Below is the list of things I’d like to see keeping in mind that the intentions are to fix some of the issues with the spec while keeping the core feeling the same. I’m not going to be suggesting any major overhauls to how the spec functions/plays.
Spec/Gameplay:
Make disintegrate and living flame always castable while moving. Originally I was on the fence about this and had suggested just making disintegrate castable while moving both while under the effects of hover AND when consuming an essence burst proc, but I’ve changed my mind about it. When you think about it, pyre is castable while moving so there really is no reason this should not also apply to disintegrate (our other spender). We are advertised as having “superior mobility” but this really only holds true for aoe or when we have hover available. Rather than asking for hover’s CD to be reduced, let’s just commit fully to the idea of casting while moving. When you compare us to hunters, both MM and BM are more mobile than we are unless it’s pure AOE (when we aren’t using disintigrate) or when we have hover up. I think the only plant-to-cast spells we should have are fire breath and essence burst. Another thing that makes the lack of mobility feel bad is how our essence consumption works. This specifically applies to disintigrate for me. There are a ton of mechanics that impact range players this tier, and starting a cast of disintegrate thinking you’re safe only to have a random swirly pop under you immediately forcing you to move/cast cancel and costing you 3 essence feels horrible. I’d rather the movement just be baseline than having a refund type mechanic built in (something else I’ve also suggested in the past but have changed my mind on).
To go with the above changes, make burnout baseline and replace burnout with a survivability based ability. Make it trigger off essence burst consumptions and grant an absorb shield to the evoker based on a % of the damage dealt by pyre and disintigrate respectively. This would help address our lacking survivability and the shield could be capped at 10-15% of our total HP or something along those lines since we do get procs fairly often and guarantee procs during dragonrage. Our big issue with our survivability is all of our mitigation outside of obsidian scales is reactive healing. We need more DRs. I get that twin guardian can be used to gimmick this with an absorb shield but I’d rather have this option. Heck, you could even make this talent a choice node with twin guardian so you’re not able to have both.
Change hover to be a fel rush dash type of an ability. This was not my suggestion but something suggested by someone else recently on the forums. I think would fit well with the aforementioned changes above and I’ll fully here for it.
Increase the dragonrage extension of Animosity from 6 seconds to either 7 or 8 seconds. Since Empower abilities require plant casting, even getting targeted by a single mechanic can sometimes mean you do or don’t get an extension. While tip the scales helps, the dragonrage window is already extremely tight and could benefit from being SLIGHTLY more forgiving imo.
Give us an execute-like functionality. The easiest solution to me would be to make essence burst always benefit from full mastery if consumed against targets under 25% hp. I think this alone would also help offset the cries for a mastery rework since it would make us more viable at the most important parts of the fight without giving us a PROPER execute since this would only be applied from EB procs. We would still want to play around dragonrage so ALL of our abilities are getting full mastery benefit. In aoe/m+ scenarios this would give us more options for target priority. Do we want to leverage our reverse execute mastery to help burn down a high hp target or do we want to help burn down the lowest hp target by juggling EB proc mastery buffs? This solution also also wouldn’t make dragonrage any stronger than it already is since dragonrage already benefits from full mastery (with tyranny). In the past, I’ve suggested changing shattering star to give execute functionality but I think that would be a less elegant solution since it would also impact the tuning of dragonrage.
Speaking of tyranny, make it baseline.
To replace tyranny, add a talent that makes deep breath good against a single target. It could be something simple like adding an increased damage modifier when used against a single target or maybe giving the ability a hard hitting short duration dot that is applied to whoever was your main target at the time of casting the ability. The dot would be hard capped at 1 target. Deep breath is such an iconic ability, I hate only using it for root removals or to get around places easier rather than for its damage in single target.
Remove firestorm and replace it with an ability that causes pyre to also burn the ground under your enemies’ feet dealing ticking damage while enemies stand in it. They could even recycle the Firestone animation for all I care. I know the class is already simple enough, so making this a passive may not be a favorite idea for some. I just think using firestorm is kinda clunky, even with the free procs. It also feels unnecessary for me as an ability though since pyre exists. I know they aren’t the same ability, but they feel redundant to be nevertheless.
Make shattering star baseline.
Make obsidian bulwark baseline (the 2 charge talent).
Make eternity surge cast on another mob in combat if you’re current target dies while you’re charging. Having this happen and the cast canceling on you entirely is extremely frustrating. I get that being smart about who I’m targeting and making sure they aren’t going to die before the cast finishes is a skill thing, but no one is perfect and sometimes you just misjudge how hard your friends go in on the mobs. I think this is a base QOL function that should have existed from the start. Compare fire breath as an example. Since FB doesn’t require an active target, it’s a non-issue with FB. I don’t see why ES can’t be the same.
Misc:
Let soar actually be a full-fledged dragon riding. We are dragons after all, we should act like them.
Give us more visage form options. We should be able to pick any race. I get lore-wise at launch Dracthyr hadn’t seen most of the races, but I’m hoping in a future patch this is added to the barber shop as a baked-in feature.
Definitely not a current change due to the amount of work it would take, but next expansion please give us a 3rd spec and make us the first mail tank class.
Also not a request for this expansion, but please give us mage tower challenges.
Shorten the wind-up animation for deep breath.
I think that’s my full list for now. I’d love feedback from others here and maybe some shares to the devs for visibility. I switched off my evoker on week 3 to my fury warrior for progression but I desperately want to main my evoker. Originally it was because of the mastery and bugs, but since the bugs are starting to be addressed and my progression is over, I am coming back to my evoker because I really do love it and want to focus on this over my other classes.
I think there are some relevant criticisms here, but I’m not sure you’ve diagnosed the core issue with each.
The problem is the 2.5s cast time of Living Flame and the channeled nature of Disintegrate. The cast time of LF shouldn’t be increased by Engulfing Blaze and Disintegrate should frankly be reworked as a spender, or at least be changed to consume essence incrementally.
This is a) not true because instant casts are still better than slow casts while moving, and b) also direct nerf to our survivability, where Burnout procs can be used to heal yourself and teammates.
The problem is Dragonrage being extension-based. The extension should be removed and the CD can be balanced accordingly. There’s no real skill check involved in the extension… more just RNG on procs and movement.
I think this (with current mastery) or a mastery rework would both be great. Mastery is frustrating for a lot of people, but outside of that it’s a tuning issue… all of our spells have to be balanced around a potentially 100%+ modifier.
I agree completely with you. I think everyone’s recommendations for hover gcd and no interupts plus disen spender vs dump essence ideas would fix a lot of issues with the class. I would also prefer a longer cd with no extentions with DR over the current design. Give a talent to reduce its cooldown or maybe add a “spend so many essence to proc dragon rage for X seconds” which in itself could be a fun short duration extention during the actual cd.
If they aren’t up to ideas like these I also recommended giving deva another empowered. It would actually make the second wave of extensions easier to land. Unholy got their burst rotation qol buff so now its time for devas.
I don’t mind disintegrate being channeled, but I do dislike how it functions as you do. If they were to make a larger change without making it always castable on the move, I think having consumption of essence on a per tick basis would go a long way to making this feel better. I have even made that suggestion on prior posts since what I personally take issue with is that you lose 3 essence the moment you start the cast. When you don’t have hover up and a random ground effect pops under you, you just lost that essence to move. A spender for our main resource should never work this way. At least making it always castable while moving would go a long way to making that feel less bad with how it currently works since you wouldn’t have to cancel the cast to avoid mechanics which is why I suggested this instead.
Regarding living flame, I agree the cast time is an issue. Being able to cast while moving would make it feel less negative but I do also agree that engulfing shouldn’t increase the cast time.
This is a) not true because instant casts are still better than slow casts while moving, and b) also direct nerf to our survivability, where Burnout procs can be used to heal yourself and teammates.
Good catch. Not sure why my brain blanked on this. I stand corrected on this. Keep burnout, just make it baseline.
The problem is Dragonrage being extension-based. The extension should be removed and the CD can be balanced accordingly. There’s no real skill check involved in the extension… more just RNG on procs and movement.
While I agree fully, I am under the assumption that they want to keep the extension mechanic for variance sake which is why my suggestion was what it was. I would much rather just have a it be 1.5 minute CD with a 20-second base duration or a 2m cd (as it is now) with a 30-second duration and call it a day.
@wickdwrath Your suggestion basically mimics boomy’s arcanic pulsar, and I’m here for it. I’d love to see this or our current 4pc baked into the spec. Either one could replace Animosity.
@shamblewing If they went with the lowered CD this could be cool, but I think with Wickdwrath’s suggestion, DR would be fine at 2 minutes and I don’t think the EB procs would be hugely impactful unless it was also given by ‘aspective pulsar’ procs as well.
Of course, that might then make it too good. It would all be a numbers thing, but I’d be down to see how it goes regardless.
I personally wouldn’t want another empowered spell unless it replaced one of the existing ones which would directly oppose the reason for your suggestion. I think the 2 empowered spells are more than enough atm. I’m glad they exist but I also wouldn’t want to be forced into gameplay that is too heavily focused around them. I feel two is just the right balance of the empowered mechanic and those are are already used to.
With that said, I wouldn’t mind eternity surge being reworked to a standard aoe blast without the multiple ranks and a different empowered spell be created to replace it that was a little more fun to use. Of the two, ES feels less engaging since it’s a simple count of the mobs to choose the empower level you need. At least fire breath has more thought behind it to me.
I get that but I don’t think comparing a heal spec to a dps is a great comparison despite us both being dragons.
Healing specs have a higher responsibility to dual heal and damage to be fully effective and most heal specs create an ability separation to accomplish that. Preservation has two empower abilities for their core gameplay type (healing) and the third being fire breath is for damage. For this reason I think the comparison isn’t great. If that same treatment applied to devoker, we would have ES, FB, and then something like dream breath which would be for support reasons. Of course, this is still irrelevant since we know you were asking for a 3rd damage option and the devs hopefully wouldn’t be silly enough to go down the support ability road if they were to add a 3rd empower ability for the spec.
Despite reservations to the idea, I don’t fully discount it fully. Maybe a 3rd empower could be a good thing in practice, I just don’t personally think it is necessary nor do I think it would solve any issues that exist with the spec by simply having a 3rd empower. I already wish I was more mobile, so having another plant cast and charge ability would just make things feel slower and more clunky to me than they already are.
Personally, I think I would still rather have ES replaced with a new empower ability that’s more engaging. They could just make ES a baseline ‘press and forget’ style short CD aoe burst that hits up to 8 targets or even just bake that functionality into shattering star instead, but I would still want a replacement empower ability since I currently feel that 2 is a great sweet spot, I just feel ES isn’t really engaging which is the issue (but not one I am super bothered by either). But again, I’d be open to try whatever.
I actually agree with you here, but y’know, devil’s advocate and all that.
I wouldn’t want to see ES replaced without a substantial rework of the spec, but it definitely feels like something is missing rotationally for Devastation. Simple specs can work, but they need highly synergistic toolkits and rotations, which we don’t currently have.
I just don’t appreciate the way the evoker specs are divided. 3 empowers for healer when one of them is for deva too and deva only has 2. I made a post with the idea of making deep breath for deva an “empowered” but channeled. That way we have more chances for our tier piece and longer uptime on the crit. Which should be an expendable buff not a refresh.
Agreed. It’s like we have two completely conflicting playstyles that we were built off. One being hyper-mobile, the other being more like a traditional caster but they definitely don’t synergize well imo.
For me the most frustrating things are the reliance of hover in ST or low cleave scenarios when we are using living flame and dis and the bugs.
Our AOE is 100% mobile outside of the empowers (which I’ve already said I feel should be plant-to-cast abilities), hardcasting firestorm if you’ve taken that and aren’t just sending it with procs, and if you want to attempt to multi-dot with ruby embers talented. That playstyle is only really done on council but there are other no dis builds that use FTF and don’t have to go with RE, Firestorm, and EBF, which are more fun IMO anyways. On the other side, our single target is all cast and channel unless we have hover or a burnout proc.
I love the ideal of the highly mobile caster, and with out shorted range I feel we should absolutely be built around that. I mentioned hunters in the main post, and I think that is the best comparison to how our mobility should be integrated with the spec, especially if they want the ‘mid-range’ caster fantasy to work out. It’s extremely frustrating that hunters are meme around the place with extreme range and aren’t wasting resources (cycling back to our dis essence consumption topic) having to move out of mechanics. It’s even more frustrating between locked between the melee and range camps and STILL having a FB miss, an ES charge up cancel, or you dis cancel the moment you start it because the tank staffed out of a ground effect and happened to move a hairs width out of range while the hunter is off in Narnia living and loving life. If we always had a passive “hover” up, we could at least move in and alleviate some of this.
Doing even half of this would make Devokers feel sooooooooooooo much better…so we know it’s never happening, as only Preservation exists in the WoW dev room. I don’t think they even know what a Devoker is.
I feel like so much of our talent tree was originally baseline and they just took it away and threw it into a tree because they didn’t feeling investing time into coming up with unique/helpful/fun talents for us. So many of the talents should just be baseline, and they should do one of two things for casting - make our range the same as other ranged classes - 40yd, or let us move while casting.
I’d prefer the latter because it would flow better and feel fun for the classes. Plus it would give the game another class, finally, that can perform somewhat similar to hunters in terms of dealing damage while moving.
Agreed. I prefer the latter as well. I don’t want full range, I want full mobility. I want the mostly unrestricted movement of a hunter (since empowers should not be usable on the move IMO). It would fit us well and since we are supposed to be a hypermobile class, the reliance on hover and procs coupled with the shorter range just feels like a conflict to me.
I am not sure that I’d want another empower spell. Maybe make one of the existing empowers a choice node with a black themed one? I’d love to hear some ideas on what you think a good empower spell with a black theme would be.
