Devastation in 10.0.7 and Beyond

PVP Arenas
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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 since 10.0.7, 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. Prior to 10.0.7, we were able to thrive against some melee comps that stacked together such as Ret/Warrior/Healer. Now we are countered by this comp, Hunters, Death Knights, and Warlocks were buffed as an already existing counter to us, which certainly is reflected in the increase player count on these classes. Making this a very difficult Meta for a Devastation Evoker to thrive in.

Summary of my Devastation Recommendations:

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 / passive tankiness, 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. Last point here: Just about every Ranged DPS is viable and performing atleast decently well in Arenas except Devastation Evoker. I suspect a correlation to Devastation being the only ranged class limited to no more than 25 yards on their abilities.

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.

7 Likes
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I agree buff Ret

7 Likes
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A very fitting name Mr. FotmRerollxd hahah

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No. That’s a bad idea with how bursty they are

I can agree with this. But not too much

Yes I hate the range limitation. It feels awful

As long as Prevoker can’t get it

1 Like
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Fair but thats assuming all of the changes below were implemented. Devastation is “too bursty” but take that from them now and they would be a low damage dealer with the defensive kit of a wet piece of paper.

I think this is where the most attention is needed. It’s why Devastation is easily bullied out of the meta. 10-15% damage reduction baseline for the scaly dragon class would make sense (Or something that we can activate in stun).

Totally agree, it’s probably why we are the one ranged dps spec that has no place or viability in arena atm.

I see your point here, but Prevoker already has access to landslide root and a stun. It wouldn’t add anything to their toolkit. Would help them rival RShaman with lasso and MW Monk with AOE Leg Sweep and Holy Priest with Chastise. That said, I wont comment as much on Prevoker, this all about Devastation because it has no place in the current meta. Prevoker a bit weaker, but still r1 viable in Arena

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No. delete lizards

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Let’s add something of substance, even if you do not play the class, share your experience playing against them then

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Evokers were just put in the game to make players literally chase the dragon. Delete lizards

1 Like
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Wanted to cover the 10.1 updated changes today: Falling in line with what I’ve said in the past, the common theme is an empty Evoker section in the patch notes, hotfixes, class tunings, etc.

Today we get 1 new PVP talent only and it’s: * New PvP Talent: Dream Catcher – Sleep Walk no longer has a cooldown, but its cast time is increased by 0.5 seconds.

Feels very unnecessary, Sleep Walk CD just under the length of the Diminishing Return, not sure how this New PvP Talent helps matters at all. Feels like it’s just “something” rather than a change geared at improving our performance.

If anything feels “done just right” with Evoker it was sleep walk… Can’t imagine how / why anyone would take this when must haves for PVP Talents would be – 1. Unburdened Flight, 2. Divide and Conqueror (New 10.1 Deep Breath Talent), and 3. Nullifying Shroud

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Adding to my point, many streamers / r1’s have already commented on this (Such as Supatease) and also feel it’s fairly meaningless given how competitive the PvP talent choices are, and adding casting time to your CC in an already dominant disruptive melee meta doesn’t feel great.

Other Classes PvP Talents Today 10.1: A theme with many of these new PvP Talents today is landing casted CC provides damage incentive (I.e. Polymorph no longer heals enemies and increases Versatility by 6%, Also Feral landing cyclones auto shifts you into cat and gives you feral frenzy baked into ferocious bite).

My Idea – For Dream Catcher Landing a successful Sleep Walk cast increases your movement speed by 25% and one of the options below (I’m not saying to have all 3, just providing 1 of 3 recommendations to along with the movement speed increase)

Option 1: Grants you 2 charges of Essence Burst (So we have on demand Disintegrates ready to fire off when we land our CC).

OR

Option 2: Grants you (1 or 2) charges of burnout (Instant cast living flame proc)

OR

Option 3: Resets the cooldown on Eternity Surge (Probably my least favorite of the 3 because this would incentivize the rotation of Eternity Surge → Sleep Walk → Eternity Surge which might feel odd, still better than the current rendition of Dream Catcher).

Also wanted to add the movement speed increase would be nice to go along with sleep walk casts because with our short 25 yard range, it may be hard to get involved in the fight, if you break away to land a sleep walk on a healer far away from their dps.

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all 3 of those ideas are crazy OP

devoker needs no damage buffs

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Movement speed increases feel largely irrelevant when you can double jump to move at 170% with a slightly forward propulsion whenever you want. It should grant hover for 4 seconds or something. That’d be cool

2 Likes
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Really want to make sure you are aware that Devastation Evoker is getting large burst damage nerfs in 10.1

The crit damage Reduction is going to hit us harder than anyone. Our only win condition in arena is 100-0 ing something in like 2-3 globals.

Also our Living Flame is getting hit significantly with damage nerfs, which is the hardest critting spell we have. Here is the 10.1 nerf below:

  • Engulfing Blaze’s damage bonus to Living Flame reduced to 25% (was 40%).

Take that along crit damage going down from 1.75x to 1.5x (I know Dev gets higher crit %, but for the sake of proportions).

We will be doing significantly less burst damage in 10.1 as is… especially compared to now in 10.0.7 where we already have no place in Arena

1 Like
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Not a bad recommendation, call that hover idea Option 4

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lol FDK would like a word

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the crit nerfs do not hit you guys harder than every other spec

when i stop seeing screenshots of 200k instant living flames on top of fb/es we can talk about ur dmg

ask for a better kit not asinine damage buffs

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yeah i’d say crit really hurts dev evoker, but it’ll hurt fire mage, destro lock, crit arms builds (but we can just pivot haste and be fine), mm hunter a bit, frost mage, ele sham, etc.

it’s definitely an umbrella of classes getting hit by it, but it’s better for the health of the game and will probably give us a middle ground between bfa levels of damp and the burst we see today. i don’t hate the change

1 Like
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I personally believe, and I know many other PVP evokers will agree with me on this, but the 10.0.7 Ancient Flame rework gutted a lot of Evoker’s Survivability in PVP, Survivability it already scarcely had.

IMHO I think that Ancient Flame’s rework needs to be reverted, as well as Giving evokers something as an immunity, Null shroud is good, don’t get me wrong, But Something similar to ice block or Aspect of the turtle would do them WONDERS with their survivability.

I’ve played my fair share of Evoker and I agree with most of this post, (I mainly Pvp’d them for the elite mog ngl) the only thing I would disagree with is the idea of giving them an Execute, most evoker wins/kills in RSS and Arena these days are Tip the Scales Firebreath macros as finishers while dragonrage is still active.

Lastly, I agree with your thoughts on the Range limit, Even in PvE it’s a liability, but in PvP it’s most evoker’s downfall, like you said, even if you have complete mastery with your Hover and rescue usages, a paladin can smite you from the heavens with Final verdict even while rooted. If I could suggest, Maybe give them a 30-35 range, I dare say 40 like mages and Hunters.

1 Like
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Can I start by asking if you have played Devastation Evoker at a decent level in Arena? I would also question your reading comprehension ability, as 2 of my 3 points, plus an additional BONUS point all address improving our Kit (Adding Range and better Defensive strength bonus point addresses CC.)

No where in this post do I talk about buffing existing Devastation Evoker Damaging abilities, only adding an additional ability execute, which if you actually play the class, you can tell we are very light in the rotational damage abilities.

We have a talent that multiplies our crit multiplier to 2.3x (Not sure what the PvP Conversion % is). Therefore our kit is completely built around large crits. Then there are classes like Demo and Aff Warlock and Shadow Priests that barely benefit from crit…

Being that our crit multiplier, like ele shaman, is the highest in the game, the crit nerf mathematically hits us harder than anyone else.

And if you read above, living flame is receiving another 15% damage nerf on top of this. Those Living Flames will probably crit closer to 120k instead of 200k and be more in line with the rest of the hard critting classes (Atleast this is what my early PTR test shows me).

Not sure if you are trolling commenting as a warlock arguably the most op class in Arena, complaining about Devastation Evoker undisputably the worst dps spec in Arena. But the irony is painful yet hilarious

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do you believe clone fear sheep and entangling roots would be exactly as powerful as they presently are, if they were on the same cd as sleepwalk and rep?