Hey everyone!
I know that ppl say that dev evoker is bonkers on AOE. I just think that I might be doing something wrong, because there are times that I get far behind other classes, like rogues, shamans and paladins on my m+ AOE damage (big pulls, 3 target seems ok). I would appreciate any tips on the AOE rotation that you may have 
I am currently running Volatility instead of Charged Blast. In a regular rotation situation, I am casting deep breath, dragonbreath , st, eternity surge 3 (tip), living flames (if db empower 3), 2x mass desintegrates (switching targets for bombardments), spam pyre, Azure strike. I know that the empower level may vary on the pull, but I wanted to give my overall rotation. I feel that sometimes it takes to long to execute this where my group is just blasting the mobs.
I am thinking on switching to charged blast for testing. Any tips? How are you feeling your dps in m+ AOE scenarios?
In 3-5 targets let Mass disintegrate full channel, then spam pyre.
In Mass AOE like 7 plus targets, a friend of mine says they cancel mass disintegrate immediately after applying bombardments and then just spam pyre.
Charged blast pulls ahead for smaller cleave and burst for one talent while Volatility would pull ahead in the 7+ target situations if you are dropping two points for it.
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This is a large part of your problem right here.
For the key levels you’re doing, things will be dead by the time you are spamming enough pyre for volatility to be worth. That’s assuming you’re even getting consistently big enough pulls to get value from it.
The rotation in general looks fine, I just think you get more value from CB in that key range (and it’s much better for bosses/ prio cleave. A lot of pulls just seem to have cannon fodder ads that die too quickly, and we can really make up ground on those other classes with 2-3 target cleave, where CB can shine.
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Ty for your answers! I’ll give CB a try. I was reading some guides that were recommending Volatility but I found it quite disappointing.
The rotation with CB is just to cast pyre after a fully charged mass disintegrate (12+ charges), right?
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You can cast a pyre after each mass disintegrate since each full-channel would be 12~20 stacks depending on procs but you don’t really need to play around charged blast, using normal disintegrates instead of pyre just to try and charge stacks would be a loss on AoE.
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Charged blast is also for blasting with dragons rage on short pulls.
Some people don’t know it applies to all 3 pyres
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lol what
I didn’t know that either
Volatility has its time and place in really large pulls (like 7+). Its good in scenarios where you want faster CDR on your empowered spells and constant extentions on your bombardments. I’ve heard of some skilled evokers holding 4 or more bombardments active all at once using this method.
But like others have said, charged blast is currently ahead in normal scenarios due to how quickly you can get 20 stacks.
The main thing is that volatility has zero value on most bosses, so if you’re doing 10+ keys (where you’re guaranteed to deal with both affixes), volatility would lose value significantly.
Playing CB well in AOE is still not far behind, so it just feels better to have CB for a little extra value no matter the size of packs/on bosses.
Are we suppose to be much lower at AoE than some other classes? I feel like I can barely keep up with classes like MM hunter, warlocks, Ret paladins and the like. Even when burning all cd’s. On bosses I’m always like 10 million damage behind the others, even when taking their bombardments in consideration.
Also, how do you use Dragonrage? Did you press it on cooldown or do you safe it? I strictly pug so it’s not like I can work around known pulls.
Respectfully, if you’re behind on AOE AND bosses, it’s likely a gameplay issue.
It’s not crazy to be behind some of those insane burst aoe specs if packs die quickly enough, but I can definitely keep up with most classes outside of lust if things are getting nuked down before I can get full rotations out.
That said, I generally come out ahead on bosses. Especially anything with cleave, we’re nuts (ie second boss in CoT).
It’s kind of a judgement call. If it won’t be back for a boss or if the pack will die with a decent amount of time left on it it’s not worth it, but you don’t want to sit on it TOO long.
Enough reps of each dungeon will give you an idea of when you’ll typically use it.
I don’t know what level you’re talking of but at mine, 610 ilvl doing +5/+6 keys, I just don’t have the same damage as other classes.
But please share your general rotation for AoE. Maybe mine is just wrong.
In a geared 5 or 6 it’s entirely possible things are just dying too quickly. I don’t feel like things live long enough for me to be competitive until 9-10 with other competent DPS.
At any rate, the most important thing in aoe (assuming you’re playing charged blast) is to weave a pyre in between mass disintegrate-disintegrates (~12 stacks of cb) and to tab to a new target for the second mass disintegrate so you have two bombardments up.
Then you spam the pants off pyre to keep them up and get another deep breath ASAP.
That’s basically what I’m doing. The longer mobs stay alive the more I fall behind though. If mobs die quickly I can sometimes outdamage the rest.
Interesting… When I get two bombards up with essence and EB pooled and have the time to get a second meaningful deep breath in, I generally start to pull away from the pack.
Yeah, mobs never live long enough for me to get a second DB of.
I managed to pug my way up to 2000 rating last night, just joining other people’s key. But at this point, seeing how poor my damage is compared to other people, I might just go back to Preservation to climb the last stretch to 2500.
Making sure you’re tabbing MD’s to have more than one bombardment up is critical to getting a second DB super quickly, since each time they proc the cd of deep breath gets reduced.
As you io gets higher and you hit those 9-10 keys, you’ll get the chance to get more reps in as well as have more time on the packs (whether you get there as pres first or not).
Not sure what’s changed. I thought I’d try a +7 Boralus and I managed to top the meters on most bosses and trash against frost mage and destro warlock.
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Could be just reps. While dev isn’t super complicated, Scalecommander is pretty unforgiving if not played correctly.
Using a +8 to +10 key level as a baseline, the general idea I go for is dragonrage will be ready approximately every three to four packs on tyrannical keys and about every three packs on fortified keys. There are a lot of variables to this obviously, such as how long enemies live for. The only time I save dragonrage is if I know a big dangerous pack or boss is coming up within a pull or two. Otherwise I send it on cooldown as long as the current pull is healthy.