Title. As much as I’ve been enjoying a break from mage on evoker I’ve finally pinpointed what I don’t like about it. Its very 1 dimensional and has less depth then even a DH. Its like the Garen of WoW.
For those who aren’t familiar with LoL garen is a prominent noob friendly champion that has one way to attack you and a very generic kit. Run up silence and bladestorm with an execute ultimate.
Evoker feels very much the same. If you put a 1500 evoker and a multiglad evoker next to each other and watched them play, assuming both knew the basics of its burst its gameplay would be near identical. There is nothing about them that pops, the kit doesn’t allow a very clear expression of skill either.
Mages have a robust enough kit to do 3 dozen different possible things at any moment that makes you go “wow thats a REALLY good mage” and you feel it when you play.
Evoker with its lack of CC/Kit/Sustain dmg and a very telegraphed burst feels like fire mage lite. Now this isn’t to say they are entirely lacking they will have a very high skill ceiling and play making with stuff like Chrono Loop/Swoop/Rescue/Time stop which I’ve said before.
The overall kit and lack off CC/Range and style of ability severely lacks though. I think of any class in WoW defines glass cannon its definitely evoker, more like close range shotgun then it does nothing for 2 minutes.
I’m not sure what kind of feedback we could give at this point to see some of abilities redesigned or things added to its kit to give it a more robust and immersing playstyle and not shotgun for a 1 shot and run and spam offheals. Would like to see it though this is just my critique as a mage main.
No matter how much I play it, I just can’t find something about it that makes me feel like I’m outplaying anyone or doing anything relevant. I load my shotgun and pray to rng that it 1 shots and go next. No real satisfaction in that gameplay.
I’ll end with not having anyway of regenerating resource is le poopy too. I’ve had moments where I have no essence or procs and im like ok im hardcasting living flame or spamming azure strike like a peasant cus i got nothing else to press. Atleast spamming fireball on mage even if its da poop gets me combust back sooner. Azure strike spam is rng fishing for essence burst and that feels awful. I could press it 5x and get nothing and still be waiting for enough essence to use diet ray of frost
My main issue with their kit is that any kind of overwhelming damage needs set-up and counterplay, which theirs doesn’t have. SK ele is IMO the baseline for what a burst class should be. Ele peak “sustained burst” is having sufficient malestrom, Icefury up, SK up, your trinket up, Flame Shock rolling, and your fire ele out (in prepatch also having just thrown out Primordial Wave). You’re then weaving multiple GCDs that amount to a large amount of damage over a relatively short time-frame. It’s not instant though. Even the super bolts themselves don’t instantly do all their damage due to the time it takes the overloads to come out. You can also attack parts of the ideal set-up in addition to defending against the actual damage as it comes out, which again is coming out slowly enough to react to. At best an ele can compress it down to SK>ES>LB>ES>LB but that’s still a cast into 4 GCDs, and it’s not going to solo anyone.
Devoker, on the other hand, just hits a couple of buttons and the damage comes out with about 1.5-3 total seconds to react and your only options being to LoS or use a defensive. And even then they can just choose not to actually use their instant breath if you react in response to their Dragonrage, which itself is not actually necessary if you can take someone from full health to zero in one ability. Further, the baseline damage potential of their instant breath means that even with quite literally zero set-up there is always the threat of them being able to instantly respond to any dip in your health from their partner or their basic rotation with an execute on you. Even on my poorly-geared prevoker I can just dump out 1/4th of someone’s health, on-command, with an instant breath, which is frankly really dumb for me to have just sitting in my back pocket.
The damage just needs more interactivity. I actually don’t even think the level of it is an issue, per se, but I don’t think Tip the Scales is a healthy CD for them to have. They should have to plant their feet and actually get their empowered cast off after catching you in the open or in a CC to be rewarded with that kind of power. That’s hypothetically the entire point of the class, where they have high output and burst and mobility, but they’re mid-range and they have to use that mobility to find the opportunity to get their big hitters off. Right now most of their power lies in them circumventing this core philosophy, which doesn’t feel like a good path forward for anyone outside of people who want “hehe instant KO”.
People used to say shaman lacks playmaking. After playing prepatch I’m convinced people have no idea what they are talking about. DH and Evoker were so strong it felt like I was a fresh 60 fighting a four season geared to the teeth character.
It’s true evoker instants are overturned and absolutely need adjustments to make dragonflight bearable, but there is still a lot of playmaking in them.
They some have some slight things they can do with what I mentioned above in regards to time stop, swoop up, rescue, chrono loop and tail swipe, wing buffet. Overall though their kit is very rigid. Most specs feel like they can move in any direction or interact with others in various ways. Evoker feels like whats best summed up as a train on its tracks and firmly in place. It doesn’t quite feel fluid in the sense it can use its kits in various ways or interact with other specs the same.
Its very much minor impact with not much to press and pull the trigger on your shotgun blast and go for the instant kill. Beyond that it doesn’t feel flexible. I have been playing it pretty heavily and I just don’t find myself in a position of feeling like I outplayed anyone or did anything really clever for that matter.
Anyones whos see me casually mess around on my mage can tell you all sorts of crazy shenanigans I’ll do. Its not limited to mage either but just going off my own experience.
Plenty of specs/classes have consistent moments of skill expression in gameplay and just outskilling at every turn. Devastation feels like it lacks that entirely. I can soft trade, I can stall I can pull the trigger sooner or rather then later. Its still centers around the meme 1 shot shotgun cone and killing one or more people with it.
The rest of its kit is really bland ontop of being small and lacking many of the interactions the most specs in game have. Evokers most impacting and expressive abilities have a long CD including their burst so what they do in between and what they have in between is what feels nothing.
Other specs in game have elements in their kit that can constantly influence the gameplay as it flows, whether your a warrior making a swap with leap, intervening to stop a go, or reflecting something important its there. We could spend all day writing essays on the micro-interactions the nearly every spec in the game is capable of.
Evoker really lacks that due to its small kit and long cds and very generic 1 dimensional playstyle. I’m not writing the class off, only putting this out there with the hope that devs take the feedback seriously and come up with a long term gameplan to get the class better put together.
You’re still talking about the cast of Stormkeeper (which is 100% necessary for the net damage, unlike Dragonrage, so if the SK is committed at the wrong time the threat is diffused until it cycles) and then three GCDs of separate damage chunks. There’s a world of difference between that and a single, instant, massive chunk of (AoE) damage coming out. It’s a burstier combo but what you’re describing is still far closer to what I described than it is to what devokers actually do. That build also sacrifices consistency and utility for the sake of more compressed damage that is more vulnerable every other go, while devokers get TtS at no real opportunity cost.
Are you talking about with a full stack of the FS buff?
Edit: Regardless, if Ele Blast is in the same boat it just means it also needs to be toned down. No spec of any class should be one-shotting, or even 90% chunking, with a single crit. Maybe if that crit required a ton of set-up that itself could be countered individually, but that would be the only instance where it should even be a possibility.
tbf u gatta cast lava burst first for the 20% dam buff or earthshock for 1-2 extra bolts (if that even still works)
either way it’s pretty telling when a ele is about to do dmg, either red totem, green blob throw, or casting stormkeeper, all of it is pretty visually impactful
Be specific. Preservation definitely has a decent kit for skill expression. Unfortunately right now they are so giga busted they don’t need to use it. Devoker on the other hand is so simple I can finally say a class is easier to play than arms warrior which I didn’t think would ever happen.
Ye lemme politely ask the kill target to stay in their vulnerable position as I run behind a pillar to cast a spell that is going to throw up a blaring neon warning sign on everyone’s screen before I waddle back around to actually utilize said spell. Also definitely not being trained by a melee and doing all of that completely unmolested.
It’s not difficult to literally cast the spell, but lining it up with everything you need for a kill is. The Ele Blast combo is less-so but I’ve already conceded that it sounds as problematic as devo burst. I don’t play that build myself.
I agree with a lot of what you are saying. I’ll list my own stuff that I don’t like about Evoker below:
I definitely feel like casting living flame should speed up resource regen as you said.
I also think there should some control over essence burst and eternity surge procs.
Deep breath is insanely buggy and needs it’s path requirements severely reduced ASAP. This is enough to actually break the class for me as it’s so important to get this damage off when needed or to use it to avoid cc/escape a root. It has to work when you need it to and not a second later. Every time. I know it’s just a “bug” but something tells me it’s not one they plan on fixing anytime soon. There’s a lot of potential skill expression with this single ability if they can make it perform like it’s supposed to.
Fire Breath and Eternity Surge often bug out on me and will keep charging even though my options are set to fire unless holding the key down, and they will often cause my abilities to go dark as if they are still charging. Again, just a bug but I know Blizzard and they let $#!t like this ride for years unless a lot of people really stay on them about it.
Hover and Obsidian scales are nice, but they need renewing blaze to work better for their big oh crap defensive. Right now it can easily be punched through even when you pre-cast it on burst. Probably needs to be a static 2m cd if they buff it.
Lastly the range. Sorry but I just don’t like this at all even after playing the spec a lot. If I had to guess they will give Evokers 40y range either mid-xpac or at the start of the next one. This just continues to feel bad and clunky. Cool idea to set them apart but its just not playing out well.
Well put and I appreciate you adding to the feedback. It’s something we need to keep pushing.
Some thing’s I’d like to add to match what you said.
Living Flame is a 2.4 cast with engulfing blaze to make it a tad more useful. You can cast it on yourself for a haste buff and it does a nice chunk of damage with scarlet adaption. You can also get free instant casts with burnout talented.
The issue I find myself having with this is without a way to increase our resource regeneration or having a strong proc rate. Were often forced to rely on it to do damage and winding up a 2.4 hardcast and getting it as a result just doesn’t feel good or match what a 2.4 hardcast should be putting out. The damage and cast time do not add up. Without the .5 increase talent on it its pretty pitiful as it stands. The numbers def need to be played with to find what feels right.
2.4 hardcast is quite longer in PVP, exceeding chaos bolt and tempered flames pyroblasts and being about the same as a glacial spike.
Deep breath needs to just fire inside and outside of structures and not have any terrain issues. Try using it in any building, or like inside AV towers. Its even worse like man i cant even fight there.
I’ve been blown up through through scales and renewing blaze even after cauterizing flames a big rack of bleeds/poisons/diseases.
I would like to see renewing blaze give a secondary function, perhaps a 25% wall as a starting number. With the damage in meta though by itself I don’t see it doing much without stacking scales since with just renewing + scales overlap you still get shattered as you’ve said. The answer shouldn’t have to be throw a 25% wall on renewing and overlap it with a charge of obsidian so you don’t die every time.
Scales 30% feels like a poor mans warlock resolve and you also need to give spend an honor talent to make it function the same. I almost wanna say the aura mastery should be baked in and honor talent gives it a better function defensively.
Defensively on evoker, I feel I’m just always pressured sometimes against better players and constantly needing to use scales/self heal some to alleviate it so I don’t get flopped out.
Its pretty horrific and I wish they wouldn’t double down on it and just give it up. It has a ton of PVE complaints already. PVP it will be worse. Playing devastation into double wizard is going to be a nightmare because you don’t have the power of a melee train beating someone down with unhealable sustained + mortal strike. Your just a diet mage with a 25 yard range any shadowplay, ele/lock or mage/lock will absolutely flop while your trying to close the gap and keep them in range.