Data: Devastation is by far the lowest repped caster in high-rated PvP

Classes Evoker
1

Hi folks. For those of you who don’t know me, I’ve played Devastation since Beta, have done and contributed to spec PvP guides, and am currently the #2 Devastation Evoker on the Solo Shuffle ladder.

There have been several threads here about Devastation’s performance in PvP, its design flaws, etc., but I wanted to bring in some hard numbers on representation.

I’ll qualify this by saying that I do understand that representation (especially for a brand new class) doesn’t prove or disqualify anything. What it does show, however, is how successful the spec is in comparison to others in a similar environment.

Here’s how the Solo Shuffle leaderboard looks for us:

Devastation
1st place: 3251 (hasn’t queued since Deep Breath nerf, +156 from 2nd place)
10th place: 2927
25th place: 2661
50th place: 2514
100th place: 2407

Compared to most other casters, this is extremely low, and many of the players high on the leaderboard (myself included) are no longer active in Shuffle. The class lacks agency, as its only real tool is (avoidable) damage. The result is that the Devastation Shuffle ladder is stagnant as compared to other specs.

Here’s how other casters compare (+ or - rating at the same spot on the ladder) versus Devastation in Solo Shuffle:

Shadow Priest:
1st place: 3383 (+137)
10th place: 3148 (+221)
25th place: 3011 (+350)
50th place: 2875 (+361)
100th place: 2705 (+301)

Elemental Shaman:
1st place: 3343 (+92)
10th place: 3251 (+324)
25th place: 3189 (+528)
50th place: 3056 (+542)
100th place: 2905 (+498)

Balance Druid:
1st place: 3404 (+153)
10th place: 3168 (+241)
25th place: 2935 (+274)
50th place: 2735 (+221)
100th place: 2491 (+84)

Frost Mage:
1st place: 3434 (+183)
10th place: 3108 (+285)
25th place: 2959 (+302)
50th place: 2730 (+216)
100th place: 2542 (+135)

Arcane Mage:
1st place: 3387 (+141)
10th place: 3108 (+181)
25th place: 2816 (+155)
50th place: 2523 (+9)
100th place: 2311 (-96)

Fire Mage:
1st place: 3321 (+70)
10th place: 3049 (+122)
25th place: 2830 (+169)
50th place: 2487 (-27)
100th place: 2204 (-203)

Destruction Warlock:
1st place: 3409 (+158)
10th place: 3316 (+389)
25th place: 3123 (+462)
50th place: 3000 (+486)
100th place: 2843 (+436)

Demonology Warlock:
1st place: 3418 (+167)
10th place: 3333 (+406)
25th place: 3085 (+424)
50th place: 2913 (+399)
100th place: 2744 (+337)

Affliction Warlock:
1st place: 3283 (+32)
10th place: 3029 (+102)
25th place: 2792 (+131)
50th place: 2606 (+92)
100th place: 2430 (+23)

As you can see, other casters with only 1 DPS spec (Ele, Shadow, Balance) are much higher rated on average than Devastation Evokers in the same ladder slots. Among casters with multiple DPS specs, no spec is lower-performing at the top end than Devastation. At the lower end, less popular Solo Shuffle specs (like Fire Mage) have a lower bottom-end rating while popular specs remain significantly ahead.

I only included caster DPS here, but findings are similar when Devastation is compared to melee specializations.

My conclusion is that Devastation’s core design, squishiness, lack of CC, counterintuitive mastery, and mediocre utility have led it to vastly underperform as players familiarize themselves with how to counter its unreliable one-shot gimmick. In order to be competitive at the high end of PvP gameplay, Devastation needs to be given tools that provide it with more agency over the flow of the match (e.g., CC) and a way to meaningfully overcome its range limitations (e.g., stronger defensives, mobility).

19 Likes
2

Honestly I’m not sure what more can be said. There’s been countless posts on the Evoker forum about the poor performance and the need for bug fixes or even full reworks, but we don’t seem to be getting any official response whatsoever. The silence here is deafening.

We just have to sit and wait in the hopes that they have something significant in the pipeline or we’ll be stuck at the bottom for a while. It’s not like a simple numbers adjustment as if we’re just having trouble putting out damage, the class is fundamentally broken from a design perspective and needs some serious TLC.

8 Likes
3

  1. Devoker in both mythic raiding and m+ is 1 of the better specs.

  2. Blizz doesn’t care now or has it ever cares about pvp.

1 Like
4

The only fun I have with PvP is world PvP where I can truly utilize my mobility, and it’s very rare for me to defeat someone with similar or better gear, simply because they can defend themselves or effectively CC and I can only flap away while spam-clicking my 2 instant self-heals.

Hit-and-run tactics (and by run, I mean run VERY far and VERY fast) doesn’t work too good in Arenas and BGs where you have far less tools at your disposal.

5

Yeah. I wanted to bring some numbers into the discussion. The difference in average rating seems pretty egregious, and I get messages all the time from players who don’t understand how they’re supposed to win as Dev.

Numerically, yes. Players still don’t like the way the class feels to play though, by and large, based on forum feedback.

Yep, I spend a large chunk of most arena matches kiting and healing… which won’t be an option after the changes to Ancient Flame go through.

2 Likes
6

Good
/tens

7

Spec is garbage tbh. It gets completely wrecked by casters who love what is essentially a squishier spec than ret paladins with worst CC and worst defensives, that you can kick on top.

The spec flat out needs better defensives and CC. The combination of garbo range, garbo CC and castable damage is drowning this spec.

8 Likes
8

I would love to see a spender that isn’t a channel, but it’s unlikely that Disintegrate will be fully reworked in the near future. I think an acceptable stopgap would be to offer a PvP talent that either replaces it or provides some kind of protection (e.g., fires an Eternity Surge at your target when kicked).

Some extra passive tankiness would go a long way, too. It feels like we have to fritter away our walls to nothing whenever the enemy connects.

2 Likes
9

Dev seems to be doing well in Mythic raiding. It is absolutely not doing well in M+. It’s well below average in M+ and has very very little representation in high keys.

3 Likes
10

I agree. the 25 yard range is too punitive and and defensives feel meaningless compared to say a shamans 60% astral defensive. Not only do they have double the range, more ccs, they are also less squishy and just as mobile. And to add to the wound, empower spells sometimes cancel itself for no reason, the overall design of that cast serves no purpose when it could simply be a regular cast on a 30sec cd instead.

2 Likes
11

Thats because the empower spells on top of low range is far too clunky in a m+ meta that is built around dance dance revoltion style mechanics. Even if they have the damage, the class is too clunky to play to bring in that type of environment. The range and clunkiness of empower spells are what need to be fixed

2 Likes
12

I’m hoping Devastation talent tree is reworked in 10.1. We saw very few changes in Beta and have almost no build options with weak or boring capstones and quite a few dead talents.

4 Likes
13

It’s really terrible. I’m by no means a good player at all, but I’m able to consistently get higher ratings on my other characters, and more importantly have more fun.

Despite everything looking good by the numbers, with fancy high damage, and potentially really cool utility spells like Chrono Loop and Time Stop, it just feels godawful to play. I want to like this spec, but it really needs to be more tanky without an overreliance on self-healing for mitigation, or have a 40 yard range like other spell casters. Either or.

Seriously, the 25 yard range handicap makes no sense whatsoever. No other caster has to deal with this at all. And I don’t feel any more mobile on my Evoker than I do on my Destro lock. If anything I feel more mobile on my Destro, and I can actually juke casts with that spec or at least have some instant casts for when I’m being trained.

5 Likes
14

When unsure of a specific view point, you can always trust the data. Seeing how other caster specs are MILES ahead of devastation not only in top 100 for CR but having a significantly lower representationacross the board it begs the question?

Why is that?

Well as someone who has been there since the beginning and providing extensive feedback on the spec since its release on beta I have a few ideas.

It is incredibly behind its counterparts in a few departments.

1: RANGE - 25 yards is just not working, it was a decent experiment to try something new but its clear than both in arena and raid / mythic plus environments it is just a hinderance and a straight up disadvantage.

2: Survivability, without a reliable way to keep yourself alive through both expected and unexpected large amounts of damage, you become a liability in every group’s eyes and are just safer with another DPS who has more dependable mitigation. There needs to be more options defensively both actively and passively.

3: Counterintuitive playstyle - the mastery for referse execute is clearly not fun for anyone, from ripping aggro from a tank to being unable to kill outside of lucky gimp one shot crits, it makes the spec feel heavily reliant on getting lucky to win, which in my experience as an arena player is the worst situation to be in. I want to earn my wins, not just get them based on luck.

Devastation is in need of a hefty rework just like ret was given, for an extremely long post on how I would go about that you can visit my earlier post.

6 Likes
15

Pshero voice: “If it crits, he dies.”

2 Likes
16

It boggles the mind enough that Blizzard released what was supposed to be a major selling point of this expansion in such an unfinished state but months later and we are still getting completely ignored and neglected in favour of what, frigging Ret Paladins?

I am at a loss what the thought process going on at Blizzard is. They moved in heaven and earth to make sure Demon Hunters released in a fun, serviceable state and tweaked them continually throughout the Legion expansion. Evokers are getting the polar opposite treatment with nothing but the basest window dressing changes or outright nerfs with no work whatsoever on the core issues holding back its DPS spec.

Such a sad waste of potential. Call it egotistical/stubborn development pride on a failed experiment or straight up mismanagement of priorities and manpower. Either way, Evokers are playing bit role in their own bloody expansion. I can’t think of a single new class in WoW’s history that has been so poorly performing in its debut appearance.

5 Likes
17

Yup, and the 10.1 changes show a nerf to living flame talent, and nothing adressing the low range, or clunky empower abilities, nor the weak defensives. Like i said earlier, the devs dont care.

2 Likes
18

I love playing ranged classes, i mostly only play range classes in this game. I was very excited for the first new range dps spec. However i was super disappointed with the whole thing even at max. Really hated how it played and i was surprised as i like pretty much all petless casters.

Spells dont feel good to press, the spender doesnt feel good. Lizard looks ugly, short range, buggy, no transmog. Nope.

In my opinion the spec was built for PVE. It has nothing good in PVP in my opinion.

1 Like
19

If I’m not mistaken, I’m sure there are certain Devs that work on certain classes. So, the Dev(s) working on Ret paladins are probably not, or shouldn’t be, working on Devastation. And, whoever is working on Devastation is out of touch with its design. Not sure how they went from an interesting and unique tree in Preservation to the crap we got in Devastation. All in all, I’m happy for the rework towards Ret.

It took them a bit to work on Demon Hunters throughout Legion and they were in a pretty bad state as well, like Devastation, upon their release with issues on abilities, while some were over tuned. However, the Dev(s) that worked on Demon Hunter did an amazing job to not only make them top tier in AoE/Single Target, but all other content, regardless of the 3 button rotation. And how long have this class been top on meters?

The Nerf to preservation was dumb, to be honest (change in abilities). Reducing healing would have been better. The Dev(s) don’t know how to Nerf classes. We’ve seen the results of these at the beginning, middle, and end of the expansion when classes/specs becoming great to trash. I bet you they will go back to the initial design of Preservation in couple months or next raid when they realize how many will not play it due to them keep F###ing S### up. As for the Dps spec, I’d say switch out the Dev(s) working on it with someone who has vision. Its complete garbage and the whole dang thing lacks synergy. Its all over the place.

It really is. Such a nice idea thrown away by bad design. Lets not even talk about the annoying limitations on appearances and stuff. They don’t even know what they are doing do Devastation, the looks, and not preservation. They’re so used to limited and gate keeping things they even do it to specs. :grinning:

4 Likes
20

I tried the new changes and its horrible. Not even fun nor does it fix the issues. There is no path in the tree compared to Preservations; before they started messing with it.

4 Likes