Here, here's my hot take. They've they've they've got to
make Aug augment through talent choices and not as a default.
That's a fun one. Yeah, I'll, I'll explain it more
in the effort because I'd love to hear you're like actually
informed take I'm. Actually informed as if anyone
knows how this thing works. Victory for the Forsaken, for
Lauderon for the Karen Tour. For.
Pandaria. For calendar to the burning
region for Gilnaeus, but has not died for.
The Lich King. For the Sindora, for the
Alliance, for the Horn, for Azeroth.
Hello and welcome back to another episode of Thor Azeroth.
I am one of your hosts Manny AKA the true villain.
Manny and I am joined by one of my prestigious Co hosts.
We have Sean, the man of the legend, the caster for Race the
World first. I meant did we not talking with
that last week? I guess we missed it.
How are you doing? Yeah, I'm casting the race to
world first for team method. Check me out mid afternoon North
America Times for the next 7 to 13 days I guess.
I mean, I mean, we will see how crazy it is on mythic
difficulty. We've had some testing, and now
patch 11.2 is here, Ghost of Koresh is here, and everybody
wants to know how things are shaking out.
And so we brought in the big guns.
Returning is our friend Jericho. Jericho, how are you and how has
the World of Warcraft been treating you?
And we'll talk about the specs after.
Yeah, not so bad. I think I'm going to have to
tune in and watch Sean cast the race the world first.
That's an exciting prospect to be sure.
And can't wait to hear some expert knowledge and insight
about how the teams are approaching the fights.
It's gonna be awesome, I think. Yeah, no, I've been not gonna be
giving my. He's gonna be giving the expert
knowledge and tactics. Are you the color commentator or
the the? Expert yeah, they I'm there as
an analyst so. There you go.
Yeah, putting the anal back in Analyst 111 butt joke at a time
there. You go, there we go.
Now I get to say that I get to fight with race.
The world's first commentators. See you guys, I'm always
punching above my weight limit. Jericho, Sean, this is literally
day two of the patch. People have been diving in.
Let's get some first impressions because you know, we, we've had
our chance. And for those who haven't been
on the PTR, they're finally experiencing it, warts and all.
And I got to, I got to say there's, there's some warts to
be seen in this fractured world of Koresh.
There have been a number of bugs, a number of quests that
I've had to like drop and pick back up again.
I have decided that if something is considered optional on the
quest, no, it isn't, Do it anyways.
I don't care if it's like sit around and listen.
Just just get them talking and then run off.
Because there's been so many times where I've had to go,
like, why isn't this going? And it's that optional.
You got to listen to to somebody could explain their angst and
then they'll let you move on. But what about you guys?
Let's let's give this to Jericho first.
How is the first touch of the ghost of Koresh being for you?
So I'm gonna go ahead and take your guys lead on maybe starting
by trying to avoid spoilers and we'll go from there.
Now I I'll be honest, I haven't gotten very far.
I've gotten my reishi wraps and that's about it.
That's about where I stopped yesterday at a very, you know,
high level wow. You know, putting putting aside
maybe some of the issues for a moment, which I haven't
experienced too many, but I'm in some of the class discords.
I see a lot of the bugs going through some of the issues, some
of the hilarious things that are still going on.
I love the void and this theme that we're doing in this patch
and going into midnight. And the music has been
fantastic. And I love Zalatat.
She's so sassy. I've just been having a blast.
I, I've never really, in my experience, Wow has, in terms of
writing it, it, it has the, the, the comic book dialogue effect,
the superhero dialogue effect where people kind of just talk
in quips and kind of 1 liners and that kind of thing.
And I think that's fine. You know, it's not really trying
to punch above its weight. It's doing its thing.
So I take it for what it is and then really enjoy the moment,
enjoy the characters just trying to get on each other's nerves.
And again, like Zelda Tap is just such a great character for
this patch. I've been having an absolute
blast going through. I'm glad.
I'm glad you're enjoying it. You're right, they are.
They're very, very much about the quips.
They're very about the like one liner.
The problem is when there's too many, none of them stick out on
this. You know, sometimes it's like
just let that one moment breathe.
But the cinematic team, the in game cinematics have been doing
a really good job. Even if I bristle against some
of the direction of the story, they still seem to execute it
pretty nicely. You don't have to trust her,
Manny. You have to trust me.
OK. And then I'm going to say it
again just for good measure. You have to trust me.
That's it. Yeah, There.
You go and John, how's your first couple days?
What, what have you been doing in this?
Like we're we're beyond 24 hour period to get to get yourself
set up and everything. So 24 hours in, actually like 28
hours in because the service came up super early yesterday.
Thank you. They were not the stabilists
that they've ever been, but Zorbix made a tweet early on
saying hey, we're aware we're working on it, and then another
one that said hey, don't go in the water, it's going to be CU.
So they're looking out for us. But they came on this early.
I have done the campaign twice, once on my death Night, sorry,
once on my Paladin on NA and once on my Druid on EU today.
And I am working through the rest of the quests and the world
events on my Paladin right now on NA.
And then last night I used the skip.
Great skip one. If you use the skip, it doesn't
show you on your map where you have to go to get your cloak.
Yeah, I just have to know where that is.
So look that up or talk to a guildy like I did.
I got a ping. Our GM is pretty good at
answering all questions at any hour of the day, which is exact.
Where you get the cloak on your main in that spot on the left.
Yeah, it's been 24 hours, man. You know, the goldfish you can
remember. I think I got it.
It is. Exactly that in mind.
For when I get my Demon Hunter through there, 'cause that
definitely gonna gear up that character this patch.
It's gonna be sick. Yeah, I believe you will.
Hopefully, maybe I do one time the entire patch.
But hey, you're going to do 1. And then I did the full M0 world
tour on my Death Knight our our Guild has or our NA Guild
actually both of my guilts. But our NA Guild has organized
plate stack or armor stacks for all the M0 dungeons.
So we did those six or only 6 available right now.
You cannot do Tazza Vech till next week.
And then we did two extra runs of Iguodo Maldoni to give us a
full 8 slot for the vault. And then tomorrow I'll be doing
the same on EU and NA. On EU it'll be on my Druid and
then NA on my Paladin. And we think filling out the
vault's probably a good idea because there might be tear in
there next week. That's that's what we're
crossing our fingers for. So between those, we're doing
delves. I I gotta I gotta check in on
that and maybe editing manual come back in.
But like on previous week zeros, hasn't the vault been like
downgraded to like previous tier?
Well, it usually, yeah, it usually doesn't give you
anything useful that first week. And certainly this is the first
time that we have like relevant content that's potentially gonna
give us stuff that we might actually want to use in the
season. And this week where we have the
possibility of getting Season 3 loot, we're inferring that there
might be tier in that box. No one knows for sure, but it
there's a good chance. So better safe than sorry I
think is how most people are taking it.
OK. Yeah, I'd rather have a full
vault and not need it than need a full vault and not have it.
For sure. I mean, at this point I've
already done the delves up to 11 because I want to be able to
like to start that right away. Haven't done my world tour.
I can't stack mail as effectively as you can stack
plate some tanks. Got to have to like be the odd
personality to do that, and I'm hoping to do that sometime this
weekend. But I've already taken 3 alts to
do the skip, so I definitely know where to pick up my cloak.
That's because I've been looking at professions I like, pushed
through, got renowned 5. That's when all the profession
stuff unlocks. You can do that first day.
And then it was just flooding the auction house.
We have like new stuff that people were buying for way more
than they're buying it now. It is ridiculous.
So many spent 20,000 gold on a contract.
Brutal. Yeah.
So I was gonna say. So there's the new threads for
the Reshi wraps, right? There's some new health potions
at A at some point, yes. Those.
Are. Yeah.
What else? You want the threads, you want
the which are better than what you get from the quest.
Do not just settle for like that that one.
Go go talk to a tailor. Get yourself the the upgrade
one. I think it goes from like 1300
mainstat to like closer to 1700 mainstat.
It's a it's a sizable jump there.
And then you're right, the potions, they're way more
effective with those new potions.
You also have a the contract. So if you are trying to get
your, your Rep up. And then there are a couple of
things for for for inscription as well.
I didn't see anything for blacksmithing or or stuff like
that because the way that the OR and the herbs work in this new
area is that you find them, they're alien and useless to
you, but you can trade them in for the old what?
Well, I say old world, but Kazalgar materials that you can
then use your stuff. So it's actually quite good
where you like run around and you can get exactly the right
type of ore that you you need based on if you got rank 3 or
rank 2 or rank 1 of this like alien herb, phantom weed or
whatever it's called. All right, well I'll have to
check that out. At the very least I've got got a
druid gatherer that's probably going to spend about 5 minutes
running through there on the gathering.
Some stuff I think they added like enchanting has these like
glamour things that change how you look for an hour and I think
they added an ethereal one if I remember right as well.
I'm just picking it straws. I'm trying to remember like
literally whatever other profession stuff they might have
added but I think that's about it.
I don't think there were too too many.
The stuff that they did add is important, but.
And plus like if you're an enchanter you don't actually
need the new stuff, just have a bunch of cloaking chants at the
ready on the auction house cuz everybody is buying those up.
That was a good mint out of that.
The problem is if you don't have it yet, it is a drop out of the
severed thread paragon bags, which means trying to get that
now you. I'm pretty sure you're going to
miss the boat unless you get incredibly lucky on your first
one this week. I see very good.
So you guys, having done all of these dungeon runs, you've had a
taste for the classes. Last check in Sean, you have
decided to stick with the Pink Paladin.
Yeah, we're locked in. We'll be dancing at the Pink
Palate Club all season long. I'll probably keep my Warrior
and my Death Knight current ish as well, but yeah, it'll be
Paladin. This too OK.
OK, I've actually had a slight renaissance on I haven't changed
my alt. Still Shaman.
Still stubbornly, stubbornly Shaman, but I've had a bit of
renaissance on both the warrior and the warlock.
The warlock switched to affliction and I've been just
loving it. Affliction did get some buffs
and warlock seems pretty good right now.
It's I'm not going to be taking this into raid.
This is just something that is like curb stomping poor, poor
quest mobs because quest mobs really need a little bit more
teeth somewhere, guys, I don't know.
And then the warrior, the changes they made, I I'm
actually liking it. I find like this is the first
tier that I'm actually using the proc ravager and having that in
between like every pole just come up is so good.
I don't think I could go back unless they like make that proc
chance way lower. So I'm enjoying some of the
changes on it, but the, of course, the big one is my
shaman. The shaman I've switched back
again. I was Totamic last year 'cause
that's, that's the tier that they decided to actually make
Totamic good. Switched over to once again and
I'm back on Stormbringer and man, Stormbringer makes me fear
the the add on Apocalypse 'cause if I did not have weak ORS I
could not play Stormbringer. There's just too much hidden
bust to track on that and it makes me wonder where classes
are. And that's why we're bringing
you on today, Jericho. To get my unfiltered opinions on
all the classes in the game, especially the ones I've never
played before, Certainly. But many they're they're adding
a new cooldown tracker stuff and buff trackers and all this
stuff. Isn't, isn't that gonna be
enough? Surely.
Set that up in your kids. Go run.
It we, we had a conversation. It looks better than it was,
better than it is, but it but it ain't here yet, so it's not an
option right now. And yeah, yeah.
We can hope for the best, but what what's the saying?
Hope in one hand, crap in the other?
See which one gets full first an.
Optimistic one for a while, certainly.
Oh yeah, I'm I'm an absolute wow simp.
You can you can go check our comments.
Yeah, confirm he it's well, he's either a Wow simp or he doesn't
play the game. We're not sure.
The comments, The comments can't figure it out themselves.
We'll put up a poll, maybe. You know you're doing something
right when you get comments from one episode to the next that are
completely contradictory. It means that I'm getting a lot
of point of views, or at least representing a lot of point of
views. It's.
The broadest appeal that's. Right.
But odd Voker, last time we had talked, it was going through a
lot. It continues to go through a
lot. And now we're at the final phase
of of the War Within. And how are Evokers doing right
now? What what what is the feeling
for augmentation for Evokers in general?
Yeah, I think the community of large has to be somewhere
between ecstatic and dooming right, Somewhere in the middle
there. Certainly where we left off last
time when when I was lost on the show was before the launch of
Season 2. We had some PTR changes, some
big changes for augmentation, where we changed Ebenmite to not
affect tanks and healers anymore.
We cut down some of the effectiveness of their spells.
We figured, OK, you know, this will bring things a little more
in balance, bring things a little more towards damage,
bring things a little more towards self damage.
And if they end up OK in tuning, then maybe we still play this
thing in M Plus, maybe it's still good.
Maybe we play it in raid. Who knows, it might be all
right. And then after that episode, the
funniest thing happened. The funniest thing happened.
They decided that wasn't good enough.
Let's nerf Breath of Eons by a whole bunch.
Let's nerf Sans by a whole whole bunch.
Just completely gut the throughput of the spec at the
last hour and just leave it there.
And that crushed everyone's hopes and dreams.
No one touched the spec basically for the entire season.
Some people eventually picked it up sort of towards the end just
for fun, but that was about it. Really what happened after that
was after the race there was a little bit of an aura buff.
Then a couple weeks later there was another aura buff.
Then a couple weeks later there's another aura buff.
The spec aura right now is at like 43% or something like that.
I don't know if it's the highest, but it's certainly at
the the top end in terms of and, and what that means really is
how how often they've sort of tweaked the specs overall
personal damage up or down through hot fixes essentially is
what that that does. So really by the end of season
2, Ogg was in a reasonable place damage wise.
It was OK, Certainly not, you know, breaking any records and
if you were to look at Raider IO stats, certainly no one's really
taking this thing and trying to push with it, but it was OK.
We can get it to some of the other fun stuff a little bit
later around utility and this kind of thing, but really that's
where it ended up in Season 2. So now we get into the PTR for
Season 3 and there are essentially no changes to the
spec at all, period, at a baseline level.
But what they decided to do this season obviously is with the new
tier sets, they've really played into the different hero talents.
So really every spec in the game through its hero talents is
getting more or less pretty significant changes through
those interactions, or at the very least through what's being
emphasized from from those talents.
When it comes to augmentation, we have Chrono Warden and we
have scale Commander and Chrono Warden is really leaning into
really it's, it's sort of buffs. It's it's got a little more
cooldown reduction. There's a little fancy build you
can do where you can hit a 92nd timing instead of a 2 minute
timing. That's that's got some good
potential in raid. And we've got scale commander
where you lean into personal damage a little bit more and
you've got these little buddies that you spawn when you cast
your breath of eons, they show up and they cast devastation
spells. Of course, why would they cast
augmentation spells? That's crazy.
They cast Pyre, they cast Disintegrate, and they just kind
of, you know, do do stuff, which is fun.
In terms of where they've kind of left those off right now,
Chrono Warden is really the only spec that seems like it might do
decent numbers in raid scale. Commander took a pretty nasty
nerf right at the end of the PTR and is not in great shape.
And then when we get look at M Plus, it's a little more even
because again, Chrono, we're talking about buffing being sort
of the focus and we have less DPS to work with in M Plus, so
it bounces out a little bit more.
You can technically run scale commander, but you're not really
winning any awards in terms of damage output.
Somewhere in the middle, this kind of thing.
And so not that I put a lot of stock or faith into community
tier lists, but if you would scour the Internet and kind of
see where opinion is right now, raid Aug potentially, OK, not
that it's that easy to gauge, but probably somewhere in the
middle. And NM plus, not really looking
great outlook wise, but at this point more because it's not
really one of those top specs damage wise.
And also it's not really bringing anything special to the
table anymore really at the end of the day, this sort of leading
into the hot take of the session, But Aug is not really a
support. It's not really a support
anymore. If we're gonna compare it to
kind of where it launched, it's now very much Adps spec that
does a little bit of its damage in a silly way and is really on
par with some of the other meta specs when it comes to utility.
It's not really bringing that much more than like a druid.
When we talk about the overall utility kit, the Evoker utility
kit is very good, but again, the Evoker utility kit, not the Ogg
utility kit, right? So this is kind of the outlook
that we've got going into Season 3 right now at the very least.
Does it infuriate you that the community pissed blood when Ugg
was sorry? Man, they might have to edit
that out. No, that's.
Fine. I'm just saying like this, this
is a very neutral question. How are you going to lead them
then? Very neutral.
Very, I think I very. Understated the reaction First
off I think. That you ramped up a little bit
that they it was just like, oh man, you need to make this a
tank spec. Actually one of my favorite
tweets ever was your tweet about how disc Priest was so strong
and they've been meta for like 6 years in a row and you're like
obviously we need to make it a thanks back.
Yeah, why not? But does it like like so Aug
gets gets its gets its identity completely stripped away from
players who love that support style, who were, who were dying
to have that in Warcraft and where we're so excited to get it
when it finally came completely stripped away Because Aug can't.
Surely we can't have Aug dominate 2 seasons in a row as
we now head into our third season of Demon Hunter, Druid,
Mage Priest, Death Knight. That's exactly how I feel these
days. It's OK, like it I I get it when
Blizzard launches a new spec halfway through an expansion,
it's the shiny new thing and it launched like I'm not going to
split errors here. It was absolutely overpowered
when it first came out. No question no question the the
shifting sands was like 3 times as strong it is as it is now.
Eben might's like Eben might was three times as strong as it is
now. You had unlimited buff stacking
there like Draconic attunements was giving you like 10% extra
health or something like that. It's been so long I don't
remember any of the numbers but like this.
This is the kit that we're talking about, right?
Outrageous potential and buffing your tanks and healers to
enormous extents. Yes, it was absolutely
overpowered. Yes, it dominated the M plus
meta for the end of season 2 for that reason.
Totally fair Season 3 still on the strong side overall, but you
could definitely start to consider running other stuff if
the M plus ecosystem if if the the nature of pushing those keys
leaned in a certain way. If you had more of a damage
focus, for example, perhaps you could try running something
else. It's just people really, really
valued having that extra throughput on the tank and
healer and and having that extra defensive capability.
But where we where we've landed now at the beginning of the war
within and what when I you know, I I count, you know, Oh yeah.
How long have these specs been meta?
How long have like how long has mage been just a really, really
good spec in M plus for the last like 10 expansions or whatever?
Surely we've had 10 expansions with M plus at this point,
right? It I don't even know anymore
getting old. It it it just to me, it's like,
OK, I'll flew, flew too close to the sun.
They didn't like the reception that that they were getting.
They didn't like the feedback, so and Morgan Day had an
interview sort of a couple months back where he basically
explained what happened, where it was, you know, yeah, we saw
that it was kind of pretty dominant in the meta.
So we absolutely took a hammer to it and we hit it a little too
hard. Yes, absolutely is is what
happened. But really the, the biggest
disappointing thing to me, and this is what comes through in a
lot of my feedback and this kind of thing, is that I and and many
others really align with that support play style, that buffing
allies, that feeling like your ally's success is being propped
up from your actions and what you're doing and this kind of
thing. And they've kept, you know, just
a tinge of that flavor a tiny bit, you know, whatever.
But but like cutting it down and eroding it and, and sort of
leaving, you know, the meta, so to speak, intact in a lot of
other ways is it's, it's disappointing, right?
And to me, the like there, there are certainly approaches you
could take that don't go that hard on necessarily the
throughput of the spec, but perhaps you know how the spec
buffs other specs. I, I've given a lot of feedback
on raid, for example, where I think the skill gap is still
tremendous when we're talking basically the highest end
potential of someone playing augmentation in raid versus the
average Joe who kind of just, you know, wants an enjoyable
casual support experience where they get to enjoy, you know,
again, the feel of powering up their, their allies, but without
the insane requirements of, OK, I need to make sure that I know
who I'm gonna buff. I need to make sure that my
allies are standing in a very specific place around me so that
I buff the right people. I need to make sure that I keep
my, you know, keep my buffs going when I want them to, but
then let them drop off when I don't want them to continue.
That, you know, I react to when my spec randomly decides to
double its duration on something like the the the list for what
it takes to play this thing at the very, very highest level
just goes on and on and for them to have kind of left it in this
state, the game's first support oriented damage spec like this.
I, I don't it, it, it, it just, it's a disconnect for me.
I I would think that they would want this thing to be
approachable, to be something that attracts kind of maybe more
casual players or players that want to put in a little bit of
less preparation going into raid, but still achieve kind of
a middle of the road performance.
Right now, what you're looking at is having to do more
preparation to get a lower than middle of the road performance
in a class that also has devastation of ochre, which
traditionally has been one of the most straightforward and
strong performing damage packs in the raid.
It's it's a tricky spot. Yeah.
Honestly, I got to ask you, do you think that there is a way
for Blizzard to balance it where it's not hitting those extremes
where it is competing but doesn't immediately dominate
where it's utility is there with like as you say, some of this
competitive with a lot of these meta specs, But what it gives as
well doesn't completely over shadow everything else because
for the points where it's dominant, it's because it's
giving that damage and the Canisoto on top.
So why not now it doesn't give that.
It doesn't give that damage. The buffs being taken away its
own personal damage that they've been propping up doesn't quite
make up for that. And it's it's falling short.
So like, where do you feel the sweet spot is?
If there ever was 1. So when it comes to mythic plus,
let's say just to start, it's hard for me to complain too too
much outside of just it doesn't really feel super supporty
anymore. And that's a very qualitative
take. It's a very opinionated take,
but the feeling has been diminished on that for me to
look at augmentation and go this is really just another middle of
the road DPS spec damage wise that has slightly above average
utility and kind of hold that up against the other DPS specs in M
Plus. I think at this point, aside
from again just that feeling around support that we're in
kind of a similar boat to a lot of damage specs when it comes to
M Plus and the meta. Realistically, again, there's
only like 5 or 6 specs ever that are happy let's say in.
In terms of like what people consider to be meta that they're
excited to bring to their group that they consider to be the
optimal composition. And there are a whole bunch of
reasons for this, whether it's, you know, you want to be able to
copy what the top teams are doing or you know, you just you
really want a safe bet that you know is going to get you into
groups. People tend to coalesce to these
just very top of the lion specs for M plus and that's.
In Rep Palliative. Right.
It's really just that like it's it's that same flavor frog at
this point, because again, it's not really doing anything
special compared to like a boomkin or a mage or a priest.
You know, hey, we have Warren Stone.
You can use that sometimes. That's kind of neat.
We have timelessness. You know, if one of your specs
for some reason is generating too much threat, you have an
option. That's about it.
Everything else is kind of in the, you know, in the class 3,
even when we talk about like survivability and the fact that
it has a cheat death, OK, great. You know, that like technically
that that is a plus certainly. But Devastation even has more
baseline health. It has more baseline magic
resistance in the class tree cause 'cause they decided they
needed to do that to kind of keep things a little bit even.
So really like the augmentation, survivability isn't even like
that much more when when it comes to that versus
devastation. So I I don't like where we've
ended up in M + 4 Ogg, but I think we're in a similar boat to
a lot of specs and I think that's just a broader M plus
issue at this point given the current kind of design of the
spec when it comes to raid. Again, like the the most
disappointing thing to me is just that I want to play
augmentation in raid, but I have to consider what specs are my
fellow Raiders playing? How well are they playing them?
How much do I want to bother them with coordinating their
cooldown timings, making sure that they're pushing their
buttons at the exact same time every pull, making sure that I'm
standing like next to the people that I want to buff and that
they know that I'm trying to do that so that they don't go run
off and and do something else? How much do I want to look at my
entire raid and put up a spreadsheet and go, OK, well,
who's doing damage when? Who are my who are my 92nd
specs? Who are my 2 minute specs?
Who's doing damage in each window?
And even if you try and keep it simple and just go like try and
buff the same people for the entire fight, you still have to
consider like like literally talk to them and coordinate and
and make sure that they know that you're trying to be buffed
so that you're standing in a similar spot.
You're still at 25 yard range, right?
So like there's just all of this coordination, whereas I can just
play devastation on just a normal 2 minute spec.
Oh, hey, you know, we might have some quirky rotation with engulf
this tier with essence bomb. OK, I'll figure it out.
That's fine. It it's looking solid and I'm
not gonna have to do too much more than just practice on a
dummy for two minutes and I'll be good.
Right. So that imbalance and and where
the tuning lies is augmentation since since released basically
after season 3 of of Dragonflight, they kind of
realized, OK, if we don't tune this thing down, it's going to
be in every race to the world 1st and they're gonna have four
of them and it's gonna be ridiculous, right.
And and they didn't want the optics of that is my guess
because you know not not that that would have been a problem
for the average player as far as I'm concerned, but they don't
necessarily want to see that. They don't want people to go oh,
you know, where's my spec augmentation's in there four
times. That's crazy, right in your
raid, you don't have to run for augmentation.
It's going to be different, right.
It's going to be like a different situation, but when it
comes to that optimal comp and they they absolutely do tuning
for the rest of the world first. There's no question.
That's why you you end up in a spot.
They cut it off and then right after the race, there's a whole
bunch of extra tuning right. So given that, really if, if if
I were king for a day, I would really, and and this is crazy
because you don't hear this a lot, try and narrow the skill
gap a lot. Try bring down the skill ceiling
of this spec. It's too hard.
I know it's crazy. No one, no one says that
everyone's like, you know, like frost decays for like right now
since the Sindragosa change, like a lot of them.
I don't know about a lot. I'm not gonna put words in
people's mouths. Some of them are complaining,
you know? Hey, I I really like the skill
expression of being able to extend that thing for as long as
possible, right? I remember thinking about like
void form on Shadow Priest right in the previous version where
especially in Surrender to Madness version.
But you know, even even after that where yeah, absolutely
there was skill expression and being able to extend that thing
as long as possible to minimize your downtime outside of your
void form window. And really, you know, like press
on and press on and yes, it sucked during downtime.
I I was always complaining, you know, Oh hey, there's an Los
mechanic. I hate this fight or posting a
feedback threads about we need something to be able to carry
void form from pack to pack or something.
The hilarious thing is they added that right.
But anyway, I did you know, it's it's just the top end for
augmentation in raid makes it extremely hard to balance for
the average player. And the the thing that really
has a lot of people the most upset, I think is that it's like
scale commander in theory is the more casual of the two.
Let's say it focuses more on direct damage.
It currently the the the build that you would run is a pretty
standard 2 minute breath of Eon cycle.
Visually, it's very cool, right? You saw on your guys and they,
you know, they shoot the boss and this kind of thing that's
very fun. It's it's just a very
traditional straightforward DPS play style with like losing a
lot of the bells and whistles of Chrono Warden, which has all
this cool down reduction, this active channeling of reducing
all your cooldowns by 30 seconds that you'd be playing, playing
90 seconds instead of two minutes does a lot to to affect
timings. I think a lot of people would
rather just have a pretty standard 2 minute cycle.
So with without getting into too, too much more than that, I
that's really where what I'd like to see out of this spec
changing going forward is bringing down the top end
potential of this thing in raid. Whether it's you're you're
buffing fewer people, maybe whether it's, you know, maybe
you're stuck to certain people for, you know, for specific
durations, you know, you don't have the ability to swap them
around as much. It's not taking out more of the
support damage. I think we've gotten to a
reasonable point there. I think Chrono right now is
probably around 5050 scale commanders tilting more to
personal. So they've kind of already
shifted pretty heavily in that direction.
I don't think it needs much more there.
But when we talk about like shifting sands and shifting
sands as a buff this late in the expansion, this is an ability
where when you cast from power spells, you, you give one of
your buff targets a whole whole boatload of versatility.
This is something that later in the expansion, as you're
stacking more mastery and giving people more versatility, that
that actually just grows in power.
And it's much more powerful at the end of an expansion than it
is at the beginning. And so every it has this effect
where augmentation at the beginning of an expansion has
certain buffs that are better at that point.
And then later on, certain things are, are better or worse,
you know, based on just scaling and and that sort of thing.
It ultimately it it, it really just comes down to I think the
philosophy around raid gameplay and how this thing plays and,
and just trying to rein in that top end to some extent.
OK, I, I think that your, your comment about maybe you're
buffing less people at the same time really resonate with me
because that is something that like I had thought of was that
maybe what really causes causes an issue Is that like an M plus
you're buffing everybody and now they've stripped it down.
So you're buffing like the DPS, right.
And you're not touching the the tank of the healer, which was
something we had talked about last time you're on.
Yeah, perhaps it becomes where it's like you are buffing being
one person, they get like a sort of forbearance like effect so
that you're not buffing the same person.
You have to like actually look at different people.
But based on what you're saying about this sort of communication
about tracking the the cooldowns, that just seems like
you're just doubling down on that sort of nightmare.
So from what you're saying, are you, are you starting to imply
that perhaps augmentation needs to like go back into the design
room and come out with something different, Go, go back into the
oven as it were? I, well, I, I think so, and I've
really been, I've been trying to push that a little bit.
I, you know, they, I write for Wowhead and they, they get us to
write these, these, these articles every like to a season
or something like that. So we got like kind of a mid
season review that we get to share our thoughts and all this
stuff. And pretty much every one of
those. I'm going OK, raid gameplay
needs a complete overhaul. This is not sustainable.
You're alienating the people who enjoy this spec.
This is kind of wild there. There are so many aspects to it.
There's the community perception where no one knows if Ogg is
good or not in in a given tier, whether it's because details
doesn't work, Warcraft logs doesn't work.
Everything's a mess in that respect.
No one has a clue if this thing's doing damage or not in
your raid. But also, again, just the if, if
you see an augmentation player in the race of world first, they
are doing things that you cannot even possibly imagine when it
comes to like actually executing on on their plan.
We're talking if you you might. And, and this is some of the
the, the extreme cooking that I hope we don't see, but we might.
Let's say it turns out that buffing frost at night is
actually really, really good. OK, I might run 2 Augmentation
of ochres because we can stack our buffs up twice.
And I might run 4 frost at nights because guess what?
Turns out that you know you you can buff four people in raid,
right? So how do I ensure that I'm
buffing the same four people as my other Ogg?
Well, what we can do is we can set up our prescience on a
couple people, have the other people stand near us, do the
opposite on the other augmentation and then make sure
that when we sort of cycle our cooldowns really quick that we
put our prescience on like guys, 3:00 and 4:00 so that both of us
are have prescience on the same for frost Death Knights.
If somehow you didn't hit the the right frost death Knights,
you can actually have the other people cancel aura their their
buffs and basically put them back on with Evan Mite by
casting that. And then now you have two odds
that are buffing 4 frost frost at nights.
And if you play your rotation well, you can just keep that
Eben mic going the entire fight and just keep buffing those same
people for the entire thing. And you're gonna line up with
all your cool bounds. You're gonna line up with
shifting sands. You're gonna you're you're just
gonna be going crazy. This in in a SIM setting does
about a million more DPS on each one of those you know or on.
On on both of those Ogs than the next best DPS in the raid.
So you're you're basically getting like 2 million DPS for
free by by doing that. Not for free.
It's insane. But anyway.
That's crazy, we should nerf fury war.
But but it's just like it's, it's, it's the the fact that I
like what I'm describing is in theory possible.
In practice, it's a huge headache.
Then then there's other stuff you can do where you can go, OK,
I'm gonna cast. I'm gonna ignore Ebenmite to
start. I'm gonna start with Breath of
Eons. That's going to like that also
casts Ebenmite. If it's not already up.
Then I I wait to see if that crits and it can it can crit to
give an extra 50% effectiveness. I wait to see if it crits.
If it crits, great. I let that ride until it's about
to expire. If it doesn't crit, then I push
Ebenmite to try and roll a crit. If that doesn't crit, then I hit
time skip and that that will reset the cooldown on Evan
right? And then I try again, see if
that one crits and suddenly, and and this is again, while making
sure that I'm juggling all these presents on these players,
standing near them, making sure they cancel where their stuff,
right? What we're describing is insane
behavior, frankly, like it. And and again, like some of this
would be fine if it's just like, it's just you doing your one
thing, like you're just playing like I'm fired up and doing cool
stuff. Like fine, I get it, right.
But it's it's the coordination. It's the fact that you have to
do this in concert with all these other people.
They have to be performing well. They need to be doing the right
timings. They like potentially need cats
or other buffs and weird stuff like that.
That that's where it kind of gets over the top and where what
the race, the world first people are doing becomes essentially
unsustainable for the average person.
So really that that's what I've been kind of harping home about
on, on a lot of this stuff at the end of the day.
Sounds like we really need a single button rotation for this.
Well, that's the thing. I mean, The funny thing is
right. Obviously the the single button
rotation works well for augmentation.
In terms of the core rotation, the core part is totally fine.
It's totally straightforward. It's it's very easy to
understand in terms of just put up prescience, then cast Eben
might then do your rotation and and you're good.
Maybe manually cast breath of eons.
That's your cool down. Awesome.
It it actually works pretty well in that sense and right because
breath of the single button rotation affects the global cool
down and nerfs your damage. Technically it doesn't nerf your
allies damage, so you actually are a little more effective,
although sequel, if your buddies aren't using the single button
rotation, but you are, you technically don't lose as much
because you're you're you're buffing people who are
performing their normal rotation right.
It's arguably one of the better specs for that.
It's just again, we're at odds with this.
In theory is a spec that should be very accessible and very
reasonable for a casual player or someone new to the game
completely at odds with Hey, if you want to perform well with
this thing and raid, good luck. And that's, that's really just
again, where I struggle light, I see a disconnect in my mind
there. I, I, I, I think they need to
pick a lane. I don't think there's a world
where everyone's happy with this.
Like, you know, it, it like below average for the average
player and then like absolute peak performance for the best
players in the game. It to me, that's just too much.
Yeah, I think your answer is right.
You lower the lower the ceiling on the DPS that you're able to
do so that it doesn't matter. You hit that cap where it's like
it doesn't matter how much more skilled you are, this is where
you're stopping. And then you can even raise the
floor a bit so that lesser skilled players can do a little
bit more and it's not as punishing on them if they don't
cancel or a macro their prescience on their front stuff.
Yeah, I'm not. Again, I'm not going to pretend
that that's like normal behavior kind of thing.
But again, absolutely, like in the the last time augmentation
was in the race the world first, they they had the analysts on
the side were preparing these, you know, these charts that tell
you who to buff when, And then also they were giving
instructions to other players to go, Hey, if you get buffed at
this time, make sure to cancel aura at this time so that it
goes on the people that we wanted to later like, which is
again, it's it's crazy and and all that, like everyone's
playing around these guys, right.
So again, like you, you have one or two OG in the raid but twenty
players are playing around the specs damage which is nuts.
Didn't they also write? Yeah, absolutely.
So, and, and where most, most DPS specs, you know, maybe,
maybe you put some notes for yourself in, in your note and
you have them flash up on screen.
The analysts every pull would push push a new note to these
players to tell them who to buff based on their latest analysis.
It's buff this person at this time, then this person at this
time, this person at this time. And now it's, it's even a little
more complicated than that because if you're playing
Chronoword and there's there's randomness in, in pressing's
duration. So I, I don't like, I'm, I'm not
gonna pretend that I know the best way to communicate that
information and to, to optimize that in a race setting, but
they'll figure it out and it'll be just as I'm here.
And just, I don't know, maybe they're, they're tracking it
live and trying to like, you know, load data in real time to
try and, and, and work around it.
Who knows, right? Realistically.
Yeah, sorry.
If you like to hire Jericho to have him figure it out for your
team, you can reach him at Jericho at Please Hire Me
augmentationanalyst.com. Yeah, I'm, I don't know, I have
a day job and I'm not the right person for this.
But look, Saelder has been doing some insane work since the spec
released in terms of getting SIMC up and running and in a
reasonable state to do analysis with the spec.
You, you won't understand how many hours this man puts into
this thing to be able to try and model this spec.
The simulation craft now has dummy profiles which do a
simplified version of different specs rotations so that we can
run time efficient Sims for augmentation.
You'll have a a profile in there that's pretending to be a shadow
priest. It does a similar damage curve
to a shadow priest, but it's not running all of the all of the
damage commands. It's just running sort of a
simplified version so that you can go into ray bots and go
what, what, what's my best gear that I can equip?
And that it gives you a reasonable answer that that
wasn't possible for like a long time.
You have to go in and build it. And that that frankly is one of
the most tremendous contributions to to the three
crafting for the spec. So whether it's that, whether
it's going in and trying to optimize the APLS there, there's
been some really great work there.
So again, big shout out to Sailor on that stuff.
And yeah, he he's a bit of a a wild card because he's also the
one that's going to, you know, go in, go in the back and cook
up this like crazy Strat with the Frosty KS where we're like,
yeah, we're just going to buff them for the whole fight.
And yeah, absolutely you're going to run this like 6-6 lock
comp with all of your other raid buffs and you're good to go.
It's like, what are you talking about?
Like sometimes he's the hero we need, and sometimes he's the
hero we deserve. But just imagine anybody who's
in the sound of my voice. Just imagine that you have the
six stack there that are that's running perfectly efficiently
right in your team and now you you have to avoid all the bad,
all the crap that the boss is putting out, but you have to
avoid getting in between that six stack because that will also
screw it up and then you're costing your team DPS.
So now there's a big void zone around these six people as well
as all the raid mechanics. That is insanity.
That is not something I would ever want to attempt to do.
This was not a thing in season 2, but in season 1, Ogg and Dev
were actually pretty close in, in certain encounters and
largely when it came to the the race of world 1st and some of
these, some of these fights, they basically said, you know
what, it's close. We don't want to deal with Ogg.
We're going to go with Dev literally just because it's such
a headache to put this stuff together and and to plan around
and to figure it out. These guilds can, they just
decided, yeah, we'd rather devote our energy elsewhere if
it's like this close and we don't need the damage, right
anyway. No, I think that that is what
you're you've been saying for this episode.
It is what does the odd demand of you.
And if you can do it without having to jump through all of
those hoops, then odd doesn't seem worth it.
If you can, it's the same argument, Sean, that you have
been putting forward for anybody who's been considering the
single button rotation, Like if you can do it and free up the
mindspace to do something else, why are you not freeing up the
mindspace? And to me, that means that like
in order to be viable, not just for these Race to World first
teams, but the friends and family at home, log has to over
perform. Or it has to be, as you've been
saying, a whole lot simpler, a whole lot more accessible in
order to be viable. Because I don't want to be
spinning 4 plates and then still trying to do my rotation in
order to get out, get like 80% of what I could be doing on
devastation or, or something else.
But that kind of brings me to the other question that I wanted
to ask you. Is Ogg being the buff class,
being the support role? It's been around for now.
This is our second expansion with it.
Do you feel like supports generally have a space in World
of Warcraft currently? Like before we were talking
about it and we're like, yeah, man.
Like I was hoping that Paladin and Priest would get their own
support specs and so they would be like able to vie for the
spec. But since that time, and I'm
going to, I'm going to lead with my own opinion.
I don't think you can fit in a support spec unless 90 or 70% of
the classes can field a support spec.
Otherwise you're locking in like let's say it's just priests and
and evokers. Like you're kind of locking in
those two 2 specs for them to not have that like complication
issue. Where do you, where do you think
like the proper balance is? Or do you do you think there
isn't it? Sorry.
Yeah, no worries. So I have a nuclear hot take on
this one which is just very fun. Certainly thought about this
tons. First off, obviously
augmentation being the only spec like this in the game.
Especially again when we talk about when it first launched and
most of its damage was puffs. It doesn't help when it's the
only spec that behaves this way that anyone that wants this play
style or feels like they need that utility in their group have
one option to play with. And Evoker has been a bit of a
black sheep since it launched for a couple reasons.
Some players love it and and really identify with it and
enjoy it. I'm absolutely one of them.
But it gets a lot of criticism and and feedback for different
reasons, whether it's the range requirement, whether it's the
fact that Mog is still a little bit awkward when it comes to,
you know, not being able to stay in visage form.
Even the restrictions on visage form are a little silly that you
only have, you know, like one or two race options there, right?
The fact that you have to stay in dragon form while you're
casting is something that people aren't super thrilled with.
So there's already a little bit of a barrier to entry to playing
Evoker that some people don't really enjoy.
And then from there there's there's these other quirks about
the spec. There's again, the limited
range, the, you know, your your dragon, this kind of stuff.
So to me that, that situation where we had literally just one
spec that behaves this way and it's not everyone's cup of tea,
I think is, is really what set a lot of people on fire when they
felt like, Oh, I have to play the spec or I have to find
someone who plays the spec to, to feel the group.
So First off, not even like I'm 100% with you.
I I think they're, they're for sure probably needs to be other
support specs in a world that we support support specs in the
game. Just having the one doesn't
really work to me. My nuclear hot take on how
supports might work in World of Warcraft is to take a page out
of other games that kind of build that that have support
options and this kind of thing. And then when they look at World
of Warcraft and how things have sort of evolved and I, my, my
perspective is existing DPS specs, frankly, almost every
spec in the game, but even just DPS specs have too much
individual utility, too many personal cooldowns for
defensives and are boxing out potential support specs because
they already bring all the support options.
They already bring all the utility.
Cut that shit in half, Get rid of all like almost all the
personal defensives. Maybe leave one, get rid of like
all these like random utility things that every spec can do.
And then have a couple support specs that maybe, oh, maybe they
do like 10% less damage on average.
But they're they're they're the utility captain.
They're the ones that are calling the shots around CC ING
the mobs. They're the ones that are, you
know, oh, maybe you have an extra external you can put on
the tank compared to the healer. Maybe you are the healer.
Maybe you know, like, right, you have like a healing kit and
you're doing some of this control stuff as well.
Like there, there's a lot of potential there to bring
throughput in the form of utility at at the expense of
damage, but only when other damage dealers are not also
competing on the utility front. That's, that's how I look at it.
And this would take a huge rework and it would be
controversial and it would be a, a whole big thing.
But again, king for a day. That's that's how I would
approach this. And you're not making everyone
happy by getting rid of all their, their innate utility that
they built up through the years. But I, I really do think that
would make for a very interesting field where you can
kind of go, OK, you know, maybe we don't need that utility.
We'll just run three like straight damage dealers and
we'll have to deal with the fact that we don't have as much
control. Maybe we will do less damage and
feel like we need that control. Like high, high keys.
Almost certainly right now you need as much control as you
could possibly get because it you, you build around that.
You build around the fact that, you know, like realistically, M
plus is about like literally how much stuff can I pull in once
and, and deal with before we get overwhelmed.
And generally speaking, control abilities are more important
than throughput when it comes to achieving that goal.
But there are ways to design around that too, if you really
want, right from a, from a Blizzard standpoint.
So to me, that's, that's how I would make support quote, UN
quote, work in, in World of Warcraft without that, you
really run into these, these situations where like, you know,
people feel like, oh, that, that spec's bringing too much and,
and they're, you know, doing a ton.
And, and I, I just, I, I get a little bit disappointed again
these days where I, I look at other specs, I look at like, you
know, I look at balance and they, they have ways to root and
control mobs. They have solar beams.
They bring 3% versatility for everybody for the whole fight.
Can only give versatility to DPS sometimes, right?
Like what, what's the deal with that?
It's it's just like, again, right right now, it's just kind
of doing DPS things. And outside of just doing DPS in
different ways, the the only real way to differentiate is to
give it some unique tools. And Blizzard have shown that
they can be creative around supportabilities and utility
and, and things that aren't just rebuffs when you know, like
again, whether it's rooting enemies, knocking them, pushing
them away, gripping them back together, silencing them for a
duration, all this stuff, tons of different abilities, but
they're all spread out on these existing damage classes.
Just put that utility on the supports have a few different
options so people don't feel like they're they're stuck on
one and go to town. That, that's my game.
I've been Bogart in the mic so much.
Sean, what's fast to see you? What would you like to know?
Yeah, give us more support specs like new Demon Hunter support
spec, new void Demon Hunter support spec.
Let's I want to talk about that. Jerry, That's my question to
you. Obviously you're you're a
support spec supporter, man, It's an awkward thing to say.
An ally, an enthusiast ally. He's an ally of the support
spec. There we go, when Blizzard
unveils the third Demon Hunter spec at Games Com on August 19th
and it comes out that it is a support style spec where it
instead of buffing your allies, debuffs the enemies through the
use of sigils. How will you feel as a as an
augmentation lover and will you be writing the guide for Entropy
DHS? I'll be honest, I I will be
considering that one if that happens.
So I'll probably put in an application, but I'll probably
have to choose. It's probably one or the other.
I don't think I have time for 2, so we'll see.
That Volk do too. I think I think like Preheat
does a couple. I mean I mean that guy is doing
this shit all day, but I mean why not right?
I just I I can not sleep, it's fine.
Sleep's overrated. You, you really think we're
getting a support? I mean, look, obviously the, the
spec isn't confirmed, but might as well, like who knows, it
could happen. You, you really think they'd go
with the support at this point given everything that we've kind
of led up to at this point? I will bet you a month of game
time that it is a support style spec that debuffs enemies
through sigils. All right, in terms of cutting
out a space for 1/3 Demon Hunter spec, you, you don't like what
is going to be a second tank spec because like, there's never
been anything with a second tank spec.
Yeah, hear me out. We we could go in a different
direction. So I think a lot of people like
the the most common thing is just another melee that's
boring. If they do that, they're going
to lose people on just what's the point?
They could do another limited range range specialization
potentially. I think what a lot of people
are, are thinking is OK, you know, give him like A2 hander.
That'd be cool. That's fine.
You know, what you can do with A2 hander is you can reach
really far. You can, you know, shoe lasers.
Those are very voidy, right 'cause I, I think like no matter
what, if we get a new demon Hunters spec, it's gonna be void
related. It's gonna relate to sort of
what we've seen in in the Soul Hunters fight and this kind of
thing. And it's gonna relate to kind of
that quest line that I'm not gonna get into that I've maybe
seen data mined, but not actually bled.
But certainly, I mean, to me, look, if you, if you, if you've
seen Evoker and you're a designer and you think, well,
you know what, we kind of have to design around this already.
We kind of have to make flights work where range has to stand at
25 yards. So why not just add a couple
more of those or, you know, see how that goes to me.
And, and this might get me shot by any shadow briefs that are
listening to this, but they've been left a lot on the table in
terms of potential spells and things that shadow could get up
to. And not like not just sigils,
but like tentacles erupting from the ground and controlling
enemies, right? Dungeons and Dragons has a has
has a spell that erupts tentacles like from you and
like, go out and like, you know, hit the enemy and this kind of
thing. And hey, why not, right?
But to me, you know, yeah, you can make this a range spec that
stands at like 20 yards and does stuff like that.
Sure. Why not right play into sigils
play you would have to play into the existing class absolutely
You could definitely have some debuff and some CC Look,
assuming Blizzard doesn't follow my my goal to, you know, put all
this stuff on support specs, you could just still add some of
this stuff to this spec to make it interesting right?
Give it some of these control options, like a mass grip that
isn't really a mass grip, but like keeps enemies grouped up
while there aren't like what's the but anyway, it doesn't
matter. I'm thinking about I'm thinking
about with like tentacles or something right, right.
Anyway, so I think that's more likely and I might take you up
on your one month bet if we don't get a new spec,
everything's off. But if it's support I think
you're up and if it's more damage Y can I just get it if
it's damage or if they do a melee that?
Works even if it's just not support.
If it's not support. You're on I'm at risk that you
have inside info, but I'll take it anyway.
We'll see how it goes. Sean's obviously going to pay
more attention to the war and the database to.
Win a month of games. They must pay you peanuts.
That's how you tell when. That's how I know.
Like if I'm watching somebody and they stop talking about
something that they've been very vocal about, I'm like, oh, now
you have an answer. Yeah, realistically though, like
if if they were to lean into support, I I'd really hope that
they've learned some of the lessons that they did from
augmentation. If you're gonna have stuff that
buffs allies, limit the number of allies that it affects or, or
have it buff everybody, like right, Like either buff
everybody at the same time or very like very limited to to who
you're buffing. Having this like hot potato
thing where you're always having to figure out who who's doing
the most damage. Technically, OK, you can play
around that, but realistically you have to really control
throughput. When that's the case, you have
to be very careful because people do different amounts of
damage at different points in the fight.
And you you have to keep it keep it limited in terms of your
overall output because that becomes part of the skill
expression. Like we're seeing with
augmentation, some of the safest support abilities, quote UN
quote, that they put in the game that feels supporty.
Are these things where you put something on an ally and then
when they do damage, they do more damage because of something
that you did, like a proc or something like that?
Paladins have had stuff like this where you you'll put like a
buff on somebody and then every time they hit, they'll do some
light damage as well, right? This is something that they've
done a lot in the past and that's the safest way to add
sort of supportive feeling stuff while making it extremely easy
to to balance. I, you know, I, I don't find
that stuff necessarily as interesting than like giving
people stats at certain times, but it's a Safeway to approach
that. Debuffing enemies so they take
more damage. Great.
You're gonna still suck with Warcraft logs and all this
stuff. It's gonna be a nightmare.
But hey, definitely an option, right?
And, and obviously sigils are very thematic to me.
I'd, I'd hope that they lean into the void stuff a lot as
well, whether it's like mind games and this kind of stuff,
the, you know, psionics, the, you know, the like, you know,
the shadow words is on the shadow side of things and, and,
and, or like these creatures from the void, right, summoning
these things that that's all very cool to me.
But I think again, just the bottom line is, is some of these
lessons that we learned from Ogg and then also just really
playing into the theme. I'd I'd love to see it and I, I
love my Demon Hunter alt. I I don't really play any alt at
like a competitive level compared to my main and again in
season, but Demon Hunter is so much fun.
I love jumping around. I love flying, I love my glades.
I just, you know, it, it, it's, it's a ton of fun.
So give me a spec that that is squarely in my in my arena and,
and it's on Demon Hunter and, and yeah, I'm sold.
I'm playing that day one. So beyond just like the fact
that you're, you're doubting this, this debuff spec or this,
this buff spec, how many, how many support specs do you think
World of Warcraft should have to like actually, it's like
actually let them take the gloves off a bit because I still
think 2 is a little dangerous. So like what would you say the
critical mass is? Well, here's the thing and it
it's it's tough now, but all right, so a little bit more
context on this one. I think they missed the boat on
hero talents by not opening up support support T options for
specs through the hero talents. I think they left a lot on the
table by not giving players some support options by saying, OK,
if I want to be supporty, I can choose this hero talent and if I
want to do direct damage, I can choose that one.
You're seeing Ogg kind of move into this domain where if if you
choose Chronal Warden, you're kind of doing more supporting
stuff and if you choose scale commander, you're doing more
self damage stuff. It the class is still the class,
the spec is still the spec, but there's a little choice there.
I would have really liked to see them play with that more.
But unfortunately what really happened in my mind was they put
forward a couple of designs. One of them was the Oracle disc
priest or Oracle priest, I guess, but whatever.
And one of them was the, the, the light, light spawn paladin
or something like that. And to me, those were just poor
implementations of a really good idea.
And I think they got the wrong idea from people.
A lot of the feedback for that Oracle priest design was this is
really bad. It replaces my Pi.
It's literally a damage loss. This is not good.
We hate it, but what they took from that was, oh, gotcha, you
don't want supporty stuff in your hero talent.
We'll take that away. Paladin had a similar thing
where they had this thing where you can drop it like the light
well version of like a weapon, right, Where you have to click
on it and then you get an empowered weapon that you swing
at people. And you know that that would be
very supporty 'cause I'm a DPSI. See my paladin put that thing on
the ground. I need to click on it, right?
No one wants to do that is the problem, right?
You're dealing with a fight, you're moving around, you're
dealing with mechanics. And then the holy, like the holy
paladin puts a thing on the ground.
You're like, I'm not gonna go click that.
What the hell are you talking about?
I'm standing over here like, right, just another again, like
poor implementation. But what if you just picked
somebody and said like, Oh yeah, they're the like holy hammer
wielder and, you know, suddenly it just spawns in their hands
and now they're like doing more, right?
That would've been cool. Why the hell not?
So to me, it was really just they they kind of failed on the
implementation and and that's that's where I think it fell
short. So again, King for day, bring in
a new spec or two that are fully support oriented and then maybe
have a couple classes where the hero talents, if they're gonna
keep that system going, those lean into supporting elements
where, you know, again, maybe you have one or two nodes that
directly buff other people's damage with a similar output to
Pi, let's say, not the same effect, but gives a similar
amount of contribution. Let's say, where you know, you
can tilt in that flavor because right now, again, Aug aug's not
bringing extra utility. But if we want to open the doors
for that, if we want to give people more of a taste of
support play style and sort of again, still dealing damage, but
dealing damage in a special way where you're doing it sort of
through your allies. That's, that's how I would
really lean into it a little bit more right now.
Realistically, if we ignore raid buffs, cause those are super
passive and boring and stuff like Bloodlust, let's say that,
you know, a whole bunch of people have realistically we
have Aug, we have Pi and then like blessing of seasons or
something. Like I don't know if you can
think of any other maybe totems sometimes every once in a while,
right? I mean, they started stripping
those wags. But yeah, so like this stuff is
very pervasive in the history of Wow.
It's just like, again, it's just kind of a missed opportunity to
me. I think like absolutely you
could. You can't add 10 new specs to
the game immediately. That's crazy, right?
It's a ton of work. And frankly, I think the team is
already stretched very thin with the current selection of specs
and hero talents and talent trees that they have to manage.
In fact, I like frankly, obviously think it's way too
much. So when we're talking about
adding one new spec here and there, I think they're already
biting off more than they can chew.
But let's say you know that, let's say that's realistic.
Fine, you're gonna have to ease into it.
It's gonna be one or two specs or even just, you know, maybe a
new class in the expansion, you know, knock on wood, right?
That would be cool, but you're you're not gonna get to more
than like 2-3, maybe 4 support E specs that are brand new.
You could start hammering some of the existing ones, but people
hate that people are pretty married to their.
Like, if if you've settled into a spec at this point, it's
because you really like, you probably really enjoy that spec.
It it speaks to you the way that it deals damage is interesting
to you. The aesthetic motivates you.
I mean, there are like die hard survival hunters that have been
playing that thing for ages and and just, you know, like nothing
will shake them, right. And if you were to go, yeah, now
survival is a support spec that, you know, traps enemies and
keeps them locked down and like, I don't know, you know, like it
empowers other people's attacks by like marking their weak
points or something, right. It's like, yeah, I mean that
it's on theme, but it's not the same flavor as sort of this, you
know, melee savage guy with a pet that's doing some crazy
stuff, right. So that that's that's to me,
like again, I just missed opportunity around.
I think the hero talents, I think they could still go in
that direction if they want to. So revamp some of the less
popular ones, add more support elements there.
Maybe we got a new Demon Hunter spec that leans in that
direction. Maybe we got a new class in
midnight that does some new some cool stuff too.
And then we have 3 or 4 and some hero talent options as well.
And suddenly now we're not afraid to play with support.
I'm very pessimistic on this. Every time I've seen an
interview recently, they've been like, I don't know, people don't
like support. We'll see.
I think people like support. It's just we're, we're getting
the wrong, we're, we're getting the wrong message across.
And I want to set the record straight.
You need to be careful with how you implement these specs, but
they are wildly popular with a big segment of your player base.
And frankly, those those players, as long as the spec is
reasonably performant and they don't feel like they're letting
their group down by playing the spec, it's fine.
It doesn't have to be top tier. It's just you're you're doing a
disservice when Ogg has a super wide skill cap in raid and
someone who we're talking about the most like selfless players.
At the end of the day, the ones that are going what what I enjoy
is making other people do more damage and play better and do
all this stuff. And if you ever give them the
feeling that they're not contributing or that they're
letting the group down by playing a spec that that kills
it immediately. And and that's, that's just
super sad. Yeah, that's that's a great
that's a great bow on that. Is that these people, they their
joy is derived from lifting others up and the community is
just like, I want to do my own damage.
If I have an Ogg, how do I know what my damage is?
It's not fair. I couldn't parse because he had
an Ogg and I didn't. It's.
Why do they want to lift these
games? It's.
Really funny because I back in the day when I first picked up
the game, I I was attracted to healing priests because I was
like, wow, there's you know, OK, there's, there's two healing
specs. That's very cool.
You know, I have some options here.
I'm really into this like, you know, like holy light healer,
but like the cloth robe aesthetic, this kind of thing.
And just like when when I first got to it in in like BC, you
know, I was like, all right, this is just a very cool spec
where I can jump in in raid with my Guild and that I just joined
and be useful, right. And then when when RAF came
along, disc was very good. We had these like huge bubbles,
this kind of thing. I'm like, heck yeah, this is
unique and interesting and awesome.
Like, you know, where I'm shielding allies, they are safe
before they take damage. Great.
And then I took some time off the game and I came back in
Legion because we got this cool knife and I was like, that
sounds cool. I was never DPS Mane before
that. I was just like, this spec
really speaks to me. So I'm gonna figure out how to
do damage. I'm gonna learn to like it and
I, I learned to like it. Surrender to Madness is freaking
cool. That spec is still the coolest
thing like ever as far as I'm concerned, but just sort of
reading out that journey to you. I'm I'm attracted to support
specs in games. I think I think it's really,
really cool. I think you can absolutely get
have a lot of fun by dealing as much damage personally as you
possibly can, But there's also something to be said about I
need the situational awareness to know where my team is, what
they're doing. If I think to like lost Ark, for
example, the lost ark support role is it's a little bit of a
healer, but you also deal damage and you also you have a lot of
this like bonus utility that other classes don't, where I can
put like, you know, a Windrush totem basically on the ground
that makes people fast or put down a gateway for people to
move that that in that game. That's pretty much all on the
support class and you can absolutely clear content without
a support. But if you want those extra
heals, if you want, right, the movement tech, this kind of
stuff, you bring a support, right.
So to me that's extremely cool. You know, anyway, it, it really
just it's, it's that flavor that that augmentation really opened
the door for where no other spec in the game at this point in
time feels like that. And the fact that they're kind
of eroding at that feel that part of the spec over time is,
is just really the like it, it, it, it's, it's, it's tricky and,
and really where I hope gets a little more attention,
especially as we go into midnight.
Kind of want to ask the audience if you were one of those resto
shamans that love being the mana battery with your mana tie
totem, If you were one of those paladins that love to do the
seal twisting, I think the support people, they've been out
there. But of course there's those
people who like didn't like totem twisting that like didn't
like having to like give up their thing or be like the guy
who would take the the damage and sack and and dying to get
resurrected. Where have you guys been before?
And I don't want to say after Ogg Ogg still around before Ogg,
right where where's where's your home being?
And would you want those things to be around?
Because I think the game has had moments where classes have been
supportive, had really had something that like added to
everybody, everybody else. And Blizzard has cut those down.
Like I, I definitely remember being the resto shaman where I
was stacking spirit for my mana tide because that helped a lot.
And I'd love to know what where people have found their support,
if they'd like to see that again outside of Ogg, or if they're
happy with just like getting that Ogg going again.
What can they tell us, Manny? Where can they give us their
answer? Well, you can definitely join
the discord at bit dot LY slash fast Discord and give your two
cents there. And you can always reach out to
us all on socials. So when people want to find you
on socials, where can they do that?
Jericho, let us know. Yeah, realistically, if you join
that fast Discord, I think I'm a member in there.
So if you go into the top right and just search JEREICO, you'll
probably find me and the purple coffee cup.
That's that's me. Got a website, jericho.com,
which has links to all my stuff. Twitter name's different, so
probably not the easiest to go there is, although I'm sure if
you search Jericho something will come up.
And also again writing for Augmentation of Ochre on
Wowhead, so there will be all sorts of links on there as well.
OK. And Sean, when you are not
waxing with all of the the what it could be theory crafting or
when you're not telling us the analysis at the at the desk,
where can people find you? Right here or also in that same
discord. And other than that, it's
cartridge Bros everywhere. So Twitch, YouTube, Twitter, I
think Blue Sky is a different name but don't follow me there
because nobody logs into Blue Sky.
Excuse. Me.
That's where I'm constantly at. It's just for shame, Sir.
I enjoy my blue sky. I enjoy my nice little liberal
bubble anyway. I'm on there as well.
I might forget to. I was going to say tweet.
What? What do we call it on that one?
I was. On Blue Sky they call it crying
because nobody reads them. Man I'm teasing, I'm teasing
blue sky fans. I was in before it was an open
invite. I'm a blue sky OG still.
Still a sad place. And of course, Lex is not here,
but you can find her at Lex under score rants on socials
including Blue Sky. She's another person who's
actually on Blue Sky. And we'd like to thank everybody
who supports the show, including one of our latest patrons.
Thank you, Elliott Beagles. We will get Sean to give you a
story next time, but we are running short on time today.
So until next time, may all your hits be grits.