When it comes to the newly-revealed Season 1 Tier Set for Augmentation Evoker, Blizzard have kept things simple by going with two straightforward bonuses highly reminiscent of past tier sets that we’ve already seen for Augmentation. At the end of the day, these bonuses likely won’t have a significant impact on playstyle, but they do highlight changes that Augmentation players can expect to feel at the start of the upcoming expansion, as well as reinforce some of the existing challenges that players continue to face when playing the spec in a raid environment.
Bolstered by a combination of hero talents and new entries in the Augmentation talent tree, the 2-pc set bonus has an impressive degree of synergy with the spec’s core damaging abilities, and as a whole perhaps indicates a shift in the spec’s damage profile towards personal damage. For example, a typical Augmentation talent setup will have
Upheaval damage supported by
Tectonic Locus,
Accretion, and especially the newly-added capstone talent
Rumbling Earth. The Chronowarden tree takes this a step further with
Reverberations and
Primacy, which trigger three times even in single-target thanks to
Rumbling Earth. Scalecommander also has personal damage multipliers up its sleeve, but it trades off some
Upheaval direct damage in the form of
Mass Eruption, while
Might of the Black Dragonflight buffs both
Upheaval and
Eruption. While we can expect additional tuning, as well as updates in the form of not-yet-implemented talents, I expect Augmentation Evokers in The War Within to be rather pleased with their personal damage contribution, especially in multi-target dungeon situations.
The 4-pc set bonus for Augmentation is quite similar to the Dragonflight Season 2 tier set
Legacy of Obsidian Secrets, but with an added twist: the bonus Intellect now ramps up in power over 10 seconds.
Ebon Might currently provides 6.5% of your Intellect (or 7.2% with
Close as Clutchmates), so this is definitely a powerful effect, especially when combined with the additional
Ebon Might duration extension afforded by Chronowarden, and to a lesser degree Scalecommander. That said, this set bonus comes with some caveats which I hope will be resolved in the coming weeks. At the time of writing, refreshing
Ebon Might before it expires causes the set bonus to reset, which does not seem consistent with the written description of the set bonus. When it comes to raiding, I can’t help but see this set bonus as contributing to a growing set of unclear goals for the aspiring Augmentation player.
Augmentation is receiving a variety of boons through hero talents ranging from improved personal damage and improved
Ebon Might uptime to additional casts of
Prescience. What remains unclear to me is exactly how these tools fit into the currently dominant “spreadsheet-based” raiding playstyle, which involves carefully pre-planning specific buff recipients in set 30-second intervals over the course of a raid encounter. Players on Live servers can find themselves actively avoiding casting their spenders while waiting for
Ebon Might to expire in order to ensure that the next cast chooses new targets, which makes the ramping aspect of this new 4-pc set bonus a somewhat perplexing prospect. Additionally, carefully managing
Prescience targets is absolutely key to maximising output, and yet hero talents like
Double-time and
Golden Opportunity bring an element of randomness to the table that is simply confusing at best. Finally, new additions to the spec like
Sense Power are absolutely welcome, but they simply don’t address the fact that Augmentation’s buffs must be online well ahead of time in order to be effective. If you as a player are relying on
Sense Power to choose your upcoming buff targets in a raid scenario, you’re already too late.
That said, Augmentation players have quite a bit to look forward to in The War Within. The new tier set bonuses are strong and hint towards enjoyable gameplay, especially in dungeons. We have been told to expect to see additional tuning and talent changes in the coming weeks, and my hope is that we will also receive changes and additional clarity specifically oriented towards raid gameplay in that time.