Playstyle & Rotation
General Rotation
Augmentation Evoker has a very simple priority system.
- Maintain Prescience on DPS players of your choice
- Ebon Might if there is less than around 4 seconds left on the buff and you want to extend your buff on the players it's currently on. If you want to buff new targets let Ebon Might run out and recast it after that.
- Use Fire Breath at rank 3.
- Cast Upheaval to maintain your Ebon Might Buff.
- Spend Essence on Eruption during Ebon Might.
- Build Essence with Living Flame.
Opener
- Use Blistering Scales pre pull on a tank.
- Pre-cast Living Flame
- 2x Prescience on targets you want to buff in the opener sequence
- Ebon Might
- Tip the Scales + Fire Breath
- Breath of Eons
- Trinket + Potion
- Upheaval
Multi Target
The Opener Sequence doesn’t change when facing multiple targets.
The “Starter Kit”
Augmentation is easy to learn but hard to master. In this section I want to give you a Starter kit that mentions the nuances and helps you get into the spec.
There are a few rules you want to hold onto, to have an easy start with Augmentation.
- Use Prescience on preferred buff targets, you can also cast prescience while targeting an enemy so it smart-buffs random dps players.
- Cast Ebon Might whenever possible, this buff on allies is your main damage source
- Cast Breath of Eons on cooldown, combine this with your allies cooldowns to get the most value out of it
- Use Fire Breath and Upheaval during Ebon Might, usually rank 1 casts are the best option
- Spend your essence on Eruption, preferably during Ebon Might since the buff gets extended when casting Eruption
- Fill with Living Flame / Chronoflames
Cooldown Usage
Breath of Eons gives Augmentation an immense potential of burst dps. You want to combine as many dps cooldowns from buffed players into your Breath of Eons window. Note that you can juice up your allies even more by using on-use trinkets and potions during that time window.
Defensives
You have a few defensive abilities with different use-cases. I’ll go over them to give you a general idea where they can be used.
Obsidian Scales: Flat damage reduction, great to survive lethal abilities.
Verdant Embrace: Stores damage taken and releases it as healing over time, make sure to use this early enough so you don't miss out on the healing!
Zephyr: Reduces AoE damage and gives a neat movement speed boost. This also buffs your party so make sure to use it whenever there is AoE damage going on.
Rescue / Twinguardian: Gives you and your rescue target a shield.
Focus Areas
As soon as you’ve found yourself comfortable with the basics it’s time to get a bit deeper into the spec. I’ll be listing some focus areas where usually there is a lot to optimize.
Hover management; everyone knows the moment where you run out of hovers but have to move. You end up spamming space and pressing Azure strike after Azure strike. Since you can't cast Eruptions or Living Flame / Chrono Flames while running without the Hover buff up, this usually results in a dps loss. So before mindlessly casting hover just to adjust your position by a few yards try to second guess yourself sometimes and pre plan hover casts depending on where you can generate the most uptime.
Also “Hover-Weaving” is super easy to pick up once you know how it works. After casting an instant ability or empowered spell your gcd will take one turn until you're able to cast again. This gcd can be used to cast hover so it's masked in the gcd and you don't have to stop any spellcasting for it.
UI Optimization and Class knowledge
Playing augmentation at a high level not only includes knowing the in and outs of your own spec, but also having a good idea of what the damage profiles of other classes look like. In other words you’re just as strong as the classes that you buff.
Improving on that area can be really theoretical. However, changing small things can result in massive dps gains. Take a look at warcraftlogs and find classes that stand out at specific points in the fight. When raiding with a guild you can make this really specific for your raid team. After the raid night is done, have a look at the performance of your friends and adapt your buff plans according to everyone's throughput at different segments of the fight. Maybe you can even ask someone to change up some cooldown timings to make them line up better with Breath of Eons and other dps players cooldowns.
One more thing worth taking a look at is your UI. Having a little icon on the raidframe of your mates that track their cooldown gives you instant feedback if things lined up well. You can also adapt Prescience and Ebon Might targets depending on what cooldowns are coming up soon again. Great Addons for this are Method Raid Tools and OmniCD.
Dispels and Utility
An underrated and unique way to express skill! With Rescue, multiple dispels, knockbacks, a stun, slows, a soothe (this list could go even longer) Augmentation has tons of utility. Check in details how many casts of what utility spell you had over the course of a dungeon. Is anything flying under the radar? Are you missing out on crucial dispels? Also take a critical look at your UI and maybe you find a way of making use of your utility a bit more convenient.