Devastation is practically unviable in M+

Classes Evoker
41

Pyre is already an uncapped beast, the problem is that they can’t make it a pyre focused hero spec because it is also a healer spec.

I already put forth a few ideas that would make Flameshaper better because the primary areas it suffers is that the additional talents it has don’t mesh well for a DPS and Reliance on one ability being a critical hit every time to even come close and competing means that either it has to be a guaranteed crit, conduit of flame needs to be reworked for devastation, or enkindle would need a major boost.

42

I’d just like both HDH and DEvoker to feel like they don’t implode the second something breathes on them.

Please? Maybe? This is my horrifically uneducated opinion on DEvoker in particular.

2 Likes
44

I distinctly remember that prior to Aug’s introduction Dragon rage CD was able to be reduced by using essence burst. But maybe I’m confusing DF ptr with season 1. I never said it was not base line 2 minutes.

Pyre is horrible damage because it’s an uncapped spell. You need 8+ mobs for it to equal the damage of a warriors blade storm on just 4 mobs or a shams chain lighting or DKs anything aoe, monks spin to win. Ect. Hell even fire mage gets full kit from combustion constantly.

Devs forced move out of mastery caused the spec to break. With Two massive damage CDs relying on mastery. Deep breath and Dragon Rage.

And why does Dev have a 2min CD for AoE when every single other class has 1.30mim or less.

Dev’s single target is not even comparable to pally. I just ran an Ara-Kara 11, parsing a 95 for Dev and was still bottom DPS to a Pally who parses an 89 and an enhancement sham with also an 89.

100kdps under the pally and 200k dps under the sham.

The spec is trash and needs a real overhaul. Not some people trying to make excuses for blizzards poor design choices.

2 Likes
45

Dragonrage’s cooldown has never been able to be reduced. Ever. Not by talent, not by essence burst, not by empowered spells, nothing.

Pyre’s base damage beats out non-mass disintegrate disintegrates after 3 targets. After 8 targets, it actually becomes stronger than mass disintegrate.

Dev’s mastery was EXTREMELY POWERFUL before, and it was nerfed because 80% of our damage was happening during Dragonrage windows and our damage was awful outside of it.

Because we have lots of damage besides our 2 minute CD.

You are probably not sure how to do the logs, because you’re probably looking at Overall damage and not separating Boss and Trash damage. Also, for your logs, you were below the tank in boss damage because you died three times and the ret was below you in boss damage. Only one who consistently did more than you for trash and bosses was the shaman.

So yeah, you might want to double-check your play first.

If you would like, I could help you out because just from a glance, comparing we both did a +10 mists one day apart, I did one one the 12th, you did one on the 13th, here’s the main difference between our runs.
My run was 19:33 and yours was 26:36
I cast Deep Breath 25 times, you cast it 26 times which means you are losing a lot of casts to only get one extra cast over 7 minutes.
I had 1,018 hits of Bombardments and you had 849, which means you might not have been hitting the right targets for Mass Disintegrate.
I had 290 million damage from Pyre, you had 101 million. Which means you may not have been utilizing Charged Blast, or completely ignoring Pyre entirely.
I had 9 Dragon Rages, you had 10, which means you were sitting on it too long to only get one extra DR in 7 minutes.
Since you’re not running Event Horizon, that means your Shattering Star and Eternity Surges would be dysnced because of our 4pc, which also costs you a bit of damage.
Your renewing blaze usage was also low, there’s no reason not to use it when there’s damage going out and since you didn’t use it at all on Tredova, that would be a big contributor to death, besides standing in pools.
Hover uptime also seems low, <20% hover uptime? It should be over 40% for Scalecommander because there’s no reason not to.
Also… No embellishments? I wonder where all that damage is going, I wonder…

I ended up getting targeted by the stun 3 times on the first pack and derped my deep breath and sat in two full stuns on the first pack of trash and still ended at 2mil DPS overall while active, 2.4mil on trash and 1.5mil on bosses while you were at 1.5mil on trash and 955k on bosses, with the ilvl difference of 5, will offer some leeway as gear plays a factor but that’s still a sizable gap with room for improvement.

5 Likes
46

This has never been a thing.

47

Probably confusing it with DR being able to be extended, which if done correctly makes the DR CD FEEL shorter.

48

Right. Sure I don’t know how to do the logs. The mists was longer because people failed the maze. Horrible dungeon to fairly compare time and spell usage on. Typical of an underhanded kinda of person huh?

Me ranking 94 to a Pally of 89 and only doing 2,000 more DPS on boss damage means what? That the Dev spec is low on single target and extremely gimped on AoE.

What you don’t seem to comprehend is that parsing is equal to class proficiency. Someone who is 5 ranks higher in proficiency on another class should never be lesser on damage to them.

But even so, you had to be 10 to 11 points higher than the next classes to beat them on damage in that Mist. If that mage was just one or two points more proficient than you, then he would be top.

And now I have a SoB 12, over timed due to the tank taking a swim on the final boss. My pars a 99. My position on damage last. Under a sham who parsed a 94. Top was a monk with another 99.

I don’t need tips from you on how to play the spec when I’m parsing in your range and almost 5 item levels lower than you.

49

It means that parses are completely and utterly useless in m+. I’m not sure why you’re stating the parses like they mean anything. It has almost nothing to do with class proficiency.

They’re not even indicative of your actual performance relative to your own spec, let alone other specs lol.

The simple fact that you don’t understand how logs work and keep mentioning it like it’s a flex shows how little you understand about how to actually analyze your performance.

Maybe take advice from a player that clearly outperforms you instead of being a defensive child.

You’re not performing similarly. In raid logs (which actually show skill level on a spec), you’re parsing 35% in heroic, while they are over 91% in mythic, lol.

Have some humility. Get better.

2 Likes
50

If a tank was messing up the maze so that it would take longer, that doesn’t explain using fewer CDs, rather it would mean you would be able to use them on more of the packs.

Even if we squished the time down to be equal, 20% fewer bombardments, a third of the pyre damage, dying with defensives off CD, there is room for improvement. Should stop fretting about M+ % because someone can get 90% just by putting a +11 key in, blasting on the opener then dying every pull, instead go by actual damage output and whether they die or not.

I can’t really easily analyze a run when I’m on my phone, but if the tank went for a swim on the last boss of siege, someone probably knocked him into the water by being way too close before being dispelled so my guess is the blame isn’t actually on the tank for that one because I doubt someone with just walk off into the water.

Still, if you don’t want help I won’t give you any. Instead, I will simply have to disagree and say that you’re still doing something wrong.

4 Likes
51

Steaming pile of ashen remains

52

The tank hero leaped onto the water by mistake. It happens.

You being able to get more bombardments means the mobs where dying slower than in my run because you where running with underperformer for their spec damage.

Pars is not key percentage, and you said I didn’t know how to look at the logs.

You again are being underhanded and for whatever reason don’t want to admit that Dev as a spec is being severely neglected compared to all others.

You don’t even have posted logs for any of your 11s that I can see. I’d bet you where not top damage or anywhere near it.

53

Might want to look up the word “percentile” then get back to me.

54

soooooo they’re in the 91st percentile and you’re in the 35th? is that better?

1 Like
55

Actually you’d be wrong. I’m usually either number one or number two on the meters but not everyone logs every single run in M+. In my last two 12s, I was tied with the Assassination rogue and 300-400k ahead of the shaman. The Rogue had better trash damage and I had better boss damage so it kind of evened out by the end. Was a friend group and their first 12s but we muscled through on time.

Also, you probably seen the log, are you saying that my group that did less damage and killed mobs slower to explain how I had more bombardments? How does that work when our group was doing more damage? Is doing more damage somehow doing less damage now? Do I have to remind you that the damage you are doing now is the damage I was doing 6 ilvls below where you are with bad trinkets for M+?

If you want to argue parses, you are just wasting everybody’s time, thinking you are better than you are just because M+ isn’t frequently logged enough to give a real estimate of percentile performance. Raid is more reliably logged, and it has you gray parsing for ilvl.

But if you want help understanding logs, here’s a rundown.

Your group was in active combat for 1530 seconds, or 25.5 of the 26.5 minutes, so only 1 minute out of combat which isn’t awful for a dungeon with RP. Group damage through the whole dungeon, including downtime was 4.3mil. You parsed 79th percentile of ALL DEVOKERS over ALL key ranges, by being in a 10, you automatically will rank better than a devoker in a +4 at 595 ilvl. Your parse for key level was 22% for ALL DEVOKERS in Mists +10 keys. Which means you are compared against 580 ilvl paid carries and 630+ ilvl devokers in the +10 keys for Mists, and you’re at 22% of the logged parses for that dungeon at that key level.

Now for my comparison of same dungeon same key level

Active time of 1136 seconds or 4 seconds shy of 19 minutes of the 19.5 minute timer, so we spent 30 seconds or so less time between pulls for the whole dungeon. Group DPS including the 0 DPS downtime was 5.7 mil. How, again, did I get 20% more bombardment hits? Because the 618 survival hunter alt and the HoF 635 Frost mage were underperforming? No. Bombardments were my responsibility to put on the right targets and maximize uptime, after all we were in combat for almost 400 seconds less.

56

Ffxiv has absolutely amazing class diversity. You can smack talk the game for many reasons, but thats not one of them.

57

Did I understand correctly that in most cases the whole secret of success in M+ is in the correct selection of targets for bombardments?

58

A not-so-insignificant portion of Scalecommander Dev’s damage relies on using Mass-Disintegrate properly.

That includes:
Knowing how to channel it, when to chain-channel and when to let the final tick happen before casting again.
Applying Bombardments to targets that aren’t going to die before it expires.
Making use of Charged Blast Pyres and Pyre in general as being the best Bombardment-extension and pure damage option once you get to 4 targets even without Charged Blast stacked if you don’t have Mass Disintegrate ready because Extended Battle is 1 sec per essence ABILITY not essence spent which means pyre = more extensions = more bombardments.
Then to make use of Deep Breath, which gets it’s cooldown reduced by all of those bombardments, which because of Melt Armor, make your spenders also do more damage while doing a strong amount of damage on its own.

Devastation is a spec that pretty much thrives on feedback loops.
Essence spenders reduce cooldown on Empowered Abilities which, in Scalecommander’s case, directly boost the power of our spenders.
Then those empowered disintegrates apply bombardments.
Disintegrate/pyre extend bombardments.
Bombardments reduce the cooldown on Deep Breath.
Deep breath boosts the damage of bombardments and spenders.

Those are the cycles that you have to know to do well as Devastation in Mythic+. Surviving is a matter of knowing the dungeon, when it’s too dangerous to breath and when it’s safe, when to push scales or renewing blaze, when to use interrupts, stops, dispels, the best places to bloodlust without holding it too long… Learning those will let someone do great in M+.

He made the claim that he had 20% fewer bombardments because his group was killing things too fast and mine was killing things too slowly, so I simply had to explain how that doesn’t math out that way. He had fewer bombardments because he was ignoring Pyre and it was falling off faster than it would with mine, which results in fewer deep breaths which results in lower bombardment/spender damage.

2 Likes
59

Not everyone playing Devastation Evoker has or needs that level of deep technical mastery. A lot of us play classes like this simply because we enjoy them—whether it’s the aesthetic, the theme, or just the feel of the abilities. Enhancement Shamans and Frost Death Knights remain popular despite being considered straightforward or “braindead” by some. Most people play what performs the best and brings the utility + DPS into the M+ and Raids, and that’s valid.

What we’re asking for isn’t to be the top of the charts but simply not to be stuck at the bottom, especially in Mythic+ content starting at 11+ keys. It’s frustrating to feel punished for liking a spec because it underperforms compared to others.

While I appreciate the detailed breakdown of Devastation’s mechanics—because it’s helpful for those who want to push their limits—many players don’t have the time or inclination to master every nuance. They just want to have fun while contributing meaningfully to their group. All we are asking is a bit of tuning to help us keep up would go a long way for the broader player base. Not everyone wants to turn their gameplay into a calculus exam. :blush:

5 Likes
60

Not if you go by key level which is want the rankings tab is. And thank you for showing that you, the highest DPS on that run did less overall damage than the shaman who was second in mine.

Our dps values only being lower due to the length of the dungeon from failing portals

So yes, you have two under preforming people who ran with you in your mist 10 dungeon, that’s why you got more bombardments off because the mobs lived longer. Which also helps with what little mastery devs use since their HP bars stay higher longer.

Keep in mind once again I pars near yours with no omen craft at that time and close to 5 average item levels lower per piece of gear.

You aren’t as good as you think you are, but none of that had anything to do with the topic at hand which is that Dev, even the best Dev in the world, is asking for buffs because the spec is not good in M+. There is a reason it is ranked bottom C.

Don’t understand why you are trying to defend that.

3 Likes
61

Agreed this guy yapped an entire technical rant when in reality his peers were garbage.

If they did more damage like they should have, you’d be dumpstered across the board in DPS.

Devastation is rat tier.

2 Likes