I wouldn’t mind if they added more range, but 25 yards has been just fine. You have to get used to it and not think you’re some glass cannon cloth caster, but you’re not a plate wearing melee either. Gotta hit that sweet spot and then the range feels perfectly fine.
Sometimes annoying in a raid when it’s super spread, but then I just let the other healers get them. Sometimes I’ll blow a Hover to get over to them if they’re out of range and they’re the only group taking gobs of damage, but honest it’s rare so far the raids are that spread out.
For dungeons it’s obviously fine as they’re much smaller scale.
PvP it’s not too bad either, unless we’re talking BGs where sometimes people are so spread even the 40 yd range would do nothing to help them. It’s been fine to heal people in solo shuffle unless they pillar hump me out of LoS, trying to run from damage I could easily heal, but then that would happen to any healer.
Fun fact: Evoker literally cannot hit tower cannons in Isle of Conquest from the ground. Your toddler range is just too short.
You can say this is a niche example but this is kind of the point; WoW is 18 years old. There are thousands of “niche examples” because the game was never built around a ranged class having lower actual range than melee gap closers. Its all good for the devs to smugly point out raids have been designed with Evokers in mind but what about the other 18 years of content that wasn’t?
Let’s be honest here; IoC isn’t going to be made compatible with Evokers. The thousands of other instances where this crops up won’t be made compatible with Evokers. And what about all the future content that will have manhours and resources wasted trying to cater for this stunted range literally no one ever asked for? This is entirely a problem of Blizzard’s own creation that serves literally no one whatsoever. The fans of Evokers don’t like having a squishy caster that has the effective range of the end of their snout. I cannot imagine encounter designers like the extra workload of having to now balance everything around this crippled ranged class. And map designers now have to consider at every point there is a ranged class that isn’t actually all that ranged when having to design virtually everything regarding that.
All because of developer pride which seems wilfully opposed to the mountain of feedback and just straight up logic of dealing with a game of this age. Having something as critical as a ranged class’s actual effective range being monkeyed with nearly two decades into the game’s lifespan is just an exercise in making something more obtuse and difficult than it needs to be.
the solution is to make them considered melee but with great range which means making most of their abilities usable while moving and raid attacks hitting as if melee not ranged. Or buff their range to 40. Those are the two options.
Thank you for this, the BG example is absolutely hilarious. This is a great writeup of pretty much the core issue: the game, past and present, is not designed around having a base range of 25/30 yds. Even melees have pull attacks which circumnavigate that. Your last paragraph is particularly succinct: nobody wants this and furthermore, nobody is going to have any kind of tears if they just made gave them 40yds of range.
Louder for the folks in the back. This is exactly what it is, this stubbornness, that really gets under my skin. Let alone the folks that adhere to it with bizarre kowtowing excuses, until it changes, then they see reason. Only when some designer admits, just like with covenant locking, hopefully not years later this time, that it wasn’t a good idea. It really makes you wonder about internal communication in the WoW team.
With all the other 40 yard ranged healers out there, surely we’re not surprised they would tackle a mid-ranged healing playstyle. Mid-range heals with plenty of mobility; in addition, their abundance of AOE healing but lack of single target healing. It all seems intended on paper.
We know it’s intended, that’s precisely why it’s such a downer. Everyone in Alpha/Beta has been communicating this for months on deaf ears because it’s anti-fun. If you’re familiar enough with the end game, particularly BGs and Raids, you know this is going to be at least temporary until they realize a ranged kit needs 40yds in WoW, or severely hamper the class to being “well let’s bring one, to SOME fights, for buffs”
Ok, so where is this “plenty of mobility?”. Hover has a 35 second cooldown and a 6 second duration. That’s about 17% uptime. You do not even get the second charge without talents and its position is of course as awkward in the tree as possible. Add to this Empowered abilities which ignore Hover anyway and demand you nail your feet to the floor while still forcing you to deal with the crippled range.
The kicker is there are multiple healer specs already who have considerably more mobility than the supposed “mobile healer” and don’t give up a single yard in range for the privilege. As said multiple times now, Evoker loses out out on a huge chunk of range while getting nothing whatsoever in exchange. They don’t have the best mobility of healers, they don’t have the best total healing output and they sure as hell don’t have the best defences. The exact same could be said about Devastation, if not more so as their range is even more clipped while again getting nothing out of the the tradeoff.
Some folks hate the term “dragon tax” but I personal think the term is perfectly apt. Evoker loses out on a considerable window of operational range while being the best at pretty much nothing. If that isn’t a senseless tax, I don’t know what is.
Just had an LFR where the Pres Evokers on Halondros were the last in healing done by about 70% and was thinking about my fellow Lizards. We need range fix or regular range!!!
1) Hover, with up to 2 two stacks. 2) Verdant Embrace 3) Zephyr 4) Time Spiral 5) Deep Breath + Recall 6) Dream Flight + recall 7) Rescue.
Even wowhead and Icyveins says they have solid or high mobility.“High mobility through Hover Icon Hover which allows you to cast some spells while moving, Verdant Embrace Icon Verdant Embrace which causes you to jump to an ally, and Rescue Icon Rescue that allows you to pick up an ally and fly with them to your cursor location.”
If you really don’t see how they have just as much mobility compared to other healers, you haven’t digested the spec thouroughly.
I’m fine either way if they give us even more mobility but this is just a silly comment.
It’s like saying all a mage has is a single use of blink for mobility, warriors have a single charge, priest have nothing. In reality we have options to take plenty of mobility and most of them are things we will always want to take with their positioning on the talent tree and a lack of amazing options.
We are Evokers, we ALWAYS have Blessing of the Bronze making Hover a 30s cooldown. Every single build for both specs should have Extended Flight making Hover last 10 seconds, it’s placed in a way so you will always take it. upping it to 33% hover uptime with none of the extra talents.
But then we have the options for more, we can take Aerial Mastery and will do so in most builds for end game content anyway giving us a second charge, on top of that we can take Time Spiral if we need more letting us use 4 hovers in a row for 40 seconds of hovering if you choose to waste them like that. It can be a bit awkward at level 60 but the extra talent points fix the issue unless you prefer taking some pretty niche talents that are useless in most content over mobility.
On top of all of that we have rescue and verdant embrace to move around, tailwind and Zephyr (Silly taking and just using it for just movement speed though.) for extra speed, along with Deep breath, Preservation also has Dream Flight. Glide is really useful too. Recall is useful but really bad placement and it’s pretty niche.
Mobility is not an issue for Evoker unless you are doing something very wrong, every spec needs to waste talents on extra mobility.
Asking for more range is another issue. While I think Evokers are ‘fine’ at 25 yards more is always better. I do think they should just up it to 30 yards because that’s what they set the healing spells at. It just feels bad having them different.
Good point. And even melee classes have some spells to reach distance. Warrior and rogues can throw blades pretty further than what evoker can achieve. I think they should give more spells to evoker to either fly to the enemy like v.embrace but hostile, and something else like a stun at 40 y, and silence 40 too
It is a “Dragon Tax” it’s the removal a basic feature in the game that seems like a miscommunication internally between the combat systems and class design teams. Some old head is really set on this idea of Dragons being “in the fray” when the reality is, that’s not even how it looks as things stand… they just look like they’re running around with their heads cut off.
Anyways thanks for your post, I think it’s the best one in the thread so far. I’m glad you came to speak here.
None of the classes you have mentioned are defined by their mobility nor paying anything in their fundamental design for the privilege of having new options. For much of the game’s lifespan, Mages DID have a single Blink, Warriors DID have a single Charge and Priests WERE lacking in mobility. Obviously, times change and you can argue the classes are now better for these new options but these were options were added to the class, not a brokered exchange. Mages are not reduced to knife fighting range for having the option of purchasing a second Blink, for instance.
We are Evokers, we ALWAYS have Blessing of the Bronze making Hover a 30s cooldown. Every single build for both specs should have Extended Flight making Hover last 10 seconds, it’s placed in a way so you will always take it. upping it to 33% hover uptime with none of the extra talents.
But then we have the options for more, we can take Aerial Mastery and will do so in most builds for end game content anyway giving us a second charge, on top of that we can take Time Spiral if we need more letting us use 4 hovers in a row for 40 seconds of hovering if you choose to waste them like that. It can be a bit awkward at level 60 but the extra talent points fix the issue unless you prefer taking some pretty niche talents that are useless in most content over mobility.
On top of all of that we have rescue and verdant embrace to move around, tailwind and Zephyr (Silly taking and just using it for just movement speed though.) for extra speed, along with Deep breath, Preservation also has Dream Flight. Glide is really useful too. Recall is useful but really bad placement and it’s pretty niche.
There are options to improve the underwhelming mobility, yes. The problem is that the mobility is scattered among far too many talents costing far too many points, their positioning is almost deliberately awkward , especially for Devastation.
For the sake of an example, let’s look at a Beast Master Hunter. With literally zero talent investment, the BM Hunter operates exactly as designed and advertised; A ranged/pet class that can operate at full range while remaining mobile for literally every ability (with the exception of resurrecting their pet). Their talents build upon this core concept, expanding their toolkit, their options and overall potential. The BM Hunter, however, is not dumping talent points to build that core concept from the ground up. They are not paying a talent point to have a pet, another to equip ranged weapons and another 2 to be able to attack on the move.
An Evoker without heavy talent investment is… well, not really much of anything. As you actually illustrated better than I did, nearly the entire source of our so-called mobility comes from talents. The core concept of the Evoker as a “highly mobile caster” is a complete and utter falsehood unless you invest heavily in to those talents. There is at least 4-5 points of talent investment that I would consider absolutely essential to operating as an Evoker, period. Not picking those talents makes either of the two specs barely playable. But on top of that, many of those have awkward prerequisites (such as Rescue for a Devastation spec being nearly entirely useless). If you want to add Time Spiral and Zephyr to the argument, this is yet more investment with more requirements to fumble around. Every point you spend trying to get the Evoker to do what is advertised on a fundamental level, the less you have to make them actually do the thing they are supposed to do even when they do manage to get in to range.
And that is all before we consider the almost amusing irony of Empowered abilities making the whole investment moot anyway…
There is also an argument to be made about Hover being too critical to the class as a whole (if the fact it has far too many talents tied to making it actually useful wasn’t enough of a giveaway) with far too much lumped on it making it something of a “feast or famine” situation that feels good while its up and awful when it isn’t but I think I have gone on too long on this point as is.
Mobility is not an issue for Evoker unless you are doing something very wrong, every spec needs to waste talents on extra mobility.
I think months and months of alpha and beta feedback would strongly disagree with you but you are welcome to believe what you wish. I think you may be in for a rude shock come lv 70 end game, however.
Asking for more range is another issue. While I think Evokers are ‘fine’ at 25 yards more is always better. I do think they should just up it to 30 yards because that’s what they set the healing spells at. It just feels bad having them different.
And here really is the kicker. The clipped range benefits no one. Not the players, not the game balance. It is a complete and utter disservice of Blizzard’s own making and with how much negative feedback it has received, I can only assume sheer developer ego is the sole reason it still exists. If we woke up tomorrow and Evokers suddenly had 40 yard range, practically nothing would change in state of game balance. Evokers would still be considerably far from being the most mobile ranged DPS/healer, they wouldn’t be doing the most damage and they sure as hell would not be the most survivable. But maybe they would be good enough and enjoyable to play. And you know what? That’s just fine with me.
We can argue semantics all day but the crux of the issue is the lower range is nothing but a detriment to not only fans of Evokers but those who they play with. Then there is the whole can of worms relating to the extra manpower wasted now having to make any and all future content “Evoker-accessible”. Other than a balm for some developer’s pride, the diminished ranged serves no one at all and its removal would be a universal positive for all parties involved.
Some people get the biggest dopamine rush from correcting someone’s minor and nearly irrelevant mistake. 26 vs 30…you get the point…don’t you? I hope so.
To be completely honest, for me the evoker should be more similar to the survival hunter but in reverse.
He should have ranged skills as a base and other melee skills along with mobility that allows him to get in and out easily. Also, the breaths should have some benefit according to the distance at which they hit, for example, that the closer it is (if you hit with the smallest part of the cone) the more damage you do or the more chance of crit you have, or something like that.
Thats me opinion, I really no have any problem with a middle distance class.
Sounds like a FF14 Red Mage which is actually my favourite class in that game. Actually I think you could get something going with a concept like that: What if your Empowered moves were the same range they are now but your more basic spells like Living Flame and Disintegrate had the full 40 yard range?
If Evokers then had the mobility they are advertised as actually having (Two charges of Hover baseline should be the bare minimum of what is added regardless of any other changes, without question), you might actually have something of a nice concept going there. You can stay at a safer range while your big damage cooldowns are offline then use your mobility to slip in, fire off Fire Breath or Eternity Surge then duck back out. It would take some tweaking to get right but it would be a hell of a lot more of an interesting concept than the “25 yard range with nothing given in exchange. Just frigging deal with it” playstyle we have now.
As I have mentioned in the beta thread, the current situation for Devastation, especially in PvP, is the worst of both worlds. You have to operate at melee range (actually inside melee gap closer range) while having cast times, weak caster-like defences and highly questionable mobility for all the hot air Blizzard have spouted trying to sell the Evoker as some sort of mobility starchild.
It really boggles the mind how such a concept was supposed to be sold over to the playbase. You are expected to play a range DPS spec with just over half of the actual range while maintaining all the usual downsides of a caster. All the while, you are given literally nothing in either offensive power, defences or mobility that surpasses anything that at least one ranged DPS class can already do at that much safer operating range.
