Latest / For Azeroth!: A World of Warcraft Podcast / #340 - For Azeroth!: "The Supports of K'aresh"

Transcript

#340 - For Azeroth!: "The Supports of K'aresh" · For Azeroth!: A World of Warcraft Podcast

• 0:00
  Here, here's my hot take. They've they've they've got to
• 0:04
  make Aug augment through talent choices and not as a default.
• 0:10
  That's a fun one. Yeah, I'll, I'll explain it more
• 0:13
  in the effort because I'd love to hear you're like actually
• 0:17
  informed take I'm. Actually informed as if anyone
• 0:21
  knows how this thing works. Victory for the Forsaken, for
• 0:26
  Lauderon for the Karen Tour. For.
• 0:30
  Pandaria. For calendar to the burning
• 0:37
  region for Gilnaeus, but has not died for.
• 0:43
  The Lich King. For the Sindora, for the
• 0:47
  Alliance, for the Horn, for Azeroth.
• 0:53
  Hello and welcome back to another episode of Thor Azeroth.
• 0:58
  I am one of your hosts Manny AKA the true villain.
• 1:01
  Manny and I am joined by one of my prestigious Co hosts.
• 1:06
  We have Sean, the man of the legend, the caster for Race the
• 1:11
  World first. I meant did we not talking with
• 1:15
  that last week? I guess we missed it.
• 1:18
  How are you doing? Yeah, I'm casting the race to
• 1:20
  world first for team method. Check me out mid afternoon North
• 1:25
  America Times for the next 7 to 13 days I guess.
• 1:33
  I mean, I mean, we will see how crazy it is on mythic
• 1:37
  difficulty. We've had some testing, and now
• 1:41
  patch 11.2 is here, Ghost of Koresh is here, and everybody
• 1:45
  wants to know how things are shaking out.
• 1:48
  And so we brought in the big guns.
• 1:50
  Returning is our friend Jericho. Jericho, how are you and how has
• 1:56
  the World of Warcraft been treating you?
• 1:57
  And we'll talk about the specs after.
• 2:00
  Yeah, not so bad. I think I'm going to have to
• 2:02
  tune in and watch Sean cast the race the world first.
• 2:04
  That's an exciting prospect to be sure.
• 2:06
  And can't wait to hear some expert knowledge and insight
• 2:09
  about how the teams are approaching the fights.
• 2:11
  It's gonna be awesome, I think. Yeah, no, I've been not gonna be
• 2:14
  giving my. He's gonna be giving the expert
• 2:16
  knowledge and tactics. Are you the color commentator or
• 2:20
  the the? Expert yeah, they I'm there as
• 2:22
  an analyst so. There you go.
• 2:26
  Yeah, putting the anal back in Analyst 111 butt joke at a time
• 2:31
  there. You go, there we go.
• 2:33
  Now I get to say that I get to fight with race.
• 2:35
  The world's first commentators. See you guys, I'm always
• 2:38
  punching above my weight limit. Jericho, Sean, this is literally
• 2:44
  day two of the patch. People have been diving in.
• 2:49
  Let's get some first impressions because you know, we, we've had
• 2:53
  our chance. And for those who haven't been
• 2:54
  on the PTR, they're finally experiencing it, warts and all.
• 2:57
  And I got to, I got to say there's, there's some warts to
• 3:00
  be seen in this fractured world of Koresh.
• 3:04
  There have been a number of bugs, a number of quests that
• 3:09
  I've had to like drop and pick back up again.
• 3:13
  I have decided that if something is considered optional on the
• 3:18
  quest, no, it isn't, Do it anyways.
• 3:21
  I don't care if it's like sit around and listen.
• 3:24
  Just just get them talking and then run off.
• 3:26
  Because there's been so many times where I've had to go,
• 3:28
  like, why isn't this going? And it's that optional.
• 3:32
  You got to listen to to somebody could explain their angst and
• 3:38
  then they'll let you move on. But what about you guys?
• 3:42
  Let's let's give this to Jericho first.
• 3:44
  How is the first touch of the ghost of Koresh being for you?
• 3:49
  So I'm gonna go ahead and take your guys lead on maybe starting
• 3:53
  by trying to avoid spoilers and we'll go from there.
• 3:55
  Now I I'll be honest, I haven't gotten very far.
• 3:58
  I've gotten my reishi wraps and that's about it.
• 4:01
  That's about where I stopped yesterday at a very, you know,
• 4:05
  high level wow. You know, putting putting aside
• 4:08
  maybe some of the issues for a moment, which I haven't
• 4:10
  experienced too many, but I'm in some of the class discords.
• 4:13
  I see a lot of the bugs going through some of the issues, some
• 4:15
  of the hilarious things that are still going on.
• 4:18
  I love the void and this theme that we're doing in this patch
• 4:23
  and going into midnight. And the music has been
• 4:26
  fantastic. And I love Zalatat.
• 4:29
  She's so sassy. I've just been having a blast.
• 4:34
  I, I've never really, in my experience, Wow has, in terms of
• 4:40
  writing it, it, it has the, the, the comic book dialogue effect,
• 4:45
  the superhero dialogue effect where people kind of just talk
• 4:48
  in quips and kind of 1 liners and that kind of thing.
• 4:50
  And I think that's fine. You know, it's not really trying
• 4:53
  to punch above its weight. It's doing its thing.
• 4:55
  So I take it for what it is and then really enjoy the moment,
• 4:58
  enjoy the characters just trying to get on each other's nerves.
• 5:01
  And again, like Zelda Tap is just such a great character for
• 5:05
  this patch. I've been having an absolute
• 5:06
  blast going through. I'm glad.
• 5:09
  I'm glad you're enjoying it. You're right, they are.
• 5:11
  They're very, very much about the quips.
• 5:13
  They're very about the like one liner.
• 5:15
  The problem is when there's too many, none of them stick out on
• 5:18
  this. You know, sometimes it's like
• 5:20
  just let that one moment breathe.
• 5:23
  But the cinematic team, the in game cinematics have been doing
• 5:26
  a really good job. Even if I bristle against some
• 5:31
  of the direction of the story, they still seem to execute it
• 5:35
  pretty nicely. You don't have to trust her,
• 5:38
  Manny. You have to trust me.
• 5:41
  OK. And then I'm going to say it
• 5:45
  again just for good measure. You have to trust me.
• 5:49
  That's it. Yeah, There.
• 5:51
  You go and John, how's your first couple days?
• 5:55
  What, what have you been doing in this?
• 5:57
  Like we're we're beyond 24 hour period to get to get yourself
• 6:02
  set up and everything. So 24 hours in, actually like 28
• 6:08
  hours in because the service came up super early yesterday.
• 6:11
  Thank you. They were not the stabilists
• 6:15
  that they've ever been, but Zorbix made a tweet early on
• 6:19
  saying hey, we're aware we're working on it, and then another
• 6:22
  one that said hey, don't go in the water, it's going to be CU.
• 6:25
  So they're looking out for us. But they came on this early.
• 6:27
  I have done the campaign twice, once on my death Night, sorry,
• 6:33
  once on my Paladin on NA and once on my Druid on EU today.
• 6:37
  And I am working through the rest of the quests and the world
• 6:40
  events on my Paladin right now on NA.
• 6:42
  And then last night I used the skip.
• 6:44
  Great skip one. If you use the skip, it doesn't
• 6:49
  show you on your map where you have to go to get your cloak.
• 6:52
  Yeah, I just have to know where that is.
• 6:55
  So look that up or talk to a guildy like I did.
• 6:59
  I got a ping. Our GM is pretty good at
• 7:01
  answering all questions at any hour of the day, which is exact.
• 7:04
  Where you get the cloak on your main in that spot on the left.
• 7:07
  Yeah, it's been 24 hours, man. You know, the goldfish you can
• 7:09
  remember. I think I got it.
• 7:12
  It is. Exactly that in mind.
• 7:14
  For when I get my Demon Hunter through there, 'cause that
• 7:16
  definitely gonna gear up that character this patch.
• 7:18
  It's gonna be sick. Yeah, I believe you will.
• 7:23
  Hopefully, maybe I do one time the entire patch.
• 7:26
  But hey, you're going to do 1. And then I did the full M0 world
• 7:33
  tour on my Death Knight our our Guild has or our NA Guild
• 7:37
  actually both of my guilts. But our NA Guild has organized
• 7:41
  plate stack or armor stacks for all the M0 dungeons.
• 7:44
  So we did those six or only 6 available right now.
• 7:47
  You cannot do Tazza Vech till next week.
• 7:49
  And then we did two extra runs of Iguodo Maldoni to give us a
• 7:53
  full 8 slot for the vault. And then tomorrow I'll be doing
• 7:58
  the same on EU and NA. On EU it'll be on my Druid and
• 8:03
  then NA on my Paladin. And we think filling out the
• 8:06
  vault's probably a good idea because there might be tear in
• 8:09
  there next week. That's that's what we're
• 8:11
  crossing our fingers for. So between those, we're doing
• 8:13
  delves. I I gotta I gotta check in on
• 8:17
  that and maybe editing manual come back in.
• 8:19
  But like on previous week zeros, hasn't the vault been like
• 8:25
  downgraded to like previous tier?
• 8:29
  Well, it usually, yeah, it usually doesn't give you
• 8:31
  anything useful that first week. And certainly this is the first
• 8:34
  time that we have like relevant content that's potentially gonna
• 8:39
  give us stuff that we might actually want to use in the
• 8:41
  season. And this week where we have the
• 8:43
  possibility of getting Season 3 loot, we're inferring that there
• 8:48
  might be tier in that box. No one knows for sure, but it
• 8:52
  there's a good chance. So better safe than sorry I
• 8:54
  think is how most people are taking it.
• 8:56
  OK. Yeah, I'd rather have a full
• 8:58
  vault and not need it than need a full vault and not have it.
• 9:02
  For sure. I mean, at this point I've
• 9:05
  already done the delves up to 11 because I want to be able to
• 9:08
  like to start that right away. Haven't done my world tour.
• 9:12
  I can't stack mail as effectively as you can stack
• 9:16
  plate some tanks. Got to have to like be the odd
• 9:19
  personality to do that, and I'm hoping to do that sometime this
• 9:27
  weekend. But I've already taken 3 alts to
• 9:32
  do the skip, so I definitely know where to pick up my cloak.
• 9:36
  That's because I've been looking at professions I like, pushed
• 9:41
  through, got renowned 5. That's when all the profession
• 9:43
  stuff unlocks. You can do that first day.
• 9:47
  And then it was just flooding the auction house.
• 9:50
  We have like new stuff that people were buying for way more
• 9:53
  than they're buying it now. It is ridiculous.
• 9:58
  So many spent 20,000 gold on a contract.
• 10:01
  Brutal. Yeah.
• 10:02
  So I was gonna say. So there's the new threads for
• 10:04
  the Reshi wraps, right? There's some new health potions
• 10:09
  at A at some point, yes. Those.
• 10:11
  Are. Yeah.
• 10:12
  What else? You want the threads, you want
• 10:18
  the which are better than what you get from the quest.
• 10:20
  Do not just settle for like that that one.
• 10:23
  Go go talk to a tailor. Get yourself the the upgrade
• 10:27
  one. I think it goes from like 1300
• 10:31
  mainstat to like closer to 1700 mainstat.
• 10:35
  It's a it's a sizable jump there.
• 10:37
  And then you're right, the potions, they're way more
• 10:42
  effective with those new potions.
• 10:45
  You also have a the contract. So if you are trying to get
• 10:49
  your, your Rep up. And then there are a couple of
• 10:53
  things for for for inscription as well.
• 11:01
  I didn't see anything for blacksmithing or or stuff like
• 11:09
  that because the way that the OR and the herbs work in this new
• 11:16
  area is that you find them, they're alien and useless to
• 11:20
  you, but you can trade them in for the old what?
• 11:24
  Well, I say old world, but Kazalgar materials that you can
• 11:29
  then use your stuff. So it's actually quite good
• 11:31
  where you like run around and you can get exactly the right
• 11:35
  type of ore that you you need based on if you got rank 3 or
• 11:39
  rank 2 or rank 1 of this like alien herb, phantom weed or
• 11:43
  whatever it's called. All right, well I'll have to
• 11:48
  check that out. At the very least I've got got a
• 11:50
  druid gatherer that's probably going to spend about 5 minutes
• 11:53
  running through there on the gathering.
• 11:56
  Some stuff I think they added like enchanting has these like
• 11:59
  glamour things that change how you look for an hour and I think
• 12:03
  they added an ethereal one if I remember right as well.
• 12:06
  I'm just picking it straws. I'm trying to remember like
• 12:08
  literally whatever other profession stuff they might have
• 12:10
  added but I think that's about it.
• 12:12
  I don't think there were too too many.
• 12:14
  The stuff that they did add is important, but.
• 12:16
  And plus like if you're an enchanter you don't actually
• 12:18
  need the new stuff, just have a bunch of cloaking chants at the
• 12:23
  ready on the auction house cuz everybody is buying those up.
• 12:27
  That was a good mint out of that.
• 12:31
  The problem is if you don't have it yet, it is a drop out of the
• 12:37
  severed thread paragon bags, which means trying to get that
• 12:44
  now you. I'm pretty sure you're going to
• 12:47
  miss the boat unless you get incredibly lucky on your first
• 12:49
  one this week. I see very good.
• 12:54
  So you guys, having done all of these dungeon runs, you've had a
• 13:00
  taste for the classes. Last check in Sean, you have
• 13:05
  decided to stick with the Pink Paladin.
• 13:11
  Yeah, we're locked in. We'll be dancing at the Pink
• 13:13
  Palate Club all season long. I'll probably keep my Warrior
• 13:16
  and my Death Knight current ish as well, but yeah, it'll be
• 13:21
  Paladin. This too OK.
• 13:22
  OK, I've actually had a slight renaissance on I haven't changed
• 13:27
  my alt. Still Shaman.
• 13:28
  Still stubbornly, stubbornly Shaman, but I've had a bit of
• 13:32
  renaissance on both the warrior and the warlock.
• 13:36
  The warlock switched to affliction and I've been just
• 13:39
  loving it. Affliction did get some buffs
• 13:44
  and warlock seems pretty good right now.
• 13:46
  It's I'm not going to be taking this into raid.
• 13:48
  This is just something that is like curb stomping poor, poor
• 13:51
  quest mobs because quest mobs really need a little bit more
• 13:57
  teeth somewhere, guys, I don't know.
• 14:01
  And then the warrior, the changes they made, I I'm
• 14:05
  actually liking it. I find like this is the first
• 14:08
  tier that I'm actually using the proc ravager and having that in
• 14:15
  between like every pole just come up is so good.
• 14:19
  I don't think I could go back unless they like make that proc
• 14:22
  chance way lower. So I'm enjoying some of the
• 14:25
  changes on it, but the, of course, the big one is my
• 14:30
  shaman. The shaman I've switched back
• 14:34
  again. I was Totamic last year 'cause
• 14:37
  that's, that's the tier that they decided to actually make
• 14:39
  Totamic good. Switched over to once again and
• 14:46
  I'm back on Stormbringer and man, Stormbringer makes me fear
• 14:54
  the the add on Apocalypse 'cause if I did not have weak ORS I
• 14:58
  could not play Stormbringer. There's just too much hidden
• 15:02
  bust to track on that and it makes me wonder where classes
• 15:07
  are. And that's why we're bringing
• 15:09
  you on today, Jericho. To get my unfiltered opinions on
• 15:14
  all the classes in the game, especially the ones I've never
• 15:17
  played before, Certainly. But many they're they're adding
• 15:20
  a new cooldown tracker stuff and buff trackers and all this
• 15:23
  stuff. Isn't, isn't that gonna be
• 15:25
  enough? Surely.
• 15:26
  Set that up in your kids. Go run.
• 15:28
  It we, we had a conversation. It looks better than it was,
• 15:32
  better than it is, but it but it ain't here yet, so it's not an
• 15:36
  option right now. And yeah, yeah.
• 15:39
  We can hope for the best, but what what's the saying?
• 15:42
  Hope in one hand, crap in the other?
• 15:43
  See which one gets full first an.
• 15:47
  Optimistic one for a while, certainly.
• 15:50
  Oh yeah, I'm I'm an absolute wow simp.
• 15:53
  You can you can go check our comments.
• 15:57
  Yeah, confirm he it's well, he's either a Wow simp or he doesn't
• 16:01
  play the game. We're not sure.
• 16:02
  The comments, The comments can't figure it out themselves.
• 16:07
  We'll put up a poll, maybe. You know you're doing something
• 16:09
  right when you get comments from one episode to the next that are
• 16:13
  completely contradictory. It means that I'm getting a lot
• 16:16
  of point of views, or at least representing a lot of point of
• 16:18
  views. It's.
• 16:19
  The broadest appeal that's. Right.
• 16:22
  But odd Voker, last time we had talked, it was going through a
• 16:27
  lot. It continues to go through a
• 16:30
  lot. And now we're at the final phase
• 16:36
  of of the War Within. And how are Evokers doing right
• 16:42
  now? What what what is the feeling
• 16:45
  for augmentation for Evokers in general?
• 16:51
  Yeah, I think the community of large has to be somewhere
• 16:53
  between ecstatic and dooming right, Somewhere in the middle
• 16:56
  there. Certainly where we left off last
• 16:59
  time when when I was lost on the show was before the launch of
• 17:02
  Season 2. We had some PTR changes, some
• 17:06
  big changes for augmentation, where we changed Ebenmite to not
• 17:10
  affect tanks and healers anymore.
• 17:11
  We cut down some of the effectiveness of their spells.
• 17:14
  We figured, OK, you know, this will bring things a little more
• 17:17
  in balance, bring things a little more towards damage,
• 17:20
  bring things a little more towards self damage.
• 17:23
  And if they end up OK in tuning, then maybe we still play this
• 17:26
  thing in M Plus, maybe it's still good.
• 17:28
  Maybe we play it in raid. Who knows, it might be all
• 17:30
  right. And then after that episode, the
• 17:33
  funniest thing happened. The funniest thing happened.
• 17:38
  They decided that wasn't good enough.
• 17:41
  Let's nerf Breath of Eons by a whole bunch.
• 17:44
  Let's nerf Sans by a whole whole bunch.
• 17:47
  Just completely gut the throughput of the spec at the
• 17:50
  last hour and just leave it there.
• 17:53
  And that crushed everyone's hopes and dreams.
• 17:55
  No one touched the spec basically for the entire season.
• 17:59
  Some people eventually picked it up sort of towards the end just
• 18:01
  for fun, but that was about it. Really what happened after that
• 18:04
  was after the race there was a little bit of an aura buff.
• 18:07
  Then a couple weeks later there was another aura buff.
• 18:09
  Then a couple weeks later there's another aura buff.
• 18:11
  The spec aura right now is at like 43% or something like that.
• 18:14
  I don't know if it's the highest, but it's certainly at
• 18:16
  the the top end in terms of and, and what that means really is
• 18:20
  how how often they've sort of tweaked the specs overall
• 18:25
  personal damage up or down through hot fixes essentially is
• 18:29
  what that that does. So really by the end of season
• 18:34
  2, Ogg was in a reasonable place damage wise.
• 18:37
  It was OK, Certainly not, you know, breaking any records and
• 18:40
  if you were to look at Raider IO stats, certainly no one's really
• 18:43
  taking this thing and trying to push with it, but it was OK.
• 18:48
  We can get it to some of the other fun stuff a little bit
• 18:51
  later around utility and this kind of thing, but really that's
• 18:55
  where it ended up in Season 2. So now we get into the PTR for
• 18:58
  Season 3 and there are essentially no changes to the
• 19:03
  spec at all, period, at a baseline level.
• 19:07
  But what they decided to do this season obviously is with the new
• 19:10
  tier sets, they've really played into the different hero talents.
• 19:15
  So really every spec in the game through its hero talents is
• 19:19
  getting more or less pretty significant changes through
• 19:23
  those interactions, or at the very least through what's being
• 19:26
  emphasized from from those talents.
• 19:29
  When it comes to augmentation, we have Chrono Warden and we
• 19:32
  have scale Commander and Chrono Warden is really leaning into
• 19:37
  really it's, it's sort of buffs. It's it's got a little more
• 19:41
  cooldown reduction. There's a little fancy build you
• 19:43
  can do where you can hit a 92nd timing instead of a 2 minute
• 19:46
  timing. That's that's got some good
• 19:49
  potential in raid. And we've got scale commander
• 19:52
  where you lean into personal damage a little bit more and
• 19:57
  you've got these little buddies that you spawn when you cast
• 20:00
  your breath of eons, they show up and they cast devastation
• 20:03
  spells. Of course, why would they cast
• 20:04
  augmentation spells? That's crazy.
• 20:07
  They cast Pyre, they cast Disintegrate, and they just kind
• 20:09
  of, you know, do do stuff, which is fun.
• 20:12
  In terms of where they've kind of left those off right now,
• 20:16
  Chrono Warden is really the only spec that seems like it might do
• 20:20
  decent numbers in raid scale. Commander took a pretty nasty
• 20:25
  nerf right at the end of the PTR and is not in great shape.
• 20:29
  And then when we get look at M Plus, it's a little more even
• 20:33
  because again, Chrono, we're talking about buffing being sort
• 20:36
  of the focus and we have less DPS to work with in M Plus, so
• 20:40
  it bounces out a little bit more.
• 20:42
  You can technically run scale commander, but you're not really
• 20:44
  winning any awards in terms of damage output.
• 20:46
  Somewhere in the middle, this kind of thing.
• 20:48
  And so not that I put a lot of stock or faith into community
• 20:53
  tier lists, but if you would scour the Internet and kind of
• 20:56
  see where opinion is right now, raid Aug potentially, OK, not
• 21:03
  that it's that easy to gauge, but probably somewhere in the
• 21:05
  middle. And NM plus, not really looking
• 21:09
  great outlook wise, but at this point more because it's not
• 21:16
  really one of those top specs damage wise.
• 21:18
  And also it's not really bringing anything special to the
• 21:21
  table anymore really at the end of the day, this sort of leading
• 21:27
  into the hot take of the session, But Aug is not really a
• 21:31
  support. It's not really a support
• 21:34
  anymore. If we're gonna compare it to
• 21:36
  kind of where it launched, it's now very much Adps spec that
• 21:41
  does a little bit of its damage in a silly way and is really on
• 21:45
  par with some of the other meta specs when it comes to utility.
• 21:50
  It's not really bringing that much more than like a druid.
• 21:53
  When we talk about the overall utility kit, the Evoker utility
• 21:56
  kit is very good, but again, the Evoker utility kit, not the Ogg
• 22:00
  utility kit, right? So this is kind of the outlook
• 22:04
  that we've got going into Season 3 right now at the very least.
• 22:09
  Does it infuriate you that the community pissed blood when Ugg
• 22:16
  was sorry? Man, they might have to edit
• 22:17
  that out. No, that's.
• 22:18
  Fine. I'm just saying like this, this
• 22:20
  is a very neutral question. How are you going to lead them
• 22:22
  then? Very neutral.
• 22:24
  Very, I think I very. Understated the reaction First
• 22:26
  off I think. That you ramped up a little bit
• 22:30
  that they it was just like, oh man, you need to make this a
• 22:33
  tank spec. Actually one of my favorite
• 22:35
  tweets ever was your tweet about how disc Priest was so strong
• 22:38
  and they've been meta for like 6 years in a row and you're like
• 22:40
  obviously we need to make it a thanks back.
• 22:43
  Yeah, why not? But does it like like so Aug
• 22:46
  gets gets its gets its identity completely stripped away from
• 22:51
  players who love that support style, who were, who were dying
• 22:55
  to have that in Warcraft and where we're so excited to get it
• 22:57
  when it finally came completely stripped away Because Aug can't.
• 23:01
  Surely we can't have Aug dominate 2 seasons in a row as
• 23:06
  we now head into our third season of Demon Hunter, Druid,
• 23:09
  Mage Priest, Death Knight. That's exactly how I feel these
• 23:12
  days. It's OK, like it I I get it when
• 23:15
  Blizzard launches a new spec halfway through an expansion,
• 23:18
  it's the shiny new thing and it launched like I'm not going to
• 23:21
  split errors here. It was absolutely overpowered
• 23:24
  when it first came out. No question no question the the
• 23:27
  shifting sands was like 3 times as strong it is as it is now.
• 23:31
  Eben might's like Eben might was three times as strong as it is
• 23:33
  now. You had unlimited buff stacking
• 23:36
  there like Draconic attunements was giving you like 10% extra
• 23:41
  health or something like that. It's been so long I don't
• 23:43
  remember any of the numbers but like this.
• 23:45
  This is the kit that we're talking about, right?
• 23:47
  Outrageous potential and buffing your tanks and healers to
• 23:51
  enormous extents. Yes, it was absolutely
• 23:54
  overpowered. Yes, it dominated the M plus
• 23:56
  meta for the end of season 2 for that reason.
• 23:59
  Totally fair Season 3 still on the strong side overall, but you
• 24:04
  could definitely start to consider running other stuff if
• 24:07
  the M plus ecosystem if if the the nature of pushing those keys
• 24:12
  leaned in a certain way. If you had more of a damage
• 24:14
  focus, for example, perhaps you could try running something
• 24:16
  else. It's just people really, really
• 24:18
  valued having that extra throughput on the tank and
• 24:20
  healer and and having that extra defensive capability.
• 24:23
  But where we where we've landed now at the beginning of the war
• 24:26
  within and what when I you know, I I count, you know, Oh yeah.
• 24:29
  How long have these specs been meta?
• 24:31
  How long have like how long has mage been just a really, really
• 24:34
  good spec in M plus for the last like 10 expansions or whatever?
• 24:36
  Surely we've had 10 expansions with M plus at this point,
• 24:38
  right? It I don't even know anymore
• 24:42
  getting old. It it it just to me, it's like,
• 24:46
  OK, I'll flew, flew too close to the sun.
• 24:48
  They didn't like the reception that that they were getting.
• 24:51
  They didn't like the feedback, so and Morgan Day had an
• 24:55
  interview sort of a couple months back where he basically
• 24:58
  explained what happened, where it was, you know, yeah, we saw
• 25:01
  that it was kind of pretty dominant in the meta.
• 25:03
  So we absolutely took a hammer to it and we hit it a little too
• 25:06
  hard. Yes, absolutely is is what
• 25:09
  happened. But really the, the biggest
• 25:11
  disappointing thing to me, and this is what comes through in a
• 25:13
  lot of my feedback and this kind of thing, is that I and and many
• 25:18
  others really align with that support play style, that buffing
• 25:22
  allies, that feeling like your ally's success is being propped
• 25:27
  up from your actions and what you're doing and this kind of
• 25:29
  thing. And they've kept, you know, just
• 25:30
  a tinge of that flavor a tiny bit, you know, whatever.
• 25:35
  But but like cutting it down and eroding it and, and sort of
• 25:39
  leaving, you know, the meta, so to speak, intact in a lot of
• 25:42
  other ways is it's, it's disappointing, right?
• 25:45
  And to me, the like there, there are certainly approaches you
• 25:49
  could take that don't go that hard on necessarily the
• 25:52
  throughput of the spec, but perhaps you know how the spec
• 25:55
  buffs other specs. I, I've given a lot of feedback
• 25:58
  on raid, for example, where I think the skill gap is still
• 26:01
  tremendous when we're talking basically the highest end
• 26:04
  potential of someone playing augmentation in raid versus the
• 26:07
  average Joe who kind of just, you know, wants an enjoyable
• 26:11
  casual support experience where they get to enjoy, you know,
• 26:14
  again, the feel of powering up their, their allies, but without
• 26:19
  the insane requirements of, OK, I need to make sure that I know
• 26:23
  who I'm gonna buff. I need to make sure that my
• 26:25
  allies are standing in a very specific place around me so that
• 26:28
  I buff the right people. I need to make sure that I keep
• 26:30
  my, you know, keep my buffs going when I want them to, but
• 26:33
  then let them drop off when I don't want them to continue.
• 26:37
  That, you know, I react to when my spec randomly decides to
• 26:41
  double its duration on something like the the the list for what
• 26:46
  it takes to play this thing at the very, very highest level
• 26:48
  just goes on and on and for them to have kind of left it in this
• 26:53
  state, the game's first support oriented damage spec like this.
• 26:59
  I, I don't it, it, it, it just, it's a disconnect for me.
• 27:03
  I I would think that they would want this thing to be
• 27:06
  approachable, to be something that attracts kind of maybe more
• 27:10
  casual players or players that want to put in a little bit of
• 27:13
  less preparation going into raid, but still achieve kind of
• 27:16
  a middle of the road performance.
• 27:17
  Right now, what you're looking at is having to do more
• 27:21
  preparation to get a lower than middle of the road performance
• 27:25
  in a class that also has devastation of ochre, which
• 27:29
  traditionally has been one of the most straightforward and
• 27:32
  strong performing damage packs in the raid.
• 27:35
  It's it's a tricky spot. Yeah.
• 27:41
  Honestly, I got to ask you, do you think that there is a way
• 27:47
  for Blizzard to balance it where it's not hitting those extremes
• 27:51
  where it is competing but doesn't immediately dominate
• 27:56
  where it's utility is there with like as you say, some of this
• 28:02
  competitive with a lot of these meta specs, But what it gives as
• 28:06
  well doesn't completely over shadow everything else because
• 28:11
  for the points where it's dominant, it's because it's
• 28:14
  giving that damage and the Canisoto on top.
• 28:18
  So why not now it doesn't give that.
• 28:20
  It doesn't give that damage. The buffs being taken away its
• 28:23
  own personal damage that they've been propping up doesn't quite
• 28:26
  make up for that. And it's it's falling short.
• 28:30
  So like, where do you feel the sweet spot is?
• 28:32
  If there ever was 1. So when it comes to mythic plus,
• 28:37
  let's say just to start, it's hard for me to complain too too
• 28:41
  much outside of just it doesn't really feel super supporty
• 28:45
  anymore. And that's a very qualitative
• 28:46
  take. It's a very opinionated take,
• 28:48
  but the feeling has been diminished on that for me to
• 28:52
  look at augmentation and go this is really just another middle of
• 28:56
  the road DPS spec damage wise that has slightly above average
• 29:00
  utility and kind of hold that up against the other DPS specs in M
• 29:05
  Plus. I think at this point, aside
• 29:07
  from again just that feeling around support that we're in
• 29:10
  kind of a similar boat to a lot of damage specs when it comes to
• 29:13
  M Plus and the meta. Realistically, again, there's
• 29:16
  only like 5 or 6 specs ever that are happy let's say in.
• 29:19
  In terms of like what people consider to be meta that they're
• 29:23
  excited to bring to their group that they consider to be the
• 29:26
  optimal composition. And there are a whole bunch of
• 29:28
  reasons for this, whether it's, you know, you want to be able to
• 29:30
  copy what the top teams are doing or you know, you just you
• 29:33
  really want a safe bet that you know is going to get you into
• 29:35
  groups. People tend to coalesce to these
• 29:36
  just very top of the lion specs for M plus and that's.
• 29:40
  In Rep Palliative. Right.
• 29:44
  It's really just that like it's it's that same flavor frog at
• 29:49
  this point, because again, it's not really doing anything
• 29:52
  special compared to like a boomkin or a mage or a priest.
• 29:57
  You know, hey, we have Warren Stone.
• 29:59
  You can use that sometimes. That's kind of neat.
• 30:01
  We have timelessness. You know, if one of your specs
• 30:04
  for some reason is generating too much threat, you have an
• 30:06
  option. That's about it.
• 30:08
  Everything else is kind of in the, you know, in the class 3,
• 30:12
  even when we talk about like survivability and the fact that
• 30:14
  it has a cheat death, OK, great. You know, that like technically
• 30:17
  that that is a plus certainly. But Devastation even has more
• 30:21
  baseline health. It has more baseline magic
• 30:24
  resistance in the class tree cause 'cause they decided they
• 30:26
  needed to do that to kind of keep things a little bit even.
• 30:28
  So really like the augmentation, survivability isn't even like
• 30:31
  that much more when when it comes to that versus
• 30:34
  devastation. So I I don't like where we've
• 30:37
  ended up in M + 4 Ogg, but I think we're in a similar boat to
• 30:40
  a lot of specs and I think that's just a broader M plus
• 30:43
  issue at this point given the current kind of design of the
• 30:46
  spec when it comes to raid. Again, like the the most
• 30:49
  disappointing thing to me is just that I want to play
• 30:53
  augmentation in raid, but I have to consider what specs are my
• 30:59
  fellow Raiders playing? How well are they playing them?
• 31:02
  How much do I want to bother them with coordinating their
• 31:05
  cooldown timings, making sure that they're pushing their
• 31:06
  buttons at the exact same time every pull, making sure that I'm
• 31:09
  standing like next to the people that I want to buff and that
• 31:12
  they know that I'm trying to do that so that they don't go run
• 31:15
  off and and do something else? How much do I want to look at my
• 31:19
  entire raid and put up a spreadsheet and go, OK, well,
• 31:22
  who's doing damage when? Who are my who are my 92nd
• 31:25
  specs? Who are my 2 minute specs?
• 31:26
  Who's doing damage in each window?
• 31:28
  And even if you try and keep it simple and just go like try and
• 31:30
  buff the same people for the entire fight, you still have to
• 31:33
  consider like like literally talk to them and coordinate and
• 31:36
  and make sure that they know that you're trying to be buffed
• 31:38
  so that you're standing in a similar spot.
• 31:40
  You're still at 25 yard range, right?
• 31:42
  So like there's just all of this coordination, whereas I can just
• 31:47
  play devastation on just a normal 2 minute spec.
• 31:50
  Oh, hey, you know, we might have some quirky rotation with engulf
• 31:54
  this tier with essence bomb. OK, I'll figure it out.
• 31:57
  That's fine. It it's looking solid and I'm
• 32:01
  not gonna have to do too much more than just practice on a
• 32:03
  dummy for two minutes and I'll be good.
• 32:05
  Right. So that imbalance and and where
• 32:08
  the tuning lies is augmentation since since released basically
• 32:12
  after season 3 of of Dragonflight, they kind of
• 32:15
  realized, OK, if we don't tune this thing down, it's going to
• 32:18
  be in every race to the world 1st and they're gonna have four
• 32:20
  of them and it's gonna be ridiculous, right.
• 32:22
  And and they didn't want the optics of that is my guess
• 32:25
  because you know not not that that would have been a problem
• 32:29
  for the average player as far as I'm concerned, but they don't
• 32:31
  necessarily want to see that. They don't want people to go oh,
• 32:34
  you know, where's my spec augmentation's in there four
• 32:36
  times. That's crazy, right in your
• 32:37
  raid, you don't have to run for augmentation.
• 32:39
  It's going to be different, right.
• 32:40
  It's going to be like a different situation, but when it
• 32:43
  comes to that optimal comp and they they absolutely do tuning
• 32:46
  for the rest of the world first. There's no question.
• 32:47
  That's why you you end up in a spot.
• 32:49
  They cut it off and then right after the race, there's a whole
• 32:51
  bunch of extra tuning right. So given that, really if, if if
• 32:56
  I were king for a day, I would really, and and this is crazy
• 32:59
  because you don't hear this a lot, try and narrow the skill
• 33:02
  gap a lot. Try bring down the skill ceiling
• 33:04
  of this spec. It's too hard.
• 33:07
  I know it's crazy. No one, no one says that
• 33:09
  everyone's like, you know, like frost decays for like right now
• 33:13
  since the Sindragosa change, like a lot of them.
• 33:15
  I don't know about a lot. I'm not gonna put words in
• 33:17
  people's mouths. Some of them are complaining,
• 33:19
  you know? Hey, I I really like the skill
• 33:20
  expression of being able to extend that thing for as long as
• 33:22
  possible, right? I remember thinking about like
• 33:24
  void form on Shadow Priest right in the previous version where
• 33:29
  especially in Surrender to Madness version.
• 33:30
  But you know, even even after that where yeah, absolutely
• 33:33
  there was skill expression and being able to extend that thing
• 33:35
  as long as possible to minimize your downtime outside of your
• 33:38
  void form window. And really, you know, like press
• 33:41
  on and press on and yes, it sucked during downtime.
• 33:44
  I I was always complaining, you know, Oh hey, there's an Los
• 33:46
  mechanic. I hate this fight or posting a
• 33:49
  feedback threads about we need something to be able to carry
• 33:51
  void form from pack to pack or something.
• 33:53
  The hilarious thing is they added that right.
• 33:54
  But anyway, I did you know, it's it's just the top end for
• 34:00
  augmentation in raid makes it extremely hard to balance for
• 34:04
  the average player. And the the thing that really
• 34:08
  has a lot of people the most upset, I think is that it's like
• 34:11
  scale commander in theory is the more casual of the two.
• 34:16
  Let's say it focuses more on direct damage.
• 34:19
  It currently the the the build that you would run is a pretty
• 34:23
  standard 2 minute breath of Eon cycle.
• 34:28
  Visually, it's very cool, right? You saw on your guys and they,
• 34:30
  you know, they shoot the boss and this kind of thing that's
• 34:32
  very fun. It's it's just a very
• 34:35
  traditional straightforward DPS play style with like losing a
• 34:39
  lot of the bells and whistles of Chrono Warden, which has all
• 34:41
  this cool down reduction, this active channeling of reducing
• 34:45
  all your cooldowns by 30 seconds that you'd be playing, playing
• 34:48
  90 seconds instead of two minutes does a lot to to affect
• 34:52
  timings. I think a lot of people would
• 34:54
  rather just have a pretty standard 2 minute cycle.
• 34:57
  So with without getting into too, too much more than that, I
• 35:00
  that's really where what I'd like to see out of this spec
• 35:04
  changing going forward is bringing down the top end
• 35:08
  potential of this thing in raid. Whether it's you're you're
• 35:11
  buffing fewer people, maybe whether it's, you know, maybe
• 35:14
  you're stuck to certain people for, you know, for specific
• 35:17
  durations, you know, you don't have the ability to swap them
• 35:19
  around as much. It's not taking out more of the
• 35:24
  support damage. I think we've gotten to a
• 35:26
  reasonable point there. I think Chrono right now is
• 35:28
  probably around 5050 scale commanders tilting more to
• 35:30
  personal. So they've kind of already
• 35:32
  shifted pretty heavily in that direction.
• 35:34
  I don't think it needs much more there.
• 35:36
  But when we talk about like shifting sands and shifting
• 35:38
  sands as a buff this late in the expansion, this is an ability
• 35:44
  where when you cast from power spells, you, you give one of
• 35:47
  your buff targets a whole whole boatload of versatility.
• 35:51
  This is something that later in the expansion, as you're
• 35:53
  stacking more mastery and giving people more versatility, that
• 35:56
  that actually just grows in power.
• 35:58
  And it's much more powerful at the end of an expansion than it
• 36:00
  is at the beginning. And so every it has this effect
• 36:05
  where augmentation at the beginning of an expansion has
• 36:09
  certain buffs that are better at that point.
• 36:12
  And then later on, certain things are, are better or worse,
• 36:16
  you know, based on just scaling and and that sort of thing.
• 36:20
  It ultimately it it, it really just comes down to I think the
• 36:22
  philosophy around raid gameplay and how this thing plays and,
• 36:26
  and just trying to rein in that top end to some extent.
• 36:31
  OK, I, I think that your, your comment about maybe you're
• 36:38
  buffing less people at the same time really resonate with me
• 36:41
  because that is something that like I had thought of was that
• 36:45
  maybe what really causes causes an issue Is that like an M plus
• 36:51
  you're buffing everybody and now they've stripped it down.
• 36:53
  So you're buffing like the DPS, right.
• 36:57
  And you're not touching the the tank of the healer, which was
• 36:59
  something we had talked about last time you're on.
• 37:02
  Yeah, perhaps it becomes where it's like you are buffing being
• 37:05
  one person, they get like a sort of forbearance like effect so
• 37:09
  that you're not buffing the same person.
• 37:11
  You have to like actually look at different people.
• 37:14
  But based on what you're saying about this sort of communication
• 37:18
  about tracking the the cooldowns, that just seems like
• 37:21
  you're just doubling down on that sort of nightmare.
• 37:24
  So from what you're saying, are you, are you starting to imply
• 37:28
  that perhaps augmentation needs to like go back into the design
• 37:33
  room and come out with something different, Go, go back into the
• 37:36
  oven as it were? I, well, I, I think so, and I've
• 37:39
  really been, I've been trying to push that a little bit.
• 37:41
  I, you know, they, I write for Wowhead and they, they get us to
• 37:44
  write these, these, these articles every like to a season
• 37:48
  or something like that. So we got like kind of a mid
• 37:49
  season review that we get to share our thoughts and all this
• 37:52
  stuff. And pretty much every one of
• 37:54
  those. I'm going OK, raid gameplay
• 37:56
  needs a complete overhaul. This is not sustainable.
• 37:59
  You're alienating the people who enjoy this spec.
• 38:01
  This is kind of wild there. There are so many aspects to it.
• 38:05
  There's the community perception where no one knows if Ogg is
• 38:07
  good or not in in a given tier, whether it's because details
• 38:11
  doesn't work, Warcraft logs doesn't work.
• 38:13
  Everything's a mess in that respect.
• 38:14
  No one has a clue if this thing's doing damage or not in
• 38:16
  your raid. But also, again, just the if, if
• 38:20
  you see an augmentation player in the race of world first, they
• 38:23
  are doing things that you cannot even possibly imagine when it
• 38:26
  comes to like actually executing on on their plan.
• 38:30
  We're talking if you you might. And, and this is some of the
• 38:34
  the, the extreme cooking that I hope we don't see, but we might.
• 38:37
  Let's say it turns out that buffing frost at night is
• 38:41
  actually really, really good. OK, I might run 2 Augmentation
• 38:46
  of ochres because we can stack our buffs up twice.
• 38:49
  And I might run 4 frost at nights because guess what?
• 38:52
  Turns out that you know you you can buff four people in raid,
• 38:55
  right? So how do I ensure that I'm
• 38:57
  buffing the same four people as my other Ogg?
• 39:00
  Well, what we can do is we can set up our prescience on a
• 39:04
  couple people, have the other people stand near us, do the
• 39:07
  opposite on the other augmentation and then make sure
• 39:10
  that when we sort of cycle our cooldowns really quick that we
• 39:13
  put our prescience on like guys, 3:00 and 4:00 so that both of us
• 39:17
  are have prescience on the same for frost Death Knights.
• 39:23
  If somehow you didn't hit the the right frost death Knights,
• 39:26
  you can actually have the other people cancel aura their their
• 39:29
  buffs and basically put them back on with Evan Mite by
• 39:31
  casting that. And then now you have two odds
• 39:34
  that are buffing 4 frost frost at nights.
• 39:37
  And if you play your rotation well, you can just keep that
• 39:40
  Eben mic going the entire fight and just keep buffing those same
• 39:45
  people for the entire thing. And you're gonna line up with
• 39:47
  all your cool bounds. You're gonna line up with
• 39:48
  shifting sands. You're gonna you're you're just
• 39:50
  gonna be going crazy. This in in a SIM setting does
• 39:56
  about a million more DPS on each one of those you know or on.
• 40:01
  On on both of those Ogs than the next best DPS in the raid.
• 40:03
  So you're you're basically getting like 2 million DPS for
• 40:06
  free by by doing that. Not for free.
• 40:08
  It's insane. But anyway.
• 40:10
  That's crazy, we should nerf fury war.
• 40:15
  But but it's just like it's, it's, it's the the fact that I
• 40:18
  like what I'm describing is in theory possible.
• 40:20
  In practice, it's a huge headache.
• 40:23
  Then then there's other stuff you can do where you can go, OK,
• 40:25
  I'm gonna cast. I'm gonna ignore Ebenmite to
• 40:28
  start. I'm gonna start with Breath of
• 40:29
  Eons. That's going to like that also
• 40:32
  casts Ebenmite. If it's not already up.
• 40:35
  Then I I wait to see if that crits and it can it can crit to
• 40:38
  give an extra 50% effectiveness. I wait to see if it crits.
• 40:42
  If it crits, great. I let that ride until it's about
• 40:45
  to expire. If it doesn't crit, then I push
• 40:47
  Ebenmite to try and roll a crit. If that doesn't crit, then I hit
• 40:50
  time skip and that that will reset the cooldown on Evan
• 40:54
  right? And then I try again, see if
• 40:56
  that one crits and suddenly, and and this is again, while making
• 40:59
  sure that I'm juggling all these presents on these players,
• 41:01
  standing near them, making sure they cancel where their stuff,
• 41:04
  right? What we're describing is insane
• 41:06
  behavior, frankly, like it. And and again, like some of this
• 41:10
  would be fine if it's just like, it's just you doing your one
• 41:14
  thing, like you're just playing like I'm fired up and doing cool
• 41:16
  stuff. Like fine, I get it, right.
• 41:18
  But it's it's the coordination. It's the fact that you have to
• 41:20
  do this in concert with all these other people.
• 41:22
  They have to be performing well. They need to be doing the right
• 41:24
  timings. They like potentially need cats
• 41:26
  or other buffs and weird stuff like that.
• 41:29
  That that's where it kind of gets over the top and where what
• 41:31
  the race, the world first people are doing becomes essentially
• 41:33
  unsustainable for the average person.
• 41:35
  So really that that's what I've been kind of harping home about
• 41:37
  on, on a lot of this stuff at the end of the day.
• 41:40
  Sounds like we really need a single button rotation for this.
• 41:44
  Well, that's the thing. I mean, The funny thing is
• 41:46
  right. Obviously the the single button
• 41:47
  rotation works well for augmentation.
• 41:49
  In terms of the core rotation, the core part is totally fine.
• 41:53
  It's totally straightforward. It's it's very easy to
• 41:56
  understand in terms of just put up prescience, then cast Eben
• 41:59
  might then do your rotation and and you're good.
• 42:02
  Maybe manually cast breath of eons.
• 42:04
  That's your cool down. Awesome.
• 42:06
  It it actually works pretty well in that sense and right because
• 42:10
  breath of the single button rotation affects the global cool
• 42:13
  down and nerfs your damage. Technically it doesn't nerf your
• 42:17
  allies damage, so you actually are a little more effective,
• 42:21
  although sequel, if your buddies aren't using the single button
• 42:24
  rotation, but you are, you technically don't lose as much
• 42:27
  because you're you're you're buffing people who are
• 42:29
  performing their normal rotation right.
• 42:32
  It's arguably one of the better specs for that.
• 42:34
  It's just again, we're at odds with this.
• 42:36
  In theory is a spec that should be very accessible and very
• 42:38
  reasonable for a casual player or someone new to the game
• 42:41
  completely at odds with Hey, if you want to perform well with
• 42:44
  this thing and raid, good luck. And that's, that's really just
• 42:47
  again, where I struggle light, I see a disconnect in my mind
• 42:50
  there. I, I, I, I think they need to
• 42:52
  pick a lane. I don't think there's a world
• 42:53
  where everyone's happy with this.
• 42:56
  Like, you know, it, it like below average for the average
• 43:01
  player and then like absolute peak performance for the best
• 43:05
  players in the game. It to me, that's just too much.
• 43:09
  Yeah, I think your answer is right.
• 43:10
  You lower the lower the ceiling on the DPS that you're able to
• 43:13
  do so that it doesn't matter. You hit that cap where it's like
• 43:16
  it doesn't matter how much more skilled you are, this is where
• 43:18
  you're stopping. And then you can even raise the
• 43:20
  floor a bit so that lesser skilled players can do a little
• 43:24
  bit more and it's not as punishing on them if they don't
• 43:27
  cancel or a macro their prescience on their front stuff.
• 43:30
  Yeah, I'm not. Again, I'm not going to pretend
• 43:32
  that that's like normal behavior kind of thing.
• 43:34
  But again, absolutely, like in the the last time augmentation
• 43:37
  was in the race the world first, they they had the analysts on
• 43:41
  the side were preparing these, you know, these charts that tell
• 43:44
  you who to buff when, And then also they were giving
• 43:47
  instructions to other players to go, Hey, if you get buffed at
• 43:49
  this time, make sure to cancel aura at this time so that it
• 43:53
  goes on the people that we wanted to later like, which is
• 43:56
  again, it's it's crazy and and all that, like everyone's
• 43:58
  playing around these guys, right.
• 43:59
  So again, like you, you have one or two OG in the raid but twenty
• 44:02
  players are playing around the specs damage which is nuts.
• 44:05
  Didn't they also write? Yeah, absolutely.
• 44:11
  So, and, and where most, most DPS specs, you know, maybe,
• 44:14
  maybe you put some notes for yourself in, in your note and
• 44:16
  you have them flash up on screen.
• 44:18
  The analysts every pull would push push a new note to these
• 44:21
  players to tell them who to buff based on their latest analysis.
• 44:24
  It's buff this person at this time, then this person at this
• 44:26
  time, this person at this time. And now it's, it's even a little
• 44:29
  more complicated than that because if you're playing
• 44:30
  Chronoword and there's there's randomness in, in pressing's
• 44:34
  duration. So I, I don't like, I'm, I'm not
• 44:37
  gonna pretend that I know the best way to communicate that
• 44:39
  information and to, to optimize that in a race setting, but
• 44:42
  they'll figure it out and it'll be just as I'm here.
• 44:44
  And just, I don't know, maybe they're, they're tracking it
• 44:46
  live and trying to like, you know, load data in real time to
• 44:50
  try and, and, and work around it.
• 44:51
  Who knows, right? Realistically.
• 44:54
  Realistically. Yeah, sorry.
• 44:57
  If you like to hire Jericho to have him figure it out for your
• 45:00
  team, you can reach him at Jericho at Please Hire Me
• 45:03
  augmentationanalyst.com. Yeah, I'm, I don't know, I have
• 45:07
  a day job and I'm not the right person for this.
• 45:08
  But look, Saelder has been doing some insane work since the spec
• 45:12
  released in terms of getting SIMC up and running and in a
• 45:15
  reasonable state to do analysis with the spec.
• 45:18
  You, you won't understand how many hours this man puts into
• 45:21
  this thing to be able to try and model this spec.
• 45:24
  The simulation craft now has dummy profiles which do a
• 45:28
  simplified version of different specs rotations so that we can
• 45:32
  run time efficient Sims for augmentation.
• 45:35
  You'll have a a profile in there that's pretending to be a shadow
• 45:38
  priest. It does a similar damage curve
• 45:40
  to a shadow priest, but it's not running all of the all of the
• 45:44
  damage commands. It's just running sort of a
• 45:45
  simplified version so that you can go into ray bots and go
• 45:48
  what, what, what's my best gear that I can equip?
• 45:51
  And that it gives you a reasonable answer that that
• 45:53
  wasn't possible for like a long time.
• 45:55
  You have to go in and build it. And that that frankly is one of
• 45:57
  the most tremendous contributions to to the three
• 46:00
  crafting for the spec. So whether it's that, whether
• 46:02
  it's going in and trying to optimize the APLS there, there's
• 46:04
  been some really great work there.
• 46:05
  So again, big shout out to Sailor on that stuff.
• 46:07
  And yeah, he he's a bit of a a wild card because he's also the
• 46:12
  one that's going to, you know, go in, go in the back and cook
• 46:15
  up this like crazy Strat with the Frosty KS where we're like,
• 46:17
  yeah, we're just going to buff them for the whole fight.
• 46:19
  And yeah, absolutely you're going to run this like 6-6 lock
• 46:21
  comp with all of your other raid buffs and you're good to go.
• 46:23
  It's like, what are you talking about?
• 46:26
  Like sometimes he's the hero we need, and sometimes he's the
• 46:29
  hero we deserve. But just imagine anybody who's
• 46:34
  in the sound of my voice. Just imagine that you have the
• 46:37
  six stack there that are that's running perfectly efficiently
• 46:41
  right in your team and now you you have to avoid all the bad,
• 46:47
  all the crap that the boss is putting out, but you have to
• 46:50
  avoid getting in between that six stack because that will also
• 46:54
  screw it up and then you're costing your team DPS.
• 46:57
  So now there's a big void zone around these six people as well
• 47:02
  as all the raid mechanics. That is insanity.
• 47:04
  That is not something I would ever want to attempt to do.
• 47:09
  This was not a thing in season 2, but in season 1, Ogg and Dev
• 47:13
  were actually pretty close in, in certain encounters and
• 47:16
  largely when it came to the the race of world 1st and some of
• 47:19
  these, some of these fights, they basically said, you know
• 47:21
  what, it's close. We don't want to deal with Ogg.
• 47:23
  We're going to go with Dev literally just because it's such
• 47:26
  a headache to put this stuff together and and to plan around
• 47:29
  and to figure it out. These guilds can, they just
• 47:31
  decided, yeah, we'd rather devote our energy elsewhere if
• 47:33
  it's like this close and we don't need the damage, right
• 47:36
  anyway. No, I think that that is what
• 47:39
  you're you've been saying for this episode.
• 47:43
  It is what does the odd demand of you.
• 47:46
  And if you can do it without having to jump through all of
• 47:49
  those hoops, then odd doesn't seem worth it.
• 47:53
  If you can, it's the same argument, Sean, that you have
• 47:57
  been putting forward for anybody who's been considering the
• 47:59
  single button rotation, Like if you can do it and free up the
• 48:03
  mindspace to do something else, why are you not freeing up the
• 48:06
  mindspace? And to me, that means that like
• 48:11
  in order to be viable, not just for these Race to World first
• 48:16
  teams, but the friends and family at home, log has to over
• 48:20
  perform. Or it has to be, as you've been
• 48:23
  saying, a whole lot simpler, a whole lot more accessible in
• 48:29
  order to be viable. Because I don't want to be
• 48:33
  spinning 4 plates and then still trying to do my rotation in
• 48:38
  order to get out, get like 80% of what I could be doing on
• 48:42
  devastation or, or something else.
• 48:46
  But that kind of brings me to the other question that I wanted
• 48:50
  to ask you. Is Ogg being the buff class,
• 48:55
  being the support role? It's been around for now.
• 49:00
  This is our second expansion with it.
• 49:04
  Do you feel like supports generally have a space in World
• 49:10
  of Warcraft currently? Like before we were talking
• 49:14
  about it and we're like, yeah, man.
• 49:15
  Like I was hoping that Paladin and Priest would get their own
• 49:20
  support specs and so they would be like able to vie for the
• 49:23
  spec. But since that time, and I'm
• 49:26
  going to, I'm going to lead with my own opinion.
• 49:29
  I don't think you can fit in a support spec unless 90 or 70% of
• 49:40
  the classes can field a support spec.
• 49:43
  Otherwise you're locking in like let's say it's just priests and
• 49:50
  and evokers. Like you're kind of locking in
• 49:52
  those two 2 specs for them to not have that like complication
• 49:56
  issue. Where do you, where do you think
• 49:57
  like the proper balance is? Or do you do you think there
• 50:00
  isn't it? Sorry.
• 50:02
  Yeah, no worries. So I have a nuclear hot take on
• 50:04
  this one which is just very fun. Certainly thought about this
• 50:08
  tons. First off, obviously
• 50:12
  augmentation being the only spec like this in the game.
• 50:15
  Especially again when we talk about when it first launched and
• 50:17
  most of its damage was puffs. It doesn't help when it's the
• 50:21
  only spec that behaves this way that anyone that wants this play
• 50:25
  style or feels like they need that utility in their group have
• 50:28
  one option to play with. And Evoker has been a bit of a
• 50:33
  black sheep since it launched for a couple reasons.
• 50:36
  Some players love it and and really identify with it and
• 50:40
  enjoy it. I'm absolutely one of them.
• 50:42
  But it gets a lot of criticism and and feedback for different
• 50:46
  reasons, whether it's the range requirement, whether it's the
• 50:49
  fact that Mog is still a little bit awkward when it comes to,
• 50:53
  you know, not being able to stay in visage form.
• 50:55
  Even the restrictions on visage form are a little silly that you
• 50:59
  only have, you know, like one or two race options there, right?
• 51:02
  The fact that you have to stay in dragon form while you're
• 51:04
  casting is something that people aren't super thrilled with.
• 51:07
  So there's already a little bit of a barrier to entry to playing
• 51:10
  Evoker that some people don't really enjoy.
• 51:13
  And then from there there's there's these other quirks about
• 51:16
  the spec. There's again, the limited
• 51:17
  range, the, you know, your your dragon, this kind of stuff.
• 51:20
  So to me that, that situation where we had literally just one
• 51:25
  spec that behaves this way and it's not everyone's cup of tea,
• 51:28
  I think is, is really what set a lot of people on fire when they
• 51:32
  felt like, Oh, I have to play the spec or I have to find
• 51:34
  someone who plays the spec to, to feel the group.
• 51:38
  So First off, not even like I'm 100% with you.
• 51:42
  I I think they're, they're for sure probably needs to be other
• 51:45
  support specs in a world that we support support specs in the
• 51:49
  game. Just having the one doesn't
• 51:52
  really work to me. My nuclear hot take on how
• 51:55
  supports might work in World of Warcraft is to take a page out
• 51:58
  of other games that kind of build that that have support
• 52:03
  options and this kind of thing. And then when they look at World
• 52:06
  of Warcraft and how things have sort of evolved and I, my, my
• 52:10
  perspective is existing DPS specs, frankly, almost every
• 52:16
  spec in the game, but even just DPS specs have too much
• 52:20
  individual utility, too many personal cooldowns for
• 52:23
  defensives and are boxing out potential support specs because
• 52:28
  they already bring all the support options.
• 52:30
  They already bring all the utility.
• 52:32
  Cut that shit in half, Get rid of all like almost all the
• 52:36
  personal defensives. Maybe leave one, get rid of like
• 52:39
  all these like random utility things that every spec can do.
• 52:42
  And then have a couple support specs that maybe, oh, maybe they
• 52:45
  do like 10% less damage on average.
• 52:48
  But they're they're they're the utility captain.
• 52:50
  They're the ones that are calling the shots around CC ING
• 52:53
  the mobs. They're the ones that are, you
• 52:55
  know, oh, maybe you have an extra external you can put on
• 52:57
  the tank compared to the healer. Maybe you are the healer.
• 52:59
  Maybe you know, like, right, you have like a healing kit and
• 53:03
  you're doing some of this control stuff as well.
• 53:04
  Like there, there's a lot of potential there to bring
• 53:07
  throughput in the form of utility at at the expense of
• 53:10
  damage, but only when other damage dealers are not also
• 53:14
  competing on the utility front. That's, that's how I look at it.
• 53:17
  And this would take a huge rework and it would be
• 53:20
  controversial and it would be a, a whole big thing.
• 53:23
  But again, king for a day. That's that's how I would
• 53:26
  approach this. And you're not making everyone
• 53:29
  happy by getting rid of all their, their innate utility that
• 53:32
  they built up through the years. But I, I really do think that
• 53:34
  would make for a very interesting field where you can
• 53:38
  kind of go, OK, you know, maybe we don't need that utility.
• 53:41
  We'll just run three like straight damage dealers and
• 53:43
  we'll have to deal with the fact that we don't have as much
• 53:45
  control. Maybe we will do less damage and
• 53:47
  feel like we need that control. Like high, high keys.
• 53:50
  Almost certainly right now you need as much control as you
• 53:53
  could possibly get because it you, you build around that.
• 53:56
  You build around the fact that, you know, like realistically, M
• 53:59
  plus is about like literally how much stuff can I pull in once
• 54:03
  and, and deal with before we get overwhelmed.
• 54:05
  And generally speaking, control abilities are more important
• 54:08
  than throughput when it comes to achieving that goal.
• 54:11
  But there are ways to design around that too, if you really
• 54:13
  want, right from a, from a Blizzard standpoint.
• 54:15
  So to me, that's, that's how I would make support quote, UN
• 54:19
  quote, work in, in World of Warcraft without that, you
• 54:24
  really run into these, these situations where like, you know,
• 54:27
  people feel like, oh, that, that spec's bringing too much and,
• 54:30
  and they're, you know, doing a ton.
• 54:33
  And, and I, I just, I, I get a little bit disappointed again
• 54:35
  these days where I, I look at other specs, I look at like, you
• 54:38
  know, I look at balance and they, they have ways to root and
• 54:40
  control mobs. They have solar beams.
• 54:42
  They bring 3% versatility for everybody for the whole fight.
• 54:45
  Can only give versatility to DPS sometimes, right?
• 54:48
  Like what, what's the deal with that?
• 54:51
  It's it's just like, again, right right now, it's just kind
• 54:54
  of doing DPS things. And outside of just doing DPS in
• 54:59
  different ways, the the only real way to differentiate is to
• 55:03
  give it some unique tools. And Blizzard have shown that
• 55:07
  they can be creative around supportabilities and utility
• 55:11
  and, and things that aren't just rebuffs when you know, like
• 55:13
  again, whether it's rooting enemies, knocking them, pushing
• 55:16
  them away, gripping them back together, silencing them for a
• 55:19
  duration, all this stuff, tons of different abilities, but
• 55:23
  they're all spread out on these existing damage classes.
• 55:25
  Just put that utility on the supports have a few different
• 55:28
  options so people don't feel like they're they're stuck on
• 55:30
  one and go to town. That, that's my game.
• 55:35
  I've been Bogart in the mic so much.
• 55:38
  Sean, what's fast to see you? What would you like to know?
• 55:42
  Yeah, give us more support specs like new Demon Hunter support
• 55:46
  spec, new void Demon Hunter support spec.
• 55:49
  Let's I want to talk about that. Jerry, That's my question to
• 55:52
  you. Obviously you're you're a
• 55:53
  support spec supporter, man, It's an awkward thing to say.
• 55:56
  An ally, an enthusiast ally. He's an ally of the support
• 56:02
  spec. There we go, when Blizzard
• 56:05
  unveils the third Demon Hunter spec at Games Com on August 19th
• 56:10
  and it comes out that it is a support style spec where it
• 56:15
  instead of buffing your allies, debuffs the enemies through the
• 56:18
  use of sigils. How will you feel as a as an
• 56:22
  augmentation lover and will you be writing the guide for Entropy
• 56:26
  DHS? I'll be honest, I I will be
• 56:28
  considering that one if that happens.
• 56:29
  So I'll probably put in an application, but I'll probably
• 56:31
  have to choose. It's probably one or the other.
• 56:33
  I don't think I have time for 2, so we'll see.
• 56:35
  That Volk do too. I think I think like Preheat
• 56:38
  does a couple. I mean I mean that guy is doing
• 56:40
  this shit all day, but I mean why not right?
• 56:42
  I just I I can not sleep, it's fine.
• 56:46
  Sleep's overrated. You, you really think we're
• 56:49
  getting a support? I mean, look, obviously the, the
• 56:52
  spec isn't confirmed, but might as well, like who knows, it
• 56:56
  could happen. You, you really think they'd go
• 56:58
  with the support at this point given everything that we've kind
• 57:00
  of led up to at this point? I will bet you a month of game
• 57:05
  time that it is a support style spec that debuffs enemies
• 57:09
  through sigils. All right, in terms of cutting
• 57:13
  out a space for 1/3 Demon Hunter spec, you, you don't like what
• 57:17
  is going to be a second tank spec because like, there's never
• 57:21
  been anything with a second tank spec.
• 57:23
  Yeah, hear me out. We we could go in a different
• 57:27
  direction. So I think a lot of people like
• 57:29
  the the most common thing is just another melee that's
• 57:32
  boring. If they do that, they're going
• 57:33
  to lose people on just what's the point?
• 57:36
  They could do another limited range range specialization
• 57:42
  potentially. I think what a lot of people
• 57:44
  are, are thinking is OK, you know, give him like A2 hander.
• 57:46
  That'd be cool. That's fine.
• 57:48
  You know, what you can do with A2 hander is you can reach
• 57:50
  really far. You can, you know, shoe lasers.
• 57:53
  Those are very voidy, right 'cause I, I think like no matter
• 57:58
  what, if we get a new demon Hunters spec, it's gonna be void
• 58:01
  related. It's gonna relate to sort of
• 58:03
  what we've seen in in the Soul Hunters fight and this kind of
• 58:05
  thing. And it's gonna relate to kind of
• 58:08
  that quest line that I'm not gonna get into that I've maybe
• 58:10
  seen data mined, but not actually bled.
• 58:13
  But certainly, I mean, to me, look, if you, if you, if you've
• 58:17
  seen Evoker and you're a designer and you think, well,
• 58:19
  you know what, we kind of have to design around this already.
• 58:22
  We kind of have to make flights work where range has to stand at
• 58:25
  25 yards. So why not just add a couple
• 58:27
  more of those or, you know, see how that goes to me.
• 58:31
  And, and this might get me shot by any shadow briefs that are
• 58:34
  listening to this, but they've been left a lot on the table in
• 58:37
  terms of potential spells and things that shadow could get up
• 58:41
  to. And not like not just sigils,
• 58:42
  but like tentacles erupting from the ground and controlling
• 58:46
  enemies, right? Dungeons and Dragons has a has
• 58:51
  has a spell that erupts tentacles like from you and
• 58:54
  like, go out and like, you know, hit the enemy and this kind of
• 58:56
  thing. And hey, why not, right?
• 58:59
  But to me, you know, yeah, you can make this a range spec that
• 59:01
  stands at like 20 yards and does stuff like that.
• 59:03
  Sure. Why not right play into sigils
• 59:08
  play you would have to play into the existing class absolutely
• 59:11
  You could definitely have some debuff and some CC Look,
• 59:14
  assuming Blizzard doesn't follow my my goal to, you know, put all
• 59:19
  this stuff on support specs, you could just still add some of
• 59:21
  this stuff to this spec to make it interesting right?
• 59:23
  Give it some of these control options, like a mass grip that
• 59:27
  isn't really a mass grip, but like keeps enemies grouped up
• 59:29
  while there aren't like what's the but anyway, it doesn't
• 59:33
  matter. I'm thinking about I'm thinking
• 59:35
  about with like tentacles or something right, right.
• 59:39
  Anyway, so I think that's more likely and I might take you up
• 59:42
  on your one month bet if we don't get a new spec,
• 59:46
  everything's off. But if it's support I think
• 59:49
  you're up and if it's more damage Y can I just get it if
• 59:54
  it's damage or if they do a melee that?
• 59:55
  Works even if it's just not support.
• 59:57
  If it's not support. You're on I'm at risk that you
• 1:00:01
  have inside info, but I'll take it anyway.
• 1:00:02
  We'll see how it goes. Sean's obviously going to pay
• 1:00:06
  more attention to the war and the database to.
• 1:00:09
  Win a month of games. They must pay you peanuts.
• 1:00:15
  That's how you tell when. That's how I know.
• 1:00:17
  Like if I'm watching somebody and they stop talking about
• 1:00:20
  something that they've been very vocal about, I'm like, oh, now
• 1:00:22
  you have an answer. Yeah, realistically though, like
• 1:00:25
  if if they were to lean into support, I I'd really hope that
• 1:00:28
  they've learned some of the lessons that they did from
• 1:00:31
  augmentation. If you're gonna have stuff that
• 1:00:32
  buffs allies, limit the number of allies that it affects or, or
• 1:00:37
  have it buff everybody, like right, Like either buff
• 1:00:39
  everybody at the same time or very like very limited to to who
• 1:00:43
  you're buffing. Having this like hot potato
• 1:00:45
  thing where you're always having to figure out who who's doing
• 1:00:48
  the most damage. Technically, OK, you can play
• 1:00:50
  around that, but realistically you have to really control
• 1:00:55
  throughput. When that's the case, you have
• 1:00:56
  to be very careful because people do different amounts of
• 1:00:59
  damage at different points in the fight.
• 1:01:00
  And you you have to keep it keep it limited in terms of your
• 1:01:04
  overall output because that becomes part of the skill
• 1:01:05
  expression. Like we're seeing with
• 1:01:07
  augmentation, some of the safest support abilities, quote UN
• 1:01:10
  quote, that they put in the game that feels supporty.
• 1:01:12
  Are these things where you put something on an ally and then
• 1:01:16
  when they do damage, they do more damage because of something
• 1:01:18
  that you did, like a proc or something like that?
• 1:01:21
  Paladins have had stuff like this where you you'll put like a
• 1:01:24
  buff on somebody and then every time they hit, they'll do some
• 1:01:26
  light damage as well, right? This is something that they've
• 1:01:29
  done a lot in the past and that's the safest way to add
• 1:01:33
  sort of supportive feeling stuff while making it extremely easy
• 1:01:37
  to to balance. I, you know, I, I don't find
• 1:01:40
  that stuff necessarily as interesting than like giving
• 1:01:42
  people stats at certain times, but it's a Safeway to approach
• 1:01:44
  that. Debuffing enemies so they take
• 1:01:46
  more damage. Great.
• 1:01:48
  You're gonna still suck with Warcraft logs and all this
• 1:01:50
  stuff. It's gonna be a nightmare.
• 1:01:51
  But hey, definitely an option, right?
• 1:01:54
  And, and obviously sigils are very thematic to me.
• 1:01:57
  I'd, I'd hope that they lean into the void stuff a lot as
• 1:01:59
  well, whether it's like mind games and this kind of stuff,
• 1:02:02
  the, you know, psionics, the, you know, the like, you know,
• 1:02:06
  the shadow words is on the shadow side of things and, and,
• 1:02:09
  and, or like these creatures from the void, right, summoning
• 1:02:12
  these things that that's all very cool to me.
• 1:02:15
  But I think again, just the bottom line is, is some of these
• 1:02:17
  lessons that we learned from Ogg and then also just really
• 1:02:20
  playing into the theme. I'd I'd love to see it and I, I
• 1:02:24
  love my Demon Hunter alt. I I don't really play any alt at
• 1:02:26
  like a competitive level compared to my main and again in
• 1:02:28
  season, but Demon Hunter is so much fun.
• 1:02:30
  I love jumping around. I love flying, I love my glades.
• 1:02:32
  I just, you know, it, it, it's, it's a ton of fun.
• 1:02:34
  So give me a spec that that is squarely in my in my arena and,
• 1:02:39
  and it's on Demon Hunter and, and yeah, I'm sold.
• 1:02:41
  I'm playing that day one. So beyond just like the fact
• 1:02:48
  that you're, you're doubting this, this debuff spec or this,
• 1:02:52
  this buff spec, how many, how many support specs do you think
• 1:03:02
  World of Warcraft should have to like actually, it's like
• 1:03:07
  actually let them take the gloves off a bit because I still
• 1:03:10
  think 2 is a little dangerous. So like what would you say the
• 1:03:14
  critical mass is? Well, here's the thing and it
• 1:03:19
  it's it's tough now, but all right, so a little bit more
• 1:03:22
  context on this one. I think they missed the boat on
• 1:03:25
  hero talents by not opening up support support T options for
• 1:03:30
  specs through the hero talents. I think they left a lot on the
• 1:03:33
  table by not giving players some support options by saying, OK,
• 1:03:38
  if I want to be supporty, I can choose this hero talent and if I
• 1:03:40
  want to do direct damage, I can choose that one.
• 1:03:43
  You're seeing Ogg kind of move into this domain where if if you
• 1:03:47
  choose Chronal Warden, you're kind of doing more supporting
• 1:03:50
  stuff and if you choose scale commander, you're doing more
• 1:03:52
  self damage stuff. It the class is still the class,
• 1:03:55
  the spec is still the spec, but there's a little choice there.
• 1:03:58
  I would have really liked to see them play with that more.
• 1:04:01
  But unfortunately what really happened in my mind was they put
• 1:04:04
  forward a couple of designs. One of them was the Oracle disc
• 1:04:08
  priest or Oracle priest, I guess, but whatever.
• 1:04:12
  And one of them was the, the, the light, light spawn paladin
• 1:04:16
  or something like that. And to me, those were just poor
• 1:04:21
  implementations of a really good idea.
• 1:04:25
  And I think they got the wrong idea from people.
• 1:04:27
  A lot of the feedback for that Oracle priest design was this is
• 1:04:32
  really bad. It replaces my Pi.
• 1:04:35
  It's literally a damage loss. This is not good.
• 1:04:40
  We hate it, but what they took from that was, oh, gotcha, you
• 1:04:45
  don't want supporty stuff in your hero talent.
• 1:04:48
  We'll take that away. Paladin had a similar thing
• 1:04:50
  where they had this thing where you can drop it like the light
• 1:04:53
  well version of like a weapon, right, Where you have to click
• 1:04:55
  on it and then you get an empowered weapon that you swing
• 1:04:57
  at people. And you know that that would be
• 1:04:59
  very supporty 'cause I'm a DPSI. See my paladin put that thing on
• 1:05:02
  the ground. I need to click on it, right?
• 1:05:04
  No one wants to do that is the problem, right?
• 1:05:06
  You're dealing with a fight, you're moving around, you're
• 1:05:08
  dealing with mechanics. And then the holy, like the holy
• 1:05:10
  paladin puts a thing on the ground.
• 1:05:11
  You're like, I'm not gonna go click that.
• 1:05:13
  What the hell are you talking about?
• 1:05:14
  I'm standing over here like, right, just another again, like
• 1:05:18
  poor implementation. But what if you just picked
• 1:05:20
  somebody and said like, Oh yeah, they're the like holy hammer
• 1:05:23
  wielder and, you know, suddenly it just spawns in their hands
• 1:05:26
  and now they're like doing more, right?
• 1:05:28
  That would've been cool. Why the hell not?
• 1:05:29
  So to me, it was really just they they kind of failed on the
• 1:05:32
  implementation and and that's that's where I think it fell
• 1:05:35
  short. So again, King for day, bring in
• 1:05:39
  a new spec or two that are fully support oriented and then maybe
• 1:05:43
  have a couple classes where the hero talents, if they're gonna
• 1:05:45
  keep that system going, those lean into supporting elements
• 1:05:49
  where, you know, again, maybe you have one or two nodes that
• 1:05:52
  directly buff other people's damage with a similar output to
• 1:05:56
  Pi, let's say, not the same effect, but gives a similar
• 1:05:59
  amount of contribution. Let's say, where you know, you
• 1:06:03
  can tilt in that flavor because right now, again, Aug aug's not
• 1:06:07
  bringing extra utility. But if we want to open the doors
• 1:06:10
  for that, if we want to give people more of a taste of
• 1:06:14
  support play style and sort of again, still dealing damage, but
• 1:06:18
  dealing damage in a special way where you're doing it sort of
• 1:06:21
  through your allies. That's, that's how I would
• 1:06:24
  really lean into it a little bit more right now.
• 1:06:25
  Realistically, if we ignore raid buffs, cause those are super
• 1:06:31
  passive and boring and stuff like Bloodlust, let's say that,
• 1:06:36
  you know, a whole bunch of people have realistically we
• 1:06:39
  have Aug, we have Pi and then like blessing of seasons or
• 1:06:44
  something. Like I don't know if you can
• 1:06:46
  think of any other maybe totems sometimes every once in a while,
• 1:06:49
  right? I mean, they started stripping
• 1:06:51
  those wags. But yeah, so like this stuff is
• 1:06:56
  very pervasive in the history of Wow.
• 1:06:59
  It's just like, again, it's just kind of a missed opportunity to
• 1:07:02
  me. I think like absolutely you
• 1:07:04
  could. You can't add 10 new specs to
• 1:07:08
  the game immediately. That's crazy, right?
• 1:07:10
  It's a ton of work. And frankly, I think the team is
• 1:07:13
  already stretched very thin with the current selection of specs
• 1:07:17
  and hero talents and talent trees that they have to manage.
• 1:07:19
  In fact, I like frankly, obviously think it's way too
• 1:07:22
  much. So when we're talking about
• 1:07:24
  adding one new spec here and there, I think they're already
• 1:07:27
  biting off more than they can chew.
• 1:07:28
  But let's say you know that, let's say that's realistic.
• 1:07:30
  Fine, you're gonna have to ease into it.
• 1:07:32
  It's gonna be one or two specs or even just, you know, maybe a
• 1:07:34
  new class in the expansion, you know, knock on wood, right?
• 1:07:38
  That would be cool, but you're you're not gonna get to more
• 1:07:42
  than like 2-3, maybe 4 support E specs that are brand new.
• 1:07:46
  You could start hammering some of the existing ones, but people
• 1:07:48
  hate that people are pretty married to their.
• 1:07:51
  Like, if if you've settled into a spec at this point, it's
• 1:07:54
  because you really like, you probably really enjoy that spec.
• 1:07:57
  It it speaks to you the way that it deals damage is interesting
• 1:08:00
  to you. The aesthetic motivates you.
• 1:08:02
  I mean, there are like die hard survival hunters that have been
• 1:08:04
  playing that thing for ages and and just, you know, like nothing
• 1:08:07
  will shake them, right. And if you were to go, yeah, now
• 1:08:09
  survival is a support spec that, you know, traps enemies and
• 1:08:13
  keeps them locked down and like, I don't know, you know, like it
• 1:08:17
  empowers other people's attacks by like marking their weak
• 1:08:20
  points or something, right. It's like, yeah, I mean that
• 1:08:23
  it's on theme, but it's not the same flavor as sort of this, you
• 1:08:27
  know, melee savage guy with a pet that's doing some crazy
• 1:08:30
  stuff, right. So that that's that's to me,
• 1:08:34
  like again, I just missed opportunity around.
• 1:08:35
  I think the hero talents, I think they could still go in
• 1:08:37
  that direction if they want to. So revamp some of the less
• 1:08:39
  popular ones, add more support elements there.
• 1:08:43
  Maybe we got a new Demon Hunter spec that leans in that
• 1:08:44
  direction. Maybe we got a new class in
• 1:08:46
  midnight that does some new some cool stuff too.
• 1:08:48
  And then we have 3 or 4 and some hero talent options as well.
• 1:08:50
  And suddenly now we're not afraid to play with support.
• 1:08:55
  I'm very pessimistic on this. Every time I've seen an
• 1:08:57
  interview recently, they've been like, I don't know, people don't
• 1:08:59
  like support. We'll see.
• 1:09:01
  I think people like support. It's just we're, we're getting
• 1:09:05
  the wrong, we're, we're getting the wrong message across.
• 1:09:07
  And I want to set the record straight.
• 1:09:10
  You need to be careful with how you implement these specs, but
• 1:09:13
  they are wildly popular with a big segment of your player base.
• 1:09:17
  And frankly, those those players, as long as the spec is
• 1:09:21
  reasonably performant and they don't feel like they're letting
• 1:09:24
  their group down by playing the spec, it's fine.
• 1:09:26
  It doesn't have to be top tier. It's just you're you're doing a
• 1:09:30
  disservice when Ogg has a super wide skill cap in raid and
• 1:09:34
  someone who we're talking about the most like selfless players.
• 1:09:38
  At the end of the day, the ones that are going what what I enjoy
• 1:09:42
  is making other people do more damage and play better and do
• 1:09:45
  all this stuff. And if you ever give them the
• 1:09:47
  feeling that they're not contributing or that they're
• 1:09:51
  letting the group down by playing a spec that that kills
• 1:09:55
  it immediately. And and that's, that's just
• 1:09:58
  super sad. Yeah, that's that's a great
• 1:10:02
  that's a great bow on that. Is that these people, they their
• 1:10:06
  joy is derived from lifting others up and the community is
• 1:10:12
  just like, I want to do my own damage.
• 1:10:14
  If I have an Ogg, how do I know what my damage is?
• 1:10:17
  It's not fair. I couldn't parse because he had
• 1:10:19
  an Ogg and I didn't. It's.
• 1:10:21
  It's. Why do they want to lift these
• 1:10:23
  games? It's.
• 1:10:23
  Really funny because I back in the day when I first picked up
• 1:10:26
  the game, I I was attracted to healing priests because I was
• 1:10:31
  like, wow, there's you know, OK, there's, there's two healing
• 1:10:33
  specs. That's very cool.
• 1:10:34
  You know, I have some options here.
• 1:10:36
  I'm really into this like, you know, like holy light healer,
• 1:10:40
  but like the cloth robe aesthetic, this kind of thing.
• 1:10:43
  And just like when when I first got to it in in like BC, you
• 1:10:48
  know, I was like, all right, this is just a very cool spec
• 1:10:50
  where I can jump in in raid with my Guild and that I just joined
• 1:10:53
  and be useful, right. And then when when RAF came
• 1:10:57
  along, disc was very good. We had these like huge bubbles,
• 1:11:00
  this kind of thing. I'm like, heck yeah, this is
• 1:11:01
  unique and interesting and awesome.
• 1:11:02
  Like, you know, where I'm shielding allies, they are safe
• 1:11:05
  before they take damage. Great.
• 1:11:07
  And then I took some time off the game and I came back in
• 1:11:09
  Legion because we got this cool knife and I was like, that
• 1:11:14
  sounds cool. I was never DPS Mane before
• 1:11:16
  that. I was just like, this spec
• 1:11:18
  really speaks to me. So I'm gonna figure out how to
• 1:11:20
  do damage. I'm gonna learn to like it and
• 1:11:22
  I, I learned to like it. Surrender to Madness is freaking
• 1:11:24
  cool. That spec is still the coolest
• 1:11:25
  thing like ever as far as I'm concerned, but just sort of
• 1:11:29
  reading out that journey to you. I'm I'm attracted to support
• 1:11:31
  specs in games. I think I think it's really,
• 1:11:33
  really cool. I think you can absolutely get
• 1:11:36
  have a lot of fun by dealing as much damage personally as you
• 1:11:39
  possibly can, But there's also something to be said about I
• 1:11:41
  need the situational awareness to know where my team is, what
• 1:11:44
  they're doing. If I think to like lost Ark, for
• 1:11:48
  example, the lost ark support role is it's a little bit of a
• 1:11:51
  healer, but you also deal damage and you also you have a lot of
• 1:11:55
  this like bonus utility that other classes don't, where I can
• 1:11:59
  put like, you know, a Windrush totem basically on the ground
• 1:12:04
  that makes people fast or put down a gateway for people to
• 1:12:07
  move that that in that game. That's pretty much all on the
• 1:12:10
  support class and you can absolutely clear content without
• 1:12:14
  a support. But if you want those extra
• 1:12:16
  heals, if you want, right, the movement tech, this kind of
• 1:12:19
  stuff, you bring a support, right.
• 1:12:20
  So to me that's extremely cool. You know, anyway, it, it really
• 1:12:25
  just it's, it's that flavor that that augmentation really opened
• 1:12:29
  the door for where no other spec in the game at this point in
• 1:12:32
  time feels like that. And the fact that they're kind
• 1:12:36
  of eroding at that feel that part of the spec over time is,
• 1:12:41
  is just really the like it, it, it, it's, it's, it's tricky and,
• 1:12:45
  and really where I hope gets a little more attention,
• 1:12:47
  especially as we go into midnight.
• 1:12:50
  Kind of want to ask the audience if you were one of those resto
• 1:12:55
  shamans that love being the mana battery with your mana tie
• 1:12:57
  totem, If you were one of those paladins that love to do the
• 1:13:02
  seal twisting, I think the support people, they've been out
• 1:13:06
  there. But of course there's those
• 1:13:07
  people who like didn't like totem twisting that like didn't
• 1:13:11
  like having to like give up their thing or be like the guy
• 1:13:14
  who would take the the damage and sack and and dying to get
• 1:13:18
  resurrected. Where have you guys been before?
• 1:13:23
  And I don't want to say after Ogg Ogg still around before Ogg,
• 1:13:26
  right where where's where's your home being?
• 1:13:29
  And would you want those things to be around?
• 1:13:31
  Because I think the game has had moments where classes have been
• 1:13:37
  supportive, had really had something that like added to
• 1:13:39
  everybody, everybody else. And Blizzard has cut those down.
• 1:13:43
  Like I, I definitely remember being the resto shaman where I
• 1:13:47
  was stacking spirit for my mana tide because that helped a lot.
• 1:13:52
  And I'd love to know what where people have found their support,
• 1:13:55
  if they'd like to see that again outside of Ogg, or if they're
• 1:13:58
  happy with just like getting that Ogg going again.
• 1:14:03
  What can they tell us, Manny? Where can they give us their
• 1:14:05
  answer? Well, you can definitely join
• 1:14:07
  the discord at bit dot LY slash fast Discord and give your two
• 1:14:12
  cents there. And you can always reach out to
• 1:14:15
  us all on socials. So when people want to find you
• 1:14:18
  on socials, where can they do that?
• 1:14:21
  Jericho, let us know. Yeah, realistically, if you join
• 1:14:25
  that fast Discord, I think I'm a member in there.
• 1:14:27
  So if you go into the top right and just search JEREICO, you'll
• 1:14:31
  probably find me and the purple coffee cup.
• 1:14:33
  That's that's me. Got a website, jericho.com,
• 1:14:38
  which has links to all my stuff. Twitter name's different, so
• 1:14:42
  probably not the easiest to go there is, although I'm sure if
• 1:14:44
  you search Jericho something will come up.
• 1:14:47
  And also again writing for Augmentation of Ochre on
• 1:14:50
  Wowhead, so there will be all sorts of links on there as well.
• 1:14:54
  OK. And Sean, when you are not
• 1:14:57
  waxing with all of the the what it could be theory crafting or
• 1:15:04
  when you're not telling us the analysis at the at the desk,
• 1:15:08
  where can people find you? Right here or also in that same
• 1:15:13
  discord. And other than that, it's
• 1:15:15
  cartridge Bros everywhere. So Twitch, YouTube, Twitter, I
• 1:15:21
  think Blue Sky is a different name but don't follow me there
• 1:15:23
  because nobody logs into Blue Sky.
• 1:15:26
  Excuse. Me.
• 1:15:26
  That's where I'm constantly at. It's just for shame, Sir.
• 1:15:31
  I enjoy my blue sky. I enjoy my nice little liberal
• 1:15:34
  bubble anyway. I'm on there as well.
• 1:15:37
  I might forget to. I was going to say tweet.
• 1:15:39
  What? What do we call it on that one?
• 1:15:42
  I was. On Blue Sky they call it crying
• 1:15:45
  because nobody reads them. Man I'm teasing, I'm teasing
• 1:15:51
  blue sky fans. I was in before it was an open
• 1:15:54
  invite. I'm a blue sky OG still.
• 1:15:59
  Still a sad place. And of course, Lex is not here,
• 1:16:04
  but you can find her at Lex under score rants on socials
• 1:16:07
  including Blue Sky. She's another person who's
• 1:16:10
  actually on Blue Sky. And we'd like to thank everybody
• 1:16:14
  who supports the show, including one of our latest patrons.
• 1:16:17
  Thank you, Elliott Beagles. We will get Sean to give you a
• 1:16:21
  story next time, but we are running short on time today.
• 1:16:24
  So until next time, may all your hits be grits.