This simply isn’t true. It’s Blizzard’s first attempt at this kind of design in WoW and you think that because the literal first live pass isn’t perfect the design is inherently untenable? There’s nothing wrong with the concept of the spec or its range. It just needs to have a kit which supports the playstyle.
Blizzard is far from the first to use the “higher positional requirements but with the kit to enable it” design. It’s entirely doable and very fun when it’s done well. Turning devastation into yet another generic caster would be a tragedy.
This also kills the spec design. They don’t need to be castable while moving at all. Arena is fast-paced but planting and casting isn’t an inherently flawed concept. Better that the empowered spells make you immune to disruption than be castable while moving. You could easily add it to Obsidian Mettle that empowered spells have its benefits at all times. Could even make it so with Obsidian Scales up empowered spells further make you immune to hard crowd controls. Would enable them and even add in additional layer of potential skill expression.
Point being, there are plenty of ways to support hard-casting instead of removing it. My suggestions are only a couple.
In what universe is this a reasonable starting position for a change? Hover has a 10 second duration, with a longer effective duration since you can start casting any length of spell as it’s ending and that spell is empowered by the buff. If you add in it being castable while casting other spells and off the GCD (which I agree with) then its effective duration is even longer yet. A 15 second recharge would be an absurd jump from 35 seconds, and would specifically move it into the realm of of you choosing more when it’s down than when it’s up. Huge skillcap nerf to the class. Hover should be a resource to be managed, not a defacto passive.
What would be good to see, in addition to the GCD and castable-while-casting changes, is to have Hover gain an additional charge at the cost of some of its current duration. So instead of 6 seconds baseline turning into 10 with talents, with 1 (2 talented) charges, it would be 4 seconds baseline, turning into 7 with talents, and 2 (3 talented) charges. This would allow devastation to have more granular control over when it is up in specific. The spec would also just straight gain access to an additional dash portion of the spell, which would be a sizeable buff. If the ability needs higher uptime still you should be looking at something like a 30 or 25 second recharge time, but to jump straight to 15 would be silly.
Another suggestion I saw here that I think would make a ton of sense for this class is to have Hover make you immune to ground-based effects. Would make thematic sense and specifically help the class deal with the additional dangers of its stricter positional requirements.
Reasonable buff, but the reasoning is poor. Evokers aren’t mages and Landslide isn’t Frost Nova. That being said I would also add that Wing Buffet and Tail Swipe should have lower cooldowns. Also if Landslide’s cooldown is reduced it should probably also have a lower PvP duration given its range and width.
Feels like people are twisting themselves in knots feeling bad about Essence when it’s just a magic version of Energy. The only thing I think it needs is to have Disintegrate require 3 charges to cast, but only consume them as it deals damage rather than upfront.
They’re also not just going to wildly improve our Essence generation for free. Even if the spec needs damage buffs it doesn’t need “quadruple our Essence generation” levels of buffs. What you are suggesting would, without question, require massive nerfs to our spenders on a cast-by-cast basis. We’re already rewarded for higher uptime with Essence Burst procs, and while I also hate RNG making the spec more deterministic at this point is going to require more than one change. For the time being a more reasonable change would be to increase the proc chance by, say, 15% on Living Flame and 10% on Azure Strike, for a total of 35% and 25%, respectively.
Potentially. I think the main issue right now is how easily it can be dispelled when the ability that generates it is on such a long cooldown and the DoT enables multiple talents. I’ve seen other suggestions, but given the spec has just this one DoT and that’s it, I would rather see it just become a physical debuff. Ideally I’d like to see it turned into a Black spell and deal Volcanic damage as well, which would help justify its DoT being physical and also mean that Fire Breath would be linked to Deep Breath in terms of kick schools, instead of with Living Flame, Pyre, Dragonrage, Cauterizing Flame, and Renewing Flame.
