Our guide writer, Jereico, details the impact of these changes for Augmentation in Season 3 both in Amirdrassil and Mythic+ and how combat log issues make it significantly more difficult to assess the spec.
Augmentation Evoker Guide
All Eyes on Augmentation in Season 3
Augmentation Evoker ended Season 2 as a top-performing spec in Raid across all difficulties and levels of player skill, according to Warcraftlogs aggregated metrics, and was a veritable cornerstone of the top-end Mythic+ metagame. Since its original release in Patch 10.1.5, the spec has received a tremendous amount of playstyle adjustments and balance changes, mostly in one direction, with the spec receiving its biggest round of nerfs to date with the launch of Season 3.
Between all of the ongoing issues with Augmentation Evokers and combat logs, as well as the challenges involved in running accurate and meaningful multi-actor simulations, it can be difficult to gauge exactly how the spec is performing, particularly across different game modes and levels of player skill. That said, with the benefit of the latest Race to World First behind us, as well a couple of solid weeks of Mythic+ progression, let’s take a look at how Augmentation Evoker seems to be shaking up in Season 3.
Season 3 Augmentation Evoker Nerfs
Guardians of the Dream Content Update Notes (Nov 7)
- Developers’ note: Our goal with these changes is to reduce the power of stacking as many Augmentation buffs as possible on the same 4 targets in raid scenarios. We want to support having multiple Augmentation Evokers in a raid, but also prevent having 4 of them feel required to do maximum damage. By forcing these buffs to spread themselves out, it should still be viable to have multiple Augmentation Evokers without being overpowered.
- If 2 Ebon Mights are already active on an ally, Ebon Might will now seek a nearby ally with fewer than 2 Ebon Mights.
- Ebon Might’s priority to apply to other Augmentation Evokers has been reduced and will apply to other damage dealing roles first.
- If 2 Presciences are already active on an ally, Prescience will no longer be able to be applied to that ally.
- When casting Prescience with an enemy selected, its priority to apply to other Augmentation Evokers has been reduced and will apply to other damage dealing roles first.
- Prescience now has 2 charges.
- Prescience now clears on raid encounter and Mythic+ start.
- Ebon Might now clears on raid encounter and Mythic+ start.
- Shifting Sands now prefers to apply to an ally who does not already have Shifting Sands.
Updated Patch 10.2 Content Notes
- Developers’ note: Augmentation’s contributions to the party, particularly in Mythic+, are too impactful and are making it difficult for other compositions to shine. As a result, we’re doing some targeted nerfs to their group utility by reducing the value of Aspects’ Favor, Molten Blood, and Ebon Might.
- Ebon Might grants 8% of the Evoker’s primary stat (was 10%).
- Aspects’ Favor increases maximum health by 2/4% (was 3/6%).
- Molten Blood absorption reduced by 50%. This does not affect PvP combat.
- Developers’ notes: The amount of utility that Augmentation Evoker brings on top of its high damage has proven to be too powerful despite recent changes. Therefore we are further reducing their damage contributions to the group in order to balance them against other specializations.
- Ebon Might grants 6.5% of the Evoker’s primary stat (was 8%).
- Close as Clutchmates increases the effectiveness of Ebon Might and Breath of Eons by 10% (was 20%).
- The amount of Versatility granted by Shifting Sands has been reduced by 15%.
Between the original balance changes that came with Patch 10.2 on November 7th, along with the follow-up nerfs which accompanied the start of Season 3 on November 14th, the development team essentially had two major issues to address going into Season 3:
- Augmentation Evoker was a top DPS spec in terms of both pure damage output, as well as survivability and group utility.
- Augmentation Evoker’s buff throughput actually scales with both the Evoker’s gear, as well as their buff target’s gear, meaning that the spec was set to soar to even greater heights relative to other damage specs with groups receiving another 39 item levels of gear in Season 3.
Without at least some degree of balance tuning, Augmentation Evoker was set to absolutely dominate group content in Season 3, with top raid teams likely playing at least four whenever possible, and with the spec feeling genuinely mandatory at all levels of Mythic+ for the most comfortable experience. By the start of Season 3, Augmentation Evoker’s primary buffing spell Ebon Might had its effectiveness reduced by an incredible 35%, with even further reductions to throughput observed between the nerfs to Close as Clutchmates and Shifting Sands, along with additional nerfs to group utility.
During the 10.2 PTR cycle I shared my thoughts on the challenges players might face when stacking Augmentation Evokers in a raid setting, as well some potentially degenerate strategies involving long pull timers, and overall I believe that the mechanical changes to Augmentation that came with Patch 10.2 did an excellent job in addressing said feedback, leaving the spec in a comfortable, but still reasonably challenging place in terms of playing optimally.
Given these substantial nerfs to Augmentation at the start of Season 3, where does Augmentation really stand in terms of performance in Raid and Mythic+? Well the answer to that can be quite difficult simply due to issues with attribution in combat logs.
Attribution Issues in Combat Logs
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. That success in implementation, however, would prove to be short-lived. While Patch 10.2 featured a cornucopia of class changes, including major reworks for the Rogue and Demon Hunter classes, it was ultimately accompanied by a whole host of new combat log issues. This in turn made PTR testing incredibly challenging, and this continues to affect the Live game, despite the development team’s best efforts.
As it stands, resolving the combat log issues remain an enormous work-in-progress for the team at Blizzard. In some cases, fixing these issues have even led down the rabbit hole of redesigning existing and longstanding systems, as was the case with Hunter pets now scaling with Attack Power.
What this means for the average player is that WarcraftLogs parses for Augmentation are simply not especially valuable for gauging true damage contribution, outside of perhaps comparing total raid damage from pull to pull, or looking at other non-damage metrics such as buff uptime, or the specific timing of abilities like Breath of Eons. In the meantime, WarcraftLogs developer and Augmentation community member Xepheris has been 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 brings to a group in Patch 10.2.
Augmentation & the Race to World First
When it comes to evaluating Augmentation Evoker under the best possible circumstances, we need look no further than the raid compositions run by the top guilds in the world during the recent Race to World First Amirdrassil.
In the latest Race to World First, the top 3 guilds, Echo, Liquid, and Method, all ran two Augmentation Evokers in their raid composition for each of the nine encounters in the raid.
The fact that these guilds all settled on two Augmentation Evokers is particularly significant. Augmentation Evoker has excellent mobility, personal survivability, and group utility which makes the spec ideal to stack in a raid for progression purposes—provided that their damage is competitive. Given the changes to buff stacking in 10.2, it is clear that these guilds determined that Augmentation Evoker is able to contribute competitive damage in line with the raid’s top DPS specs when it is allowed to buff the best four players at any given time (the first and second Augmentation Evokers), but are likely unable to do so when buffing the next four best players in the raid (the third and fourth Augmentation Evokers).
The key takeaway here ultimately indicates where balance tuning has left Augmentation Evoker in terms of the ideal raid composition for the Season 3 Amirdrassil raid. In the most general terms, the optimal raid composition currently includes two Augmentation Evokers, provided that those players are prepared and able to adjust buff targets throughout the fight for maximum damage.
Pre-combat Preparation for Augmentation?
With current tuning in Season 3, the first two Augmentation Evokers in a raid can absolutely compete with the strongest DPS specs in the game, provided that they are being played to their fullest potential—but what exactly does that entail?
It means that pre-raid preparation is more important than ever when it comes to dealing optimal damage, and the sky’s the limit when it comes to optimization. Augmentation players must identify the best four buff targets over the course of a fight, divided into 30 second intervals and accounting for mechanics. The top guilds used additional techniques, like “Ebon Might cancelaura macros” to allow the Evokers to quickly switch buffs to new players, and used sophisticated weakaura assignments to highlight optimal buff targets in order to streamline moment to moment gameplay.
The race even featured some fun on-pull tech as shown below, which allows players to guarantee that four players receive fully stacked Augmentation buffs without the use of Prescience.
In the above clip, Tobo begins the fight at maximum Ebon Might range away from a stack of four DPS players and the other Augmentation Evoker, Fraggo. Fraggo casts Ebon Might and quickly moves out of range to join the rest of the raid, at which point Tobo then casts Ebon Might. The only eligible targets are the four stacked DPS players that were buffed by Fraggo, which guarantees that all four of these players receive both stacks of Ebon Might. Tobo then uses his Weyrnstone to quickly rejoin the raid and continue his opener as normal.
All of this is to say, you don’t need to do these things in order to play Augmentation in raid, but all else equal, making a concerted effort to buff optimal targets and carefully align cooldown timings is absolutely required in order for Augmentation to be considered the best choice for its raid spot.
Augmentation in Season 3 Mythic+
While the Augmentation nerfs in raid were substantial, Mythic+ is certainly where Augmentation was hit the hardest, with the additional nerf to Close as Clutchmates as well as the further adjustments to group utility.
Where Augmentation was itself a top damage dealer in Season 2, in Season 3 players are essentially now faced with a choice. It is now absolutely possible to build a group without an Augmentation Evoker and deal more overall damage, potentially completing the key faster. The caveat of course is that Augmentation continues to provide an enormous amount of group utility and survivability, between its arsenal of group defensives, various stops, and Defy Fate, along with Ebon Might continuing to buff tank and healer throughput.
While it is still early in the season, class diversity in keys at the 20+ level is particularly encouraging at the moment, with most classes seeing at least 5% representation across their various specs. It’s really only once we start looking at keys done at the 25+ level (which are generally played competitively for score by some of the strongest, most dedicated players) that Augmentation remains a hard favourite, at least for the time being.
As it stands, the high-end Mythic+ community still largely considers Augmentation to be an indispensable component to any group timing high keys, but that’s not stopping others from beginning to branch out and test alternative strategies.
In fact, when it comes to the competitive scene, it’s quite likely for the upcoming Mythic Dungeon International format that Augmentation Evoker will simply be sidelined in favour of higher throughput DPS compositions capable of putting out the biggest numbers in order to achieve the fastest times. Whatever the case may be, there is certainly a broader conversation to be had in Season 3 around the necessity of Augmentation in competitive Mythic+ groups, especially when compared against the backdrop of Season 2.
Final Thoughts
With the considerable nerfs received coming into Season 3, Blizzard have hit a new tuning target for Augmentation this patch; it is no longer possible to easily outperform other DPS players with a simplified “Autopilot” buffing playstyle, and for most players the spec should not be considered mandatory in Raid or Mythic+ outside of perhaps the hardest content in the game played at the highest level.
This may open up options for groups looking for a bit more flexibility in their compositions, but at the same time existing fans of Augmentation hoping to achieve strong results without partaking in exhaustive out-of-raid strategizing and homework may be left wanting. Of course the spec still has a reasonably simple and accessible basic rotation, but as time goes on, it seems to demand an increasingly highly attentive playstyle, with its limiting 25 yard range on friendly buff abilities Prescience and Blistering Scales continuing to pose yet another unique challenge for players to overcome as they seek to improve their play and approach playing the class at the highest level.
While Augmentation itself has not received any additional adjustments since the start of Season 3, Augmentation players must also be attentive to balance changes to other specs, as nerfs to popular buff targets directly translate into nerfs for Augmentation, while buffs to underperforming specs only rarely 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 by an additional 2-3% in a typical Mythic raid composition.
As far as my own thoughts go, I believe that the out-of-raid preparation required to play Augmentation at a top level remains on the excessive side, and I certainly would like to see changes to buff targeting down the road to alleviate the burden associated with that aspect of the spec. That said, Augmentation may not be the universal “best spec in the game” that it might have been in Season 2, but it certainly remains a perfectly viable spec for most players in Season 3 in all PVE content, provided that you’re willing to work a bit harder to achieve the same results. I’ve been excited about the “great Augmentation experiment” since the spec was first announced, and frankly I continue to look forward to seeing how the meta develops and how Augmentation evolves from here on out.
About the Author
This guide is written and maintained by Jereico, author of the Jereico Evoker community site. Previously a long-time Shadow Priest main, Jereico has been involved as a theorycrafter and contributor in the Evoker community since the early Dragonflight Beta. If you want to get in touch, you can find him in his Community Discord, on Twitter, posting videos to YouTube, and occasionally streaming on Twitch.
