Augmentation Evoker Guide for The War Within

Welcome to our War Within expansion guide for Augmentation Evoker. Ahead of launch, this page will contain everything you need to know about the Augmentation Evoker spec in the forthcoming The War Within expansion, including changes, Hero Talent Trees, and some light predictions on the state of the spec going into the expansion.

This page is a constantly evolving work in progress, with regular changes expected as updates hit the War Within Beta. This is not meant to be a launch guide for Augmentation Evoker, but instead serves as a resource for you to keep up to date with how the spec is evolving on Beta, and what you can expect from its playstyle and feel on launch.

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

Evokers now start at level 10 instead of level 58.

Sense Power is a new togglable passive ability for Augmentation Evoker. When toggled on Sense Power will show an indicator buff on allied player frames when they have cooldowns active.
Additionally to the toggle-able buff Prescience will now prioritize players that have Sense Power (e.g. their Cooldowns up) over other players. This is both a boon and a curse due to how Augmentation Evoker plays in Raids vs Dungeons.
In Dungeons, the Sense Power buff is convenient to be able to track when other members in your group are doing damage without having to use other addons or Weakauras, and because your goal is to have as close to 100% uptime on the DPS as possible, it does not matter if the auto-targeting changes which DPS gets the buff - both will have it regardless.
However, while playing optimally in raids, you often cast your Presciences up to 20s in advance of when you want to buff that player because your other buffs prioritize each other in a chain ( Shifting Sands prefers Ebon Might, which prefers Prescience). A player with cooldowns active now is not likely to have cooldowns active in 20 seconds, making that target a poor choice for the Prescience. On average, this is likely to be a worse target than a random one, making this a DPS loss in raiding.

The War Within has major implications for all specs thanks to the Hero Talent Tree system, new tier sets, and the natural reduction in secondary stats when entering a new expansion.

Augmentation Evoker gets to choose between the Chronowarden and Scalecommander Hero Talent Trees. In sections below, we will talk more deeply about the implications of these Hero Talent Trees for the spec, and some thoughts on what looks strong and weak ahead of launch.

Augmentation Evoker have had a lot of talents move or be added in both the specialization and class trees. The talent changes and their impacts will be discussed below.

• A lot of talents changed places, although it did not result in much change as all of the standout talents from Dragonflight are still taken. For more indepth information about each change check below.
• Spatial Paradox is now 3 minutes and is a choice node in the Class Tree with Time Spiral.
• Prescience, Fate Mirror and Momentum Shift were moved into the middle, which makes utility points tighter to grab.
• Arcane Reach was added to help with range but the additional damage nodes shifted into the middle make it harder to pick this up in all content without dropping something important like Chrono Ward or Imposing Presence.
• The new damage nodes added in the bottom section primarily boost Personal Damage or Augmentations Breath of Eons window by giving you more resources.
• Sadly, the new Motes of Possibility remains lackluster and unlikely to be played.

• Spatial Paradox had its cooldown changed from 2 minutes to 3 minutes and was moved from the Augmentation Evoker tree into the Class Tree as a choice node with Time Spiral.
  This change is both good and bad for Augmentation. Spatial Paradox being moved out of the Specialisation tree frees up a talent point there at the cost of another point in the Class tree. With the changes done to other talents, the value of Specialisation talents has increased, so this change is a nice positive.
  However, Augmentation has lost the ability to bring both Time Spiral and Spatial Paradox to an encounter which was very strong.
  Finally, since the other Evoker Specialisations can now bring Spatial Paradox to a raid the individual value of an Augmentation Evoker has decreased slightly as this was a very common reason people played it before, even if the class was not tuned as highly as Devastation.
• Renewing Blaze and Source of Magic (and their upgrade nodes below them) have swapped places. Overall, this does not change much as you always used to talent both anyway, but in scenarios where you do not need Source of Magic you can save three points now by dropping Source of Magic, Potent Mana and Panacea.
• Panacea had its healing halved but it now triggers on both Verdant Embrace and Emerald Blossom instead of just Emerald Blossom. This is a minor change that does not really change much for Augmentation.
• Overawe now only reduces the cooldown of Oppressing Roar by 30 seconds instead of 20 seconds per debuff dispelled. This is a nerf primarily aimed at keys since Evokers made Raging weeks significantly easier.
• Landslide now only roots for 15 seconds instead of 30 seconds. All mass roots had their duration reduced in The War Within.

• Draconic Attunements now provides 2% increased maximum health instead of 4% and Aspects' Favor increases the maximum health provided by 1% per point instead of 2%. This is a fairly significant nerf to Augmentation Evokers utility as this health provided was extremely noticeable in high end raiding and Mythic+. As a result of this change it is likely that default builds no longer talent into Aspects' Favor as the rest of the changes Augmentation received already made points tighter and this gives us points back to take Chrono Ward or other utility. We expect the Aspects' Favor to be a more situational talent choice going forwards.
• Echoing Strike now also provides 15% increased Azure Strike damage in addition to its previous effect of making Azure Strike have a chance to echo. This is a nice buff to this talent, and it might see play for Scalecommander Augmentation Evokers. Chronowarden will still have to play Pupil of Alexstrasza because of its synergy with Chrono Flame.
• Geomancy has been removed with Timelessness taking its place. Geomancy being removed is not a loss, as the talent was not very powerful nor used. The new location for Timelessness makes it a bit easier to take as you must take one of Stretch Time, Timelessness or Bestow Weyrnstone to get Prescience.
• Seismic Slam was made into a single point for the full 4-second stun and moved to where Timelessness was. This being a single-point may make this see some fringe use as an AOE stun in some content, although unlikely because it still requires the midair to get stunned, and not all monsters can be knocked up. Typically, if you need to stop a cast then the knock up alone is sufficient.
• Power Nexus was moved to where Seismic Slam used to be. This change is good because it means we can now avoid talenting this node. Power Nexus is incredibly weak and contributes what can only be described as a rounding error worth of DPS.
• Arcane Reach was added where Power Nexus used to be. This new talent increases the range of your beneficial abilities (e.g. your buffs) by 5 yds. This talent is a very nice piece of QoL that can help ease some of the issues Augmentation has on some raid encounters where players are forced to spread out. Unfortunately, because there are more DPS talents in the tree now, there are fewer spare utility points going around, and you have to sacrifice something else to get this talent.
• Prescience was moved to where Spatial Paradox used to be. This change is a big DPS increase as it frees up a point in the bottom 3 rows for another DPS increasing talent.
• Fate Mirror was moved into a new space below Presciences new location. This is another big DPS increase as it frees up another point in the bottom 3 rows.
• Anachronism has been moved to where Prescience used to be. You still always take this talent, so nothing has changed here.
• Inferno's Blessing has been moved to the location where Anachronism used to be at. This does not affect any talent viability by being moved, and this is still a potent choice.
• Font of Magic was moved into a new space below Accretion. This talent was a slight DPS increase before but will no longer be taken due to competing with significantly stronger talents in the bottom three rows.
• Momentum Shift was moved to where Font of Magic used to be. Momentum Shift is significantly better than Font of Magic so this is another dps increase.
• Reactive Hide was buffed to 15% per stack from 10%. This talent is still too weak compared to other talents in the bottom 3 rows because Blistering Scales baseline is not very powerful and this talent only being useful in environments where the stacks rarely drop off.
• Accretion was moved to where Momentum Shift used to be. This talent and Hoarded Power (one of the nodes leading to Accretion) are still always taken so this movement does not change anything.
• Motes of Possibility and moved to where Accretion used to be and was reworked. Eruption now has a 15% chance to summon a mote. The mote now provides a random buff - providing either Shifting Sands, Inferno's Blessing or Symbiotic Bloom. The ball spawned will travel towards a nearby player so they can no longer get stuck in monsters out of reach, which is a great change.
  Despite the changes to this talent, it is still terrible because it has a low chance to proc and the chance to receive a valuable buff ( Shifting Sands) is low due to the very weak buffs ( Symbiotic Bloom and Inferno's Blessing) polluting the buff pool. Inferno's Blessing is weak because it is tuned around receiving five of them per Fire Breath cast not a single buff. Hypothetically, if you received a single Inferno's Blessing per cast of Eruption this would only be approximately a 10% increase to Eruptions damage.
  Overall, this means there is a very low chance you get anything useful each time this procs, which is why it still remains a do not pick talent.
• Overlord now also spawns a Motes of Possibility orb when it creates an Eruption. This is a small buff to the talent that helps improve the power a little. However, because it is placed behind Motes of Possibility on the tree, it will not see any play until Motes of Possibility is buffed at a minimum.
• Rumbling Earth is a new talent that causes Upheaval to repeat itself two times at half damage at its original location. These repeats do not trigger Shifting Sands nor extend Ebon Might but they do trigger Chronowardens Primacy on each hit, letting it cap on Single Target. This talent is where Motes of Possibility used to be and is incredibly strong and feels very satisfying to use as the Upheaval repeating provides very visceral feedback to the damage. This node doubles the damage of Upheaval making it do a significant portion of your damage, especially on AoE. This node is likely going to be always taken.
• Molten Embers is a new talent in the spot where Fate Mirror used to be. Molten Embers causes enemies to take 20% more damage from your Black Spells ( Upheaval, Eruption and, Bombardments) while affected by Fire Breath. With all the damage boosts to Upheaval and Eruption from the tierset and the talent tree this talent also ends up being a pretty decent DPS gain.
  With this talent, we will only use R1 Fire Breath to have as high uptime on the dot as possible and use Tip the Scales on Upheaval only.
• Imminent Destruction reduces the essence cost by 1 and increases the damage by 10% of Eruption for 12 seconds after you land from Breath of Eons. This talent synergizes well with both Hero Talent trees by leaning into a stronger cooldown window by buffing Breath of Eons to do more things with each cast.

The Chronowarden Hero Tree Talents are primarily based around improving the power of your cooldowns, focusing more on the longer cooldowns, while providing a replacement filler to Living Flame with Chrono Flame.

Gameplay-wise, this is mostly a passive kit with everything happening from doing your normal rotation. The haste from Temporal Burst and Primacy help to make gameplay feel smoother despite the lower secondary stats we have in the first season of The War Within. The only talent that needs playing around is Golden Opportunity procs to make sure you cast the Prescience on the correct player, similar to how the S3/S4 Dragonflight 2pc works. Double-time passively boosts the value of Critical Strike chance for Augmentation but can feel bad due to it being a single roll of an incredibly impactful effect for each cast making it very swingy.

Power-wise, this is powerful all-round Hero Talent Tree that leaves very little weaknesses. This tree doubles down on what Augmentation Evoker by making its two minute Breath of Eons window even stronger with Temporal Burst, Threads of Fate and Time Convergence while also improving the filler rotation between by buffing both Empowers with Afterimage and Upheaval with Reverberations and Primacy. Double-time is also very powerful instead of Time Convergence with some Critical Strike Chance investment and makes it a very good stat.

Defensively, this tree is quite powerful due to Temporality giving Augmentation Evoker a strong defensive on a low cooldown. Due to the extremely short duration and decaying damage reduction, this requires precise timing and is best suited to mitigate large big hits, like those that are often present in high-level Mythic+ or Raiding.

The Scalecommander Hero Tree Talents are primarily based around improving the power of your cooldowns, focusing more on the shorter cooldowns. Scalecommander primarily revolves around Empower spells and the keystone node Mass Eruption and the Bombardments talent as well as boosting Breath of Eons.

Gameplay-wise, this is slightly more involved than Chronowarden because it changes your rotation slightly. Bombardments makes you want to space out your Empowers by a few GCDs to get a higher uptime on the debuff and if you are fighting AOE, you can get enough CDR to cast Breath of Eons every minute instead of every two.

Power-wise, this tree is relatively well balanced with Bombardments being primarily focused on single-target damage because it deals split damage but Wingleader and Maneuverability favour AoE and help sure up the power for M+.

Defensively, this tree is quite strong with Hardened Scales providing an additive 5% DR to Obsidian Scales making it a 35% DR and getting 10% reduced area damage taken while hovering from Nimble Flyer.

Below are the Tier Set Bonuses for Augmentation Evoker in The War Within. After the wording of the bonus, you will find a brief note/commentary that is italicized.

• Evoker Augmentation Season 1 2pc — Upheaval deals 30% increased damage and increases the damage of your next 2 Eruption casts by 30%. This is a boost to Augmentation Evokers Personal DPS by improving the value of each Upheaval cast.
• Evoker Augmentation Season 1 4pc — Ebon Might increases primary stats by an additional 0.4% of your own every 2 seconds it remains active, up to 2.0% This means Ebon Might ramps up over 10 seconds from 6.5% of your primary stat to 8.5%. Recasting resets this bonus.

Both set bonuses are completely passive and are not expected to have any gameplay impact.

The 2pc bonus is fairly weak, but with all of the supporting talents from the Hero Trees and the new nodes on the Talent Tree this adds up to a somewhat sizeable amount of damage. The predicted DPS value of this bonus is around ~3-3.5% on Single Target, as a very rough estimate. This will be more on AoE because Upheaval is stronger there.

The 4pc bonus is much stronger with Ebon Might being the largest proportion of your damage dealt in The War Within. The predicted DPS value of this set bonus will be around 6-7% at most. This set bonus has issues due to the ramping nature of it and it resetting with each recast. Due to that and how you ideally swap buffs around in Raid, this is likely to be stronger in Mythic+ where it will be around its maximum of 7%, while raids will be closer to the lower estimate of 6%.

The total expected value of the Tier Set is around 10-11%. This is weaker than the Dragonflight Season 3/4 that Augmentation currently uses but is still quite powerful.

Strengths

• Higher Personal Damage Output (~40% to Dragonflights ~30-35%).
• Stronger Cooldown Windows.
• High Uptime on Ebon Might without needing to rely on stats.
• Better on Demand Defensive options to make the class feel tankier.
• Opportunity to talent into better Stat Scaling with Chronowardens Double-Time.

Weaknesses

• New Defensives are Short Duration and use charges of your Movement Ability making them harder to use well.
• Less available Secondary Stats weakens buffs as we cannot get big Shifting Sands buffs.
• Raid buff planning is harder due to not having consistently 3+ Prescience Buffs.