Augmentation Evoker Best Augmentation Evoker Buff Targets — The War Within (Season 1)
A guide for everything you need to know about what specs to buff as Augmentation Evoker, and when to buff them, both for Raiding and Mythic+.
Please refer to our Rotation, Cooldowns, and Abilities for more information regarding the general Augmentation Evoker Rotation.
Foreword
This page contains more in-depth information on how Augmentations Buffs work as well as information on who to buff.
Almost all of Augmentation Evokers buffs stack fully with other Augmentation Evokers. Assume it stacks unless it is specified otherwise.
How Augmentation Evokers Buffs Work
Prescience
- Prescience increases an allies Critical Strike Chance by 3%.
- There can be at most two Prescience's on a player from any source at any one time. You may still only have a single prescience on each player. You will be unable to cast Prescience on a player who already has two.
- The Fate Mirror talent enhances Prescience and grants allies with Prescience 10% chance to deal 15% of the damage of the triggering ability.
- Prescience and Fate Mirror works on non class damage like trinkets and embelllishments
- Prescience works fully with Pets and Guardians.
- Prescience will automatically target the nearest DPS player if cast on an enemy.
- Ebon Might will prefer to go on allies with Prescience letting you more easily fine-tune who you buff. This is the main way you control who gets your buffs.
- If Sense Power is active Prescience will prefer players with the buff active.
- Golden Opportunity has a 20% chance to grant a buff that makes Prescience last 100% longer
Ebon Might
- Ebon Might has two main effects, granting 6.5% of your primary stat to your allies and increasing your own damage by 20%.
- Just like with Prescience, Ebon Might has a maximum cap of 2 buffs on a player at any time from any source, including yourself, other raid members or even other players in the open world.
- Evoker Augmentation Season 1 4pc makes Ebon Might increases primary stats by an additional 0.4% of your own every 2 seconds it remains active, up to 2%. This bonus will reset whenever you recast Ebon Might.
- Ebon Might prefers to go on DPS with Prescience
- Mastery: Timewalker prefers to give Shifting Sands to allies with your Ebon Might.
- Ebon Might does not snapshot and updates every second.
- Ebon Might will extend the duration of all currently active Ebon Mights if cast while it is still active.
- Ebon Might will pandemic letting you cast Ebon Might with 30% or less of the base duration remaining and not lose any uptime.
- The Primary Stat provided by Ebon Might does not increase the size of another Augmentation Evokers Ebon Might. This is why buffing another Augmentation Evoker is highly not recommended.
Ebon Might Auto Targeting Priority Order
- Ebon Might will always extend any currently active Ebon Mights overbuffing new targets.
- Ebon Might prefers to go on the nearest DPS with Prescience, as long as they have less than two Ebon Mights from any source.
- Ebon Might prefers to go on nearest Tanks / Healers with Prescience, as long as they have less than two Ebon Mights from any source.
- Ebon Might prefers to go on the nearest DPS without any Ebon Might, even other peoples.
- Ebon Might prefers to go on the nearest Tanks and Healers without any Ebon Might, even other peoples.
- Ebon Might prefers to go on the nearest DPS as long as they have less than two Ebon Mights from any source.
- Ebon Might prefers to go on the nearest Tanks and Healers as long as they have less than two Ebon Mights from any source.
- If Ebon Might failed to find a valid target following the above priority, any extra targets do not happen.
Shifting Sands
- Shifting Sands is a Versatility Buff based on your Mastery, Mastery: Timewalker, and is triggered by casting empower spells.
- Shifting Sands does not snapshot Mastery and instead update the Versatility buff provided to your current Mastery Percent every second.
- Shifting Sands prefers to go on the closest nearby DPS player with Ebon Might that does not already have Shifting Sands from any Evoker, including other players. If every player with your Ebon Might already has a Shifting Sands, it will go onto the nearest DPS Player.
Shifting Sands Auto Targeting Priority Order
- Shifting Sands prefers to go on the nearest DPS with Ebon Might and without any Shifting Sands
- Shifting Sands prefers to go on nearest Tanks / Healers with Ebon Might and without any Shifting Sands
- Shifting Sands prefers to go on the nearest DPS without any Shifting Sands
- Ebon Might prefers to go on the nearest Tanks and Healers without any Shifting Sands.
- Ebon Might prefers to go on the nearest DPS.
- Ebon Might prefers to go on the nearest Tanks and Healers.
Blistering Scales
- Blistering Scales is a buff that grants 30% of your armor to an ally, as well as stacks of scales that explode for uncapped AoE damage when they receive auto attacks. You can only have one Blistering Scales at any time.
- Blistering Scales has a 2s icd on proccing the damage effect when receiving an auto attack.
- Blistering Scales scales entirely with the Augmentations stats. For example, the damage done is based on your Intellect, Versatility, and Critical Strike Chance despite the damage being sourced from the target.
- If you cast Blistering Scales on an enemy, it automatically targets their target, which helps smooth out gameplay. This means you do not need to swap off the boss in raid to cast this.
Breath of Eons
- Breath of Eons is an ability that applies a debuff to enemies hit that will store 10% of the damage dealt to them by your allies with Ebon might and then explode at the end of the duration for the stored amount.
- Breath of Eons often has a cooldown less than 2 minutes from talents like Time Skip or Interwoven Threads reducing the cooldown, but you still always want to use it every two minutes paired with DPS player cooldowns. Breath of Eons is a short-duration damage multiplier, so stacking it with other cooldowns is how to get the most effect.
- Breath of Eons only stores damage from class abilities and auto attacks and does not amplify damage from Trinkets, Enchantments, Embellishments, Consumables, or Gear Procs.
- Breath of Eons works fully with pets and guardians with their damage counting as if it were dealt by their owner directly.
- Breath of Eons always critically strikes but gains no damage from doing so.
- Breath of Eons does not gain damage from other Breath of Eons going off from other Augmentation Evokers nor Fate Mirror procs from yourself or others.
- Breath of Eons will apply Ebon Might if it is not currently active obeying normal targeting rules. The duration of this Ebon Might is always 5 seconds and is not increased by Mastery, nor can be increased by Sands of Time. However, if Ebon Might was already active then it extends it by 5 seconds, and this is affected by Sands of Time. This is one of the main reasons why it is suggested to cast Breath of Eons while Ebon Might is already up.
Bombardments
- Bombardments scale with your own stats and not with the stats of the players that trigger them.
- Bombardments have a 30% chance to trigger from each hit and a 2 second shared ICD between all players triggering them. This means that more players or more frequent hits will proc this closer, on average, to its cooldown resulting in very slightly more DPS. Despite this, there is not a significant difference in proc rate between M+ and Raids.
Threads of Fate
- Threads of Fate work similar to Fate Mirror and have a chance to replicate a percentage of all damage or healing done by the player with the buff.
- Threads of Fate last 10 seconds baseline and currently has a 33% chance to replicate 15% of the damage done, effectively being ~5% DPS increase during the effect.
- Threads of Fate prefers to go on the closest DPS player to you with Ebon Might if that is up, else just the closest DPS player. This is loosely the same priority that Shifting Sands follows so it should go on the same player guaranteeing maximum effect. The only time it would not go on the same target as your Shifting Sands is if you are running more than one Augmentation Evoker, in which case it will likely be on the target with the other Augmentations Shifting Sands and thus still receive the benefits of stacking multipliers onto one target.
- Threads of Fate can be extended if you play the talent Master of Destiny. This lets your Essence spells extend all active Threads of Fate by 1 second per cast.
Spatial Paradox
- Spatial Paradox is an external buff for healers, giving you and them the ability to cast while moving with double range.
- Spatial Paradox if cast on an enemy, will default to the nearest healer.
- Spatial Paradox does not stack.
Draconic Attunements
- Draconic Attunements is a talent that gives you the two stances Bronze Attunement and Black Attunement. Bronze Attunement gives you a 10% increased movement speed, while Black Attunement gives you 2% increased maximum health.
- The auras from Draconic Attunements apply to you and your 4 nearest allies.
- Draconic Attunements does not stack.
- Swapping stances between Bronze Attunement and Black Attunement is off GCD, letting you do it any time, but it It has a 3-second lockout after swapping.
Identifying who to target with buffs
Augmentation provides multiple temporary short-duration buffs and is therefore incentivized to cast those buffs on burstier classes to maximize the effect of its own buff windows. This is because a burstier class will be able to pack more damage into the short windows offered by talents like Breath of Eons.
Augmentation Evoker has five DPS buffs:
- Ebon Might - A Primary Stat Amplifier
- Shifting Sands - Augmentations Mastery, Versatility Percent
- Prescience - A Critical Strike Chance buff
- Fate Mirror - A general damage amplifier
- Breath of Eons - which acts as a cooldown dps multiplier.
A common misconception people have is that because Augmentation provides Crit and Versatility buffs that classes that invest in Crit and Versatility will like the Augmentation buffs. This, for the most part, is not true.
The more Versatility a class has, the smaller the increase provided by Mastery is. Say you provide 25% Versatility with your Mastery, going from 0% to 25% (25% More DPS). Versatility is a much bigger DPS increase than going from 25% to 50% (20% More DPS).
This means that classes that invest in Versatility by necessity are usually inferior choices for buffing. This is because they do not have any other good stats and are therefore forced to use Versatility to scale their damage and usually have a significant amount. This includes classes like Windwalker Monk and Outlaw Rogue, to name a few.
It is also worth considering that your main way to target Ebon Might onto specific players is via Prescience, and Critical Strike chance has virtually no value for some specializations, which makes targeting them with Prescience inefficient compared to trying to buff them via proximity. Classes with poor Critical Strike Chance scaling include Frost Mages (Unless they gear around receiving Prescience) and Fire Mages. You do not wish to give Prescience to these DPS classes if you can avoid it.
On the other hand, some specializations also perform better with Critical Strike Chance than expected, such as Frost Death Knight and Devastation Evoker. This increases the value of giving them Ebon Might as well as they usually come as a combined package deal.
Buff Target Ranking For Opener
These rankings are based off of Season 1 Simulations. All of these rankings are based on Augmentation using its own Season 1 set as well as the dps being buffed using their Season 1 sets. These are still subject to change as tuning occurs and as more information becomes apparent and will be updated accordingly to maintain as high accuracy as possible.
This section is currently only based off of initial preliminary sims for The War Within Launch. These Simulations are not guaranteed to be bug free! The rankings will be adjusted after raid launch when more data is available on what performs well ingame to combine the two.
This ranking is not absolute. Player skill and gear have a large impact on how good classes are; use your own judgment in combination with the list to work out who you wish to receive. Classes receiving Power Infusion gain significant value.
This ranking includes the Prescience to force the buffs onto that class. Classes that mention weak or no Critical Strike scaling gain significantly if buffed via proximity (by standing near them as Ebon Might targets nearby allies).
Class | Brief Explanation |
---|---|
Frost Deathknight |
|
Havoc Demon Hunter (Fel-Scarred) |
|
Assassination Rogue |
|
Feral Druid |
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Enhancement Shaman |
|
Subtlety Rogue |
|
Survival Hunter |
|
Unholy Death Knight |
|
Arcane Mage |
|
Beast Mastery Hunter (Dark Ranger) |
|
Havoc Demon Hunter (Aldrachi Reaver) |
|
Arms Warrior |
|
Balance Druid |
|
Windwalker Monk |
|
Frost Mage |
|
Shadow Priest |
|
Devastation Evoker (Scalecommander) |
|
Beast Mastery Hunter (Pack Leader) |
|
Affliction Warlock |
|
Retribution Paladin |
|
Elemental Shaman |
|
Destruction Warlock |
|
Outlaw Rogue |
|
Fury Warrior |
|
Marksmanship Hunter |
|
Fire Mage |
|
Demonology Warlock |
|
Devastation Evoker (Flameshaper) |
|
Good Targets After Opener
This section is currently only based off of initial preliminary sims for The War Within Launch. These Simulations are not guaranteed to be bug free! The rankings will be adjusted after raid launch when more data is available on what performs well ingame to combine the two. All of these rankings are based on Augmentation using its own Season 1 set as well as the dps being buffed using their Season 1 sets. These are subject to change as tuning occurs and will be updated accordingly to maintain as high accuracy as possible.
Augmentations opener lasts for approximately a minute unless you intentionally avoid refreshing your first Ebon Might by holding your Ebon Might cast until it falls off (typically around 32-34 seconds into the fight, this is common practice at high levels of optimization where you use tools like WoWAnalyzer to optimize each segment individually). You have opportunities to retarget your Ebon Might whenever it drops and it is a noticeable Single Target gain to do so, although not required to enjoy the specialization. Below are intervals into the fight for which classes cooldowns come back up to help you judge who to buff.
Cooldowns shown below are the cooldown required to be active or nearly ready for the class to be valuable to buff. Any class without a cooldown shown is always a good target, regardless of whatever cooldowns they have.
Specs Good Per Time Interval
Specs Good Every 180s
Class | Cooldowns |
---|---|
Enhancement Shaman | Ascendance |
Specs Good Every 120s
Class | Cooldowns |
---|---|
Frost Death Knight | Breath of Sindragosa / Empower Rune Weapon |
Assassination Rogue | Deathmark |
Havoc Demon Hunter ( Fel-Scarred) | Metamorphosis |
Balance Druid | Convoke the Spirits / Celestial Alignment |
Feral Druid | Convoke the Spirits / Berserk |
Windwalker Monk | Invoke Xuen, the White Tiger alongside Storm, Earth, and Fire |
Subtlety Rogue | Flagellation - This has a varied CD between 1m and 1m30s. You always wish to buff this damage window with whatever you have available. |
Beast Mastery Hunter | Call of the Wild |
Shadow Priest | Void Eruption and Power Infusion |
Affliction Warlock | Summon Darkglare |
Frost Mage | Icy Veins |
Havoc Demon Hunter ( Aldrachi Reaver) | Metamorphosis |
Destruction Warlock | Summon Infernal |
Devastation Evoker | Dragonrage |
Marksmanship Hunter | Trueshot* this is never 2 minutes because of Calling the Shots granting CDR. |
Specs Good Every 90s
Class | Cooldowns |
---|---|
Unholy Death Knight | Raise Abomination |
Arcane Mage | Arcane Surge |
Subletly Rogue | Flagellation - This has a varied CD between 1m and 1m30s. You want to buff Subtlety during these windows if possible and there aren't other more impactful 2-minute cooldowns available. |
Fury Warrior | Avatar and Recklessness |
Arms Warrior | Avatar |
Specs Good Every 60s
Class | Cooldowns |
---|---|
Subletly Rogue | Flagellation - This has a varied CD between 1m and 1m30s. You want to buff Subtlety during these windows if possible and there aren't other more impactful 2-minute cooldowns available. |
Frost Death Knight | Pillar of Frost (often 45s because of Icecap) |
Shadow Priest ( Archon) | Halo |
Affliction Warlock ( Soul Rot) | Soul Rot |
Demonology Warlock | Summon Demonic Tyrant |
Assassination Rogue | Kingsbane |
Strong Fallback Specs
Class | Cooldowns |
---|---|
Arms Warrior | Boss HP <35%. |
Frost Death Knight | Pillar of Frost |
Enhancement Shaman | - |
Havoc Demon Hunter | - |
Devastion Evoker ( Scalecommander) | - |
Beast Mastery Hunter | - |
Elemental Shaman | - |
Retribution Paladin | Avenging Wrath |
Survival Hunter | - |
Arms Warrior | -- |
Marksmanship Hunter | 3t+ |
Fire Mage | Combustion / Sun King's Blessing - Do not use Prescience, only buff via proximity due to poor crit scaling. |
Destruction Warlock | - |
Outlaw Rogue | - |
Changelog
- 17 Sep. 2024: Update buffs page for a better snapshot of Mythic week launch.
- 11 Sep. 2024: Correct another typo
- 11 Sep. 2024: Correct a typo
- 10 Sep. 2024: Preliminary update of Buff Targets for The War Within Season 1.
- 09 Sep. 2024: Reviewed for The War Within Season 1.
- 21 Aug. 2024: All buff mechanics were updated for The War Within Launch. Best Buff section temporarily removed.
- 23 Jul. 2024: Disclaimer added for The War Within Prepatch.
- 07 May 2024: Reviewed for 10.2.7.
- 22 Apr. 2024: Reviewed and updated for Dragonflight Season 4
- 19 Jan. 2024: Reviewed for Patch 10.2.6
- 08 Mar. 2024: Rewording and typo fixes
- 15 Jan. 2024: Update Buff Targets with latest Priorities.
- 22 Nov. 2023: Update Buffs Page - BM Now Attributes
- 13 Nov. 2023: Update Buff Targets after Latest Hotfixes and Tuning
- 09 Nov. 2023: Update Buff Targets Slightly
- 06 Nov. 2023: Reviewed for Patch 10.2
- 04 Sep. 2023: Reviewed for Patch 10.1.7
- 09 Aug. 2023: Update information on Buffs for recent Changes.
- 15 Jul. 2023: Redo Priority List for recent Eons Changes.
- 13 Jul. 2023: Change note for Elemental Shaman Opener Priority.
- 12 Jul. 2023: Buff Priority Adjusted for Feral.
- 10 Jul. 2023: Page added.
More Evoker Guides
Guides from Other Classes
This guide has been written by Saeldur, an Evoker Theorycrafter since the class came out in Dragonflight. He is an accomplished high end player with top parses on multiple specs, an Expert on the Evoker Discord, and has a deep understanding of many other classes, and how they interact with Augmentation Evoker.
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