World of Warcraft: Dragonflight has broken the ceiling for support classes with the announcement of a new specialization. In just a few weeks’ time, Evokers will say hello to a brand-new specialization: Augmentation. This role might be labeled as a damage dealer, but it’s unlike every other DPS spec in World of Warcraft.
Augmentation changes the way support classes interact with allies, as its spells and abilities focus on buffing party members, increasing their health, speed, and damage output depending on what the situation requires. With this in mind, the Augmentation Evoker might be the herald of a whole new play style for World of Warcraft’s support and damage specializations. The age-old method of simply hitting bad guys will no longer cut it for this class, and a more complex style of gameplay is on its way.
Augmentation Evokers Could Lay the Foundation for More Complex Classes in World of Warcraft
Every single healing specialization in World of Warcraft focuses on mitigating as much damage as possible on behalf of the player behind the keyboard, topping up allies’ health bars and sometimes shielding them from incoming damage. There are a handful of spells that increase the power of party members, but there is not a single specialization in the game right now that acts as both a damage dealer and support. It's always been one or the other in WoW, and though classes vary in their strategies, the gist of things never changes. At least, until Augmentation came around and turned the whole meaning of a DPS spec on its head.
World of Warcraft's upcoming Augmentation Evoker isn’t so selfish with its damage and emphasizes the importance of teamwork. Its main strength comes from increasing the damage that its friends deal. Augmentation is truly a black sheep among both damage dealers and healers in World of Warcraft, and future classes might take full advantage of this unique combination. One such suggestion thus far is the long-requested bard class, as logistically, its most likely role will be a support class that buffs allies with the power of music. The minutiae of such a class are probably a long way from even being considered, let alone worked out, but at least now the foundations have been laid.
While World of Warcraft’s Discipline Priests come close to the versatility of a DPS/support hybrid, they are still healers at their core. Augmentation Evokers don’t just provide a whole new array of utility buffs for allies that meet practically any situation, but they also operate using a smart targeting system. Discipline Priests have to manually target enemies and party members, or make use of personal macros, and this can make the specialization unnecessarily difficult to play. Augmentation Evoker won’t have this issue, as its spells can intelligently choose to target a friend or foe without the player having to worry.
While this clever targeting system is likely to come to Discipline Priests in the future, Augmentation Evokers currently offer an exciting prospect for the future of World of Warcraft. Their unique philosophy of dishing out second-hand damage by helping their teammates presents a whole host of opportunities going forward. Augmentation Evokers could change the way World of Warcraft players think and act in their gameplay, as a whole new mindset is required to make the most of what this new specialization is after.
The Augmentation Evoker will arrive in patch 10.1.5., in the midst of the Aberrus, the Shadowed Crucible raid tier. Until then, Dracthyr players will eagerly await their present from Blizzard, and see if this new specialization is all it’s cracked up to be. If its role and play style turns out to be a resounding success, it could change World of Warcraft forever.
World of Warcraft is available now on PC.