Amirdrassil Weekly DPS Rankings – Dragonflight Season 3 Week 3

Augmentation Evoker received two rounds of substantial nerfs coming into Season 3, with the implied goals of preemptively addressing item scaling, reducing the amount of Augmentation Evokers considered “necessary” for top guilds to stack for raid, and minimizing the extent to which players consider Augmentation to be “mandatory” for Mythic+.

Perhaps the single most frustrating issue with Augmentation at the moment for players and developers alike is the lack of reliable damage attribution in the combat log. By the release of Patch 10.1.7, it had seemed that most of the major launch issues had been resolved, and Augmentation logs were providing a reasonable indicator of overall performance. Unfortunately, with the release of Patch 10.2 and its variety of class changes, including major reworks for the Rogue and Demon Hunter classes, came a whole host of new combat log issues. WarcraftLogs developer and Augmentation community member Xepheris has been diligently maintaining a lengthy list of known combat log attribution issues on GitHub, which also includes instructions on how you can contribute to the list.

Until these issues are substantially resolved, we simply have to rely on other tools and analysis in order to determine how much value the average Augmentation Evoker actually brings to a group in Season 3. Analysis done for the recently-concluded Race to World First Amirdrassil makes it clear that there is a sweet spot at two Augmentation Evokers in a Mythic raid composition, and that when played at the highest level (as in fully optimized and buffing the best specs at the right times), these two Augmentation Evokers are able to provide real damage contribution at or near the level of the other top damage dealers in the raid.

Realistically, it is unlikely that most Augmentation players are playing the spec to the potential exhibited by the top players in the Race to World First. Achieving top damage as Augmentation in Season 3 genuinely requires substantial out-of-raid preparation in order to identify the four best buff recipients at each of the fight’s 30 second intervals, and it requires that these players play in a consistent, predictable way in order to actually ensure that cooldowns align properly with Augmentation buff windows. This is a notable departure from Season 2, where it was entirely possible to perform at an adequate level applying buffs in an “Autopilot” fashion. This new and unique burden is very real for Augmentation players, and is something that I hope will be revisited in the future from a design standpoint.

Augmentation players unsurprisingly must also keep on top of balance changes to other specs, as nerfs to popular buff targets directly translate into nerfs for Augmentation, while buffs to underperforming specs typically don’t have an offsetting effect. In fact, all else equal, the latest tuning changes which include common buff targets such as Rogue, Hunter, and Demon Hunter are expected to impact top-performing Augmentation Evokers even further by an additional 2-3% in a typical Mythic raid composition.

Augmentation Evoker is not the same spec that it was back in Season 2. The spec is expected to rise slightly in the rankings as players obtain more gear, and particularly as combat log attribution issues continue to be addressed, but the prospect of additional nerfs to top-performing damage specs along with the sheer amount of effort and analysis required to play the spec at a high level ultimately leave something yet to be desired.

When it comes to class tuning with a new patch, there are always winners and losers. Season 3 of Dragonflight is no exception, but there is always a bit of variability in how unbalanced things end up. Now that Season 3 is well underway and Amirdrassil, the Dream’s Hope has been conquered on Mythic, it’s that time where Blizzard will begin class tuning. As one of the underperforming specs, Devastation Evoker is slated to receive a 5% buff this coming reset.

Before we get into it, I want to say that I’m enjoying Season 3 as a Devastation (and Augmentation) Evoker a lot! The content in this patch is exceptional, and I’ve spent a lot of time enjoying the game. This is the first major patch since Augmentation was released. I know a lot of people have already made their minds up about this spec, but regardless of how you feel about Augmentation, it is seemingly here to stay. The impact of the support role can be felt strongly in the heavy class imbalance of Season 3, especially when it comes to parses since the Combat Hooks are still a work in progress but that’s a topic for another day.

Today I want to talk about the implications of Augmentation when it comes to Devastation, and why it is that Devastation has seemingly fallen off the face of Azeroth when it comes to Mythic Raiding.

Where did all the Devastation Evokers go?
I would love to write about Devastation without mentioning Augmentation, but tuning within a class between its specializations is an important piece of context when it comes to explaining why a class is underrepresented or underperforming.

When choosing to DPS as an Evoker you are faced with a funny proposition. Augmentation and Devastation could not be more opposite when it comes to the demands of the playstyle, defensive capabilities, and overall performance. In all qualifiable areas (except when an encounter demands regular intervals of burst AoE) Augmentation is superior (despite what faulty combat logs might show). A lot of classes have a spec that performs better than the others, but the degree to which Augmentation is easier to play, harder to kill, and more impactful to your group’s success as a support isn’t comparable. Choosing to play Devastation over Augmentation when it comes to challenging content can be seen as a choice against the interests of your teammates, and this is after the 5th nerf to the spec!

Is Devastation still viable?
The short answer is yes. The damage output of Devastation is in line with a lot of other classes that are middle of the pack, but the damage profile is not a very good fit for most of the raid encounters in Amirdrassil, the Dream’s Hope. The only Mythic encounter I would say leans towards Devastation is Tindral Sageswift, since Devastation is very good at keeping the Mass Entanglement roots and Scorched Treants in check with Fire Breath, Pyre, and Dragonrage. Unravel as Devastation is also much stronger and a great asset on this encounter.

Since the last two encounters are not included in the Mythic statistics, and Devastation is seen as outside the meta, it will likely take some time for guilds working on Tindral Sageswift to experiment with it. Mythic Tindral Sageswift is also one of the hardest encounters in recent memory, so Devastation can be seen as a liability when other classes are “proven” to work well on the fight. For these reasons, Devastation will likely remain underrepresented in Mythic until it receives further tuning.

Conclusion
To say Augmentation has eclipsed Devastation would be an understatement, but many players (especially those who rolled Evoker at the start of Dragonflight) are still fans of Devastation. Regardless of this, Mythic is a team activity so choosing to play Devastation instead of Augmentation can easily cost you a raid spot especially when comps are already so locked in with Raid Buffs and so many classes are performing miles ahead of others.

I want to emphasize that Devastation is perfectly viable to complete most of the content the game has to offer, but Augmentation is better in (almost) every way. This is just the obvious effect of sharing the class with the only support in the game. As it stands now, 2 Augmentation Evokers are locked into the comp. With raid compositions this tight with required buffs, Devastation will continue to be a hard sell unless it actually performs well above average.

When it comes to class tuning with a new patch, there are always winners and losers. Class balance so far in Season 3 has been exceptionally top-heavy and raid compositions are more locked in than ever before with the addition of Augmentation and the amount of raid buffs required to check all the boxes.

How is Mage?
When looking at players in the 90th percentile, or those who are playing their class properly, Mage is middle of the pack. Because class balance is so skewed right now, classes that are “alright” will appear much worse than normal. Middle of the pack means that Mages are really only brought for their raid buff: Arcane Intellect. Since Mage is brought for its buff, the main competition it has is with the other Mage specializations.

All 3 Mage specs are really close, and their damage is comparable on most encounters. Frost and Arcane have an edge when it comes to burst, but Fire has Cauterize, strong mobility, and execute damage.

Where Fire falls behind is encounters with damage amp phases in Amirdrassil, the Dream’s Hope. Fire has moved from being high burst to more of an uptime spec with a flatter damage profile then its contemporaries with the rework in 10.1.5. Because of this, Frost and Arcane are a better fit for most of the harder encounters this tier. Smolderon, Tindral Sageswift, and Fyrakk are not currently included in the statistics shown here, so Fire is likely to fall further in the coming weeks by comparison.

Is Fire still viable?
Absolutely, Arcane is the current “Meta” pick but Fire (and Frost) are perfectly viable to complete all current content. That doesn’t mean it will do great damage, however, since your real purpose is to provide Arcane Intellect. The issue isn’t really that Mage is bad, it is that many other classes are overtuned.

Frost Mage is performing relatively poorly compared to other classes in Amirdrassil, the Dream’s Hope. This isn’t due to to design issues inherent to Frost Mage; the overall state of raid class balance right now is just more skewed towards some of the better performing specializations than it has been in a long time. While additional tuning is still needed to resolve overall class balance in the raid, the upcoming class tuning that will bring some of the big outliers down a little is a good start.

It is also important to keep in mind that we are still only a few weeks into the season and the most popular compositions right now include an Arcane Mage instead of a Frost Mage. Whenever this happens, some of the players who may be top performers on a spec like Frost Mage will instead be playing Arcane on most of the fights, which can skew Frost Mage down a little. This is probably especially true on fights like Gnarlroot and Smolderon, which have short windows that favor burst damage. After its 10.1.5 rework, Frost Mage is now much more of a burst specialization and a large fraction of its damage occurs over around a 40 second window while Icy Veins is active. In the past, Frost Mage was not good at burst damage windows and many players looking to optimize these windows are still probably just defaulting to playing Arcane instead.

Regardless of statistical performance compared to other classes, it is important to keep in mind that having a Mage is considered mandatory in any Mythic raid composition thanks to Arcane Intellect. While the performance of the Mage class in general is poor in this raid so far, it is good that all three Mage specializations are tuned relatively closely to each other, such that the best Mage specialization mostly comes down to the specific characteristics of each fight. Hopefully, any changes made to improve the relative performance of the Mage specializations will still maintain this level of balance.

It’s no secret that the start of 10.2 has been a very rough time in the life of a Windwalker. Unfortunately, this is turning out to be the 3rd consecutive expansion where Windwalker is driving the struggle bus into the final tier. It would be the 4th consecutive expansion, but Blizzard intervened as we entered Antorus in Legion and gave Windwalker one of the largest buffs that I can remember. The announced 6% buff will help, but given that the spec was upwards of 13% below the average in some difficulties and skill levels, its unlikely this 6% aura buff, that’s actually a 4-5% damage increase, will change the fate of this woeful spec. The reasons for Windwalker’s current plight are numerous, but very few of them are new. I’ve elaborated on much of what’s wrong with Windwalker here on Wowhead and on PeakofSerenity. However, for the sake of those who may be new to the struggles of Windwalker, I’ll recap them.

Windwalker is no exception to the problems that other specs face from time to time. Currently, the Windwalker tier set (Mystic Heron’s Discipline) is incredibly weak, and we moved from a very powerful tier set in Aberrus to one that is, again, very weak, despite numerous buffs. Many report that the tier set also feels awful and disruptive to play, and that making it trigger off more than Blackout Kick and/or stack to 3 would go a long way to making it more fluid. The current fight designs in Amirdrassil don’t reflect well on what Windwalker can do better than some; the biggest leg to stand on is burst AOE using Fatal Flying Guillotine and Touch of Death, but very few fights in Amirdrassil can use this often, and most of the things you could use it on are easily demolished by others who don’t require the setup time that Windwalker does, leaving Windwalkers scrambling. Timings of current fights are also very difficult for Windwalkers currently, and with almost zero talent diversity, there’s simply nothing that can be done if mechanics do or do not align with burst windows.

When it comes to the problems of the past, unfortunately its the same bad apples popping up again. Windwalker has continued to get more convoluted and complicated, making it harder to maximize its performance than ever before. The spec is generally very undertuned after a significant nerf coming out of Dragonflight PTR, has no special interactions with trinkets, several counterproductive mechanics, and no legendary. Windwalker continues to lose out to some tank specs when it comes to making use of externals like Power Infusion, Augmentation Evokers, or Windfury Totem. Historically Windwalker is a strong AOE spec, but that isn’t the case anymore where they’re outclassed by specs with uncapped AOE and simply higher numbers. Even our niche of being an “AOE spec” is lost to the fact that our below mediocre ST damage is statistically better than our even lower AOE damage except for the perfect situations to use Fatal Flying Guillotine and Touch of Death, which is rare.

Lastly, a special mention needs to be said for the continued catastrophe of scaling. With the current system of Diminishing Returns and the amount of stats that all specs have access too, Windwalker is hitting the DRs on Critical Strike and Versatility, which pushes them into needing to use Mastery and Haste. Unfortunately, Mastery and Haste are absolutely garbage stats for Windwalker and need significant changes to improve their value. Windwalker, along with Outlaw, are (by a significant margin) the worst scaling specs in the game; meaning they get the least from increasing their gear. Outlaw, and the other Rogue specs, saw a big boost this tier, which has helped to push their scaling problems down the road; Windwalker was not this lucky.

The problems that face Windwalker are plentiful and they are deeply ingrained in the foundation of the spec. The size of an aura buff the spec needs would be unprecedented in the history of tuning, with upwards of a 15-20% buff still not enough to bring Windwalkers to the top. The outcry for help has continued to grow, but unfortunately its continued to grow from many people who have moved on to other specs. I hope that something is done while there’s enough people still in love with the spec to enjoy it.