I wouldn’t say it’s a problem, but the damage from ES procs during CD windows (I’ve seen 120k+) is high enough that it can absolutely make or break games.
Had a game recently against Maldiva where I killed him from ~50% in half a Disintegrate because of successive high-roll proc crits, which seems a little much to me.
In general, though, I’m a fan of controlled output over random output.
Sorry - meant to type pve. I am not qualified to say anything about pvp (:
If something is latency dependent, requires an addon or WA to track correctly, or isn’t at all intuitive to people playing the class its not good design imo. Most players arn’t watching videos or looking at guides on how to optimize DR uptime by clipping channels. I disagree with the idea that this is a “skill” thing and is more so just tedious.
The problem isn’t the direction they are taking to make devoker full channel disintegration, the problem is the tunning and overall nerf to single target with that playstyle.
If blizz wants to make Devoker an interesting dps with a clear delineation of skill they need to make the rotation more interesting by adding abilities or making existing ones more attractive. Not by keeping spell clipping around.
There is some validity to this statement but addons, guides, etc., have been a part of the game forever and the folks that don’t use them generally aren’t playing at a high enough level to actually care about optimizing. There are always exceptions, but the latency, wa tracking, etc., only really are for those who care enough to try and minmax to a pretty high degree.
I personally disagree but I do get why this isn’t a playstyle many people would enjoy. I for one do like the clipping. It is fun since it gives what is otherwise a pretty boring and slow paced rotation for st/2 tar cleave a little variance and excitement. Missing a clip tick, using the wrong ability in your priority, managing buffs, procs, essence, and hover timing, etc is a skill inside the window when everything is suddenly cranked up and you’re trying to eek out as much in that window as you can. You could argue that skill exists at a baseline, which is absolutely does, but inside the window it is far more emphasized and easy to tell the players who excel at this compared to those who p**p the bed on it. A more casual player likely isn’t going to really attention to that stuff anyways so if they aren’t clipping, it’s really almost a non-issue for them.
That’s certainly a fair take and I honestly wouldn’t be against full dis casts, but I do want something else to offer engagement that I would be losing from the clipping pacing and feel… even though sims are currently still saying clipping is the way to go with these 10.1 changes, which I find to be actually hilarious. I really expect this will be changed in the next build or two to work off the ticks instead of the channel time, as it should be. But regardless, my issue with the change isn’t solely about the numbers, it’s also around the feel and pacing. I think the full channel change just makes things feel so much slower and less engaging. Numbers tuning will come because we are about 10% weaker on average from what I’ve been seeing in ST now, so I fully expect tuning to correct this, but compensatory tuning alone won’t fix what we lost imo.
Obviously I don’t disagree here, I am just at a loss for what to do. I already have said a few times between here and other posts/comments I’ve made that I actually enjoy the clipping, but I know it’s not intuitive nor is it a playstyle that I expect many to like, such as yourself. A few comments above I mentioned some things that I feel should be changes in the talents, this could give more options for interesting replacements. But in all honesty, one of the things I really enjoy about evoker is that it’s simple to pick up but quite nuanced to master. I enjoy minimal button bloat and more fun priority juggling and interactions so what I wouldn’t want to see is a bunch of new abilities added to our bar to compensate for interesting gameplay.
I think having us built around mobility (which I feel DIS is at odds with this goal currently), essence burst, and the empowers is great and should just be more heavily leaned into.
I certainly agree with your comment about button bloat, we want to avoid that. Maybe its just a matter of further exploring the interactions between the core abilities we have now. I think azure strike, for example, could be a far more interesting filler.
I LOL’d at this. I think the developers are reading different forums. Or maybe I am? I haven’t really found anything that doesn’t fit between (ignored) critical/gameplay fixes and feedback and harsh, non-productive criticism.
Still nothing addressing the buggy nature of empowered casting. But hey, why not redesign something instead of fixing it…
I did too. Don’t get me wrong, I really enjoy the spec… but the general consensus seems to be that although the spec fantasy is fun, the design is half-baked.
Yeah, no blue posts about devastation for 2 months and then that?
At first I was thinking, hmm, this could be cool or they could go the fury warrior route where AS is the filler outside of dragonrage and it automatically switches to living flame inside dragonrage but that wouldn’t work. Maybe the reverse could work but then we would lose the instant cast spam and cleave from AS which would also feel horrendous for any 3+ target situation.
Issues I see with this are that so many talents emphasize living flames. Burnout, scarlet adaptation, leaping flames, ancient flame (if taking that), ruby essence burst, inner radiance, both ruby embers and engulfing blaze, and snapfire for example. Making AS the only filler would have a lot of negative drawbacks unless they modified all of those talents to also function with AS the same way they do with LF, but AS can’t be used to heal yourself or spot heal allies which adds another negative drawback to it and why I really feel both need to exist in our current class design.
That said, I love the idea of one filler spell for simplicity, but I also don’t really have an issue with both existing currently. I actually think having both gives some additional layers of thought to the currently gameplay, both inside and outside of the DR window.
Of course, I am no class designer so I really am at a loss as to what to actually do with it though, but I do agree that exploring the interactions of the core abilities is the way to go. I personally think there could be a lot more interactions around burnout’s instant casts, essence burst, and our empowers. Those are the crux of the class, and I feel those would be what we play around. I’m not happy with how the ID change makes deep breath something we want to use as an opener, which in turn also reduces the value of our mastery on our empower casts, but I am happy to see them making deep breath more relevant in ST as well. I think it should be since it’s easily the most visually iconic ability for us.
I think the mastery issue and defensive issues could be offset by essence burst. Make it so essence burst always benefits from 100% mastery and make essence burst consumers apply an absorb shield for a portion of the damage dealt that caps at like 10-15% of our total hp. This would add a layer of complexity since we would:
PR marketing at its finest lol. I got excited when I read that line, until I read the actual notes and was like… whoa, this isn’t what anyone was really asking for nor complaining about.
I genuinely love devoker, but I do take issues with a few minor things.
Alternatives:
Example that comes to mind for this topic is always the hill trash in Nok. You have to move so much and as mobs are dying and you’re left with only a few, you want to switch to using dis and living flame over the instant cast abilities to finish up the pack. Not only because using AS on 1 or 2 targets makes no sense unless you’re in your dr window, but also because charge blast is going to ramp up faster for stacks going into the next mob pack from dis when there are less than 3 targets left. At least, that’s how I’ve been playing and what my understanding is. I could be wrong on that, but I’m pretty sure I’m playing correctly in that regard.
Reworking Aerial Mastery to provide 3 seconds of Hover when Disintegrate is cast would be really cool.
Thanks. I think it would be an elegant solution to a problem that only affects like half our kit. I was thinking 8 seconds because it would let you cast dis and still have 5 seconds to squeeze in 2 living flames cast before you’re forced to plant if you don’t have a burnout proc, EB proc, or essence to chain another dis. Like I wouldn’t want it to result in 100% uptime on hover but I would want it to have a high uptime regardless and it would also lend to some semblance of a skill expression as well.
Current hover duration is 10 seconds btw, this would nerf it by 2 seconds but it would still increase overall uptime where and when it actually mattered and be far more intuitive and exciting gameplay in my opinion.
It’s a very thin line between ensuring the spec is fluent and has the tools to work with it’s intended deficits and erasing those deficits entirely.
Hover being off the GCD would be great. Hover being CWC as well would be even better, though I hear there’s technical issues with that. I’d further go so far as to say that Hover should have a shorter duration per cast, but with three charges, so we can dole out it’s uptime more granularly. In PvP we have plenty of room for defensive buffs now so the extra dash would be no problem.
Disintegrate consuming essence on a per-tick basis and/or being passively possible to cast while moving removes logical failure cases the spec should be working around. A swirly appearing around your feet after you’ve begun your cast is a danger, but it’s not a danger we can do nothing about. More familiarity with the affixes and dungeons and raids gives you the ability to know when you are more likely to deal with swirlies, so you can pre-cast Hover. Hover also has a dash attached to it and Disintegrate is a channel, so unlike other specs caught in a swirly mid-cast we have the option to stay planted for as many ticks as we can squeeze out before jumping out of danger at the last second, reactively mitigating the detrimental impact of the forced movement.
Specs should have a combination of chasing success and avoiding failure/working with deficits, and a lot of the time suggestions here seem like they want to wipe out any real failure cases. What drew me to devastation is that it has more depth to the use-cases of it’s abilities due to its positional requirements, fragility, and need to cast. I much prefer “soulslike” combat systems insofar as I find it more compelling to have fewer buttons with greater implications each, where timing and positioning matter in addition to the order you press the buttons in. I like how I press the buttons to matter just as much as that I pressed them.
If the only consequence of forced movement is checking if you are asleep that is incredibly dull and drastically lowers the skill floor and ceiling when it comes to mastery over your spec. It removes most of the reward for actually knowing the fight and your rotation instead of just playing reactively.
I get what you’re saying and to a degree I agree with you, but it’s not always so cut and dry as a skill barrier. I know the raid and dungeons very well. There are plenty of trash mechanics or even boss mechanics that just randomly happen off timers. If I’ve burned hover to deal with other mechanics where I knew I’d need it, and then this scenario happens after hover is on CD, the issue still remains. I wouldn’t have an issue with hover as is if it was essence consumption on ticks, but as it remains now, this coupled with our short range is the main driver for the suggestion of why I’d want hover baked into dis.
The dash is only if you’re moving. If you cast it while already stationary, you will just float in place. This adds more support for my suggestion and the separation of the CWC and dash portions. Note, I didn’t originally come up with the dash separation but it’s an idea I expanded upon since it made sense.
Agreed, but I don’t think that suggestion would entirely remove skill expression or risk of danger. Take hunters as examples, while they are all/mostly instant casts (depending on spec), the high mobility doesn’t remove the threats for them entirely. We’d still need to plant cast for both empowers, firestorm if we talent and aren’t running snapfire or don’t have a snapfire proc, and living flame when we don’t have burnout or hover. My suggestion of 8 second hover duration may be too long, so maybe a 6 second would be better. Keep in mind this would also remove the cast on the move buff of current hover. Since our aoe options are already instant cast, it wouldn’t be an issue to lose the hover button in those cases, so baking it into DIS as the only activator on a shorter duration buff that doesn’t provide 100% uptime would still give quite a bit of skill expression imo, but maybe I’m wrong and this is just a good paper theory but in practice it may not work as I’m imaging it would. However, this is mostly a suggestion to combat our essence consumption with dis (since pyre is a non-issue) and our range issues.
The theory crafters are are at it, the current 10.1 does not fix the clipping issue. I even thought Causality would be an improvement with it reducing both empowerment spells, but its not. My suggestion is to watch the whole thing buttttt…
Negative attention is still attention xD
Not touching on the defensive issues, talent tree setup, aesthetic aspects, or the bugs plaguing the spec, I just posted this in the Embers of Neltharion feedback thread but wanted to share it here too since folks are still using this thread as well.
While I’ve made a statement that I enjoy the clipping mini-game, it’s because it speeds up the rotation and makes things feel more exciting. After watching the Preheat VOD with the devoker boys, I really got to thinking about the missed opportunity of the interplay between the red and blue spells and how they really should lean into that.
Conceptually speaking I was thinking something like the following:
Causality (revised) -
Honed Aggression (revised) - 1pt talent
Dragonrage (updated) -
Imminent Destruction (redesigned) -
–THE WHY DRIVING THE ABOVE–
You’d want to cast AS to empower pyre and proc an instant living flame.
You’d want to cast pyre for FTF CDR and to apply shattering star.
You’d want to cast living flame to empower disintegrate.
You’d want to cast disintegrate for the splash damage in aoe and for the CDR from causality.
You’d no longer have to worry about casting deep breath in dragonrage which means we wouldn’t lose out on the mastery scaling from Tyranny against lower hp targets, a current 10.1 concern with the ID redesign. This also gives us the same benefit of the current 10.1 redesign at a cost of mobility.
Hover being active during dragonrage just makes sense, and since deep breath wouldn’t be usable during dragonrage with these changes, that would help offset the loss of mobility to a degree.
Now, keep in mind that this is just a purely off-the-cuff suggestion. I am no game designer nor theory crafter, so those numbers may be too good or not good enough. In practice, this may not actually work, but I think SOMETHING LIKE THIS this may lead to some fun gameplay in concept and fix some of the issues we are having.
Theorycrafters putting more work into understanding class design than the actual class designers?! What?!
(>.>)
Ion was a top tier raider and teorycrafter if Im not remenber bad XD
Seriously when Blizzard makes these changes, I don’t understand how they can’t sim their own changes and see that it didn’t fix what they wanted to fix.
YouTubers did it in a cave with a box of scraps