Despite the recognized bad situation of the spec little is said about it, but when the Preservation Evoker went from top 1 to top 3 everyone goes crazy and starts to wonder what is the point of the extra difficulty of shorter range.
This proves that Devastation, which is in the floor on pvp and barely stands up in pve, doesn’t even cross the mind of Evoker players, it’s being ignored on a subconscious level, it’s not even considered.
At this point the Devastation Evoker doesn’t need life magic, it needs necromancy of the highest level, or just being born again.
It’s impossible to take any of these posts seriously, because literally every class forum, at all points in time, claim all specs in the game are bad/forgotten by blizzard.
Preservation evoker is S tier in all forms of PvE content. A tier in PvP.
Devastation evoker is A tier in PvE. But yes, it probably one of the weakest PvP specs.
But the class is definitely not doom and gloom like say survival hunter has been most of this xpac.
What do you mean it sucks in PVE, It’s so good in PVE, I certainly find it better than all the other classes at least. I can’t say nothing for PVP though cause I don’t do PVP.
maybe in m+ where its mostly aoe fights but they suck at st damage and its not getting any better in 10.1. also you cant say every class forum when shadow priest exist. its so bipolar there between people complaining and then other people saying they enjoy it. it seems a pretty good split between people happy with shadow and people who are unhappy. even with the change there getting. oh and hunters always complain. thats like a core part of playing a hunter. when survival was the top spec and bm was at the bottom even with appl that complaining i saw more bm hunters than i did survival and they were doing amazing dps to the point the groups i was in with them the whole group questioned everything we saw and heard about bm cause we either kept getting the top 1% or they couldnt be that bad. preservation is catching a nerf and wont be as good and devastation just feels bad. its the only new class to not dominate spots in a raid. last week i saw my new high of 4 evokers in a 25m raid. no other new class had so few people in groups it was always packed with as many as you were willing to stuff in
It’s fun and new in PvE, but fails to deliver sustained damage. I truly enjoy playing Devoker in dungeons, but I’m embarrassed by it’s flaws: very inconsistent burst damage, low overall damage compared to others (despite good gear and understanding of the spells and abilities), the well-known and documented bugs plaguing the class, the hard-to-aim/if-you-miss-you’re-screwed spells, the pathetic defensives combined with the extremely short range for abilities that make healers flinch when they see you in their party and the overall boredom of the “rotation” that is either charged spells or a combo of disintegrate and pyre.
I mostly PvP with it, but even I can see it needs help in PvE. Don’t be fooled by mainly single target raid boss data that relies heavily on group support and knowing how the bosses move and what they’re about to do after months of learning the raid.
Yeah. We need some huge improvements in sustain. I hate our new 4pce is going to try and encourage us to be a dot class. Blegh. Guess they couldn’t figure out any other way to balance us.
Trading blows with other ranged classes is out of the question. Move in to pop a full charged eternity surge on the melee I can reach. Now have every ranged on me and melee swaps to me. I die so fast I didn’t even get the enternity surge off. This happens every battleground with more than 10 a side. The design of devastation is not fun at all and needs a full on rebuild right out of the box. I could write an essay on why they are not good.
Preservation is a lot more fun, won’t die unless there are more than 3 people on me and it will still take awhile to kill me. Can do enough damage to contribute to kills. Hope the tank spec is fun cause devastation is unplayable and I honestly don’t think it will ever be this expansion.
I’ve written several essays on these forums about the fundamental flaws with Devastation Evoker, I just hope our voices are being heard. Coming from someone who managed to pull 2900 off in Solo Shuffle on Devastation before 10.0.7 patch, the performance of this spec is down right horrendous, and comes down to a coinflip on whether you get enough AOE Crits to 100-0 a team and end a game. It is your only win condition.
Quick Summary of What Needs to Happen:
1. Devastation needs an execute: Our mastery essentially nerfs our damage the lower health % our target is. Making it extremely difficult to finish a target at say 30% HP. You have a higher probability of 100-0ing something very quickly, making it extremely difficult to land kills outside of Dragonrage. An execute ability (Maybe that scales inversely to your mastery) could certainly help to remedy this.
2. Devastation needs some love defensively: This spec is easily the “Squishiest” DPS spec in Arena, as you are hindered by a limited range and no defensive abilities or passive that can help you during stuns. We NEED some passive defensives as a scaly Dragon it only makes sense, and similar to the attention Ret got during it’s rework. Currently, it is very easy for a Rogue/Mage/Healer or Rogue/Hunter/Healer to kill you within 2-3 kidney shot set ups. Because you are limited to 25 yards, a hunter or mage can sit 40 yards back while a Rogue stuns you, and you cannot defend yourself against the Ranged class, and you only have 1 trinket to activate to save yourself in stun. You will be checkmated within 1-2 kidney shots on the next setup.
3. Range Limitation a Huge Fundamental Design Flaw: Going off of the last point, being limited to 25 yard range has proven to be a huge issue for Devastation in an Arena PvP scenario. You can be kited by ranged classes which is very awkward, Melee Spec Ret Paladin has more range on it’s rotational abilities than we do and 10x the defensive strength, making them now a hard counter to us (We use to counter them). When you are defenseless against Ranged DPS Classes that can kite you, and highly susceptible to death in every stun, you know there is a fundamental flaw with the defensive strength.
BONUS - Attention to CC: By in large I think our CC is in a good spot despite many other Evokers feeling differently. Sleep Walk is in a great spot. However, I feel making Landslide a 4 second AOE Stun, and switching the Deep Breath stun talent to a root, makes a great deal of sense, and allows us to be “Less scripted / predictable” by not tying our Stun directly into our largest damage dealing ability.
I’m pretty low dps in my raid. I’m not really that skilled or equipped compared to some of our raiders. The dps of the top players in my raid is nearly twice mine.
That said, I can still sometimes get aggro from the tanks and die in the first 10 seconds if I unload with max dps combo right at the pull. This mastery sucks!
Yes it is a very awkward design. Only credit i’ll give it is that it is unique. If we had an execute ability that scaled inversely with our Mastery, I actually wouldn’t mind it.
I mained evoker when the expansion dropped, I like preservation, but devastation is anything but devastating. In raids they did no damage unless dragonrage is popped, and in pvp they’re absolute trash, I had such high hopes for this class, but I gave up on it waiting for Blizzard to fix it.