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tour. For.
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has not died for the Lich King. For the.
Sindora for the Alliance for the Horn for Azeroth.
Hello and welcome to another special episode of Four Azeroth.
I'm Sean, one of the Co hosts of the show.
I'm here as always with Manny and a very special 3rd guest
today, the Augmentation guide writer for Wowhead, the one and
only Jericho. Jericho, thanks for being here.
Thanks for having me. We are going to sit down today,
so augmentation has been a hot topic since it came into the
game. In was it 10 point 2.5?
I believe it's 10 point 1.5 so it was the the middle patch of
season 2 of Dragonflate. Yeah, and it came in, hit the
ground running, made a big splash.
We're going to get Jericho's opinions on how Ogg has been
since its inception and where it's going in the future.
Why don't we start with just maybe give a brief rundown of
what augmentation does and how it first came into the game?
Oh boy, so how how absolutely exciting to be talking about
augmentation and how it's kind of come along all this way.
So augmentation first came into the game halfway through season
2 of Dragonflight. And the best way to kind of
think about that is OK, the race to world first has ended.
We're well into kind of farm for rating groups, but the mythic
plus scene is still going strong.
So there's a lot of, you know, still jockeying for that top 1%,
the latter, that sort of thing. So the biggest impact that
augmentation had when it first hit was in Mythic Plus.
And it goes without saying that augmentation was pretty damn
strong when it first hit. In fact, augmentation has got
hit with nerfs pretty much every single major patch since then,
and it's still in every group in Mythic plus at the very top end
and still very strong in raid, especially in the hands of some
of the top guilds. And that's something we can kind
of talk about as well. But when the spec first hit, we
had these hilarious videos of 30 augmentations in a raid, buffing
two death Knights and just killing bosses in 10 seconds.
We, you know, just absolutely ridiculous stuff in terms of
the, the scaling. And through time, Blizzard's
gone. OK, we're gonna hopefully peel
that back to more reasonable levels.
Let's try and get the damage in check and that sort of thing so
that, you know, we're, we're not running thirty of these in, in a
raid. One of the biggest changes
initially in in the rating setting was limiting you to two
buff targets essentially for your for your Evan Mites, or
rather, you can only receive 2 Eben might buffs.
So the sort of limited stacking the augmentations and raids.
And then as we've gone in mythic plus as well, the potency of a
lot of these buffs has been peeled back a lot.
So I, I actually pulled some numbers for a while had article
that I put together and remembering this is hilarious.
Eben Might when it first came in was a 10% stat buff that gained
an additional 40% when when in sort of a solo situation or in
in M plus because of that clutch of sorry closest clutch mates
buff, right? So this thing was giving 14%
main stat in in these M plus groups.
Also we had black atunement, right, which was basically this
big health aura like you know, fortitude giving 5% health as as
being pretty strong Black atunement if you popped Obsidian
scales was giving you 16% maximum health for the duration
of that buff absolutely insane right.
So all of this stuff has kind of come back and in, in many
different ways. And in addition, it's kind of
been hammered all over the place.
So frankly, 1 of augmentation's biggest strengths and continues
to be the case is that it has a lot of buttons there.
There are just a lot of different ways that it interacts
with the group, that it controls, you know, mobs in a,
in a mythic plus setting. And it just has a lot of
different sort of support and utility options.
And it's it's been kind of a multi layered thing to kind of
get a lot of those things in into check for fragmentation
since then. So to get a little bit of
perspective where we are now in 11 point O or you know, point O
seven, however you want to look at it, Ebenmite is now 5% main
stat closest clutch mates is gone, which means that it's
Ebenmite is just as effective in raid as it is in mythic.
Plus black atonement has been nerfed so much that we basically
don't even run it anymore. For the most part, it's the the
2% Max health that we get from it.
You're almost better off just putting those points somewhere
else. And frankly, when it comes to
you know, augmentations placed in the meta, it's still
considered to be, you know, strong enough from a damage
standpoint to be brought to these mythic plus groups.
When we look at Raid for example, interestingly not part
of every composition in the mythic race, the world first,
but was absolutely included on a few key bosses towards the end.
And in this case, Evoker was absolutely well represented.
It's just that Preservation and Devastation were particularly
strong this time. We had 4-5 plus Evokers in on
pretty much each kill, especially towards the end.
It's just augmentation was either better or worse than
devastation in in certain spots. So Long story short and happy to
dive in on on any one of those topics in in a little more
detail, but this spec started strong.
It's seen a lot of kind of changes in nerf since then.
Right now it's still in a pretty good spot and the changes going
into 11.1 are meaningful, substantial, but not, I wouldn't
say, the death of this spec in any meaningful way.
Not yet. We won't say that yet.
Maybe by the end? Of the episode.
Manny, you are a longtime wild player, obviously more years
than you'll care to admit. You play mainly as DPS when
augmentation, the very first ever and the date only support
spec was introduced to Warcraft. How did you feel about it?
Did you? Did you welcome Ogg with open
arms or were you hesitant? I was hesitant, but not because
of Aug itself, but because Aug was the only buff class put in
that. It's such a big change to find a
place for something that the game has never supported before.
And based on how it's been going, they're still trying to
find the exact place for it. So Aug itself, I was like, yeah,
OK, we're going to see changes. It's got, it's going to have
growing pains, which it's had, but I was expecting that with
the War Within, with the hero talents, I was expecting some
other classes to start going into that that role so that Ogg
would have some competition that they could really carve out a
niche for it. But they decided not to do that.
And I think that's the biggest issue with Ogg is that they want
it to be viable. They want it to have a place,
but if that place becomes mandatory, then everything is
Ogg and that screws up their classroom representation.
So they've really put themselves in a hard place in my opinion.
Maybe we need some totem, totem twisters, seal seal, throwers on
paladins and and shamans just to say OK people need to have the
buff class, but at least it doesn't always have to fall on
this one class. Also the one thing I hate about
Ogg Earthshield looks crappy compared to what they gave
augmentation. Come on, it's.
True. It's true.
They. Absolutely nailed it.
Sorry with the visuals for this spec.
It is the newest class to the game and it shows.
The visuals are fantastic. Yeah, yeah, it is beautiful.
So I wanna touch on community feedback now.
We're hesitant. I say we man.
He's always hesitant to use the term the community as a giant
all-encompassing entity. I love to do it because I'm a
big fan of paint brushes and generalizations.
Jericho, can you tell us how was like what was the community
sentiment on Ogg when it was released and up until right now?
Yeah, I'm going to also agree that the community at large is a
bit of a difficult term to use in this case.
And as, again, as, as the writer for Wowhead, I get the, I have
the pleasure of reading these fantastic comments on all of
these articles that we post, which is just fantastic.
I'll, I'll try and summarize in, you know, in in a pretty
straightforward way what I think different segments of the
community look like and what that kind of means.
First off, just by design, the way that the spec has been
implemented and by virtue of how it interacts with other
characters in in your groups and in your raids, necessarily right
now is going to have a very different impact for different
players of different skills and different sort of points.
The game necessarily by way of buffing other characters, you
rely on the scale of your allies to sort of boost your your
damage output and your effectiveness.
There's that aspect, but there's also this aspect of sort of
being able to recognize, for example, how to move your buffs
between different players in a raid setting, which is a huge
part of how Ogg is sort of most effectively played in a raid.
That's changed a little bit more recently, but by and large,
still fundamental. And then also just the simple
fact that so much of what all brings to the table is in the
form of this utility, this crowd control, the box that it brings
to the group. It's it's stuff that as maybe a
more casual damage dealer, you know, DPS player, you might not
think about all the time, especially if you're just kind
of blasting through keys just for fun.
You're not necessarily pushing. You're just like, I'm going to
push my damage buttons and be done right.
So when it comes to all of that augmentation, if played just for
its damage isn't really right now anyway, especially anything
particularly special. But once you layer on all of
these different sort of effects, the way that it buffs your tank
and your healer, the way that it brings all of these control
options, you have Tail Swipe, Wing Buffett, Oppressing Roar,
you know, Landslide, all these damage reduction buttons like
Zephyr. You know, you have spatial
paradox for your healer. I've got a fun list on the side
here just to just remind me just in case, but the list goes on,
right? So really what I think a lot of
where, where a lot of the dissonance is, is in, in terms
of community reception and that sort of thing is recognizing
what aspects of the spec are, you know, really valued by the
the top players in terms of, you know, why they're bringing them
to groups versus why the average player might want to play this
spec. So I've seen a lot of different
opinions on augmentation as we go.
There's a pretty, I, I would say I, I don't want to say, you
know, uninformed, but maybe just less interested in a productive
discussion where, you know, it's just, hey, you know, delete the
spec. This thing's no good failed
experiment, that sort of thing. That that's one that hits close
to home because for me, I, I think this has been a very
valiant experiment, so to speak to, to sort of bring
augmentation in as the first and I would say sorry, support
oriented damage dealer. Really by and large, if there
was any hope of calling this thing a support spec, they've
moved away from that as much as possible, especially more
recently. It's, if anything, they've been
moving away from this spec that brings a ton of just crazy
utility and, and really try and focus on, on the damage more
than anything. And I think the community
reception has really shaped a lot of that.
I, I had a similar sort of thought to to many that if there
was appetite for it, especially in terms of design and, you
know, community feedback and that sort of thing, that the
hero talents would have seen a lot more sort of support
elements brought in to give players of other classes the
option to play those sorts of things.
And my personal opinion, my hot take on the matter is that the
wells sort of got poisoned by the specific implementations of
some of those that we saw in in the beta.
We saw the light force Paladin, for example, which dropped the
the weapons on the ground that you, you know, were supposed to
have your team go and pick up and that sort of thing.
And then we had the first cut of Oracle for healer priest, which
frankly was just not a very good implementation of what something
like that could be. And that's sort of the thing
that makes me the most sad at the end of the day is I do see a
world where, you know, having a, you know, having one of the five
players in an M plus situation, for example, be a support
oriented spec makes a ton of sense.
Where you know, OK, maybe you're giving up a bit of direct damage
or healing to bring a lot of this extra utility to the group
in in different ways and in creative ways, frankly.
But I think the overwhelming feedback that Blizzard received,
especially in in the beta for the War within was we don't like
what you've suggested here for these hero talents.
We'd rather something more conventional.
And I think that really scared the development team in the big
way from doubling down on support classes going forward,
which is, which is a shame because frankly, I, I adore the
idea of, you know, a less conventional, but more support
oriented character ultimately. And, you know, that's bringing
something different than just pure damage, pure healing, that
sort of thing. But as it stands, you know,
having augmentation as a role that brings just as much damage
as any other spec, if not more, depending on the meta.
And then also all of these other tools.
Yeah, that's probably a little bit unhealthy.
If you want a an M plus meta, for example, that has broad
representation of a lot of different specs.
I, I, I think that's at least the sentiment that most people
can agree on is if this spec brings so much to the table and
it feels like it's locked in, that really restricts your
ability to make viable compositions at the end of the
day. And that's, that's I think where
a lot of the the conservation has come from, especially at the
top end. Seeing Blizzard be hesitant to
implement more support style classes or specs, is there any
concern among augmentation enthusiasts that they will
eventually start to shift augmentation away from support
and that it will become a purely DPS spec?
Well, I think that's if anything, a fear that we've been
seeing manifest a little more recently.
And you know, as we kind of go through the war within into
Season 2 here, the, the elephant in the room in terms of the
biggest changes coming in 11-1 is that Eben might will no
longer affect tanks or healers. Ebenmite will purely be for the
benefit of the DPS players in, in the group and in the raid.
And for what it's worth, this is of course more impactful in
mythic plus setting than than raid.
It was frankly only very niche situations that you would ever
have plus a healer, Sorry, Ebenmite, a healer in in a raid
setting, for example. But what this does and, and I
want to be a little bit clearer that it it it, it does not
completely remove all of augmentations buffing power on
tanks of healers, so to speak. In fact, blistering scales for
tank armor is absolutely still there.
It still gives a, you know, a few points of damage reduction
by way of armor source of magic, which many of ochre brings or
well, devastation and and augmentation both bring is a
significant source of healing for the group as well.
And Eben might in its most recent iteration.
That's just 5% main style for the tank and the healer.
Taking that away, it's not necessarily the end of the
world. It's not, you know, like maybe
as big of a game changer for for the entire group as as some of
the Aug haters, for example, might have hoped for.
But I mean, and, and that's not to say that healers won't notice
it, they probably will notice a a 5% cut here or there.
But essentially what this change does, and coupled with the
closest clutch mates sort of buffed back up to 25%, is it
does move that throughput from the tanks and healers back into
the DPS players as a combination of augmentation's own damage and
the other DPS players in the group.
Essentially, we are moving away from, you know, the additional
throughput for the tank and the additional throughput for the
healer and really just focusing back on damage.
And this has been pretty consistent with a lot of the
nerves that that we've seen over the last bit.
And that's not to say that it's not warranted because it
probably is if augmentation's going to be the only spec that,
you know, can do these things and still bring, you know,
enough damage to be competitive. But it is pretty clear to me
that, you know, OK, in its current form, they're they're
really trying to maybe narrow the gap between the additional
utility that augmentation brings versus other more traditional
DPS specs. I mean, if we think of utility
in the way of throughput that that other specs bring, we think
of priest with power infusion, which frankly, anytime you can
put a priest in your group in mythic plus, you absolutely try,
whether it's, you know, discipline or holy priest as the
healer or if you can bring a shadow priest.
Awesome mages have been, you know, popular forever since
usually they do a ton of damage, but also arcane intellect has
been incredibly strong to, you know, benefit healers as well.
The God comp that we saw towards the end of, you know,
Dragonflight bringing both was, you know, a perfect example of
just that, that synergy where you know, OK, you've got the
power infusion plus arcane intellect plus Ebenmite, all of
these things working in tandem. It but also, but you know, not,
not any one of those specs necessarily not pulling their
own weight, right. Like, I, I would argue
absolutely that power infusion is a support ability.
These raid buffs and having them in mythic plus, for example, are
also support abilities. Absolutely, they're very
passive, but hey, it's it's utility, right.
So while augmentation has just an absolutely crazy laundry list
of of different buttons and different things that benefit
the group, it it, it is pretty clear to me that until we see a
little more experimentation in the form of a new class or a new
spec or some enhancement to these hero talent trees or what,
it seems like they are really trying to peel back on on the
support aspects of augmentation. Push it a little more in the way
of damage, at the very least to try and narrow that gap a little
bit. I don't think it's at least for
the foreseeable future. It's still quite a crazy kit in
terms of all the things that it brings, but but I definitely
would say that that's the direction that that it's been
heading, so to speak. So I'd I'd like to ask you if
augmentation didn't have the the buff to DPS and could opt to
instead throw it on on the tank and healers, right?
So you can choose to either buff the damn DPS or buff the tank
and the healer, right? That's a I think a big problem
with with lining up augmentation is that it brings everything to
the table and it's like, what can you leave off the table?
So if you had to make that sacrifice, would that ever be a
sacrifice that augmentation players or theory crafters would
ever consider worth it? Or is it just that DPS just
rules everything at this point? Well, when, when was the last
time that we've had a meta, for example, where we've been like,
OK, what if we could run 2 healers in mythic plus, right?
What if we ran like 2 discipline priests and just, you know, went
nuts with power infusion, that sort of thing.
Like I, I would say in general, and, and this is just my, my
naive view, I'm not necessarily, you know, a, a crazy key pusher
or anything like that. But to me, the sentiment that
I've I've seen through time is the the meta in the community,
so to speak, seem to prefer when damage is king, when your damage
throughput dictates whether or not you succeed in the key.
And that it's not, you know, oh, we're getting overwhelmed by
incoming damage that we have to, you know, have all these crazy,
you know, sort of like stacking defensives and making sure that
we can survive every single like incoming ability.
And that, you know, it's not that you're worried about timing
the key, but you're worried about surviving hits.
It. It seems to me that players
prefer when damages the the sort of when, when, when damage
throughput is sort of the the limiting factor, right.
And as long as that's the case, and again, this is a very M plus
sort of focused, you know, point.
But I think as long as that's the case, Blizzard is going to
continue to sort of design in that direction, which is to say,
OK, players really try and do as much damage as possible and, you
know, healing and survivability or that sort of thing, or a bit
more of a checkbox exercise. And that's really, I, I think
that's driven a lot of the community reception through
time. I think that's driven a lot of
design through time. And we, we do see it in terms
of, you know, compositions in the meta and that sort of thing.
For example, when you can bring a pallet and tank to the group
and they're doing all this crazy off healing, that sort of thing,
you're happy to have them, right?
They're, they're absolutely contributing to the success of
the group. But that's not usually your
first thought. Your first thought is, OK,
what's, what's the tank that's gonna, you know, succeed in
these, you know, huge crazy 5 pack pulls that we're trying to
do without falling over and that's, you know, also
contributing a substantial amount of damage and, and that
sort of thing, right? So I think by and large, it's an
interesting thought to say, OK, you know, what if we had a
version of augmentation that was more focused on the tanker
healers, right? And, and would that be an
interesting, you know, choice, for example, to, to bring
perhaps in a rate setting right there?
I mean, I could see a world where, and, and it's a little
bit difficult there as well, because most encounters are
balanced around, you know, specifically 2 tanks on on that
side of things. But you can imagine a world
where, hey, I have a third character that's like kind of
beefy and is able to like off tank some ADS or something every
once in a while or that has, you know, just a few extra externals
to keep the tanks alive in, in crazy moments, right.
And healing's always interesting because healing is the situation
where sort of towards the beginning of the tier, you need
a lot of it. As farm goes on, you need less
of it and you focus more on damage and kill times and that
sort of thing. But there are moments where, and
this comes down to tuning and how hard you're you're pushing
and that sort of thing. But in in the race to world
first, for example, augmentation has every once in a while had
moments where you might want to put Ebenite on healers.
And again, very niche. But but you you know, we're in a
position where you might do that just just to give the healers
that extra, you know, 510% throughput for that one moment.
And then you go back to the to the the DPS, right.
And so having a spec that that could do that right or go I'm
going to buff this healer right now and then this healer and
that sort of thing. Yeah, absolutely.
It's a it's an extension or, or you know, an an interesting
design idea, certainly. But I do think the game is
personal anyway, just more designed around the the damage
question in general. So that that's kind of an
interesting thought for sure. So if if the survivability
through healing and tanking is so binary where it's like it's
good enough move on to DPS, how do you how does like
augmentation like work with that if not focused on the DPS beyond
good enough to survive? Let's get the numbers.
Well, and, and again, I, I do think this is where Blizzard
might have designed themselves into a bit of a corner here
where and, and I, I don't think this will be shocking to anyone.
But I mean, at the, at the end of the day, if you have one
speck that brings, you know, again, sufficient damage to earn
its place in the group, but is also just, you know,
automatically causing the tank to, you know, generate more
thread and have 5 percent, 10% more survivability and do more
damage. And the healer is doing the same
thing where, you know, maybe they can just cast a regular
spell instead of a cool down because they have that buff.
Right. When, when you have all of that
in play and you're the only spec that can do that.
And again, especially noticeable in mythic plus, you, you have
kind of solidified a spot for that character in, in that
group. I, I mean, I again, I, I love
the idea of support characters in, in Mmos in particular.
I'm like when, whenever I try a new MMO, I'm always sort of
going towards that support character first and foremost.
And it is a bit of a bummer to me that, you know, in, in World
of Warcraft, OK, I'm either playing a direct damage dealer
or I'm playing a healer, right? But there there isn't really
something in the middle that you know, that that I can that I can
choose that does a little bit of both, unless in this case I'm,
you know, I'm playing this one spec that brings more than maybe
one slots worth of of utility. At least that's how it largely
was at the end of Dragonflight. And so it like in, in terms of
its current state and especially going into 11 one, I, I think it
is in a much sort of, I would say healthier state in terms of,
you know, do you need one in your group?
I would say largely, a lot of players will probably look at
everything by and large and go, OK, I don't need Warren Stone
because we're not doing any weird tech.
I don't need rescue because I'm actually not like that confident
in my ability to use twin guardian.
Well anyway, so maybe I don't care too much about that.
And you know, hey, yeah, I really do want to bring my my
shadow priest because Pi on this enhancement shaman would be
nuts, right? So like by and large, players
might decide, you know, hey, I, you know, they're just no longer
is enough on the throughput side of things that, you know, hey,
maybe I can experiment a little more.
But the biggest thing ultimately to to me when it comes to
augmentation and why it gets this big of a wrap, I think
personally is this idea of kind of agency and the way that the
buffs are felt. OK.
And then this is something that we don't necessarily talk about
a lot, but when I am a shadow priest player and I just have my
1, you know, power infusion that I put on people, I have my
passive fortitude and then I'm just doing damage the rest of
the time. No one's really looking at that
and going like, you know, for, for example, Wow, that that
shadow priest is is making all the difference in terms of
whether or not, you know, we succeed this key.
The healer is not going like, oh shit, you know, I've got this
buff on me and I'm doing more now, right?
And then especially when it comes to to tanking, for
example, it, you know, you might have a, a priest in your group
and everyone has more, more health, or you have a major
group and everyone has slightly more, more main stat.
But the fact that Ogg has these buffs and they're, they're
active and that you're like, you know, pressing buttons and
that's causing, you know, players to, to have more
throughput. They, they, it's almost
psychological, but you almost just feel it more when, when
this, this spec exists and, and is doing this stuff.
So I, I do think by and large, the, the changes that are, that
are coming are going to even the playing field a little more,
especially in terms of perception.
And then hopefully by then players will realize like, OK,
this back is, is pretty neutral in damage.
We can, you know, we can live or with or without it, It has very
specific utility. So if you know, if I really need
to be able to do this or that, great.
It still has a lot of, you know, different crowd control options
and God cauterizing flames super useful.
Like, you know, just the the list goes on in terms of all
these different buttons, but you might decide, hey, I don't need
that, right? And, and I, I do think at the
very least in terms of this, this design pit that, that I
think we've kind of ended up in where if we're not gonna make
more of these things, then they should kind of still exist in
the DPS paradigm. I think they're at least moving
in, in a way where it can live a little healthier in, in, in the
world of DPS specs, so to speak. And again, it's a bit of a
bummer for me. Like, I, I love the idea of, you
know, hey, we'd have like support characters that are
doing cool stuff. It just doesn't seem like that's
where we're at right now anyway. Or at least, you know, there
doesn't seem to be a lot of appetite at the moment.
Yeah, in, in infinitely. Scaling content like M plus you
have two options. You're either the you get to a
point where you can't kill the mobs fast enough because they
have so much health to time the key, or you get to a point where
the damage they do is so overwhelming, you die and you
can't time the key. And that's we're currently in
that state and we've been there since that's August launched,
where the deciding factor is there's too much damage.
We need more defensives. And as long as we're in that,
that design world, augmentation is going to be needed at the top
level keys forever because people are sheep.
It will trickle down and we'll be running them in our sevens,
but if we switch to the other, if we switch to the point where
OK, what the deciding factor now is can we do enough DPS to kill
these mobs to time the key as opposed to can we survive?
Are you worried about augmentations place in the game
as because devastation typically is tuned for more damage.
Well, I would say before you tacked on that last little bit
at the end, yeah, I mean it it it all hit both when it comes to
augmentation and how it looks sort of in a damage dealing
paradigm. It I I would say it's it's now
at a point where we can pretty safely say it depends Before I
would have said this thing brings 1 1/2 DPS players worth
of value. Of course you want it right,
That that was the the Dragonflight tuning angle and
we're we're past that. It's it's been nerfed to the
point where it it now depends. The current meta that we're in
right now, for example, where enhancement is just absolutely
nuts, lends itself very well to augmentation coming in, buffing
the enhancement, the enhancements getting Pi and from
the healer in this case mostly, and the occupations coming in.
And also, you know, you've got your shifting sans buffer, more
versatility. You've got your Eben might,
you've got your prescience for crit and then all these other
stacking buffs when when you're really leaning on this, this one
character and buffing that one character up to a tremendous
extent. It works very well, right?
It's, it's very well suited for, for that in, in terms of what's
coming up in 11-1 and sort of what that I think looks like
we're we're gonna see a little more damage on the Aug itself,
certainly a little less damage from tanks, healers and more on
the group. It's hard to say before we like
I have a good understanding of what the other specs are going
to bring to the table, but in a similar meta, so to speak, you
know, assuming you have specs like enhancement that are still
viable, augmentation absolutely can still kick it from a pure
damage standpoint. In fact, I, I would say right
now, it's, it's absolutely, you know, it's, it's competitive in,
in terms of the, the damage it brings.
And largely, I mean, when, when you compare to devastation, for
example, devastation has struggled for a long time in
terms of just the fact that it, and, and it's, it's crazy 'cause
it, it was this for a while, but it really doesn't bring enough
burst damage in the way that you might hope for a mythic plus
situation. The dragon rage has turned into
this, you know, really like 42nd long sort of damage window and
and really there there are a couple aspects of of devastation
that that could work well in a particular setting.
You know, pyre is still uncapped, which is wild, but
using doing unethical amounts of damage to like, you know,
compare with some of these other specs like enhancement, like
frost. You know, I mean, even balance
is doing really well in some of these keys, right.
So it's just been, you know, it's been something you can
enjoy in your 10s, elevens twelves, absolutely, and you
know, I play it from time to time in in those keys.
It it's not bringing anything special to the table beyond the
list of evoker utility to those top groups, especially when you
have another character in the group that brings lust right,
that sort of thing. So so devastation unfortunately
has has actually been a little lackluster in terms of its, you
know, inclusion in in mythic plus, especially it's very
strong in raid right now and it just has a very good damage
profile for a lot of these fights.
But when it comes to mythic plus, it's it's just a little
bit lacking and we'd probably hear a little more about it if
augmentation wasn't in every group.
I think that's sort of a a big thing as well.
It's not to say that every devastation player likes to play
augmentation. In fact, that's, you know, a
little bit of a dividing point, I think for a lot of players as
well. But certainly what the situation
is right now is Evoker is in pretty much every top group.
It's being run as augmentation and it's well represented and
it's not purely in fact, it's almost not exclusively at all
for its its utility. It does enough damage to hang.
So when we come into 11 one, it's even more personal damage.
The tier set looks like it's going to sort of, you know, pile
on to the buttons that that augmentation hits and then does
more damage with. It's looking like it's gonna
have a crazy resource economy, which means basically permanent
uptime on a lot of these buffs and this sort of thing.
It looks, frankly, and we haven't tested it yet, but it
looks pretty wild right now. So looking at the immediate
future, yeah, it looks like augmentation will be fine.
In terms of damage. It's sort of up to where all of
the tuning lands. And if there aren't three other
DPS specs that outperform, right?
And really, when when push comes to shove, then we're in a
position where we can say, OK, the side utility isn't game
breaking anymore. We are mostly looking at the
specs damage output. Yeah, I, I I think that's at
least it's a much easier place to balance from.
And I think a place where people trying to, you know, come up
with their group compositions by playing their favorite specs are
a lot more keen on going, OK, yeah, I can do more damage than
than if I were playing hogs. So let's try this and see if
this works. So I mean, my, my, my $0.02 on
it are I think Ogg is in a good position to do good damage in
season 2. And I think the trend at least
looks like it'll continue to to do well, especially when you
have, you know, the ability to buff a crazy damage back like
enhancement. But I, I, I do think we're in
kind of a bit of a healthier paradigm, or at least a bit of a
return to form where we can kind of just hold them side by side
mostly on damage and then go, OK, do I, do I need the, the,
the extra utility? Do I need to be able to, you
know, throw a wearing stone in here?
Do I need, you know, do I need rescue shield to keep the healer
from dying on this hit? That sort of thing.
So yeah. This is where we asked the
experts for a well balanced, optimistic outlook as opposed to
the Twitter doomers who quickly announced Dog's demise.
Manny, I don't have any more questions for Jericho.
I could listen to him talk for hours, sometimes I do during
raid. He is very passionate about his
spec and in his class and I really enjoy it.
Do you have any questions left for him?
Honestly, I think that we've pretty much covered it all at
this point. It is like looking towards the
future and speculation. So with 11.1 coming soon,
hopefully on the PTR within the next week, crossing fingers, I'm
looking forward to seeing where where Voker goes.
And of course, you know, we're at a lot of enhancement shaman.
Let's hear more of that. Yeah, Jericho, if any of our
listeners want to get more of you directly pumped into their
veins, where can they find? You sure?
So I, I've got a website, jericho.com, jereico.com and
haven't updated in a while, but it should have all the links to
everything that you might care about like Twitch, YouTube,
Twitter and mainly Discord. I would say if you spend any
time on Discord, you can join the, the little Jericho
community that we've got on there and get a hold of me
pretty easily. More than happy to talk about
Evoker, answer questions, have a good time and frankly, I could
again talk in excruciating detail of kind of any of these
different topics that we only kind of lightly touched on
today, but absolutely happy to have a good chat so you can find
me there. I actually lied.
I do have one more question. Where does the name Jericho come
from? Are you just a big fan of Skeet
Ulrich TV shows? It's gonna kill me with
references beyond my comprehension There.
It's an. Old TV he's, he's an actor, but
he was in an old TV show called Jericho.
Absolutely. No, I'm, it's just one of those
things, you know, are you, you're 13 years old and you're
like, damn, I'm gonna come up with a cool name for when I
spend time on the Internet. And that's where we landed.
That's why the the spelling makes no sense and why it
doesn't align with anything you've ever seen before.
So I dig it. I dig.
It all right Anyway, thanks for being here.
Thank you, all of our listeners for joining us.
And we'll see you in the next episode.
Until next time, may all your hits be Critz.