World of Warcraft’s new patch adds a new way to play the game

World of Warcraft : DragonflightThe Bronze Dragonflight expansion has received a lot of positive feedback. Now, with the Fractures in Time Update we delve deeper into the mystery of this ancient race. They have found that the Dragon Isles have had problems brewing for 10,000 years. The Fractures in Time patch unrolls a nefarious new plot from the Infinite Dragonflight, but players will have new tools to fight back — including a new and unprecedented player specialization.

Long-term World of WarcraftPlayers are aware that the Holy Trinity comprises of three archetypes: tank, healer and damage. Certain classes are able to switch between archetypes. For example, a priest can change from Holy (healing), to Shadow (damage). Now there’s a new contender to shake up the class dynamics: the Dracthyr Evoker’s Augmentation specialization. Evokers launched with two specializations – the Devastation damage spece and Preservation healing. Fractures in Time introduces this new third spec, and it’s designed around helping your allies hit harder and kill faster. It’s World of Warcraft’s first dedicated support spec.

“One of the big themes for the class is, you have five dragonflights of magic, and you want to use them all. For Devastation and Preservation, we focused on Red, Blue, and Green,” says senior game designer Graham Berger in a call with Polygon. “We’ve seen a lot of corrupted Black dragons, but not the original form that Neltharion used before he became Deathwing. We discussed what Black dragon magic could be used for and the team was eager to get started. We also wanted to explore the Bronze, there’s a lot to play with in time magic.”

Image: Blizzard Entertainment

The abilities an Augmentation Evoker has aren’t completely unprecedented; some healing classes, like Shaman or Paladin, have played supportive roles in past iterations of World of Warcraft. Bloodlust, for example, can make the difference in whether you defeat a boss and return to your spirit healer or not. But the Augmentation Evoker takes those high moments of support and integrates them into the class’s moment-to-moment kit.

“It’s for an audience that isn’t especially served by any of our existing specializations,” says Berger. “We had a lot of questions to answer about it. How can you maintain balance with so many styles of play? World of WarcraftHow can we manage so many groups of different sizes? How do you give players feedback on what they’re doing well and what impact they’re having, when so much of their value comes from what they bring to other players?”

Thus, the Augmentation specialization arrives a little later in the expansion than its two predecessors — it’s simply a more complicated beast. This version of the Augmentation Evoker took a lot of time to create. It can solo leveling and fights, but it is still able to hold its own. “We made Augmentation able to solo by making them pretty tanky and survivable. You can apply skills to yourself to give yourself more armor, you have defensive capabilities, and you can still deal damage,” says Berger. But with more than half the class’s abilities centered around empowering teammates, you’ll always be more powerful with a few friends.

Image: Blizzard Entertainment

What is the role of a Support Class in the Tank-Healer-DPS System? As damage dealers, Augmentation evokers queue. “We’ve done a lot of work on how their abilities interact and how many people you’re buffing, to look at the numerical values to make them equivalent to other DPS,” says Berger. “We didn’t want to break that trinity, because it would really disrupt the game — like, do dungeons need to be six players, now? So it was like, OK, how do we fit them into the existing paradigm and still play differently?”

The Augmentation Evokers, then, are multipliers of force. In a game so heavily based on teamwork, it’ll be fascinating to see how the new play style lands. Will guilds pick this new play style up for the Race to World First in the game’s raids? Support will it ever take off and are there any classes that have a different take on this concept in the future? There are new ways of playing after nearly 20 years. World of Warcraft. The Dracthyr Evoker is one of the most experimental classes we’ve seen yet, and the Fractures in Time update takes that even further.

The Fractures in Time patch will go live on the 11th of July. This patch will include a brand new Megadungeon called Dawn of the Infinite as well as Time Rifts in the Dragon Isles and quests related to the Bronze Dragonflight, including the tragic end of Nozdormu, their Aspect.