Review of Scalecommander Hero Talents: An Augmentation Evoker's Perspective

This past week, Blizzard revealed 8 new Hero Talent Trees in a sneak peek at the new system coming with The War Within expansion. Our Augmentation Evoker guide writer, Jereico, offers an early review of the Scalecommander Evoker Hero Talents for Augmentation where players harness the powers of the black dragonflight to become commanders of the earth and sky. While Scalecommander comes with a strong fantasy, there are some concerns that perhaps the value of this tree might be more valuable for Devastation.

The War Within Hero Talents Overview

Blizzard has revealed an early preview of Hero Talents coming in the next expansion, The War Within. Our Guide Writers have provided initial first impressions on the Hero Talent Trees revealed so far. Check out all of our released editorials below.

• San'layn Death Knight

• Blood
• Unholy

• Keeper of the Grove Druid

• Balance
• Restoration

• Elune's Chosen Druid

• Coming Soon

• Wildstalker Druid

• Coming Soon

• Chronowarden Evoker

• Augmentation
• Preservation

• Scalecommander Evoker

• Coming Soon

• Dark Ranger Hunter

• Beast Mastery
• Marksmanship

• Frostfire Mage

• Fire Mage
• Frost Mage

• Herald of the Sun Paladin

• Retribution
• Lightsmith Paladin
• Holy
• Protection

• Templar Paladin

• Coming Soon

• Oracle Priest

• Discipline & Holy

• Trickster Rogue

• Coming Soon

• Diabolist Warlock

• Coming Soon

• Colossus Warrior

• Coming Soon

• Mountain Thane Warrior

• Fury
• Protection

Scalecommander Augmentation Evoker Review

As the upcoming The War Within expansion marches ever closer, Blizzard continues to tease us with Hero Talent tree previews, having now shown 16 of the total planned 39 trees. This past week’s latest reveal included one of the trees that I have been particularly eager to dive into: the Scalecommander Hero Talent tree for Augmentation and Devastation Evoker.

"This place... I have not been here for a long time. Not since before I was a Scalecommander. It is a dark place, full of pain... and failure. This was where Neltharion tested those he considered most worthy of his attention. He poked and prodded us with powers we could not understand or control. Many of us were found... wanting." - Scalecommander Emberthal, A Creche Divided

First introduced alongside the Dracthyr storyline in Dragonflight, Scalecommanders canonically comprise of Neltharion’s highest ranked lieutenants, hand-picked from amongst the elite Dracthyr soldiers and made to undergo deadly trials before being deemed worthy to lead.

Scalecommander is the second of two Hero Talent tree choices for Augmentation Evoker alongside Chronowarden, and evokes the image of a hardened military officer leading their forces into battle through command of the skies and overwhelming strength. If the Chronowarden Evoker is a master of Bronze time magic, then the Scalecommander Evoker deals in the very essence of Neltharion himself; the earthen magic of the Black Dragonflight.

Talent Breakdown

• Mass Eruption

Not unlike Chrono Flame for Chronowarden, Mass Eruption as a keystone talent for Augmentation is perhaps not among the most visually interesting or gameplay-changing of all of the Hero Talents revealed to date. While this node unlocks additional cleave potential for Devastation in the form of Mass Disintegrate, Eruption already has a built-in mechanism for splitting and scaling damage across nearby targets with Ricocheting Pyroclast. Adding an additional layer of single target scaling does not so much change the feel of the spell as it does amplify its existing behavior.

From a damage standpoint, this node certainly represents a substantial increase to Augmentation’s personal damage output. More importantly, assuming that Mass Eruption behaves like Overlord and casts Eruption multiple times, we are looking at up to 4-6 seconds of additional Ebon Might uptime per Ebon Might window in AoE, as well as a further reduction in Upheaval’s expected cooldown time through Accretion. If Overlord is somehow allowed to interact with Mass Eruption on top of that... things could certainly get pretty spicy.

Mass Eruption represents a modest damage increase in a typical single target raid encounter, but seems to have outsized potential when it comes to prolonged AoE or Mythic+ engagements through its target scaling. I am personally looking forward to testing the various interactions with this talent in an upcoming preview build of The War Within.

• Might of the Black Dragonflight

Might of the Black Dragonflight is a small increase in personal damage for Augmentation, buffing Eruption, Upheaval, and Blistering Scales by 10%. Not much else to say about this one; it’s about as straightforward as they come.

• Melt Armor

Melt Armor is another modest increase to throughput for Augmentation in this tree, providing a boost to personal damage during your Breath of Eons window. It should be noted that this buff is limited to Bombardments and Eruption, and does not include damage from Empower spells or other damage sources.

In terms of actual value, this is one of many nodes in this tree which is heavily dependent on the effective cooldown of Breath of Eons, which is something I will cover later when discussing Wingleader.

Choose one: Hardened Scales or Menacing Presence

For our first choice node, Hardened Scales emerges as the likely default pick for most PvE content (especially raid encounters and bosses), representing a modest additional 7.2% damage reduction from all sources while Obsidian Scales is active.

Outside of its potential usage in PvP, however, what is particularly interesting about Menacing Presence for Augmentation is the spec’s access to Upheaval as a rotational knock ability. Coupled with the rather generous 8-second duration of reduced damage taken, this means that an Augmentation Evoker using Menacing Presence will frequently take less damage on average from trash mobs in a Mythic+ setting. Just keep in mind that this isn’t likely to replace careful and deliberate usage of real defensive abilities.

• Bombardments

At the very center of the Scalecommander tree is Bombardments, a group-oriented damage talent reminiscent of Inferno's Blessing which causes you and your allies to deal additional damage to targets marked by your Mass Eruption casts. From a flavor standpoint Bombardments checks all the boxes for the Scalecommander Evoker as a battlefield leader marking targets for destruction.

When it comes to Augmentation gameplay, there is one major point to highlight around this mechanic that relates to feedback that I provided previously for the Chronowarden Hero Talent tree.

Augmentation Evoker is only able to reach its highest damage potential when it is allowed to carefully time and stack its buffs with allies’ damage windows. The typical rotation encourages you to cast both Empower spells together without exception in order to maximize the value of Shifting Sands on allies. Spreading out Empower casts for Bombardments buff uptime is simply not practical under Augmentation’s current playstyle and spell priority. This means that for Bombardments to be effective for Augmentation, the 10-second base duration will have to be made to stack in some way in order to permit proper timing of Shifting Sands.

In terms of both damage output and interactions with other talents in this tree, the value of Bombardments for Augmentation unquestionably depends on the effect’s internal cooldown (ICD), or how frequently this ability is allowed to trigger. While this is certainly an aspect of the talent that can be easily tuned, it will be interesting to see what the first iteration of this ability looks like once it’s available for playtesting.

• Wingleader

Cooldown reduction for major damaging abilities as a design space has always been a bit hit or miss throughout the history of World of Warcraft. Generally speaking its reception depends heavily on a number of factors, such as a spec’s propensity to stack different cooldowns, the magnitude of cooldown reduction, the power of external effects like trinkets and Power Infusion, and the design of raid or boss encounters.

This most recent raid tier, Subtlety Rogues for example were able to exploit non-standard cooldown timings though Invigorating Dust in order to have burst damage available for each of Smolderon’s vulnerability windows–a feat that is not achievable by most DPS specs which typically rely on rigid two-minute or even three-minute cooldown timings.

When it comes to Augmentation Evoker, Breath of Eons is a major damaging ability on a two-minute cooldown. It is also somewhat unique in the sense that using it optimally involves carefully lining it up with burst windows from up to four other players, each with their own separate considerations around cooldown timings and effect stacking. In practice, given that most DPS specs in the game have major abilities on a two-minute cooldown, there isn’t much inherent value in additional cooldown reduction beyond the token amount provided by Interwoven Threads. All it stands to accomplish is desync Breath of Eons from your allies’ major two-minute abilities, which would absolutely be a damage loss.

In practice, the only way for me to be excited about Wingleader for Augmentation is if Bombardments procs a lot… and I mean a lot. Suppose with Interwoven Threads talented that we are able to make Wingleader activate at least 48 times per minute, or 12 times per Mass Eruption cast. Without relying on further effects like Motes of Possibility, this is what it would take to bring Breath of Eons down to a one-minute cycle and allow an extra cast without desyncing with two-minute cooldowns.

With the additional target scaling on Wingleader, the cooldown reduction appears to be especially potent in a Mythic+ setting, and could potentially allow a Breath of Eons on nearly every pack. This could certainly be quite interesting, especially in higher level keys where the enemies are more likely to actually survive the duration of the spell. Practically speaking, the target scaling here is likely not a critical aspect of this talent's design, and could probably be removed in favour of a more generous base effect in order to make a one-minute Breath of Eons a more realistic prospect.

Choose one: Extended Battle or Diverted Power

This choice node is actually fairly interesting for Augmentation, and will eventually come down to the tuning of the various effects in this tree. Given that Augmentation generally cannot cast its Empower spells as frequently as Devastation, Extended Battle is actually an important talent to consider for Augmentation if additional uptime on Bombardments is considered valuable, either for its direct damage or to achieve specific timings with Wingleader.

On the flip side, additional Essence Burst from Diverted Power can support even greater Ebon Might uptime, and of course help maintain stacks of Momentum Shift for more consistent throughput.

A quick point of note is that neither of these choices explicitly reference Eruption, meaning that both of these talents can potentially be used with Emerald Blossom as an Essence spender through Dream of Spring. This is not currently a particularly popular talent choice for Augmentation, but access to additional Essence Burst for example certainly serves to improve the resource economy for such a build to thrive.

In the end, both of these talent choices represent real throughput gains in all content and again will simply come down to the final numbers in order to determine where the most value lies.

• Onslaught

Onslaught is not the most remarkable talent in this tree when it comes to prolonged engagements like raid and boss encounters. Nonetheless it still represents an enjoyable quality of life addition particularly for Augmentation which does not normally have access to Burnout.

In other forms of content however, the value of this effect should be more pronounced. In Mythic+ this will interact frequently with Leaping Flames to provide quick instant-cast burst, and on-demand access to Burnout will certainly be felt when playing either spec in Open World content.

• Unrelenting Siege

On the flip side, Unrelenting Siege has the opposite flavor, being most relevant in raids and boss fights. Generally speaking, effects that are execute-themed or which increase in power over time are quite valuable for progression raid content. This effect does only affect filler spells, but this can still represent up to a couple percentage points of throughput over a typical raid encounter.

One hopes that this buff does not immediately drop when combat ends or else players may feel pressured to deliberately roll combat in a Mythic+ setting (not that this would be especially worthwhile in this case). Damage profiles which rely on chain-pulling and maintaining combat can often lead to frustrating moments and unintended friction within a Mythic+ group, and frankly intentionally avoiding dropping combat plays directly at odds with Onslaught.

Choose one: Nimble Flyer or Tailwinds

The last choice node in the Scalecommander tree also offers a bit of an interesting decision to make. It should be noted that of the three Evoker specializations, Augmentation has the highest natural uptime on Hover before considering Hero Talents. Nimble Flyer is likely to be a top pick for Augmentation in all content given that the spec already enjoys solid uptime on Hover, and an additional 10% reduction in incoming area damage is nothing to scoff at.

When it comes to Tailwinds for Augmentation, we have to return to the overarching question of “How often are we pressing Breath of Eons?” in order to truly gauge its value. One additional cast of Hover every two minutes is probably not enough to overtake Nimble Flyer for Augmentation, but on a significantly lower cooldown this could surely emerge as a competitive alternative.

• Maneuverability

For a capstone talent, Maneuverability is quite high in fantasy value, delivering on the battlefield master archetype by changing the behavior of each spec's major breath cooldown. While the damage component of this effect simply comes down to tuning, the gameplay implications with this talent have immense potential.

This is frankly the one talent in this tree that I am most excited to playtest as soon as possible. The fact of the matter is, Breath of Eons (along with Deep Breath for Devastation) is such a polarizing ability. It is visually exciting with a ton of weight behind the action of flying over the battlefield, and yet it also manages to be a source of endless frustration in practical gameplay. In order to maximize damage you are encouraged to minimize the opportunity cost of casting more damaging spells by spending as little time as possible in the air. In certain situations, battling with the cast reticle to find the minimum distance or correct angle of attack without getting killed by mechanics can be next to impossible, and often results in hilarious but ultimately unsatisfying deaths.

At the end of the day if I'm going to be sold on the fantasy of casting my breath ability more frequently as a cornerstone of my rotation (particularly in the case of Devastation where Deep Breath is not currently a part of the core rotation), this talent is going to have to seriously deliver on the implied promise of making these abilities more fun and less frustrating to use. Whether this talent will actually make a meaningful difference in how Breath of Eons feels to cast simply remains to be seen, but I must say that I’m looking forward to seeing it in action.

Overall Impressions

In terms of first impressions, Scalecommander represents a solid entry into the pool of Hero Talent trees, and is perhaps one of the most successful trees shown to date in terms of vision and execution. As a fan of both Devastation and Augmentation, I am left feeling overall that Devastation has a bit more to gain from the Scalecommander Hero Talent tree, between more frequent access to its Breath ability, lower cooldowns on its Empower abilities, and the sheer power of Mass Disintegrate. That certainly doesn’t mean that the Scalecommander tree is not a strong option for Augmentation Evokers, as the tree feels competent as it stands and certainly has the potential to be competitive with Chronowarden.

When it comes to Augmentation, my biggest outstanding question for this tree is how much cooldown reduction we can reasonably obtain on Breath of Eons. Augmentation does not have the freedom to cast Breath of Eons without lining it up with both other Augmentation buffs as well as allies’ damage cooldowns, and as such only certain specific breakpoints can be considered to be game changers in terms of affecting gameplay.

Acknowledging the sheer number of Bombardments procs needed, a one-minute effective cooldown for Breath of Eons in single target is the most optimistic outcome and would be a pure benefit over current gameplay, allowing extra casts without affecting the two-minute cooldown cycle. Alternatively, a 1:30 cooldown could be considered more realistic, but is significantly more niche in value, and would only be truly valuable in very specific encounters or situations, like the Smolderon encounter.

At the end of the day, the one thing that particularly resonates with me when it comes to both the Scalecommander and Chronowarden trees for Augmentation is that both trees are entirely compatible with the highly necessary changes that we have been discussing as a community in order to improve the overall gameplay feel of Augmentation in a raid setting. Both trees focus on flavor first and strive to enhance both the feel and effectiveness of certain core elements of the spec. Neither tree dives deep into Ebon Might interactions or directly assumes the usage of Prescience for buff selection, leaving some of these troublesome baseline aspects of the spec open for revisiting in the coming expansion.

When the Chronowarden tree was first revealed, it certainly seemed like it would be hard to compete with talent offerings like Warp in terms of both sheer fantasy and gameplay feel. While there’s still quite a bit to uncover through testing, I think it’s fair to say that Augmentation Evokers have two solid offerings available to choose from between the Chronowarden and Scalecommander Hero Talent trees, with both options containing interesting mechanics and visuals suitable for all varieties of PvE content.

It still remains to be seen exactly how Augmentation Evoker will play in The War Within and whether we will see any major changes to its design, but you had better believe that I am thoroughly excited to check out both of the revealed Hero Talent trees as soon as playtesting for the upcoming expansion becomes available.

Make sure you prepare your Evoker before the War Within addon starts.