So, recently I’ve had the itch to play an alt and decided to dust off the Evoker I played during MoP remix. Speced into Aug to give it a shot since I’ve only really played Dev.
I feel like I’m missing something playing this class, I can’t get into a flow at all while playing it.
I think I get the basics. The idea is to cast Ebon Might and then use Eruption, Fire Breath, and Upheval to keep it up as long as possible while weaving in Living flame as a filler when out of essence. This rotation feels a bit wonky but I’m confident it will iron out the more I play it.
The hard part is being mindful of using Prescience and Blistering scales. These buttons feel terrible for me to press simply because they don’t have much audio/visual impact when you press the button. It leads to me simply not thinking of using the abilities and letting them cap there while I focus on up-keeping Ebon Might. Even on a training dummy I occasionally just forget they exist.
Is it something you simply have to get used to while playing the spec? Or am I simply looking at the wrong spec if I’m expecting it to flow?
I still plan to main my windwalker so I’m not too concerned with how Aug is preforming DPS-wise. Just wanted to give the spec a try since I didn’t play it at all during MoP remix.
Suppose Prescience will just take practice. I’ve got it on my 3rd most convenient keybind to hit. Very much wish it had a more prominent animation and sound to make it feel just a bit better to hit.
Actually another question. I’ve been playing as scalecommander so far. How is Chronowadren in comparison? Scalecommander has a talent that gives Breath of Eons CDR so I can’t bind it to Tip the Scales anymore so if Chronowarden is comparable I’ll probably swap.
Chrono feels soooo much better with the haste and reduced casting times. Wish it was a more relevant hero talent tree. Then again, I also wish Aug was relevant when compared to Dev…every single time I play my aug I ask myself why I don’t just play the better spec(in PVP at least).
If you’ve been around long enough to see what happened to Demonology Warlock back in WoD, that’s basically what seems to be going on with Aug. Their personal damage is genuinely awful (by basically every metric the worst in the game), they don’t buff the party all that well (they don’t do much for tank or heals these days), and their kinda bonus-healer type build doesn’t have much purpose (as all existing healers are designed to be perfectly comfortable without a spotter for their metaphorical lift). I feel that this is likely because they have some pretty heavy rework going on behind the scenes (y’know, like what happened with Demo in WoD).
It’s really unfortunate, because I very much dig playing support specs, and I loved Aug, but thing is this - as the one and only sole support in the game, they undeniably fell into one of two camps: 1) You must bring one because they’re just that good. This was Dragonflight, basically. 2) You mustNOT bring one because they’re just that bad. This is now, basically.
The issue in short is: If they’re good enough to justify another DPS losing a spot, they’re objectively BIS. If they aren’t objectively BIS when compared to another DPS, they’re not good enough to justify bringing at all over a full DPS. Without another support spec or two out there to balance it against, it can’t reasonably be balanced at all due to the nature of what support specs do.
If I were betting, because I don’t see more support specs getting thrown out in the near future, I’d place my paycheck that they’ll simply prune the party buffs back far enough to justify significantly beefing up it’s personal DPS (whether by buffing itself or by it’s spells simply hitting harder), thereby transitioning it to just be a regular ol’ spell DPS.
TL;DR - If you don’t super hate it, play Dev or Pres until Blizz figures out what’s the plan with Aug. Aug currently’s real bad. If you super must play Aug, I wish you the best with your min-maxing, you’ll definitely need it.
The WoW community is insanely immature so this line applies to 100% of all classes. As a Ret Paladin I am frequently told things like “imagine playing paladin and not tanking or healing” etc. They say Ret is worthless and you’d be surprised how many groups I see saying that… despite that if I am given a chance I tend to top dps charts easily. But because someone on Youtube or icy veins said ret is not the top of the simulators, they assume it’s worthless and should never be invited. I don’t think that is a good argument one way or the other, the WoW community has room temperature IQ.
That being said to me the idea of a support class is awesome, and Augmentation gameplay is the funnest in the game in my opinion. I really hope it is redeemed in some way but… I think that even if the class is good, the community will scream its bad just because of how simple minded they are. If your dps is lower than theirs they will always assume the class sucks.
The difference here is Ret is (if you care about tier lists at all) pretty solidly top end in all PvE content. A+ in Mythic+, A in raiding. Not OP, but certainly by no stretch of the imagination bad. Anybody denying a ret a position for being a ret right now either has a comp reason (party may already contain a paladin, which is plausible because they’re very popular) or an axe to grind (which is weird).
Where, again, Augmentation was objectively the best class for that DPS slot period full stop no exceptions in Dragonflight. They got nerfed without enough compensation to their personal DPS, leading to them being objectively the worst class for that DPS slot period full stop no exceptions in TWW. It’s buffs do not currently compensate for it’s literal-bottom-of-the-barrel DPS, meaning it should not be brought (unless you have a party that fully understands you’re playing Aug 'cuz you want to and will need a Sherpa). It’s unfortunate, because I loved the playstyle and the support elements, but the game isn’t set up for a support spec to exist. Because there wasn’t a second spec to balance it against, it lead to Aug being unbalanced one way or the other (which is where it’s still at right now, which is to say unbalanced in that it’s bad).
Ultimately, I’d love for it to be reworked into a tank. We’ve seen the support experiment here, some of us (like me) loved it, but the support it was turned out to be incredibly good, and the “support” it became turned out to be incredibly bad. If they wanted support to be a thing, there needed to be between 1 and 4 other support specs to balance it against.
I tried doing some Aug in pve, it has pretty decent AoE damage in m+ but it’s a bit of a one trick pony for the deep breath and not great for single target.
On the flip side Aug is blowing people up in PvP right now, with the most recent changes it has skyrocketed to not only viable but actually quite good.