Would you prefer disintigrate to be a channel spell or a cast spell?
I saw someone say in a twitch stream about how many people dislike the channel aspect of disintigrate and it got me curious about the general feeling about this. Now obviously there will be an element of bias because people who play dev currently will be people who either like, or have accepted, playing a class with a frequently casted channel. But what are your thoughts on this, forum?
My personal preference would be for a cast rather than a channel, but I don’t necessarily hate having a channel. I AM concerned by the current issues with Scalecommander and the way mass disintigrate can’t be chained without losing out on a tick and damage, making the rotation significantly more awkward. But hopefully that gets fixed.
I’d be interested in how it would interact with things like catalyze and scintillation if it were cast instead of channel. I don’t know of any beam/missile-type periodic spells that aren’t channel though, unless I’m missing something which I could be.
I don’t see the advantage to a cast with how our kit works–you get some extra value (albeit like 2%) from being able to chain disint accurately. You also can exploit LoS with a channel and hover where you cannot with a cast.
Channeling also makes it so that having to interrupt your cast 75% of the way through still means you get that portion of the damage, whereas a hard cast with hover down would be much more punishing to have to cancel.
I don’t see a particular advantage of it being a cast, but maybe I’m missing something?
Yeah this needs to be fixed either way for sure, but since only the disintegrate after the empower is a MD, I feel like that makes it a stranger fix to push through.
Do you just have the MD continue on the other two targets and start a fresh one on your current target for the chain? That’s really the only way I can think of, but with their spaghetti code I’m not shocked that it isn’t working that way.
Yeah, thinking about it, I do prefer it as a channel specifically for pvp.
I personally don’t like having to watch the channel cast timer to time when I next cast a spell and prefer the queue mechanic for cast spells. It would make playing dev more simple for me which I enjoy.
That’s fair–i personally feel like it’s one of the few bits of nuance to the spec and like it better, but maybe it’s something they could explore with a talent.
Would it just deliver the damage of all of the ticks once you cast? Would it remain a beam?
I was thinking charging up and unleashing a burst, more like a railgun. I’d say leaning into the godzilla vibes, charging (casting) before unloading with the blast causing damage over a second, and the animation lingering somewhat like lightning bolts do for shaman after the cast. Frostflame would be perfect.
Yeah, I’d definitely be down for a choice node. Maybe it’s something they could do for additional flameshaper flavour, turning breath into more of a flame-like attack to fit with the vibe.
Sadly probably way too late for such things to be designed and implimented now.
There are times when I only get a single tick of Disintegrate off but it uses 3 essence. Feels bad.
Would be really cool if Disintegrate required 3 essence but only consumed 1 per tick that it was active. Perhaps make essence burst stack higher and only make 1 essence free at a time?
That way if you had 2 stacks of essence burst and 1 actual essence you could still cast Disintegrate.
I don’t mind Disintegrate being a channeled spell but the fact that you spend the entire resource even if you dont channel the entire spell is a little wonky. I don’t know if any other spell does that, even an iconic spell like mind flay only uses mana per tick it’s active (or at least, it did for a long time even if it doesn’t anymore)
If i could choose between cast, channel or instant, id pick instant cast.
But channel is better than hard cast, like it has been said, a portion of the damage can hit before being interrupt.
Also visually i like the channel effect.
I feel like evoker would be a lot more boring if it was a click and wait spell unless they allowed you to do other spells while it was casting, which would probably make them way OP.
Still waiting on the fix to mass disintigrate and how it doesn’t chain correctly into standard disintigrate. Please fix, bliz.
I’m not sure I understand what you mean by this. If anything, a channel is worse for mobility because you lose all the essence you spend the instant you start casting the channel, whereas with a cast, if your cast is interrupted then you still have the full essence value to spend.
Biggest plus so far I’ve found has been the line of site play with a channel, but to be honest, I feel like that shouldn’t even be a thing.
With hover, your opponent is eating all that damage while still trying to track you. Using flames while hovering for example, if it’s interrupted at the very last spilt second it does nothing. Disintegrate itself is baked in with incredible CC which enables kiting.
I like that there’s a bit of expression in the kit letting MD fully channel. There’s almost zero DPS loss not chaining as it is, I don’t see them “fixing” this, because I don’t think it’s a bug at all.
Again, this is skill expression. If you lose essence for this, you should have pre-hovered the channel knowing that a movement mechanic was coming.
With slipstream now, there’s no excuse not to be using hover liberally and proactively.
Dev is already insanely simple, it doesn’t need to be further simplified.
Ahh, so you mean specifically in pvp when you are more likely to have your spells actually interrupted whilst being cast. I should have picked up you meaning in pvp with you mentioning us being on the soft side. I agree for pvp. In pve, I think that overall a channel is more likely to be worse for mobility if it’s a spender due to the reasons I mentioned.
Just by having the first tick of the new cast continuing to channel mass disintigrate with the damage buffs. As always, it’s personal preference. I personally prefer the smoother feeling of chaining the channel. I’m kind of used to it now though.
I agree with everything you have said. I just didn’t understand why the other poster thought that a cast would be worse for mobility, as per my post above.
I mean I do too, but you can’t have one tick of a channel be a different spell and transition to a new one. Once you use your MD, the button becomes disintegrate again. You’re literally casting a different spell.
If you couldn’t chain both MD’s together, that would be something that needed fixing, but you can.