Feedback: Evokers

In Development The War Within Beta Test
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In this thread, we’ll be testing and talking about Evokers in The War Within. Look here for posts from the development team as adjustments and bugfixes are made throughout the testing period.

Please note that off-topic or inappropriate posts will be strictly removed.

The War Within Beta

All classes’ Hero Talent trees are available for testing. Please keep in mind that this is a Beta environment:

  • There may be UI elements on the talent panel that are placeholder, including things like talent icons, text, or final UI art.
  • Some talents may not be functioning yet, or may be marked as not yet implemented (NYI).
  • Some new spell visuals and audio may still be a work in progress.
  • There are some talents that are not fully tuned yet. This is expected, and we will implement tuning adjustments throughout testing.

The combat design team has two big areas of focus at this time:

  • Finish work on changes to talents, especially wherever Hero Talents still need adjustments.
  • Fix bugs that are blocking testing of new talents.

Working from Feedback

Alpha feedback thus far has been of great benefit to us.

Now that we are entering Beta, our focus on Hero Talent trees is shifting away from reworks and design changes and towards tuning and refining. We want to thank you so much for all the forum posts, videos, and discussions all over the internet. Your feedback and impressions have been invaluable for bringing their identities to life and making them fit into what you love about the classes you play.

We are looking forward to hearing from more of you as you get a chance to try Hero Talents for yourself. We are specifically interested in feedback or impressions on these topics:

  • Hero Talents that you feel are “required” for your spec in a type of content, such as raiding or Mythic+, or that push you towards picking a specific tree. This could be due to damage profile, utility, defensives, or something else.
  • Hero Talent trees that you feel are either too strong or too weak in power level compared to other options.
  • Hero Talents whose functionality is confusing, unclear, or difficult to track during gameplay.
  • Hero Talent choice nodes that you feel could offer more meaningful choices.

Again, Thank You

Feedback throughout the Alpha test was highly impactful on our design of the game, and we look forward to refining every class with you in the Beta. Thank you!

– The World of Warcraft Combat Design Team

4 Likes
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Please revert the animosity change. It feels so bad. Especially with the new tier set and hero talents.

21 Likes
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Hello,

As a Devastation Flameshaper I’m suggesting a change to the Devastation talent ‘Titanic Wrath’ Please make this a 1 talent point cost talent. This will make Flameshaper not feel so stretched out trying to get Scorching Embers, Causality, Scintillation, and Iridescence.
Leaving ‘Titanic Wrath’ as a 2 cost talent point talent just makes you miss out on one or the other capstone that all really effect throughput.
All four of the above stated capstones should be accessible to the evoker.

Thanks,

Edit: Doing more thinking on the subject I thought if we don’t want to reduce the talent point cost of ‘Titanic Wrath’, we could swap places of ‘Font of Magic’ and ‘Scorching Embers’. That would allow the Evoker more versatility while building. Please consider this change!

2 Likes
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The nerf to animosity feels very bad.

Chasing extensions were a very fun aspect to Devastation’s rotation. You stated the reasoning for the change was so evokers were not as reliant on power infusion from a priest but we now have access to things like mass disintegrate and the new 4pc bonus which refutes this because we are now less reliant than ever on PI For extensions. I hope this change is reconsidered to even simply increase the cap on extensions to 6 (what we currently get on average ST in live) or to increase the duration of the extensions.

P.S. loving Flameshaper but the ability ‘Engulf’ could really use a animation update to not look like another Pyre.

16 Likes
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Could Devastation - Flameshaper please get some sort of Dispel protection on Fire Breath for PvP?

Between healer Dispels, Reverse Magic, Immolation Aura Dispel, Judgements of the Pure, Death Knight’s new Anti-Magic Shell dispel, Dwarven Racials, etc it’s going to be very hard to use the core mechanic of Flameshaper (Fire Breath > Engulf) when people can counter it so easily.

DoT classes need Dispel protection, and Flameshaper’s key mechanic is designed to work with DoTs

6 Likes
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Just wanted to say… the 20-yard healing range really dampens my enthusiasm for playing the class. I’m totally on board with a mid range design, when it comes to AoE, but single target heals need to still be 40.

7 Likes
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This feedback is mostly aimed towards the Devastation 4pc’s interactions with Scalecommander Dev Evoker because thats the one i’ve spent the most time experimenting with. My assumptions could be wrong, but this is less based on tuning and more around the actual playstyle of the Hero Talents.

  • The 4pc seems to favor playing Scalecommander at least in theory, without any tuning or numbers in mind. CDR on Eternity Surge for Flameshaper basically only functions as an essence burst, something Flameshaper feels flush with as long as they are able to hit a high health target due to Titanic Precision(something dev already prefers to do), or helping to extend on Dragonrage (something that was removed beyond the 3rd extension due to the change to animosity).

  • The CDR from the 4pc and Event Horizon DOES enable a really desirable playstyle with Scalecommander. The extra empowers you get due to mass disintegrate and the above mentioned CDR allows you to chase extensions (given enough haste or lust) and extend(or create new) bombardments, depending on talent selection. This is again hamstrung by the change to animosity.

  • The Animosity nerf severely impacted what could be a really enjoyable playstyle of balancing the extension of bombardments and Dragonrage into a playstyle that’s going to feel identical to the current live patch one just with deep breath added in (something that will be fit into an exact part of the rotation, likely before pressing empowers/shattering star, or Dragonrage, depending on the CDR of DB gained by Wingleader)

  • Speaking of Wingleader! This talent could be really hit or miss. Depending on the amount bombardments that actually trigger in a given 2min window, specifically for ST. If you aren’t able to get 2 Deep Breaths in within a Dragonrage window there is a pretty high chance it will be held to line up with DR, unless the value of losing a use outweighs the damage gain from holding, due to the added benefit of our mastery and the increased essence burst gained during DR.

All of this is just thoughts and ideas until people way smarter than me can provide numerical-based evidence. I really hope the change to animosity is adjusted in some way. It is the most fun aspect of playing devastation correctly in current content to me, and feeling like my potential is being hamstrung by a button that I don’t even have (power infusion) is not the greatest.

I could have a fundamental misunderstanding, in which case disregard any of this. :slight_smile:

6 Likes
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Engulf is just as epic as I suspected it would be, I have gotten 5m crits from it already. 5m crit from an AOE ability heh.

Devastation looking very crisp in TWW so far, love it. I’m not a bleeding edge player so the animosity thing while is a nerf, isn’t something I am gonna stress over.

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More Flameshaper thoughts:

  • Conduit of Flame seems redundant with Devastation Mastery. Both benefit hitting a high health target versus a low health target. It’d be nice if Conduit of Flame increased critical strike chance against targets beneath 50% HP, to give Devastation something to look forward to when enemies hit low health.

  • Are Pyre and Disintegrate supposed to count as one periodic effect for Engulf’s 50% modifier? When I use them, they both share a single Enkindle buff. Does this mean that Engulf does the same damage if both Pyre and Disintegrate were used prior to Engulf?

  • It seems like Ruby Embers only functions as a single periodic effect modifier for Engulf, even if stacked. Which seems balanced, but I’d appreciate developer feedback on what all is intended to count as a modifier for Engulf ^u^

  • Would be nice QOL change to extend Enkindle’s duration and compensate with more damage (at least for PvP.) Having an 8 second window to maintain both Enkindle and Ruby Embers while dodging cc, trading defensives, and respecting positioning to land the big Engulf combo (Star > Fire Breath > Double Engulf) will be frequently annoying.

  • Also, Firestorm still just seems bad. It should be strong as a standalone talent. It’s not exciting to cast and needs a lot of subsequent follow up talents to be attractive. Either it should do weak damage and be frequently available with a short cast time, or its current form (long cd, long cast time) but do way more damage. Due to enemy movement and positioning, I think it’d be better if it could be used more frequently and had another tuning pass.

Additionally:

Devastation’s healing seems really bad in PvP ._.

With such low haste values it takes ~2 seconds to get off a Living Flame that might heal for 6% of my health and will oom you before you’re topped off. For a class that already has some of the worst active defensives in the game, and 15 yards less range than other casters, I hope there could be targeted buffs to Devastation’s personal healing.

Or at least more anti-magic mechanics, as Devastation struggles in arenas against double rdps :smiley:

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What exactly do you mean when you say double dips? If you mean it benefits from high hp targets for both effects, I feel like that’s entirely intended. If you mean it’s gaining more than bonus damage + bonus crit chance and gaining the same benefit twice, then yes that’s double dipping and is a bug.

I believe that enkindle is supposed to be us basically getting s2 tier set baked into our kit, I like it personally. And it’s how that tier set worked, so I assume this is supposed to work like this.

Agreed, you have to push deep into the left side of the tree and even when you do, you lose so much of the frankly - better parts of our kit, to gain an AOE that is clunky. Maybe this will be proven wrong but even with firestorm gaining an instant proc, instant cast, double damage, it’s still not good because of how much you have to give up for it.

I can’t speak for pvp but in pve Evoker defensives feel amazing. Renewing Blaze = if you dont die, you didn’t take damage. And with Renewing Blaze affecting a nearby friendly, super strong. Wonder if you can target someone with it? :thinking:

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Feedback on the new Arcane Reach talent

The range of your helpful magics is increased by 5 yards.

Current Issues:

  • This talent does not affect abilities like Eruption, Zephyr, or Cauterizing Flame.
  • In the context of “viable builds,” this talent competes with DPS talents, which are usually prioritized over utility.
  • The recent reshuffle of talent positioning has made the talent tree more competitive, especially with the introduction of reworked DPS talents that are more appealing.

Comparison with Similar Talents:

  • Talents such as Symbiotic Bloom (which increases healing received by 3% for 10 seconds with Emerald Blossom) are rarely used.
  • Arcane Reach is at risk of becoming another underutilized talent.

Suggestions for Improvement:

  1. Extend the range increase to all abilities, including Zephyr and Eruption.
  2. Increase the range boost from 5 to 20 yards.
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I believe you can target someone with Blaze now

But unlike PvE, PvP has mortal strike effects and dampening. All healing is reduced, which is very problematic for a spec that’s primary defense is healing. Renewing Blaze ticks can also be purged.

I’ve been exclusively PvPing since beta started and Devoker healing just seems massively lack luster.

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P.S.: This text is translated with the help of AI, as I do not have mastery over the English language.

My feedback is primarily related to Flameshaper, from the perspective of Devastation.

• Visual Appeal:

  • Of the three hero talent trees we have, Flameshaper has the weakest visual appeal of all.
    Engulf needs an updated look to be much more impactful; a skill with such power needs to have a visual to match, and being just a Pyre that travels faster doesn’t help with that.
  • Enkindle needs to add red particles to the essence abilities, it could be something similar to what was done to “Chrono Flame”, where the original visual of the skill remains, but with additional effects to differentiate and create a greater visual appeal.

• Hover Modifiers:
All three hero trees have some form of interaction with Hover. Chronowarden reduces the cooldown of the skill by 5 seconds, and Scalecommander has some resets or turns Hover into a defensive skill. Flameshaper, on the other hand, does not increase our active time with Hover; all it does is make you travel faster and further, which can be more harmful than beneficial.
Add some form of increased active time for Hover to this talent tree, perhaps making Trailblazer increase the duration and speed of Hover.

2 Likes
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I just checked a handful of my characters to see if similar DR effects were magic and could therefore be purged, they weren’t. They presumably cannot be purged. The fact that Renewing Blaze can makes me sad, despite not being a pvp’er. Seems unfair.

2 Likes
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1-Something needs to be done about our Transmog situation and clashes with racial dragon armor

If you’re not going to fix our tier sets not applying to our chest, arms, and legs, despite the fact only evokers can use their tier set, and should be able to see their visual progression with tier like any class, at least the tier pieces that we can see on our dragon form should be designed with color palettes that match our remaining barbershop racial armor.

Instead, including with this latest tier set (which is gorgeous, don’t get me wrong), you’ve implemented color palettes which conflict with several of our barbershop racial armors because no colors match.

Our blue and silver racial barbershop armor for the blue dragonflight motif is met with a tier set that is blue and copper/bronze instead. Why? The shoulder and belt do not match with our racial armor, and it feels bad.

This happens with other flight racial barbershop armor colors as well, it only seems like you keep red dragonflight motifs in mind when you design tier set color motifs.

So, please, change the blue tint of our raid tier set to be blue and silver so it matches our barbershop armor, or let us finally see our tier set chest, gloves, legs, and feet adapted to our dragon form.

It s really not acceptable that our transmog is in such a half baked state one expansion later.

2-Devastation and Preservation should gain the Defy Fate passive

It is no secret that Augmentation has strangled the other specs in representation, especially devastation, because Defy Fate and the 4% extra HP on top of all their utility makes an otherwise squishy specialization into a considerably tankier one.

This will continue to be a problem in M+ and PvP and raids. You can’t have a durability gap this large between specs.

Why is augmentation the only spec to such a powerful cheat death passive on top of basically a Power Word:Fortitude equivalent aura to their group?

Please find a way to give Defy Fate to Devastation and Preservation.

3-Hover should not interrupt channeled spells like Disintegrate, just as shimmer and ice floes and spiritwalker’s grace do not

If you won’t fix this, please at least consider making disintegrate consume essence per tick so that forced movement isn’t such an aggravating circumstance, especially in PvP.

17 Likes
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Feedback on the reworked Oppressing Roar and Overawe talents

  • Overawe has been redesigned – Now grants 30 seconds of cooldown reduction (previously reduced cooldown per Enrage dispelled).
  • Oppressing Roar cone increased to 60 degrees (was 45 degrees).
    • Developer note: Oppressing Roar with Overawe was too effective in Mythic+ dungeons with the Raging affix, but not very useful elsewhere. We’re reducing its effectiveness in that specific scenario while making it more generally useful as a talent. We’re also increasing Oppressing Roar’s cone radius since it can be difficult to aim without a preview cone like Fire Breath or Dream Breath have.

Current Issues:

  • This talent was mainly utilized during Mythic+ dungeons with the Raging weekly affix.
  • The redesign seems to aim to make it more generally useful, but the only change is the cooldown reduction, which might not address the underutilization in other scenarios.
  • It’s unclear to me how the new design makes it more generally useful as stated in the developer note.

Concerns:

  • The talent might still be ignored outside of the Raging weeks, which remains a core issue.
  • The cooldown reduction nerf is understandable, but the talent needs additional utility to be appealing in a wider range of content.

Suggestions for Improvement:

  • Enhance Overawe to make targets affected by Oppressing Roar take extra damage in addition to its current effects.
  • Enhance Overawe to disorient targets affected by Oppressing Roar in addition to its current effects.
  • Enhance Overawe to remove one beneficial effect (mass purge) from targets affected by Oppressing Roar in addition to its current effects.

Implementing one of these changes would increase its overall utility and make the talent more attractive outside of the Raging affix weeks.

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Hello . I was finally able to enter the BETA and test the evoker a little. Many talents feel great and are fun to play. Let’s see how the numbers are in the Firestorm build of the Devastation even though it loses a lot of Single Target DPS. On the other hand, the Animosity change feels very bad when that was one of the things the spec had that made it fun and even more so with PI or BL. Better remove PI from the game.

In the case of Augvoker, the Chronowarden talents feel good, but on the Scalecomander side there is a talent that worries me and that is Wingleader. As evoker augmentation our job is to make allies stronger, many of the classes we have in the Raid or M+ have 2Min DC. Reducing the breath CD doesn’t feel as good because you have to hold it until the other classes have their 2min CDs. On the other hand, you can create a node where that passive ability is maintained (mainly for Devoker or when the Aug plays with low CD classes) and add another talent in the node where it increases the time the Aug’s breath lasts or the DoT of Devoker. Thank you

3 Likes
18

So far, tuning aside, both scalecommander and flameshaper feel really good for devastation.

Though i gotta say some things could stand to be a little more visually spectacular. Mass disintegrate looks cool when there’s more than one target, but in plain single target it’s boring, and there’s also nothing to visually distinguish it from regular disintegrate.

For flameshaper, Engulf does HUGE damage but it kind of just looks like you’re burping a little fireball onto your target. It doesn’t even have an explosion animation when it reaches the target to indicate how large its aoe radius is

Also this is more feedback for drachtyr than evoker, but can we please get the ability to toggle off transmog on the dragon form all together so i can wear shoulders, belts, and tabards again without it mismatching horribly?

I’m gonna disagree on that one. It feels like a load off. No more chasing an elusive 3rd extension. No more pleading for PI, no more adjusting talents for when you know you’re the PI target, and no more bad rng/latency issues that cheat you out of it.

You just do two rounds of extensions, without clenching. The tier sets cooldown reduction DOES feel unnecessary, though. The free essence burst with eternity surge feels great, however.

3 Likes
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A couple notes for Augmentation:

  • since at least 10.2.7, possibly earlier, Ebon Might can’t be extended on targets further away than ~45 yards. This is a very frustrating change, especially considering Ebon Might can be applied to targets up to 100 yards distance.
    • additionally, this makes certain raid encounters extremely frustrating to play as Augmentation, notably Raszageth, Dathea, Fyrakk and Nymue.
  • please extend the duration of Blistering Scales similar to Source of Magic. Right now you have to recast it 2-3 times over the course of a dungeon and it’s tedious to track, particularily without addon help.
    • alternatively, Regenerative Chitin could also extend the duration but considering you’re practically never switching Blistering Scales in context of a Mythic+ run, imo it should be baseline functionality
    • it’s duration in raid is ok, but you’re rarely swapping it there anyway so why not extend the duration
  • Arcane Reach - while being in a better position than when initially introduced during Alpha - is too weak to be considered relevant for both dungeons and raids
    • it would be significantly more interesting if this generally increased the range of spells by 5 yards. the discussion around 25y and Evoker are exhaustive however, so I’m afraid that won’t happen. In its current state however, it’s dead on arrival
    • it currently also doesn’t apply to: Source of Magic, Blistering Scales, Cauterizing Flame, Timelessness
    • it however applies to Living Flame, which is odd because its practically exclusively used as offensive spell
  • Time Convergence (Chronowarden Hero Talent) incorrectly proccs of:
    • Cauterizing Flame, even without dispelling anything
    • Time Spiral
    • Fury of the Aspects
  • the new Motes of Possibility are significantly better than the old, very happy with this change
    • they currently can apply: Shifting Sands, Symbiotic Bloom and Inferno's Blessing
    • while naturally Shifting Sands is a major win, it’s odd to have Symbiotic Bloom included, especially when not being talented into it. unsure at this time whether it’s a bug - I hope it is - but I also understand that talenting out of both current other options would guarantee Sands which is unlikely to happen
    • some motes currently just don’t do… anything
  • the new tier set 4pc bonus resets upon recasting Ebon Might while it’s still up. ideally it wouldn’t but it’s not too terrible. mostly curious whether that’s intended behaviour considering going by the wording, it hasn’t faded.
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I also wonder if empowered disintegrate will lose it’s damage if you clip it? Which means you lose what, 75% increased damage on single target if you clip early? Sure it would only be the last tick if you clip it like normal but that’s still 1 tick of 75% increased damage potentially.