Augmentation Evoker is here - the first so called 'Support Spec' which has been doing the rounds and stirring up no shortage of drama thanks to its new approach to DPS. Mike also had an amazing time doing the new Megadungeon with Zepla and Nobbel. Let us know, do you think the Augmentation Evoker stands to change WoW forever and evolve the state of Tank, Healer and DPS. Or do you think it will fizzle out as just another failure on the pile of dead specs? Drop a comment.
Augmentation is straight up the most broken spec to ever be released, we are 3 days in and every group in 25+ keys are bringing them as a mandatory slot. Couple reasons for it on logs they are bringing the same damage as every other top spec but on top of that they are bringing massive utility and survivability, everyone in the group having 15%+ versatility makes groups capable of doing +1-2 key levels of what was previously possible. Of course this is high level gameplay and in lower keys the whole kick/low dps thing may be true but as is in high keys they have already become completely mandatory. Its already become a massive problem as group finder is basically a bunch of keys listed looking for an evoker or spriest as currently they are both mandatory at high keys.
The only thing I hope they fix is not exactly for Augmentation Evokers themselves but for people who group with them by giving some kind of more visual alerts or such for when they are using their buffs on you. For example, I ran normal aberrus as healer with one and supposedly they kept giving me buffs like one that allowed me to spellcast while moving and honestly I never noticed it and thus was wasted for the most part.
I went ahead and made some weakauras personally. One for Ebon Might, another for Prescience and the third for Spatial Paradox (the buff you mentioned) and it's helped a lot to tie in all my cooldowns when they're up.
@@RedGalbot Your UI is already pretty cluttered, especially on intense fights. Flashbanging someone because they fail to notice an evoker buffing them is going to be way worse than just getting a set of WAs set up the way you like it.
@@fare-5174the base game should do a good enough job to render add-ons useless. The reliance on them fucked over the game for the last decade. Make optional indicators but make them baseline.
I remember when Shaman was the support CLASS, it's a shame the totems got obliterated into oblivion. Would love to see a 4th spec someday with lots of totems.
@@jodydonovan2599 We all have. Especially those of us who were tanking as a shaman from Vanilla to late Wrath. When they took the ability to take from Shamans, I became a permabear
As a 14 years shaman player I missed it so much I went Aug immediately and my guild accepted me as long as sometimes I switch for windfury stuff when pushing as we have 2 augs
I think Augmentation is both really fun and really cool. It's also nice to have another spec to play as Evoker. And btw, I have not encountered anyone telling me my dmg is low. People have been saying things like, "Damn, Augmentation is sick" and stuff like that.
End of Trinity? Not at all. Introduction of an additional niche spec? Yes. They should add more utility/support focused classes and specs, Augvokers are amazing.
I miss EQ1 classes like the Bard, Enchanter, Shaman, Monk where they made the grouping smoothing and easier. You noticed when they were not there. I would love that in WoW.
I miss support classes as well. I love playing them and making my party better. The problem that devs have is figure out how to balance them and players don't know how to deal with them. Tank/healer/dps are really straightfoward. (Not necessarily easy, just straightforward.) Support classes are potentially quirky. They're effectively force multipliers. Either they become required or are negligible enough that you're better off taking an actual dps.
@@gstugard in EQ1 you definitely noticed am amazing Enchanter or Shaman in the group versus a second rogue. But what I miss the most is how janky you could make a group and STILL do stuff. 1 cleric, 3 necros, a monk and an Enchanter. I remembered fear kiting mobs without a tank. Stuff like that. Maybe WoW won't ever have that though as end game is focused on GOGOGO
I am primarily hoping this opens the door for more support oriented specializations. I am definitely one of those players that enjoys empowering my allies. It's definitely tricky when it comes to balance, but if they can make it work, I personally am all for it.
A Necromancer spec for Warlock/Mage (or hell, even an entire class) would fit for support too. Summoning minions to protect your allies or even help with soak mechanics.
@@Syngrafer I've always wanted a warlock tank spec centred around demons. Either transforming into a demon or using a demon/undead that can equip a set of tank gear. Having a pet tank spec especially would be really cool and something new.
If you want to play support. Plzzz go play another game. Most players dont want support classes that take away their ability to be in control of their own dmg or healing. As a dps i absolutly hate pi and external buffs.
@@zpokie123 I defintely understand where you are coming from. I guess it depends on the implementation. For example, I think most people like Heroism/Bloodlust, as it applies to all party/raid members equally, and multiple classes get access to it. Power Infusion and similar spells are problematic because only a single player gets the benefit. So perhaps if supports were more focused on multiple target support it would be less of an issue? Evoker seems to be group focused for the most part. I have to say though, playing priest with power infusion or paladin with blessing of summer, feels really good when you choose the right player at the right moment and give them a huge dps boost. Support is a dangerous archetype to add into a game due to the risk of it being too powerful. Similar to legion shadow priest, it could end up being too difficult to balance. Supportive effects have always been a part of WoW though, so this is nothing new. Windfury Totem, Bloodlust, Power Infusion, Dark Intent, Auras, Curses, Sunder Armor, Class Buffs (Arcane Intelect, Power Word: Fortitude, etc) We've just never had a class quite as support focused as this before.
I am still a Mythic raider, and for the first time ever I went into this dungeon blind like this. Obviously had much more gear so it was easier, but this dungeon was still the most fun I've had in WoW in years! Also Augmentation is very quickly becoming my favorite class to play! Been on it non stop since the patch dropped!
I love how so many players these days have been reacting to augmentation evokers like pre-Cata boomkin, ele shammy, shadow priest and other technically support specs didn't exist in the past. As someone who played ele shammy in BC and boomkin in WotLK, I'm glad you sorta touched on that support element back then at the start of your augmentation segment.
Haven't played WoW in years but my best times were back in BC. One of those things was raiding as a Druid in a support class configuration. Basically I did off-tank and when another tank wasn't needed I did mainly kitty dps and even could pop out and offer a support heal. Sure I wasn't topping the dps charts but that wasn't my role. Loved doing that. No surprise my favorite toon to play in Guild Wars 2 is support Guardian (core or elite specs).
I think the whole community should embrace this filosophy more. More blind content, less hyper progress mania. More kindness and encouragment and less aggressiveness
Just an FYI, might be a typo. Philosophy is spelled with a ph for the f sound. Weird little quirk. Just wanted to point it out incase you were ESL or anything. No trying to be rude.
@@EviIM0nk3y true mate so many toxic prople in raiding and m+ ... leave after like 2 deaths even it would be still intime easy. Also in raiding more than 2 wipes on a boss in normal.or hc? Well half of raid leaves.. kinda sad the decline of player behavior in an mmorgp
as much as id love for this to be a thing, this is the WoW community. Most players are pretty much conditioned to be quite the opposite, tho you do find your outliners here and there.
Aug evoker is the most amazing thing to be added for M+ the way they play is perfect and the spec is perfectly designed for M+. The ability to have a spec that can just soley focus on controlling the mobs and supporting the grp without having to focus on staying alive, min maxing dmg, or healing the group feels so good. Just having a guy in the group who can do those things stress free just takes a major weight of stress off the other roles.
Yah so every other dps class gets fucked out of a M+ spot because everyone wants their buff monkey augvoker. No thanks. It's terrible for the game. I guess you don't pug keys at all?
@@johnd2946 So the game should stop innovating and doing things the wow community has asked about for years because you don't have friends? you have the logic of a 5 year old. go back to the forums where you belong. The "meta" is not Blizzards problem its the communities. You roll around in the mud that is pugging and then complain to blizzard that your covered in dirt. News flash any multiplayer game with any sort of ranking is gonna have that "meta" gate keeping attitude with its solo player base. Look at league look at csgo or valorant. Their the exact same as M+ pugging. So either grow up and stfu and accept that pugging is always going to be like that no matter what happens to the game or you can go find actual people to enjoy and do the content with the way this game was designed to be played.
My gf played Aug in our raid last night and honestly, you could really feel the buff. I had about 50% uptime on Ebon Might and most of the raid had a good 20-30% higher dps than usual, along with noticeably better survivability. With practice, she can probably push that uptime up further and get used to applying Prescience to the right classes to really shine. It really reminds me of Dis tbh - the buff-oriented playstyle is remeniscient of spreading and maintaining Atonements. On the meters, damage was pretty weak (20k or so when she was pulling 60kish on devastation), but on warcraft logs (where the buff damage is re-attributed back to the augvoker) it was clear that her damage contribution was roughly competitive with what she was pulling in the dps spec. In all, it feels pretty well balanced for average players - obviously it'll be broken as all hell for the RWF crowd, who'll stack three with verse-loving classes, but for the average group it's going to be about as good as taking a devo. The only thing that can go wrong is the community utterly failing to understand it and demanding it gets crushed into another dps class with the buffs being minimized to meaninglessness.
If I could get into guilds or groups that did blind raid/play I would play WoW again, but it doesnt really exisit. One reason I'm looking forward to things like Ashes of Creation seems like the model of the build would make blind play pretty much the norm
I believe in order to make support classes viable for the community in the future is to make their dps buffs easy to extract from other people dps and give it to the support class since it's because of them. SImplest way would be to make all buffs X% damage increase, since X% Haste gain can't be calculated and extracted. In short, make it so you can have a rDPS stat just like FFXIV. It would do wonders to humble selfish classes and value things like PI from priests.
Tbh them, paladins and monk heal specs could be rekitted to be like such. They all do damage but heal (specific builds unlike disc priests) but disc priests need it far more I feel
Design behind and why evoker is DPS and not Healer is because a healer buffing dps = more group dmg overall. A DPS slot Buffing DPS = the dps can relatively be the same. Augmentation evoker can buff Allie’s then do support stuff that won’t lose out on too much dmg because buffing your Allies is the most important thing you’re doing. So as per above, I think enhancement shaman would be a good option for support + any class that has 3 dps specs like Mage, warlock, rogue and any healer that has 2 healing roles like priest. They should all have 1 support role.
Yo Preach! I'm the same way with blind raiding! I have preferred doing this method and have done this with my guild for years now. We have been skilled enough to not even have to look up guides cause we'd (more me) be the ones mroe likely to actually create guides for boss fights but yeah. I hear you. capturing that without having any knowledge of the fights is a really fun way to enjoy the game. Also I wanted to point out this thing that you're talking about, I don't even know if your'e even aware of it. This "capture" of WoW being fun again is due to the fact that you're undergeared for something and you're still able to overcome those boss fights. That's why it felt so fun to you. You've lost this feeling over the years cause you've played the game SO much that you haven't had the chance to be the under dog anymore and over come something really challenging like that. Just figured you'd want a bit of insight as to why you're able to actually enjoy WoW so much in this kind of perspective of playing WoW again.
I could see the support role bring me back into the game, depends on how it shakes out in the long run. The game needs more class fantasy imo, as well different utility based things to do in or out of combat. I think it'd be neat to have the support be able to start a prepull rotation so the pull timer would be based around when your support started. There are a bunch of neat things they could do with a support role that would shake up the game in a way that it sorely needs.
Omg. I just have to say @16:30 "throw yourself into bad situations". That's how my husband taught me how to tank back in BC and into Wrath, leveling a warrior and him on a shaman. He would just constantly pull everything and like "oh no what are you doing tank save me!" and if I were healing on my druid he would stand in fire in dungeons and still expect me to be able to keep him and the party up. Ah.. good times. I haven't raided in years. Now that our kids are more or less self sufficient, maybe I could get back into it.
I'm so glad you could experience WoW blind this time Preach. I ever only did a trial version to lvl 20 and the beginner dungeons blind were so much fun. Yeah I died and got kicked, but man was it fun to try as tank, dps and healer and learn and beat those dungeons. WoW anxiety did kick in with also a few negative dungeon experiences. So I never picked it up. But this way of playing (blind mega dungeons and support possibility) does make me wanna try WoW now. Having fun and learning and not having to do a job (read up about all the mechanics beforehand) is really nice to know it's still a possibility in WoW. Your enthusiasm is contagious!
I love the blind raid mentality that Preach has. My guild goes in on day 1 of every raid release on Normal difficulty and turns off every boss mod available. We tell everyone to not look up the fights, and if you do you go mute and just tunnel DPS into the boss. It's the most fun raiding experience I've had, since we've started doing the blind play through - because Preach is right. There are core strategies that can be tweaked based on your teammembers, and we do just that - we find a strategy that works for us, and tweak it based on the skillset of our players.
Undergeared and freshly dinged is how me and my friends did karazhan in legion, we dinged 2 days before it released so we went in blind with no gear. Most fun dungeon run in modern wow for me
My two favourite MMO classes to play ever were LoreMaster and Captain in Lord of the Rings in SoA/MoM period. Both support classes but a well played LM or Captain in a raid could make a massive difference to how a fight played out
it's a regular DPS spec with the exception that your own damage is not recorded on detail ( hence oyu get kicked out of group by noob who don't know) and part of how much damage you do depend on how someonelse press his buttons.
@burnttoast26 I'm not a developer by any means, but from what I understand from some other videos (I think Bellular or another Preach video I can't remember) is that any DPS meter is based off of the combat log, and as far as I'm aware it wouldn't be able to determine what is buffed vs base damage on its own. WoWLogs would be where the change would have to occur and follow the FFLogs route of doing raid dps to properly distinguish how much dps a player got from buffs from other party/raid members.
Everyone talking about Augmentation like there haven't been support specs in the past. Especially in TBC shamans and druids were almost indispensable supporters. They did less damage than the full dps specs but brought the most powerful buffs in bloodlust/heroism, totems like windfury and things like fairy fire and innervate. Melee shaman was called 'Enhancement' for a reason... I welcome the concept back. Been playing around on my Evoker and it's actually fun to not absolutely focus on my own dmg output while not having to play healer.
I want augmentation to be good because I like supporting my teammates while also not feeling sweaty that my dps is 100k and not 110k. If I can prevent a death, move somewhat to prevent them from dying, buffing teammates... That's the DPS I want to play. Augmentation is a good START (because it's not perfect). Prescience is clunky, Time Skip is not a major CD rotation really, and the rotation is very boring. But this is good! People are so blind to what Augmentation even is. It's not just "my dps is lower so yours is better," it's all the talent utility it brings as well.
Over the years I started to get tired of healers and just playing whack-a-mole with hp bars and really started to get into buffers, mainly cause of enchanters in LoL. I never really cared about big dick dps, I always enjoyed setting up shit for my team and making things easier, giving them my power and allowing them to express themselves better. Which is why I really like ranged dps in FFXIV and offensive boon supports in GW2. There are players that want to measure other things like ward scores, time cc-ed, kill participation, and I'd totally love a class in mmo that gives away 30-40% of my power or more to the rest of the group.
Preach discussion about augmentation evoker and that these players needs to study the group and maximise the group damage output made me think of a pug m+ Halls of Attonement I did in Shadowlands. I played assasination rogue, venthyr. We had a kyrian windwalker and a kyrian guardian druid. The druid placed his ability on the monk to start with, but midway first pull he noticed, and swaped, his ability to me. And I had it the rest of the dungeon. I asked the druid in whisper: "with what stats I get, I believe I should have the ability on trash, but on bosses I believe the best one is the windwalker, if it is not to much job for you" He answered with: "I believe you are wrong, I believe you will be best also on bosses". That just shows that, what the people believe to be the best, not always is the best. You need to track abilities, you need to observe and adapt. This was in season 2, when assasination rogues stacked crit/haste for single target, and crit/mastery for aoe. With kyrian druid ability active I was running around with 87% crit, if I remember correctly. with procs I could get even higher.
Look at m+ and even PVP, Aug are definitely rocking the boat! Also even logs don't include pets and how they scale off primary stat, or certain spells (ignite etc), and since all the top classes are unholy DK, fire mage and demo, who knows how much of their damage isn't being attributed to the Evoker on logs - when that's fixed, there's a good chance demo etc drop a bit and Aug pop off! Heck, you already see them on the top page occasionally if you exclude PI.
Lotro captain main(support class) here. I would like to finally welcome wow's support spec(augmentation evoker) to the awesome world of support. First of all support is not the main healer,main tank,big damage person. Were there to buff the groups so they can get healed more and do more damage. And to alleviate the stress of the healers and tanks when we support. If everyone in the group had a great chill time in the raid. That means the augmentation evoker did there job right.
if been absent from wow for a long time but it's so cool that there is a "support" class now that buffs others. If i ever return, this would be the number 1 class to play.
Hi Preach, An interesting thing to note is the people that make Warcraft logs also make FFXIV Logs and in FF logs that is a measurement most people use called RDPS (Raid DPS) so if you buff someone, the extra damage they do will count for the toward the person that gives them the buff. Its probably a smaller note but the conecept is already there and probably not unrealistic to implement. Although a critisim from the FF community is the "2 minute meta." to make it easier for people that provide buffs all cooldowns will be available every 2 minutes (some are 1 minute cooldown, some are 40 seconds, etc) and the higher end community sees this as dumbing down the game. I'm not as invested into WoW anymore to say what direction things will go but its interesting to see how it will play out.
Support roles have been dead in most games for so long, it breaks my heart. It's what I truly loved. It's what I played in RIFT, it's why I was Enhancement in early WoW, it's what I used to Bard in FFXI and even, for a bit when it was a thing, in FFXIV. I just love the archetype of being utter trash by yourself but bringing a group to greater than the sum of it's parts. It just really brings the co-op feeling up for me. I miss it so, so much.
They really need to make a 4th Support 'Role'. And more Specs should be converted into Support specs. The actual concept is pretty cool though. Augmentation feels pretty fun to play. My Evoker isn't very geared, but since the buff scales with Intellect, I imagine that they're really powerful later on. What would happen if you had 4 Augmentation Evokers and a tank? Would they buff each other enough that they did normal dps? lol
In Lotro if there is more than one captain(support class) in the group then the buffs of the other captains can get overwritten if there is a captain that can provide buffs that are higher than the other captains. I can only assume it's the same thing in wow. But having more than 1 augmentation evoker would maybe make the raids easy. Or just make the group be extra safe.
@@morrowoblivion13 There was a video of a raid when they first came out, where they had like 17 Aug Evokers beefing up 2 or 3 dps. The top one was an Unholy DK that was doing over a hundred million dps. The bosses died in a few seconds on Heroic difficulty(Almost the highest).
@@Azrael79athat means the buffs can stack or some of them were using different buffs to be combined together. I can only assume that btw. In Lotro if there is more than one lead the charge captain ( red line/dps) their buffs can't stack unless they timed different buffs to be combined to give the dps people massive dps but they have to time that precisely as some buffs only have a few seconds.
@@morrowoblivion13 Well, supposedly they hotfixed whatever caused it to happen. The current ability is basically pretty simple. You buff 4 people with 14% of your main stat value, which transforms into their main stat value. It might not stack now though, I don't know. Or if it does stack, it just doesn't work that well in a large group with more than 5 players. Btw, in smaller groups, there's an extra buff that increases the bonus by like 40%.
@@Azrael79a the smaller group buff does seem similar to the captain's brother skill in Lotro. You put blade brother on a person and then the brother skill is also applied to the entire group. Oh man the people have no idea the kind of fun people will have with an augmentation evoker in their groups in wow. Prepare for a much more chill time raiding.
The sentence at 10:28 of 'seeing when DPS cooldowns are popped' just makes me miss old AST cards so much more. Yes, you could fling them out wily-nily, but a good AST paid attention to people's burst windows (as they were at odd times back in the day) and doled out cards accordingly based on who was where in their damage rotation. It made for a really damn engaging system on top of the usual healing.
Yea it's kinda wank that FFXIV omogenized all their classes in time while wow is adding more variety now, I miss a lot of old classes gameplay in FFXIV :(
Tbc resto shaman has been my favorite class in any MMO I've seen. I love the party role it filled but also it had four mutually exclusive class mechanics which made it feel very strategic. The totems, weapon imbues, shocks, and shields all had opportunity costs which organically created meaningful choices.
This Augmentation problem is reminding me a lot of when Brewmaster came along. Due to how the stagger worked on paper and on addons, it looked like Brewmasters were made of paper and had no damage mitigation at all. It was only halfway through Mists when the value of Brewmasters was known and used in almost every raid.
augmentation feels like a spec for progress where 1 person has control of when damage goes out and improves group survivability and for groups with a wide skill deviation so carries carry harder and the lower skill players dont get killed as often and rescued from their own mistakes. The Mega dungeon is a ton of fun, did it half blind just so i knew what abilities there were without needing a wipe to get that info. The difficulty feels really strange, manifested timeways and tyr were far harder than any other boss and the last 3 where almost a push over with the tank soloing the last half of morchie and Deios for 10 minutes and the battlefield feeling like a tank and spank with tab targeting being the real enemy.
On FFLogs we have something called "rDPS" this basically takes all the DPS others gained from your buffs and adds them to you instead. This should paint a better overall picture of how effective they are.
I've always had a policy of first dungeon first raid blind and that's one reason why I still play wow after 19 or so years. Blind raiding/dungeoning is the most fun aspect of the game
I really like that Blizzard is trying to do what it does well: take designs from other games. The emphasis on buff timing (and knowing it) lines up with the buff system in FF14 and as Preach also mentioned, GW2. If Blizzard can take that system and deliver a satisfying addition to it, I think maybe yeah, Blizz could break out of the holy trinity.
Ya the megadungeon was fun we went in full blind as well (3 guildies and me).. We had to pug a tank but luckily after the first one left when we wiped at the first boss we got another one that was equally going blind and in the same mindset as us.. It was a lot of fun to figure out the mechanics and how to deal with them on our own, we did look into the dungeon journal a few times but no guides or videos.
i played yesterday M+ with my guildies with my Augvoker..and the Tank was shocked how his DPS went up not only in the burst window. The Tank buff alone made 6,2 million dmg on a Boss.
Augvoker is definitely the prototype for Support specs, if it's well received then Blizzard may very well do more. i'm just glad that Blizzard came out and said "we're not remaking any current specs into support specs, but we are open to the idea of making support specs in the future."
You've peaked my interest, but I just can't support blizzard until I can be garunteed the old guard is purged, and the dev work is there absent of corporate meddling. But these things do sound good.
in lotro, you have lore masters with a lot of buffs debuffs and cc options, and let me tell you, the difference between a good and a mediocre and a bad player is crazy. its huge. but that is good, the utility of them along with other suppport classes and the synergy between different buffers makes them nice and people will bring them, although lotro has 6 and 12 mans instead of 5 and 10 mans, which makes a bit more room for them in small group size content.
I hope there is more supporting style stuff added to classes, as its near non-existent right now. It would also open the door to more creativity than just DPS,HEALER,TANK. Stuff like Support-DPS, Damage-Healer would be rad
lord of the rings online has many support class options, and there the difference between good support and bad is litterally almost double damage, and it does really add some layers to synergy, which is nice. hope it works out, but there should be more options like this for more classes really, and hybrid specs, maybe some class could drop their dps by 10-20% and do some more support, would be really nice, i think the important bit is to create loads of options with drawbacks and strenghts where its not mandatory to bring 3 of anything, but at least a couple of support players is nicer over all.
I really like how the Augmentation Evoker is working, and I hope Blizzard looks into shifting a few more specs to a support(ish) role like the Augvoker. It would more than likely have to wait for a new expansion overhaul of classes, but having more options to do something similar would be ideal.
Easiest way to explain Augmentation to people who don't know... There buffs are equivalent to... Having 2.5ish Sophic Devotion Enchants Having an Extra Tier piece set equipped Having a extra Dps Trinket Having a Eons Breath With okayish heals
I don't see much dungeon kicking in at least LFG or even LFR. AFK/DC players get kicked and that's it. Nobody really cares about your performance since there is always one player severly above everybody elses ilvl. It's more about following certain shortcut routes (Azure Vaults) and even there I haven't seen much drama in more than 100 rnd hc runs.
Going blind to the megadungeon with my friends was the most fun experience we've had in a long time. Augmentation is awesome, and for a healer main it's a blast. I only wish ebon might gave a power infusion-like visual so people knew they got empowered.
End of the holy trinity? Yesn’t It’s more like a new era One that’s catching up with FFXIV’s Bard and Dancer jobs True noobs will boot an Augmentation evoker looking only at the raw DPS put out Real veterans will look at the boss dying faster and look to investigate Support specs were removed from WoW because of the former
I'm really enjoying the Augmentation Evoker. So far I've been picking the top blaster and keeping their buffs going. But I think you're right about trying to pass buffs to people with CDs up.
last time i did something similar was the week 1 hard mode Tazavesh on my undergeared healer. Took us good 5h to clear 1st time around but it was so much fun. Especialy trying to optimize my CDs on last boss
Got our second kill on mythic shadowflame last night. Enjoying auggy except for prescience. Feels like i have to cast it so much. That and my 25 yard range, its so short when you still get targed by range mechanics but need to keep melee targeted
It's not necessarily cool that people are getting kicked for playing the new spec but at the same time I get it. Whenever a new spec or class gets added to the game tons of people flock to it, some of them are amazing but a lot of them are not. For me personally at the start of Dragonflight there were a lot of Dracthyr that I wish just weren't in my groups. The classic paradox of wanting my fellow players to have fun and play what they want but not wanting their fun to impact my dungeon/raid experience negatively.
This reminds me that my disappointment with the warlock is they pushed them to a pure DPS class. I had wanted affliction warlocks to sure use DOTs but more focus on debuffs. They instead de-emphasized the debuffs instead of focusing on them and just made them a DPS dot caster which to me is boring. Give the affliction spec all the curses(even doom like why is the coolest curse on demonology) Make the curses so its reducing armor, resistances is strong enough that its a core part of your build while solo or in groups. Let them stack even on a solo lock so you can really debilitate enemies. Have all their dots have some extra rider, like maybe agony reduces the targets accuracy a smidgen. If all you want from your warlock is DPS that is what the destruction spec is for.(though I prefer classics method of talents vs picking a spec)
I love to heal, I quit wow because the healer spots were all taken in my group, and I didn't want to fight over it. This is making me come back, I hope this spec let's ppl who like to support have a spot similar to the healer without fighting over the finite spots
Well, the nail was hit within the first minute 30 seconds. Blind playing. That is what made vanilla, TBC and Wrath so much fun. Sure, there were guides and videos and this n that. But for the most part, everyone just went to raids not knowing a god damn thing. That's what made it fun. For me, anyway. Keep your negative replies to yourselves please.
I want to play WoW Again but Id need to find a guild thats cool with "blind" gameplay. I just want to play and experience the game without the need to consume hours of videos or reading just to meet to approval of a few people. If I feel the need to look something up of course I would, but I wouldn't want to feel somewhat forced to do so if that makes sense.
Support classes have been around for a while just not in wow. Ff14 bard and dancers , Rit bards and archon , everquest bards shaman enchanters. Thing is i dont see how this will work with the current mythic plus iteration we have. Maybe if they remove timers and go more along the nm dungeons stuff
I played Wow since Vanilla loved the game highs and lows. Have done GW2 for a bit over a year and that cast bar in combat is painful. Interesting idea for wow though. Your description of the blind mega dungeon reminds me of DM west for me and group I did it with.
I love doing blind raiding/dungeons. This time though I did research because I've found people are so anti-blind experience, and I wanted to have a bit of an idea of what I was getting into. If it was a normal dungeon, I wouldn't have, but this isn't. Still looking forward to it though!
The number of times I've seen a group wipe while the tank solo's half a boss I'd say they already got rid of the trinity. At least the tank healer interdependence part of it. DPS is now the tank.
Not that involved on wow but if this is a success, can hope that paladin shaman priest(Discipline) and warlock(demonology) can be supportive too. Because that be fun to read about.
Idk much about wow. So I'm putting this in a Lotro perspective. The support class called the captain. Captains support dps/heals(we call that red line/lead the charge). Support tanking/heals(we call it yellow line/leader of men). Support healing/dps (we call it blue line/ hands of healing) so yeah you do have a point there. that dps people can dps/healing support specs too.
Augmentation Evoker is here - the first so called 'Support Spec' which has been doing the rounds and stirring up no shortage of drama thanks to its new approach to DPS. Mike also had an amazing time doing the new Megadungeon with Zepla and Nobbel.
Let us know, do you think the Augmentation Evoker stands to change WoW forever and evolve the state of Tank, Healer and DPS. Or do you think it will fizzle out as just another failure on the pile of dead specs? Drop a comment.
Probably the best spec to bring if you have room. Anyone who thinks they're bad are just that- bad.
Augmentation is straight up the most broken spec to ever be released, we are 3 days in and every group in 25+ keys are bringing them as a mandatory slot.
Couple reasons for it on logs they are bringing the same damage as every other top spec but on top of that they are bringing massive utility and survivability, everyone in the group having 15%+ versatility makes groups capable of doing +1-2 key levels of what was previously possible. Of course this is high level gameplay and in lower keys the whole kick/low dps thing may be true but as is in high keys they have already become completely mandatory. Its already become a massive problem as group finder is basically a bunch of keys listed looking for an evoker or spriest as currently they are both mandatory at high keys.
The only thing I hope they fix is not exactly for Augmentation Evokers themselves but for people who group with them by giving some kind of more visual alerts or such for when they are using their buffs on you. For example, I ran normal aberrus as healer with one and supposedly they kept giving me buffs like one that allowed me to spellcast while moving and honestly I never noticed it and thus was wasted for the most part.
I went ahead and made some weakauras personally. One for Ebon Might, another for Prescience and the third for Spatial Paradox (the buff you mentioned) and it's helped a lot to tie in all my cooldowns when they're up.
I mean it's up to you to track that stuff too tbh. Add a weakaura that lights up when you get it
@@TheSilverwing999I disagree. Blizzard should have designed a more clear visual indicator that you're under these effects.
@@RedGalbot Your UI is already pretty cluttered, especially on intense fights. Flashbanging someone because they fail to notice an evoker buffing them is going to be way worse than just getting a set of WAs set up the way you like it.
@@fare-5174the base game should do a good enough job to render add-ons useless. The reliance on them fucked over the game for the last decade.
Make optional indicators but make them baseline.
I remember when Shaman was the support CLASS, it's a shame the totems got obliterated into oblivion. Would love to see a 4th spec someday with lots of totems.
I’ve always wanted tanking spec for shaman.
@@jodydonovan2599 We all have. Especially those of us who were tanking as a shaman from Vanilla to late Wrath. When they took the ability to take from Shamans, I became a permabear
As a 14 years shaman player I missed it so much I went Aug immediately and my guild accepted me as long as sometimes I switch for windfury stuff when pushing as we have 2 augs
I love how totems work now honestly. So much interesting utility.
i would love to see a support spec on other unconventional classes. maybe a warrior support spec that uses banners or shouts
Hopefully the spec is well received. So many people advocate for Blizzard to make big changes that shake the game up and this is one of them.
well as he said, wow community is super "simple"
@@KazaarLothaThe WoW Andy brain as Asmon put it. 😂
Big changes doesnt mean good. And this spec and the whole idea behind it is a miss. External buffs are aids.
@@ivarisalie8759 Honestly they did not do enough. A support dps is awesome.
@@oabh1808 No chance you seriously tried to compare Blizzard adding a new spec to WoW and a real life relationship. That was a joke, right?
I think Augmentation is both really fun and really cool. It's also nice to have another spec to play as Evoker.
And btw, I have not encountered anyone telling me my dmg is low. People have been saying things like, "Damn, Augmentation is sick" and stuff like that.
No one cares if Aug does 40k overall dps when the one with the ego's damage goes up by 60k
End of Trinity? Not at all. Introduction of an additional niche spec? Yes.
They should add more utility/support focused classes and specs, Augvokers are amazing.
Exactly
FFXIV did this same thing years ago, and no where is it more apparent than the Dancer
Bard to a lesser degree, but still
I miss EQ1 classes like the Bard, Enchanter, Shaman, Monk where they made the grouping smoothing and easier. You noticed when they were not there.
I would love that in WoW.
I miss support classes as well. I love playing them and making my party better. The problem that devs have is figure out how to balance them and players don't know how to deal with them. Tank/healer/dps are really straightfoward. (Not necessarily easy, just straightforward.) Support classes are potentially quirky. They're effectively force multipliers. Either they become required or are negligible enough that you're better off taking an actual dps.
@@gstugard in EQ1 you definitely noticed am amazing Enchanter or Shaman in the group versus a second rogue.
But what I miss the most is how janky you could make a group and STILL do stuff.
1 cleric, 3 necros, a monk and an Enchanter. I remembered fear kiting mobs without a tank. Stuff like that.
Maybe WoW won't ever have that though as end game is focused on GOGOGO
I am primarily hoping this opens the door for more support oriented specializations. I am definitely one of those players that enjoys empowering my allies. It's definitely tricky when it comes to balance, but if they can make it work, I personally am all for it.
A Necromancer spec for Warlock/Mage (or hell, even an entire class) would fit for support too. Summoning minions to protect your allies or even help with soak mechanics.
@@Syngrafer I've always wanted a warlock tank spec centred around demons. Either transforming into a demon or using a demon/undead that can equip a set of tank gear. Having a pet tank spec especially would be really cool and something new.
Yeah but what happens is even if say every class has it as an option it makes every other build not viable
If you want to play support. Plzzz go play another game. Most players dont want support classes that take away their ability to be in control of their own dmg or healing. As a dps i absolutly hate pi and external buffs.
@@zpokie123 I defintely understand where you are coming from. I guess it depends on the implementation.
For example, I think most people like Heroism/Bloodlust, as it applies to all party/raid members equally, and multiple classes get access to it. Power Infusion and similar spells are problematic because only a single player gets the benefit. So perhaps if supports were more focused on multiple target support it would be less of an issue? Evoker seems to be group focused for the most part.
I have to say though, playing priest with power infusion or paladin with blessing of summer, feels really good when you choose the right player at the right moment and give them a huge dps boost.
Support is a dangerous archetype to add into a game due to the risk of it being too powerful. Similar to legion shadow priest, it could end up being too difficult to balance.
Supportive effects have always been a part of WoW though, so this is nothing new. Windfury Totem, Bloodlust, Power Infusion, Dark Intent, Auras, Curses, Sunder Armor, Class Buffs (Arcane Intelect, Power Word: Fortitude, etc) We've just never had a class quite as support focused as this before.
I am still a Mythic raider, and for the first time ever I went into this dungeon blind like this. Obviously had much more gear so it was easier, but this dungeon was still the most fun I've had in WoW in years! Also Augmentation is very quickly becoming my favorite class to play! Been on it non stop since the patch dropped!
I love how so many players these days have been reacting to augmentation evokers like pre-Cata boomkin, ele shammy, shadow priest and other technically support specs didn't exist in the past. As someone who played ele shammy in BC and boomkin in WotLK, I'm glad you sorta touched on that support element back then at the start of your augmentation segment.
don't forget classic LotP ferals
Haven't played WoW in years but my best times were back in BC. One of those things was raiding as a Druid in a support class configuration. Basically I did off-tank and when another tank wasn't needed I did mainly kitty dps and even could pop out and offer a support heal. Sure I wasn't topping the dps charts but that wasn't my role. Loved doing that. No surprise my favorite toon to play in Guild Wars 2 is support Guardian (core or elite specs).
I was disco bubble/dispel guy in ICC, I made my other healers life smooth and give them chance for high green numbers.
I think the whole community should embrace this filosophy more. More blind content, less hyper progress mania. More kindness and encouragment and less aggressiveness
Just an FYI, might be a typo. Philosophy is spelled with a ph for the f sound. Weird little quirk. Just wanted to point it out incase you were ESL or anything. No trying to be rude.
i for one would be more invested in raiding, mythic, and pvping if everyone just learned how to chill and relax lol
@@EviIM0nk3y true mate so many toxic prople in raiding and m+ ... leave after like 2 deaths even it would be still intime easy. Also in raiding more than 2 wipes on a boss in normal.or hc? Well half of raid leaves.. kinda sad the decline of player behavior in an mmorgp
That's like 80% of why I can't stick to wow anymore
as much as id love for this to be a thing, this is the WoW community. Most players are pretty much conditioned to be quite the opposite, tho you do find your outliners here and there.
Aug evoker is the most amazing thing to be added for M+ the way they play is perfect and the spec is perfectly designed for M+. The ability to have a spec that can just soley focus on controlling the mobs and supporting the grp without having to focus on staying alive, min maxing dmg, or healing the group feels so good. Just having a guy in the group who can do those things stress free just takes a major weight of stress off the other roles.
Just getting back into WoW after a long hiatus and i’m giving the Augvoker a shot! 💪
Yah so every other dps class gets fucked out of a M+ spot because everyone wants their buff monkey augvoker. No thanks. It's terrible for the game. I guess you don't pug keys at all?
@@johnd2946 So the game should stop innovating and doing things the wow community has asked about for years because you don't have friends? you have the logic of a 5 year old. go back to the forums where you belong. The "meta" is not Blizzards problem its the communities. You roll around in the mud that is pugging and then complain to blizzard that your covered in dirt. News flash any multiplayer game with any sort of ranking is gonna have that "meta" gate keeping attitude with its solo player base. Look at league look at csgo or valorant. Their the exact same as M+ pugging. So either grow up and stfu and accept that pugging is always going to be like that no matter what happens to the game or you can go find actual people to enjoy and do the content with the way this game was designed to be played.
Aug is mandatory for high keys now. Sucks but that’s blizz for you they never find a good balance for keys
@@TheCherrypoppin unfortunately there never will be true balance for content that can only have 5 specs out of the total of 39 specs in the game.
My gf played Aug in our raid last night and honestly, you could really feel the buff. I had about 50% uptime on Ebon Might and most of the raid had a good 20-30% higher dps than usual, along with noticeably better survivability. With practice, she can probably push that uptime up further and get used to applying Prescience to the right classes to really shine. It really reminds me of Dis tbh - the buff-oriented playstyle is remeniscient of spreading and maintaining Atonements.
On the meters, damage was pretty weak (20k or so when she was pulling 60kish on devastation), but on warcraft logs (where the buff damage is re-attributed back to the augvoker) it was clear that her damage contribution was roughly competitive with what she was pulling in the dps spec.
In all, it feels pretty well balanced for average players - obviously it'll be broken as all hell for the RWF crowd, who'll stack three with verse-loving classes, but for the average group it's going to be about as good as taking a devo. The only thing that can go wrong is the community utterly failing to understand it and demanding it gets crushed into another dps class with the buffs being minimized to meaninglessness.
If I could get into guilds or groups that did blind raid/play I would play WoW again, but it doesnt really exisit. One reason I'm looking forward to things like Ashes of Creation seems like the model of the build would make blind play pretty much the norm
I believe in order to make support classes viable for the community in the future is to make their dps buffs easy to extract from other people dps and give it to the support class since it's because of them. SImplest way would be to make all buffs X% damage increase, since X% Haste gain can't be calculated and extracted.
In short, make it so you can have a rDPS stat just like FFXIV. It would do wonders to humble selfish classes and value things like PI from priests.
Blizz already said they are doing that, but it takes some time
I wish Disc Priest would get reworked to be like Augmentation evoker. It has so much potential for something like that
Tbh them, paladins and monk heal specs could be rekitted to be like such. They all do damage but heal (specific builds unlike disc priests) but disc priests need it far more I feel
Tbh enchancement shaman fits the theme much more. Guardian druid too imho
@@anders8461 a support tank seems interesting 🤔 necessarily I don't think the role should Inherently change, but just add support to it.
I'd quit playing disc so fast if it did man. I like how disc is now
Design behind and why evoker is DPS and not Healer is because a healer buffing dps = more group dmg overall.
A DPS slot Buffing DPS = the dps can relatively be the same.
Augmentation evoker can buff Allie’s then do support stuff that won’t lose out on too much dmg because buffing your Allies is the most important thing you’re doing.
So as per above, I think enhancement shaman would be a good option for support + any class that has 3 dps specs like Mage, warlock, rogue and any healer that has 2 healing roles like priest.
They should all have 1 support role.
Yo Preach! I'm the same way with blind raiding! I have preferred doing this method and have done this with my guild for years now. We have been skilled enough to not even have to look up guides cause we'd (more me) be the ones mroe likely to actually create guides for boss fights but yeah. I hear you. capturing that without having any knowledge of the fights is a really fun way to enjoy the game. Also I wanted to point out this thing that you're talking about, I don't even know if your'e even aware of it. This "capture" of WoW being fun again is due to the fact that you're undergeared for something and you're still able to overcome those boss fights. That's why it felt so fun to you. You've lost this feeling over the years cause you've played the game SO much that you haven't had the chance to be the under dog anymore and over come something really challenging like that. Just figured you'd want a bit of insight as to why you're able to actually enjoy WoW so much in this kind of perspective of playing WoW again.
I could see the support role bring me back into the game, depends on how it shakes out in the long run. The game needs more class fantasy imo, as well different utility based things to do in or out of combat. I think it'd be neat to have the support be able to start a prepull rotation so the pull timer would be based around when your support started. There are a bunch of neat things they could do with a support role that would shake up the game in a way that it sorely needs.
Omg. I just have to say @16:30 "throw yourself into bad situations". That's how my husband taught me how to tank back in BC and into Wrath, leveling a warrior and him on a shaman. He would just constantly pull everything and like "oh no what are you doing tank save me!" and if I were healing on my druid he would stand in fire in dungeons and still expect me to be able to keep him and the party up. Ah.. good times. I haven't raided in years. Now that our kids are more or less self sufficient, maybe I could get back into it.
I'm so glad you could experience WoW blind this time Preach. I ever only did a trial version to lvl 20 and the beginner dungeons blind were so much fun. Yeah I died and got kicked, but man was it fun to try as tank, dps and healer and learn and beat those dungeons.
WoW anxiety did kick in with also a few negative dungeon experiences. So I never picked it up. But this way of playing (blind mega dungeons and support possibility) does make me wanna try WoW now. Having fun and learning and not having to do a job (read up about all the mechanics beforehand) is really nice to know it's still a possibility in WoW. Your enthusiasm is contagious!
I love the blind raid mentality that Preach has. My guild goes in on day 1 of every raid release on Normal difficulty and turns off every boss mod available. We tell everyone to not look up the fights, and if you do you go mute and just tunnel DPS into the boss.
It's the most fun raiding experience I've had, since we've started doing the blind play through - because Preach is right. There are core strategies that can be tweaked based on your teammembers, and we do just that - we find a strategy that works for us, and tweak it based on the skillset of our players.
Undergeared and freshly dinged is how me and my friends did karazhan in legion, we dinged 2 days before it released so we went in blind with no gear. Most fun dungeon run in modern wow for me
My two favourite MMO classes to play ever were LoreMaster and Captain in Lord of the Rings in SoA/MoM period. Both support classes but a well played LM or Captain in a raid could make a massive difference to how a fight played out
Ill be logging in to have a look. Hoping this scratches the itch for my long dead Rift archon mage.
God I miss Preach videos where he just talks about WoW. BRB, re-watching old videos from 2017.
it's a regular DPS spec with the exception that your own damage is not recorded on detail ( hence oyu get kicked out of group by noob who don't know) and part of how much damage you do depend on how someonelse press his buttons.
The meter addon people need to change how that works, a lot of people use meters and are gonna think Aug is trash if they don't change.
@burnttoast26 I'm not a developer by any means, but from what I understand from some other videos (I think Bellular or another Preach video I can't remember) is that any DPS meter is based off of the combat log, and as far as I'm aware it wouldn't be able to determine what is buffed vs base damage on its own.
WoWLogs would be where the change would have to occur and follow the FFLogs route of doing raid dps to properly distinguish how much dps a player got from buffs from other party/raid members.
Everyone talking about Augmentation like there haven't been support specs in the past. Especially in TBC shamans and druids were almost indispensable supporters. They did less damage than the full dps specs but brought the most powerful buffs in bloodlust/heroism, totems like windfury and things like fairy fire and innervate. Melee shaman was called 'Enhancement' for a reason...
I welcome the concept back. Been playing around on my Evoker and it's actually fun to not absolutely focus on my own dmg output while not having to play healer.
So, should I swap from my Feral to Augmentation so I can quit being insta-kicked from M+ pugs?
I want augmentation to be good because I like supporting my teammates while also not feeling sweaty that my dps is 100k and not 110k. If I can prevent a death, move somewhat to prevent them from dying, buffing teammates... That's the DPS I want to play. Augmentation is a good START (because it's not perfect). Prescience is clunky, Time Skip is not a major CD rotation really, and the rotation is very boring. But this is good!
People are so blind to what Augmentation even is. It's not just "my dps is lower so yours is better," it's all the talent utility it brings as well.
Over the years I started to get tired of healers and just playing whack-a-mole with hp bars and really started to get into buffers, mainly cause of enchanters in LoL. I never really cared about big dick dps, I always enjoyed setting up shit for my team and making things easier, giving them my power and allowing them to express themselves better. Which is why I really like ranged dps in FFXIV and offensive boon supports in GW2.
There are players that want to measure other things like ward scores, time cc-ed, kill participation, and I'd totally love a class in mmo that gives away 30-40% of my power or more to the rest of the group.
Preach discussion about augmentation evoker and that these players needs to study the group and maximise the group damage output made me think of a pug m+ Halls of Attonement I did in Shadowlands.
I played assasination rogue, venthyr. We had a kyrian windwalker and a kyrian guardian druid.
The druid placed his ability on the monk to start with, but midway first pull he noticed, and swaped, his ability to me. And I had it the rest of the dungeon. I asked the druid in whisper: "with what stats I get, I believe I should have the ability on trash, but on bosses I believe the best one is the windwalker, if it is not to much job for you" He answered with: "I believe you are wrong, I believe you will be best also on bosses".
That just shows that, what the people believe to be the best, not always is the best. You need to track abilities, you need to observe and adapt.
This was in season 2, when assasination rogues stacked crit/haste for single target, and crit/mastery for aoe. With kyrian druid ability active I was running around with 87% crit, if I remember correctly. with procs I could get even higher.
Look at m+ and even PVP, Aug are definitely rocking the boat! Also even logs don't include pets and how they scale off primary stat, or certain spells (ignite etc), and since all the top classes are unholy DK, fire mage and demo, who knows how much of their damage isn't being attributed to the Evoker on logs - when that's fixed, there's a good chance demo etc drop a bit and Aug pop off! Heck, you already see them on the top page occasionally if you exclude PI.
Lotro captain main(support class) here. I would like to finally welcome wow's support spec(augmentation evoker) to the awesome world of support. First of all support is not the main healer,main tank,big damage person. Were there to buff the groups so they can get healed more and do more damage. And to alleviate the stress of the healers and tanks when we support. If everyone in the group had a great chill time in the raid. That means the augmentation evoker did there job right.
if been absent from wow for a long time but it's so cool that there is a "support" class now that buffs others. If i ever return, this would be the number 1 class to play.
Hi Preach,
An interesting thing to note is the people that make Warcraft logs also make FFXIV Logs and in FF logs that is a measurement most people use called RDPS (Raid DPS) so if you buff someone, the extra damage they do will count for the toward the person that gives them the buff. Its probably a smaller note but the conecept is already there and probably not unrealistic to implement.
Although a critisim from the FF community is the "2 minute meta." to make it easier for people that provide buffs all cooldowns will be available every 2 minutes (some are 1 minute cooldown, some are 40 seconds, etc) and the higher end community sees this as dumbing down the game. I'm not as invested into WoW anymore to say what direction things will go but its interesting to see how it will play out.
Support roles have been dead in most games for so long, it breaks my heart. It's what I truly loved. It's what I played in RIFT, it's why I was Enhancement in early WoW, it's what I used to Bard in FFXI and even, for a bit when it was a thing, in FFXIV. I just love the archetype of being utter trash by yourself but bringing a group to greater than the sum of it's parts. It just really brings the co-op feeling up for me.
I miss it so, so much.
They really need to make a 4th Support 'Role'. And more Specs should be converted into Support specs. The actual concept is pretty cool though. Augmentation feels pretty fun to play. My Evoker isn't very geared, but since the buff scales with Intellect, I imagine that they're really powerful later on. What would happen if you had 4 Augmentation Evokers and a tank? Would they buff each other enough that they did normal dps? lol
In Lotro if there is more than one captain(support class) in the group then the buffs of the other captains can get overwritten if there is a captain that can provide buffs that are higher than the other captains. I can only assume it's the same thing in wow. But having more than 1 augmentation evoker would maybe make the raids easy. Or just make the group be extra safe.
@@morrowoblivion13 There was a video of a raid when they first came out, where they had like 17 Aug Evokers beefing up 2 or 3 dps. The top one was an Unholy DK that was doing over a hundred million dps. The bosses died in a few seconds on Heroic difficulty(Almost the highest).
@@Azrael79athat means the buffs can stack or some of them were using different buffs to be combined together. I can only assume that btw. In Lotro if there is more than one lead the charge captain ( red line/dps) their buffs can't stack unless they timed different buffs to be combined to give the dps people massive dps but they have to time that precisely as some buffs only have a few seconds.
@@morrowoblivion13 Well, supposedly they hotfixed whatever caused it to happen. The current ability is basically pretty simple. You buff 4 people with 14% of your main stat value, which transforms into their main stat value. It might not stack now though, I don't know. Or if it does stack, it just doesn't work that well in a large group with more than 5 players. Btw, in smaller groups, there's an extra buff that increases the bonus by like 40%.
@@Azrael79a the smaller group buff does seem similar to the captain's brother skill in Lotro. You put blade brother on a person and then the brother skill is also applied to the entire group. Oh man the people have no idea the kind of fun people will have with an augmentation evoker in their groups in wow. Prepare for a much more chill time raiding.
I'm jealous of the blind experience in WoW. I would absolutely love that. A hard experience to find.
So happy you are able to do blind play these days. The expectations that come from having such a prevalent ptr are something I don't miss from WoW.
blizz should go back and rework some specs to be more like the Aug spec. For example ENHANCEMENT shaman...
The sentence at 10:28 of 'seeing when DPS cooldowns are popped' just makes me miss old AST cards so much more. Yes, you could fling them out wily-nily, but a good AST paid attention to people's burst windows (as they were at odd times back in the day) and doled out cards accordingly based on who was where in their damage rotation. It made for a really damn engaging system on top of the usual healing.
Yea it's kinda wank that FFXIV omogenized all their classes in time while wow is adding more variety now, I miss a lot of old classes gameplay in FFXIV :(
Tbc resto shaman has been my favorite class in any MMO I've seen. I love the party role it filled but also it had four mutually exclusive class mechanics which made it feel very strategic. The totems, weapon imbues, shocks, and shields all had opportunity costs which organically created meaningful choices.
This Augmentation problem is reminding me a lot of when Brewmaster came along. Due to how the stagger worked on paper and on addons, it looked like Brewmasters were made of paper and had no damage mitigation at all. It was only halfway through Mists when the value of Brewmasters was known and used in almost every raid.
augmentation feels like a spec for progress where 1 person has control of when damage goes out and improves group survivability and for groups with a wide skill deviation so carries carry harder and the lower skill players dont get killed as often and rescued from their own mistakes. The Mega dungeon is a ton of fun, did it half blind just so i knew what abilities there were without needing a wipe to get that info. The difficulty feels really strange, manifested timeways and tyr were far harder than any other boss and the last 3 where almost a push over with the tank soloing the last half of morchie and Deios for 10 minutes and the battlefield feeling like a tank and spank with tab targeting being the real enemy.
RIP NON META DPS specs, good thing unholy dk just had a recent show case for using aug inv.
I think there might be a bug with Eruption where it still finishes casting even if the target is dead. Is that normal?
On FFLogs we have something called "rDPS" this basically takes all the DPS others gained from your buffs and adds them to you instead. This should paint a better overall picture of how effective they are.
I really hope Augvoker opens the way for more support aspects in the game, and maybe even 4th specs for existing classes.
I've always had a policy of first dungeon first raid blind and that's one reason why I still play wow after 19 or so years. Blind raiding/dungeoning is the most fun aspect of the game
I really like that Blizzard is trying to do what it does well: take designs from other games. The emphasis on buff timing (and knowing it) lines up with the buff system in FF14 and as Preach also mentioned, GW2. If Blizzard can take that system and deliver a satisfying addition to it, I think maybe yeah, Blizz could break out of the holy trinity.
I definitely see a lot of FFXIV boss design language in the mega dungeon. Telegraphs, visual queues instead of boss mods etc, and I love it.
Ya the megadungeon was fun we went in full blind as well (3 guildies and me).. We had to pug a tank but luckily after the first one left when we wiped at the first boss we got another one that was equally going blind and in the same mindset as us.. It was a lot of fun to figure out the mechanics and how to deal with them on our own, we did look into the dungeon journal a few times but no guides or videos.
i played yesterday M+ with my guildies with my Augvoker..and the Tank was shocked how his DPS went up not only in the burst window.
The Tank buff alone made 6,2 million dmg on a Boss.
Augvoker is definitely the prototype for Support specs, if it's well received then Blizzard may very well do more. i'm just glad that Blizzard came out and said "we're not remaking any current specs into support specs, but we are open to the idea of making support specs in the future."
You've peaked my interest, but I just can't support blizzard until I can be garunteed the old guard is purged, and the dev work is there absent of corporate meddling. But these things do sound good.
in lotro, you have lore masters with a lot of buffs debuffs and cc options, and let me tell you, the difference between a good and a mediocre and a bad player is crazy. its huge. but that is good, the utility of them along with other suppport classes and the synergy between different buffers makes them nice and people will bring them, although lotro has 6 and 12 mans instead of 5 and 10 mans, which makes a bit more room for them in small group size content.
Lotro captain main here. Lore masters ftw. Never go into a raid without one.
In battle grounds , i played as a support class ( Orc Hunter ) to help out my team mates . In which it pissed off the Alliance to no end .
This place is a mechanical challenge, not ilvl challenge. Tons of fun.
Preach, do you still make your Elvui updated and available? I used it back in BfA but just recently came back to the game
I hope there is more supporting style stuff added to classes, as its near non-existent right now. It would also open the door to more creativity than just DPS,HEALER,TANK. Stuff like Support-DPS, Damage-Healer would be rad
Sounds fun! If i ever go back to wow this what I'll be playing
lord of the rings online has many support class options, and there the difference between good support and bad is litterally almost double damage, and it does really add some layers to synergy, which is nice. hope it works out, but there should be more options like this for more classes really, and hybrid specs, maybe some class could drop their dps by 10-20% and do some more support, would be really nice, i think the important bit is to create loads of options with drawbacks and strenghts where its not mandatory to bring 3 of anything, but at least a couple of support players is nicer over all.
I really like how the Augmentation Evoker is working, and I hope Blizzard looks into shifting a few more specs to a support(ish) role like the Augvoker. It would more than likely have to wait for a new expansion overhaul of classes, but having more options to do something similar would be ideal.
Easiest way to explain Augmentation to people who don't know...
There buffs are equivalent to...
Having 2.5ish Sophic Devotion Enchants
Having an Extra Tier piece set equipped
Having a extra Dps Trinket
Having a Eons Breath
With okayish heals
I don't see much dungeon kicking in at least LFG or even LFR. AFK/DC players get kicked and that's it. Nobody really cares about your performance since there is always one player severly above everybody elses ilvl. It's more about following certain shortcut routes (Azure Vaults) and even there I haven't seen much drama in more than 100 rnd hc runs.
this spec is so fun, i absolutely love it
Going blind to the megadungeon with my friends was the most fun experience we've had in a long time. Augmentation is awesome, and for a healer main it's a blast. I only wish ebon might gave a power infusion-like visual so people knew they got empowered.
End of the holy trinity?
Yesn’t
It’s more like a new era
One that’s catching up with FFXIV’s Bard and Dancer jobs
True noobs will boot an Augmentation evoker looking only at the raw DPS put out
Real veterans will look at the boss dying faster and look to investigate
Support specs were removed from WoW because of the former
Speaking of support spec, I remember shadow priest used to be a support but that didnt work. So I am glad Aug is working well at the moment.
I'm really enjoying the Augmentation Evoker. So far I've been picking the top blaster and keeping their buffs going. But I think you're right about trying to pass buffs to people with CDs up.
Hey Preach, is there any chance you could release an update weakaura package for DF? I am willing to pay.
last time i did something similar was the week 1 hard mode Tazavesh on my undergeared healer. Took us good 5h to clear 1st time around but it was so much fun. Especialy trying to optimize my CDs on last boss
Got our second kill on mythic shadowflame last night. Enjoying auggy except for prescience. Feels like i have to cast it so much. That and my 25 yard range, its so short when you still get targed by range mechanics but need to keep melee targeted
I'm very thankful that we have rDPS and nDPS in FFXIV logs.
"Lmao Azralon" is always the correct answer when dealing with someone from that server.
It's not necessarily cool that people are getting kicked for playing the new spec but at the same time I get it. Whenever a new spec or class gets added to the game tons of people flock to it, some of them are amazing but a lot of them are not. For me personally at the start of Dragonflight there were a lot of Dracthyr that I wish just weren't in my groups. The classic paradox of wanting my fellow players to have fun and play what they want but not wanting their fun to impact my dungeon/raid experience negatively.
They need to add a rdps log for warcraft logs like fflogs has. that should help show the power of that support
For WoW to grow , Blizzard will have to create support classes . I defiantly will be on board with that 100%.
This reminds me that my disappointment with the warlock is they pushed them to a pure DPS class. I had wanted affliction warlocks to sure use DOTs but more focus on debuffs. They instead de-emphasized the debuffs instead of focusing on them and just made them a DPS dot caster which to me is boring. Give the affliction spec all the curses(even doom like why is the coolest curse on demonology) Make the curses so its reducing armor, resistances is strong enough that its a core part of your build while solo or in groups. Let them stack even on a solo lock so you can really debilitate enemies. Have all their dots have some extra rider, like maybe agony reduces the targets accuracy a smidgen.
If all you want from your warlock is DPS that is what the destruction spec is for.(though I prefer classics method of talents vs picking a spec)
I love to heal, I quit wow because the healer spots were all taken in my group, and I didn't want to fight over it. This is making me come back, I hope this spec let's ppl who like to support have a spot similar to the healer without fighting over the finite spots
This expansion is amazing honestly, it’s probably the best expansion I’ve played.
The new mega dungeon seems like a mini raid and I’m here for it.
i hope they implement more of these classes. imagine if we get the same just with shaman, would be sick support class.
Well, the nail was hit within the first minute 30 seconds. Blind playing. That is what made vanilla, TBC and Wrath so much fun. Sure, there were guides and videos and this n that. But for the most part, everyone just went to raids not knowing a god damn thing. That's what made it fun. For me, anyway. Keep your negative replies to yourselves please.
WOW video YES finally a good video! HYPE!!!!!
The ghost of Rift past continues to live through Augmentation evoker and Disc Priest. Prior Rift Archon/Chloro players UNITE!
I want to play WoW Again but Id need to find a guild thats cool with "blind" gameplay. I just want to play and experience the game without the need to consume hours of videos or reading just to meet to approval of a few people. If I feel the need to look something up of course I would, but I wouldn't want to feel somewhat forced to do so if that makes sense.
Love augmentation in my M+ groups they just allow me to crank on bosses and mob packs like there is no tomorrow honestly great addition
Support classes have been around for a while just not in wow. Ff14 bard and dancers , Rit bards and archon , everquest bards shaman enchanters. Thing is i dont see how this will work with the current mythic plus iteration we have. Maybe if they remove timers and go more along the nm dungeons stuff
Loved the mega dungeon as well, will be happily running it every week. Second half is even better!
I played Wow since Vanilla loved the game highs and lows. Have done GW2 for a bit over a year and that cast bar in combat is painful. Interesting idea for wow though. Your description of the blind mega dungeon reminds me of DM west for me and group I did it with.
One step closer to the bard class, we're getting there
Dude I’m excited af with aug evoker
I love doing blind raiding/dungeons. This time though I did research because I've found people are so anti-blind experience, and I wanted to have a bit of an idea of what I was getting into. If it was a normal dungeon, I wouldn't have, but this isn't. Still looking forward to it though!
The number of times I've seen a group wipe while the tank solo's half a boss I'd say they already got rid of the trinity. At least the tank healer interdependence part of it. DPS is now the tank.
I an others were calling for Bards as a Support Class since launch. It's baffling it took them so long.
Not that involved on wow but if this is a success, can hope that paladin shaman priest(Discipline) and warlock(demonology) can be supportive too. Because that be fun to read about.
Very sad when Blizz said “we aren’t planning to change existing dps specs to be support.” Imo that’s exactly what you should do to refresh this game.
Idk much about wow. So I'm putting this in a Lotro perspective. The support class called the captain. Captains support dps/heals(we call that red line/lead the charge). Support tanking/heals(we call it yellow line/leader of men). Support healing/dps (we call it blue line/ hands of healing) so yeah you do have a point there. that dps people can dps/healing support specs too.
Zepla and Mike combo is hilarious cannot help but laugh and enjoy the banters hehe
Preach is back playing wow:D Retail is healing