Because I got SOUL. Something devastation evoker painfully lacks.
I wish it would gesticulate more 
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Casting an empowered spell with Hover will not cancel hover. Once you finish casting the empowered spell (unless the duration timed out) you will still have Hover. I think the main thing was being CCed removed hover, making it less-good in PvP.
Though Evoker gets up to two charges for flappy derg time, it also has several ‘fly to’ abilities: Rescue which you can macro to make the wonky targeting easier, Verdant Embrace to fly to an ally, Deep and Dream Breath follows Heroic Leap pathing where you can go vertical with it, Time Spiral to get an extra charge of flap while also giving other people a free use of their mobility CD.
The main problem with Evoker DPS is that a lot comes in the empowered spells. Sometimes they aren’t responsive and can sometimes cancel the cast. Slight breeze of one of the 500 knockbacks in the dungeons? Well, better start slowly charging your fire breath again. Started charging but they pulled everything out of your medium-range cone? Well, better start over again…
I think the big fix to make it perfect without breaking it would be: Empowered spells prevent you from moving so you cannot accidentally move while channeling it BUT Hover can be used while casting without interrupting the cast and can also be used to reposition while channeling an empowered spell but won’t allow free-movement after the short burst. Hover, as a movement ability, is great if it didn’t interrupt abilities since you can dash forward/back/sideways based upon movement input when you press it, just in combat, unless you are chaining all of your hovers together, you won’t really be able to benefit from it.
Having a 20 second cast-while moving window every minute with an extra 10 seconds of casting while moving every 2 minutes ain’t bad, just the way it operates is clunky. It isn’t on the GCD but it does have a VERY brief 0.25~0.5 second animation lock where you can’t start a cast but it isn’t a full GCD so it makes it worse than Shimmer/Icy Floes simply because the fact that it interrupts channels/empowered spells.
I liked it on the pve side. I dont’ see a problem with it. Feels like a mage/hunter.
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Well,I’m jealous ,they get a better heal,so there’s that.
I don’t even know what that is, and quite frankly, i don’t care much if people think it’s fine. It’s ultimately subjective on what they think.
And personally, while you did give me reasons that made me go “well that doesn’t sound good”, i am going to wait until i get to play it and see how it plays.
I will say this, i’m not expecting them to play like my Fire Mage, so…
Oh no, people like something you hate. ahhhhhhhhhhh… /s
There are worse things to be scared of then this.
…You haven’t even played it yet. 
…Or you can just… not play the DPS spec.
Good for you. That means you will only focus on what’s fun for you and not what isn’t fun then.
I don’t think Blizzard has a gun to your head and telling you to play it or else.
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I am in the beta, I literally have played it.
If Hover had 2 charges baseline (3 talented) and Evoker had an armor buff aura to cover some greedy laser casts I’d be more than content.
Ahh, alright then.
Well either way the cheese slices, you can just not play the DPS spec if you hate it that much.
I’m sorry but what stuns are you even talking about? If you’re going off about [Snowdrift] Frost PvP talent, that’s a huge joke of a spell.
Armor buff aura? You mean Tempered Scales that grants them 75% more armor on top of having mail armor?
Is this another baseless anti-Mage comment? Why yes it is.
Daze and incapacitate and polymorph but yeah, no actual Stuns.
arguably more interactive than arcane mage, period.
small tangent: I used to -love- arcane mage, because it required careful balancing of dps with mana management, cycled around 1 ‘burst window’ cooldown. now you have like 3 or 4 ‘mini bursts’ and mana regen is basically a non-factor in any fight that has even the slightest bit of mobility being required (which is all of them)
but since everything was balanced around that ‘burst window’ it was balanced around all 3/4 windows lining up at the same time, and yeah… when they -do- line up you can do some pretty serious damage, but its pretty pathetic outside of that.
mage specs have lost a lot of their ‘flavor’ since they tried to make all 3 equally ‘viable’ in all forms of content, imo it was better back when ‘ice gave you the best cc and mobility’ ‘fire gave you the best burst damage but struggled in longer fights’ and arcane was ‘steady but solid dps that shone in longer fights with minor bursts for pvp’
look at the pretty dragon
ima fly with wings weeeee
2 Likes
I had the same thought. I have no problems with Evokers being Dracthyr only or with Evoker being a caster spec, but I think Dracthyr should have had other class options. Namely Warrior, Hunter and maybe Rogue since those are all generic martial specializations that are less specific about where their power comes from.
Devastation is fine, could be better sure but it works fine and performs well in PvE. Mage honestly has too much thanks to the new talent tree’s, along with a couple of other specs/classes. If you compare it to all classes it’s not in a bad state at all.
It’s good in PvE and will be fine in arena too with the main problem being hover breaking while rooted rather than just forcing you to sit still for the duration of the root.
The spec is not clunky, I’ve yet to see why the handful of people who say it is feel that way. It seems people just throw around buzzwords.
- Range
Outside of battlegrounds there is no issue with it having 25 yard range. More often than not ranged specs are that close anyway. It does feel a little worse after playing my BM hunter recently but it’s still better than melee.
More range would be nice though! At least with our utility.
- Mobility
Evoker mobility is great. Hover is a powerful ability, 30 second cooldown that has a dash if used while moving, then a movement speed buff + the ability to cast while moving. Everyone will likely talent for two hover charges but there is also the option for taking time spiral for another for you + the whole raid. After doing LFR last night and watching people die to mechanics because they wasted their mobility before hand, time spiral is probably worth it.
Verdant embrace will let us jump to an ally within 25 yards, the lack of range does kind of suck with this spell tbh.
Rescue that lets us grab an ally and then fly to a location of your choosing while giving both of us a 30% shield.
While I don’t think we will use it for the mobility Zephyr also gives us 30% for 8 seconds.
Deep Breath deals good damage and let’s us travel a good distance. Great skill depending on the content you are doing.
Glide is great for getting around when you are not dealing damage, just spam space bar to constantly jump forward, it’s like having a 30-50% speed boost.
Other than FB and ES we are near fully mobile in 4+ aoe as we use AS and Pyre. We will be using FB at lvl 1 most of the time and we only charge ES past lvl 1 in AoE so when we do stop it’s not for too long. All of the other casters need to sit still for longer in AoE.
In ST it’s rare you need to move a ton in the first place, and we will have a hover charge up for when we do need to move, unless you are wasting it to run in circles for no reason. Most other casters will need to lose out on most of their DPS while dodging mechanics while Evokers will more often than not lose nothing or little compared to them depending on if they can get FB and ES off.
Personally I think they need to change rescue to work like Heroic leap when not targeting someone for the added mobility and the shield for when we are not in groups or when it’s a bad idea to move a friendly around.
Overall the spec has great mobility. I’m always willing to take more though if you can get the Devs to give us extra, but it’s not needed at all.
- Utility
Or utility is also pretty good. We have decent off heals, rescue, zephyr expunge, cauterizing flame, Landslide, Tail swipe, Sleep walk (more of a PvP spell.), Wing buffet, Oppressing Roar, time spiral, source of magic (likely useless with how it currently works.), and Hero. Evokers are going to be great in M+ thanks to their utility. A lot of it is niche but depending on the situation it can be pretty powerful.
- Survivability
Not having an immune sucks, but outside of that we are not in a bad place. Our armor is about the same as plate classes for physical damage reduction. We have 1-2 charges of a 30% wall on a 90s cooldown. 30% shield for you and an ally with rescue + twin guardian. Then zephyr for 20% aoe reduction for you and 4 others, renewing blaze, cauterizing flame and self heals.
Worse than a mage but Devokers can benefit others rather than only themselves.
- Mage stuff
Mages don’t have stuns in PvE, Evokers can talent into a 3s aoe stun on a 1min CD, with oppressing roar it along with other CC will last 50% longer.
Mage has better roots but the evoker root is ‘ok’, good range in a line but the CD might be too long. It should be good enough for your tank along with what they have. Evoker slows are not the best but fire is probably worse with arcane being a little ahead or about the same, and frost dominating these specs.
Overall they are not bad at all, I don’t think they will be meta but they are in a good state. We have plenty of video’s thanks to Preheat, Jereico and others showing them do very well in M+. We will likely be middle of the pack in raiding unless our niche spells have a role to play on some fights.
In PvP it looks like one of those classes that need a proper arena team and skill to really shine, I don’t expect them to be one of the better solo shuffle classes sadly as two melee on you without support will be rough with how much mobility they gained in DF. I’d love some changes to help performance in PvP but It’s not AS BAD as some people make it out to be.
I expect them to be pretty powerful in 10v10 battlegrounds with swoop up, and chrono loop to kill the FC and other kill targets along with rescue to save your own FC and others.
I would think they lose some value in Epic BG’s same as melee classes as they lack the range to battle with the large mob of ranged characters. I would think they basically want the play the same way as UDK players by kidnapping people with Swoop up and throwing out what damage they can before the melee rush in.
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Clearly that was a Boomkin Druid that rolled on everything.
Evokers can use polearms and other 2h weapons as transmog options. The armor they have is our Dracthyr form armor we can choose to use. They just look cooler in the cinematic like with everything else in WoW.
Less popular than monk, I’m hoping.
Should have given us tinkerer.
Yep man them attention grabbing headlines (click bait) that them youtubers use is something new. I know nothing about devastation to be fair as I can only stand to play healers and tanks. You can see by this char only a few hours into his life he stopped where he was. Preservation though is very fun for me at least. It will be interesting to see if I end up on MW monk or Preservation as a main this xpac though. I did not want to ruin preservation so I only ran a few dungeons on beta.
If you don’t like the ranged dps spec then play a different one. No one besides you said you have to do anything. That sounds like an internalized self caused issue.
If you actually want to see fixes or changes you need to separate your emotions and provide IMPARTIAL detailed feedback. Your have only provided emotional and subjective feedback. Drop the emotion, get some good comparisons and objective feedback. Make some videos show the difference between another ranged spec. Show how situations would make them struggle vs other ranged casters in situations where ranged should thrive.
You can see Roran’s feedback as a good example of a template for making an statement or argument for or against something.
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