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Augmentation Evoker in Midnight

Augmentation Evoker in Midnight

We've now had a couple days to have a first look at the Midnight Alpha and I want to summarize a couple of my thoughts, but also document an initial impression as well as issues and possible solutions.

I will also be updating this post throughout Alpha and Beta cycles, but to give myself the change to test changes and gather a deeper impression, it'll always be delayed a bit, just like this one.

Table of Contents

Initial Alpha Launch

Oct 1st 2025, Source

  • Developer's notes: The goal of these changes is to simplify Ebon Might targeting in raid environments. Since it now applies to all members of the raid, there is no need to micromanage who it should go on. There will still be some buff management gameplay with Prescience, which will continue to have a smart-targeting option for those who do not want to swap targets between enemies and allies frequently. Overall this should make raid gameplay much smoother and similar to dungeon gameplay.
  • Apex Talents: Duplicate
  • New Talent: Clairvoyant - Motes of Possibility may now grant Prescience to allies and have a 10% increased chance to activate.
  • Regenerative Chitin has been redesigned - Blistering Scales no longer loses charges and deals 20% more damage.
  • Ebon Might now grants 8% primary stat (was 5%).
  • Ebon Might is now applied to all damage dealing allies within 100 yards.
  • Ebon Might now splits its effect when applied to more than 2 other allies and is no longer is limited to 2 maximum applications.
  • Breath of Eons' debuff Temporal Wound is now visible to all allies, and indicates how much damage it accumulates on the aura tooltip.
  • Temporal Wound now reduces its effect when Ebon Might is applied to more than 2 allies.
  • Breath of Eons accumulates 15% of damage (was 10%).
  • Defy Fate healing increased by 100%.
  • Molten Blood absorption increased by 30%.
  • Inferno's Blessing now only targets you and 1 nearby ally (was all allies with Ebon Might). New visual of a flame sprite added to represent the blessing. Damage increased to 350% spell power (was 88% spell power).
  • Ignition Rush has been relocated to Rockfall's location and now increases the damage of Eruption by 20%.
  • Rockfall has been removed.

Thoughts

Raid Changes

Let's talk about Ebon Might becoming raid-wide first:

Contrary to popular belief, for all of War Within already it wasn't needed to min-max buff targeting to perform well outside of maybe the RWF or a similar world rank. There's still a burden of preparation on the player, needing to know encounter timings and which spec/which player in your raid is the best to buff for the given scenario, but that's trivial, especially for farm. That burden will also continue to exist, as you'll now want to target the best players with Prescience instead. Some encounters like Nexus-King or Dimensius make it also very easy to swap buff targets situationally.

It's worth noting that while 100 yards application range is great and technically unchanged, the current extension range is only ~45 yards and leads to awkwardness in too many scenarios. We still have to re-test whether this also got adjusted.

Previously, Prescience was the targeting mechanism for Ebon Might, which then was the indicator for which players Shifting Sands should go on. Now with Ebon Might on everyone, Shifting Sands would just apply to the closest Ebon Might-buffed player unless targeting gets updated. It's of course a question of whether this is now considered unwanted, but Prescience becoming the driver for Shifting Sands targeting would be a reasonable adjustment.

Apex Talent

Not extremely fond of introducing more pets with possibly wonky targeting or pathing. For context, the current Scalecommander set summons a Dracthyr Commando which will Pyre while flying and then continue to Disintegrate for a bit. Unforunately however, they don't choose your target so they'll happily slap some irrelevant minion next to your own target half of the time.

The non-pet elements are intriguing however:

  • doubling the effects of Ebon Might for a minimum of - currently - 20 seconds sounds very strong for keys in particular as Breath of Eons - again currently - is available for every pull as Scalecommander
  • the extension isn't particularily exciting but just happens naturally anyway so why not

Ultimately not extremely surprising for Blizzard to introduce yet another source of personal damage. First impression is also that it seems to favor Scalecommander rather significantly over Chronowarden for a variety of reasons:

  • Scalecommander simply has more Breath of Eons available, so more Duplicates
  • Scalecommander is also more likely to play Upheaval-empowering talents to begin with, or at least has been historically
  • the only blatantly obvious synergy with Chronowarden is Double-time getting gigabuffed during Duplicate

Rotational implication is minimal. Before you wanted to Fire Breath ahead of Breath of Eons, now you'll want to do it after, unfortunately counteracting Imminent Destruction.

Talent Changes

  • new talent: Clairvoyant
    • more power to Motes of Possibility - I'm ok with that. Currently you have a 33% chance to roll an entirely irrelevant buff - Symbiotic Bloom - that doesn't even reattribute in logs, now it'll be 25%.
  • changed: Regenerative Chitin
    • good quality of life change, paired with an undocumented change to Blistering Scales in general: it now lasts 60 minutes baseline!
    • Blistering Scales damage was painfully low, so 20% more won't fix anything but also certainly doesn't hurt
  • changed: Defy Fate healing
    • irrelevant, doesn't hurt
  • changed: Molten Blood absorb
    • irrelevant, still dead
    • absorbs 2100/54860 when at max health (3.8%)
    • absorbs 5249/54860 when at ~10% health (9.5%)
  • changed: Inferno's Blessing
    • it seems to now do approximately 75% of an Eruption
    • welcome change, as it did terribly low damage before in AoE
    • since it can also be rolled from Motes of Possibility, we'll take those
  • changed: Ignition Rush
    • position change is nice
    • damage increase to Eruption slowly starts to read like some of those Mistweaver Renewing Mists mods (15% here, 20% there, 25% over there) but Eruption is our bread and butter still so I'll take it
  • removed: Rockfall
    • entirely ok with this. annoying RNG talent

New Hero Talents

Scalecommander
  • Command Squadron

    While flying during Breath of Eons you are assisted by a squadron of Dracthyr who assault enemies with Pyre, dealing (365% of Spell Power) Fire damage to nearby enemies up to 8 times.

    • basically half of the 11.2 set with minor QoL improvements:
    • the squad now fires at your target before you hit something with Breath of Eons if you don't hit something with Breath of Eons within the first ~1.5 seconds. If you have none, they'll pick a close by target.
  • Concentrated Power

    Mass Eruption strikes 1 additional target.

  • Refined Essence

    Essence abilities deal 15% additional damage.

    • effectively just another Eruption amp, we stack plenty of those already but its on theme for Scalecommander and continues the trend of increasing personal damage done
Chronowarden
  • Chronoboon

    Tip the Scales' cooldown is reduced by 30 sec.

    • also basically half of the 11.2 set, except halfed in power
    • confusing, because you'd always want to sync it with Breath of Eons but due to this talent, its now guaranteed to be ready ~15s ahead of each Breath and you end up holding it for Breath anyway
    • so.. what's the point of this talent then?
  • Energy Cycles

    Temporal Burst grants Essence Burst every 6 sec.

    • kind of a throwback to the Evoker Devastation 10.2 Class Set 4pc (do not mention this to Devastation Evokers, that set is not remembered fondly)
    • probably ok for Aug to have just due to how little Essence Burst it can reliably generate
  • Overclock

    Chrono Flames' maximum damage or healing is increased by 40%, up to [(Spell Power * 3.5) * (1 + Versatility)] Arcane.

Tuning

Ebon Might now grants 8% primary stat (was 5%)

Breath of Eons accumulates 15% of damage (was 10%)

Straight forward W from a current point of view. Sims will tell more once we're there.

Do note that this is paired with an undocumented removal of Close as Clutchmates.

Ebon Might now splits its effect when applies to more than 2 other allies (...)

This is a very welcome change and something I've been advocating for for a while. We'll circle back to that under Problems in just a minute however.

(...) and is no longer is limited to 2 maximum applications.

Time will tell whether this can become problematic.

Problems

Some old, some new.

Ebon Might now splits its effect when applies to more than 2 other allies (...)

We're almost there. This needs the following tweaks:

  • (again, currently not re-tested) the extension range on Live is only 45 yards - please raise this to 100 yards. Why is it even ~45 to begin with?
  • name it increase its value if less than 2 targets are affected
  • make it re-evaluate its state once a buffed player dies or the aura expires on them due to outranging, e.g. on Fractillus you can currently be buffing players that spread to the far side, losing extensions

This is a major pain point for Augmentation in keys in particular since 11.2 now since you only buff the other two DPS: the moment a buffed dps dies, you lose a considerable amount of both of your buff and personal damage:

  • if a combat ressurection is available, you situationally want to avoid casting any extender now in anticipation of the resurrection, which leads to you losing Ebon Might early
    • you're thus forced to spam Living Flame, but now that you don't even have the +20% self-buff from Ebon Might anymore
  • if no combat resurrection is available, well, unluck I guess. You're locked out of most of your damage buff now because.

No spec gets punished for another party member dying. Why does Aug get punished twice?

more personal damage through the introduction of Duplicate

More and more personal damage means less and less reason to buff others. More buff damage offsets this and that has already happened here.

However, Prescience and Shifting Sands will still be significantly more impactful on the Augmentation player themselves over the tank or healer. It's time to update the smart-targeting logic.

Duplicate pet targeting

Initial testing suggests it's already behaving like that but time will tell whether that reliably checks out - but please, make it target our current target.

Dead Talents

Weird Talent Pathing

Neither Stretch Time nor Timelessness have any logical connection to Prescience. Neither are attractive for raid or the far majority of dungeon content.

Suggestions

  • consider making Prescience the targeting driver for Shifting Sands
  • increase extension range of Ebon Might to 100 yards too
  • make it split on one target already for dungeons
  • make it re-evaluate its splitting state once a buffed player dies or the aura expires on them due to outranging
  • move the +20% self-buff from Ebon Might to the general spec aura
    • this doesn't suddenly enable casting extenders outside of EM, but at least active dots and Living Flame won't be wet noodles
  • update Prescience/Shifting Sands smart-targeting logic to the following:
    • other DPS by proximity unless already buffed
    • self unless buffed
    • tank/heal by proximity
  • swap Arcane Reach with Stretch Time
  • make Aspect's Favor a one-pointer
    • it'll find a niche by that, but due to its problematic past, imo just replace it
  • make Symbiotic Bloom reattribute in logs at least
  • remove Prolong Life / Dream of Spring or at a minimum, change them to something interesting

Bugs

Of course there's a bunch of bugs, entirely expected at this point, so I'll just dump the list:

General

Cooldown Manager

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