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.