This WoW spec’s popularity proves Dragonflight has a major balancing problem

World of Warcraft Dragonflight’s balance was nearly perfect until Patch 10.1.5, a patch that introduced Augmentation Evokers and broke the game once and for all. Now, Augmentation Evoker’s popularity is through the roof and this is slowly ruining the game.

According to the latest stats depicting raid spec popularity and average overall DPS from Sept. 14, Augmentation Evoker is undoubtedly the single best spec in the game. This is far from being a shocking fact, but the introduction of Augmentation Evoker had quite large consequences on the health of both raids and Mythic+ dungeons.

Ever since it joined the Alliance’s and the Horde’s forces, Augmentation Evokers have become a mandatory spec because it does what no other spec in the game can do—buff themselves and allies. In other words, Augmentation Evokers are irreplaceable, and precisely because of that, they will always have a spot in both Mythic+ dungeons and raids. 

Normally, no spec has a guaranteed Mythic+ or raid slot reserved. The team comps change from patch to patch, and sometimes even from hotfix to hotfix, as Blizzard aggressively balances the game at the beginning of the season. Because Augmentation Evoker is such an invaluable addition to the team and every group needs one, other specs are losing their slots, making the game far from being the balanced paradise players originally believed Dragonflight was.

Essentially, Augmentation Evoker changed how team comps work, meaning you always need to have one support spec at hand. But since this is the only spec in the game that can empower allies, it will always be broken because there’s no class in the game that can contest that.

The next step in balancing this game should be committing to the support spec role and making a number of different support specs that can contest the sheer value of Augmentation Evokers. This would diminish the value of Augmentation Evokers and open up team comps in a new way.