’t love EM applying to group at all, but I like that you at least shifted skill expression elsewhere.
I personally think that they just need to shift a lot of the power into the personal DPS. A huge reason Aug is impossible to balance is because its damage is so weighted towards EM. The balance of other classes, and the availability of a second Aug that stacks buffs, becomes the true gate to performance.
I think our buffs need to be ~20% of our damage and the rest shifted to personal performance. Some of our survivability (defy fate) needs to shift to the class tree.
If they aren’t going to focus on creating more supports for next xpac, they can’t leave Aug as it is.
While I do think that the survivablity should be moved over to the class tree, I strongly disagree with shifting our damage back onto the evoker. I like the idea of a support class; If I wanted to DPS, I would play Devastation. I would much prefer Aug being turned into a tank or healing spec before I would ask them to turn it into a second “pure” DPS spec.
If they can’t make the Aug support spec work as-is, then let us heal or tank instead, and buffing our party members’ damage can be toned way down, but we’ll offer survivablity and utility buffs instead.
They take the path of least resistance, so shifting it onto a more personal DPS is by far the most likely fix.
I don’t like the tank idea but I wouldn’t really care if they did it…I just have played this game long enough to know there’s not a chance of that happening.
Agreed, but they’ve already said they aren’t exploring more support specs currently, which sort of suggests that the spec probably won’t remain how it is.
I would say establishing 4 other players to maintain Ebon might on, then lock that in while in combat would be good to bring down the skill celing for raids.
To give less of a headache for raid leaders, i’d say just having an “Ebon lock” skill that you can put on 4 players that does not move while in combat. If you fail to “Ebon lock” 4 players, the first 4 players that get the first Ebon Might cast get locked in. If someone dies the next ebon might goes to someone new, prescience preferred.
You know what the fun thing is? That apparently aug was originally supposed to be a close quarter, polearm wielding tank. Similar to how hunters go from range in bm/mm to melee in survival. before someone at blizzard decided to make them a support spec instead. This is implied in the lore by Emberthal and her weyrn appearing in the legacy flashbacks wielding polearms, and Emberthal pretty much soloing Razageth in the novel using her spear.
Augmentation frontliners with devastators and preservators as the backline/range would have fit much better to their “adaptable elite super soldiers” theme but no. Blizz decided to step on a nail instead and create a new role wich they are still trying to balance nowadays