I mean I want to have faith in Blizzard in balancing a support style DPS which can heal better than all recently nerfed hybrids - to have an equal contribution DPS wise to a fight in all types of content... but history says this isnt the way.This is Death Knights all over again with their 3 specs that could initially tank and DPS. The better option will be making Support its own spec and that wont happen until theres at least one more Support to choose from. It will be easier to compare apples with apples than trying to make this half apple/half orange be on equal footing with other apples.As far as PI, windfury and monk/dh buffs which are currently considered "unmetered" are concerned - in a world of multiple Supports, these perks need to be stripped and given to them. Make a player clearly choose their role in a group, if they are support then they buff the attributes of others, if they are DPS they reducing the HP of a target to zero.Supports can then also leave the world "of combat log hooks" to assign DPS back to them because they are not DPS and haste buffs like PI are just the buffs they do. If anything the metric for Supports is the uptime of their buffs and on a per-spec basic how many players are buffed.
Kalamazi is a GD rock star, there are humans who "understand the game" and humans who understand the game and also have a clear and concise way of pleasantly communicating information. He has that special niche that makes things easy to understand while enjoying learning. Born teacher.
Cool, finally official confirmation that solo play is intended to be as viable as any other class. New main.
I really like this Graham fellow, I get the sense he is really into mmorpgs even outside his job. That's who ya want doing the thing. WoW players are weirdly myopic when it comes to things like this new spec, Like, so much of the community has clearly never played another MMORPG in their life.
okay, so what I got out of the interview was that they weren't able to implement reliable dmg hooks to account for the buffing of augvoker as initially announced? There will be the flat contribution like Vers and Prescience spell copies seen in dmg meters from the augvoker, but everything else will be contributed without a proper breakdown to the buffed class.
pretty lame that details won't be able to show the advanced damage hooks and we have to rely on logs to see it... Sadge
This is going to be a disaster. My biggest takeaways from this were:"Not a goal that Augmentation replaces healers especially in Mythic+."Translation: It's not our goal, but we know it's going to happen."Released mid-season to see exactly how big the delta is between less experienced players buffing their less experienced allies and more hardcore min-max players buffing their hardcore allies."Translation: This is a live beta test. We have absolutely no idea what is going to happen when we release this."If the gap of multiple Augmentation is overwhelming then they'll look to close that, but there's not a specific design planned. Augmentation stacking pushing out more fringe DPS specs is a concern but they're going to treat it like any other DPS spec in terms of damage and utility. It should not be a required spec and it is not a new role. It is just a damage dealer."Translation: Your fringe dps spec will definitely be nerfed when hardcore players immediately discover ways to stack augmentation evokers to make your 'fringe spec', which has always been at the bottom, finally perform well.
This is one of the good devs but this spec will still be a sh%t show until 10.2. I don't think people realize how many ways this can and will fk the meta, lol.
PI as a spell caused "some" problems such as "fk weak specs, it goes to the top dps spec" which deletes specs (aka not inviting them, especially in higher keys) on its own, wonder whats gonna happen when this 1 spell converts into a spec. What could go wrong? :)Specs that can go well with Augvoker, gonna be nerfed, just like spreist is dog because of PI, get ready guys.
omg Berger adressed my single biggest fear in the interview! YES ! I was afraid that the extra damage of my allies will simply show as my own on the metters and that it wouldnt feel like a support specc at all then, but now im 120% in! Blizz handing out Ws like candy, awesome!and, as a sidenote, Im exactly that altruistic player type he is talking about. A healer / tank who thinks about ways to make his group succeed. As a result I feel heard and recognized by the devs even though I never said anything! HYYPE !
I'm glad that we have more information than before. The comment about tank/healer players make me wonder if it's that uncommon/rare for people to make alts that can fill a different role, though.
"incredibly approachable with a very high skill floor"So that's why its rotation consists out of Eruption, empower spells and nothing else.I like the concept of augmentation evoker, but nothing about it, except for prescience, which is mostly used to give you a free essence burst proc, feels like a support spell. It feels like a worse and more boring version of devastation evoker. Prescience is shattering star, both give an essence burst proc. Ebon might is less valuable Dragonrage that hits allies as well, you try to keep it up for as long as possible using your empower spells, just like dragonrage.Eruption is your only proper essence spender and 90% of the time you're casting eruption.Honestly, the only satisfying and cool spell about this new spec is the breath of eons.Make augment less static outside of hover, give the spec some instants other than prescience, all in all, don't give it a "very high skill floor" because that way, the spec feels like vanilla wow frost mage.