Augmentation Evoker: Midnight Expansion Preview

Augmentation Evoker has received several notable changes to talents and base kit for Midnight with hopefully further changes, which could dramatically alter the contents of this page, so check back!

As mentioned in the Developers’ Notes above, Ebon Might is receiving large changes in Midnight. These changes are listed below:

• Ebon Might is now 8% Primary Stat per Player (was 5%).
• Ebon Might is now applied to all DPS within 100 yards instead of just 4.
• Ebon Might will now split the Primary Stat buff Value if more than 2 allies are affected.
• Ebon Might is no longer limited to two maximum applications so raids can contain more than 2 Augmentation Evokers.
• Breath of Eons will accumulate 15% of damage (was 10%).
• Breath of Eons will have reduced effect when Ebon Might is applied to more than 2 allies.
• Close as Clutchmates has been removed.

These changes are incredible and will make raiding on Augmentation Evoker significantly less taxing and make using external tools less of an advantage.

Currently on live to get the best out of your Ebon Might casts you need to pre-plan the targets and cast Prescience on them ahead of time or have them stand near you. Additionally, you would frequently intentionally drop Ebon Might which felt worse and worse to do as we got more stats over an entire expansion making it easier to maintain naturally because you would have to make suboptimal rotational choices to cause Ebon Might to end.
These changes address these problems — Ebon Might will just go on everyone. Additionally, this will allow you to cast Prescience on whoever is doing damage in that moment and not have to worry about future cooldown usage which is significantly easier and means that Sense Power is now actually useful.

These changes also came alongside the removal of Close as Clutchmates as it is no longer necessary to even out Augmentation's power in a Mythic+ Environment vs Raid, with Ebon Might and Breath of Eons value now being consistent in both environments.

Augmentation Evoker has received several updates to its talents and abilities. The changes to Ebon Might and Breath of Eons are detailed above in their own section. Information about the new Apex Talents are also in their own section. The talent changes are documented below:

• Rockfall has been removed.
  This change is not that impactful on Augmentation Evokers overall damage and the randomness of this talent was sometimes frustrating. I am not sad to see this one go to make space for other more interesting talents.
• Ignition Rush has been moved to where Rockfall was and was buffed to also increase Eruption damage by 20% when spending an Essence Burst.
  This talent already felt incredible to use as the cast time reduction was very noticeable and moving it higher up in the tree to become more accessible is a welcome change. The addition of the damage increase makes this talent truly exceptional.
• Clairvoyant is a new talent taking Motes of Possibility's old spot that increases the chance for Motes of Possibility to proc by 10% and allows for Motes to grant Prescience to allies.
  This new talent is extremely powerful as it increases the number of overall good buffs from Motes of Possibility while also increasing the chance for you to proc it. This talent will be very fun to have as you will get to see a larger number of Motes of Possibility's drifting around.
• Inferno's Blessing now only targets you and 1 nearby ally (was all allies with Ebon Might). A new visual of a flame sprite added to represent the blessing. Damage increased to 350% spell power (was 88% spell power).
  This is approximately a 59% buff to the talent which is nice to see as it was starting to fall out of favour and was doing relatively low damage.
  This buff also has another consequence in that it makes rolling Inferno's Blessing from Motes of Possibility significantly better (297.7% stronger). This means if you have the new talent Clairvoyant then the only bad roll from Motes of Possibility is Symbiotic Bloom.
• Regenerative Chitin has been redesigned and now makes Blistering Scales no longer lose charges and deal 20% more damage.
  This is just a strictly better version of its current state and is a welcome buff. This allows you to fully fire and forget Blistering Scales in Mythic+ after applying it once.
• Molten Blood absorption increased by 30%.
  Unfortunately, despite the buff, this talent is still incredibly weak and should not be taken over the alternative Regenerative Chitin as the shield applied is very small. Even at its largest this will be less than 10% of your targets health, and on average be closer to 4%.
• Defy Fate healing increased by 100%
  This does not change much by itself but it should mean you will be on slightly higher health after your cheat death procs than before which is nice. If you talent into Improved Defy Fate as well then you will heal for ~60% of your health when Defy Fate triggers, which is a noticeable and huge heal.
• A new talent Improved Defy Fate has been added that increases the healing of Defy Fate by 100% and reduces its cooldown by 1 minute.
  This talent is a solid defensive boon and acts as the new default pathing node to access Prescience. This does add slightly higher opportunity cost for taking Bestow Weyrnstone or Timelessness but is not the end of the world to be without.
  Overall, this is better than what Stretch Time used to offer and so there are no complaints about the change.
• Stretch Time has been moved to the Class Tree and Bestow Weyrnstone has taken its old spot on the tree.

Augmentation Evoker is getting access to a new Apex Talent: Duplicate. Duplicate will cause Breath of Eons to summon a pet for 20 seconds that will cast Eruption, Upheaval and Fire Breath along with Living Flame.

The Duplicate will not copy your own casts and acts independently similar to the Scalecommander The War Within Season 3 Tier Set. This Duplicate does not interact with talents like Molten Embers.

You can invest further points into your Apex Talent getting Duplicate which will cause your Ebon Might to be 100% more effective while the Duplicate is active and to increase the damage of Upheaval and Eruption by 25%.

Two additional points can be invested into Duplicate which allows you to extend your Duplicate with anything that will extend Ebon Might by 50%/100% of Ebon Might's extension depending on points invested. This extension is referring to Sands of Time and does not include the duration gained from casting or refreshing Ebon Might.

The way the Apex Talent is laid out lets you talent Duplicate and then invest in either Duplicate or 1/2 points in Duplicate which can increase build flexibility as sometimes you might not need the full extension on a fight and you can take another useful talent instead.

This Apex Talent seems very fun offering both a strong increase to personal DPS throughput while also boosting Ebon Might during cooldowns, which is the most important time for other allies to be receiving a more potent buff. This talent feels all round excellent and summoning a clone of your Future Self is a great thematic addition to the class.

Evoker received several changes to the class with varying degrees of importance. The most notable changes are the defensive changes. Blizzard had some further developers’ notes about these changes:

These changes make sense in the grand scheme of the Midnight adjustments and are in line with the defensive pruning that other classes and Specialisations are receiving. It will be sad to see Twin Guardian as it was a dominant piece of defensive utility that Evokers offered that fitted in with Augmentation's playstyle of being supportive extremely well.

The new Renewing Blaze is significantly worse than the current Renewing Blaze and it would be nice to see the amount it heals untethered from the damage it reduces, as this pushes Augmentation further towards playing Scalecommander as it will get more defensive power from Hardened Scales.

All of the changes are detailed below with some additional comments:

• Hover can now be cast while casting without interrupting your current cast and no longer locks you out of casting for a brief window.
  This is an incredible change and will massively increase Quality of Life for all Evoker Players. Previously you would have to make sure you had a Prescience charge available to hover in otherwise use an Azure Strike.
  Currently, it will not do a directional dash if you cast Hover in the middle of a cast as attempting to move in a direction would cause your spell to cancel. If you already had the ability to cast while moving from Hover or another effect then you can directionally dash while casting another spell without any issue.
• Stretch Time is now on the class tree instead of the spec tree has been buffed so to 100% of damage you would take is instead dealt over 10 seconds while flying with Breath of Eons or Deep Breath.
  This is an interesting change and improves accessibility to Stretch Time as well as significantly buffing it. This has potential be an incredibly powerful Defensive Effect which we do not believe is their goal with this talent as it seems like it is supposed to make using Breath of Eons less risky due to the loss of control. If this does not see a reduction in power then holding your Offensive Cooldown to use it defensively may end up being relevant at the highest levels in Mythic+ and could be frustrating, especially with a cooldown like Breath of Eons that is best used alongside other peoples CDs.
• Strike from Above is a new talent that increases Glide speed and height increased by 20%.
  This is a nice effect and will make open world exploration slightly quicker as well as a very slight improvement instance mobility.
• Twin Guardian has been redesigned Rescue will now increase increases movement speed by 100% and allows spells to be cast while moving for 3 seconds.
  While this is definitely worse than the previous iteration of Twin Guardian which was a defensive node and external absorb shield the new version still looks alright and could be useful in situations where we use Rescue frequently. This is effectively giving us 3 seconds of Hover after each Rescue and a short Sprint.
• Renewing Blaze has been redesigned and now upgrades Obsidian Scales. This will cause you to heal for the amount of damage that Obsidian Scales reduced over 8 seconds.
  This is another considerable nerf to the Evoker Defensive package. Losing the flexibility of timing on Renewing Blaze from it being a separate ability is quite the nerf as you often did not want to combine the two as usually Renewing Blaze was sufficient to cover a damage event.
  Additionally, as the healing is now based on the damage reduced it is increased by the Scalecommander node Hardened Scales which makes Scalecommander slightly better than Chronowarden defensively. Going from 30% damage reduced (and then healed) means you will need to be healed for 60% of the incoming damage while having 40% reduced (and thus healed) will mean you only need to be healed for 20% of incoming damage, a massive difference!
  This likely should be a static amount taken on the post mitigation damage taken.
• Fire Within has been removed as Renewing Blaze is now a passive effect.
• Unravel is now a passive effect — Fire Breath consumes absorb shields from enemies, dealing additional Spellfrost damage to them.
  This is a nice buff and will allow Evokers to still do strong Shield DPS without having to sacrifice GCDs for it. Unravel costing GCDs but not generating Essence Burst previously lowered its value significantly.
• Azure Strike damage increased by 50%.
  This is a small buff that makes it slightly less punishing when you cast Azure Strike over Living Flame but is unlikely to sway us from Pupil of Alexstrasza as it has significantly more QoL as it always works at 2T+.
• Leaping Flames now changes the icon for Living Flame while active.

Scalecommander has three new nodes added and a slight nerf to Slipstream where it will only grant a single charge of hover now instead of granting full Charges. The new talents are:

• Command Squadron causes a Squadron of Dracthyr to launch up to 8 Pyres while you are flying with Breath of Eons or Deep Breath.
  This talent is a homage to The War Within Season 3 Scalecommander 2pc and was incredible for AoE damage which was something Augmentation Evoker historically had issues with. It is wonderful to see it return and continue to offer great AoE Burst.
• Concentrated Power makes Mass Eruption strike an additional target.
  This is a nice boost to the power of Mass Eruption and further Augments the damage of Evoker in AoE scenarios. This also increases the damage of Mass Eruption on single target currently on Alpha.
• Refined Essence causes Eruption to deal 15% more damage.
  This is another damage modifier for Eruption which continues the trend of Scalecommander focusing heavily on personal damage. This should be a decent increase to DPS as Eruption makes up a significant portion of your damage done.

Chronowarden received three new nodes that were inspired by the old tierset and Golden Opportunity was redesigned. The new talents and changes to Golden Opportunity are detailed below:

• Chronoboon reduces Tip the Scales's cooldown by 30 seconds.
  While this sounds good to start with this is likely not as great as it immediately sounds. You ideally want to pair Tip the Scales alongside Breath of Eons which is a 2 minute cooldown. By reducing Tip the Scales by 30 seconds it no longer naturally syncs up so Chronowarden might end up holding Tip the Scales until Breath of Eons anyway. The only time you may gain a use is if you were going to hold Breath of Eons for an extra minute such as holding the 3rd use from 4 minutes to 5 minutes on short fights to do more damage with everyone's 2nd potion.
• Overclock increases Chrono Flame's maximum damage or healing is increased by 40%, up to 350%.
  This is a small increase to the damage of Chrono Flame and ends up being a relatively minor DPS increase.
• Energy Cycles causes Temporal Burst to grant an Essence Burst every 6 seconds.
  Temporal Burst will last for 30 seconds so this should grant 5 Essence Bursts over its duration. This will make your cooldown window feel stronger and when paired alongside Breath of Eons, Duplicate and Duplicate will let you extend your duplicate for a very long time extending your cooldown window. This will likely feel very good to play as Augmentation is not flooded with resource and is capable of spending additional generation easily thanks to Ignition Rush.
• Golden Opportunity has been redesigned and now increases the duration of Prescience by 15% instead of having a chance to proc a double duration Prescience.
  This is a great change as dealing with the ultra long Prescience procs were not always intuitive to use. Having them all be a consistent length makes it easier to plan around who you want to give them to based on your knowledge of those classes. Alternatively, for those who do not wish to do any planning there will be less variance in value of the random targets from the auto casts.

Augmentation Evoker's rotation will not change drastically in Midnight and most of the moment-to-moment gameplay will be identical. In raid you will no longer have to worry about dropping Ebon Might and can freely extend it as much as possible which means getting good luck on Essence Burst procs will no longer feel bad.

Augmentation Evokers Apex Talent Duplicate will further incentivise pooling resource for your Breath of Eons windows but that was already encouraged due to Imminent Destruction. It is likely that Plot the Future and Imminent Destruction will see a significant rise in popularity to make the Breath of Eons window as strong as possible alongside the Apex Talent.

The buff to Motes of Possibility makes maximising your overall casts of Eruption even more important in Midnight. The DPS loss for missing casts is going to be higher than ever.