Good job on name changing, Flameshaper looks way cooler than Ruby Adept.
From a devastation point of view:
I agreee 100% with this point, only having 10% extra crit chance vs enemies with 50%+ hp will still contribute to devastation feeling less powerfull with time even if our mastery gets to the point before the second nerf.
Additionaly, from my viewpoint, Titanic Precision could be a nice QoL baseline or at least on the class spec tree for all 3 evoker specs, and I hope firestorm will get removed or reworked because its pretty sad thinking it might be a useless spell for another whole expansion
Itâs just confusing, because the name/playstyle have no specific theme around it mattering WHAT percentage of health we get the extra damage.
It would make SO much more sense to literally just change the wording to âunder 50%â and it rounds out the spec really nicely. It also makes it better for pres as well. Legitimately seems like a typo.
I think the tree looks pretty good. It offers some interesting additions to both specs. Two things Iâm a bit unsure/concerned about though. As other people have mentioned, I could see potential threat issues with Conduit of Flame as Dev. Also, Iâm unsure how Enkindle will work exactly. I didnât play the first two tiers of DF, so I also have no experience with the tier set bonuses, but some clarification here would be nice. What happens if we use essence abilities back to back? Will it stack? Or maybe combine damage?
First off, this tree looks a lot more complete than the Scalecommander tree. Everything makes sense. There are no talents that directely conflict with others. Overall a solid tree from a Devastation player POV.
Now my only 3 issues with this tree.
This tree adds even more burst AOE damage which has been cause to a lot of instant agro issues Dev has had to deal with all xpac. It would be nice if agro is looked at for Dev going into War Within.
âConduit of Flame - Critical strike chance against targets abaove 50% health increased by 10%.â Passives like this are just boring. This passive seems more suited towards Pres than both Pres/Dev. On a raid boss, your only way of utilizing this talent once the boss is sub 50% is to do higher empowered fire breaths for Leaping Flames usage. Generally on ST you wont be going for max empowered fire breaths. This also feeds more into the problem that Dev had during Dragonflight. The more a fight goes on, the less powerful you get. I would like to see a shift away from the targets % mattering as a Dev player.
More of a ST problem than an AOE problem, which this tree seems more built towards AOE. This tree seems to only incentivize using max empowered fire breaths. If I were a Flameshaper, I couldnât see any reason to ever cast a fast empowered fire breath. Makes fire breath a boring channel to press instead of the decision to quick or max empower it.
Lastly, not an issue, more of a request or thought to improve âLifecinders - Renewing Blaze also applies to 1 nearby injured ally when cast.â Change this to allow us to place renewing blaze and the player of our choosing. Pretty much like the paladin talent that lets you freedom someone else and you also gain the benefit of freedom.
Well if Consume Flame is causing engulf to consume 8 seconds of fire breath from your target (and causing that to detonate for 300% AoE dmg), and a max rank firebreath has a 6 second dot, wouldnât that be suboptimal? Iâd think youâd go for a rank 4 for the 12 second dot and then get it spreading back around because of the engulf(s) via traveling flame.
I do agree that a playstyle around never empowering at rank one is very boring ( I guess it makes SoM stronger for healers? )
Also, could use clarity from a dev. Consume Flame says that it causes Engulf to consume 8 seconds of the FB/DB dot and not âup to 8 secondsâ so does that mean if the dot has less than 8 seconds you canât even use engulf?
So Deva has now two hero trees to pick from, where ScaleCommander focuses on Single Target/cleave DPS and Flameshaper to to full AOE.
I think it is a bit boring that both trees have a capstone talent about Deep Breath. Also in this tree we missed the change to create a buff for firestorm, and make this currently dead talent worth picking again.
Nothing more to be said, the only cool aspect here is higher essence burst generation on crits, but even then itâs not that good.
Scalecommander all the way, just add mass pyre to the first ability in the tree so scalecommander has the choice between mass aoe dishing out 3 pyres, or strong cleave with 3 disinitegrates, and also make all empower reliant stacking abilities stack up to 2.
But yea, this one is deeply unimpressive. Nothing good to say about it, just boring.
wait. is there something iâm misunderstanding here? 300% of 8 seconds of dream breath, in an aoe, reduced but not capped beyond 5 targets, is significantly more than the actual healing of dream breath. and this is something we can trigger multiple times per dream breath cast even if engulf canât be echoâd. that is ludicrous. thereâs no way consume flame actually releases in the state shown here, right? weâd be able to top off an entire raid in seconds with just dream breath and our 2 engulf charges
The design seems to be quite good and well fleshed out. Each talent has a purpose that links to other talents and/or causes improvements in gameplay. Itâs hard to say how desirable it will feel to play, considering that Scalecommander seems pretty awesome as well, but very excited to see the gameplay testing. Bringing in a new active ability will make the Devastation gameplay more interesting for sure. Just hoping Engulf isnât going to cause us too much of a threat issue; we already have aggro problems when bursting.
Defensive/Movement nodes
Flameshaper appears to be the only Evoker hero spec with no defensive nodes that have an upfront damage mitigation. Chronowarden has the Interdimensional Phase and +Stamina nodes, Scalecommander has Hardened Scales and Nimble Flyer. It feels that Flameshaperâs defensive/movement nodes are subpar in comparison.
Shape of Flame will probably never be taken. Itâs essentially just a damage mitigation for your tank in M+ and is useless in raid. Defensives/movement/survivability nodes really need to affect the player as a priority.
Lifecinders, while super interesting and has the potential to be powerful in certain damage profiles, does not directly benefit you and the ally target is random. Draconic Instincts will probably always be selected in this choice node as it benefits you directly. You need to still take the full damage and then afterwards if it procs itâll heal you back, which while great, you still have to take the full hit upfront rather than mitigating the upfront damage. Hopefully the proc rate of this is large enough that itâs impactful.
Trailblazer I can see the Hover distance changes will cause unintentional deaths from the distance change particularly if weâre swapping between hero trees or other Evoker specs regularly depending on content. I would have liked for this to have some other effect on Hover that provides a defensive capability or uniqueness that doesnât exist in the other trees. For example, when Hovering we are temporary immunity to, or take significantly reduced damage from, ground effects. This would be great when we have to Hover launch ourselves over fire/ground effects to get to a new location. Or even casting Hover breaks out of roots/stuns.
I would have liked to have at least 1 talent node in Flameshaper to reduce incoming damage before the damage is taken, like with Chronowarden and Scalecommander, otherwise in very high damage scenarios that have one-shot potential the lack of this extra mitigation might force players into the other hero specialisation to pick up the extra survivability.
I think you misread the Flameshaper capstone. It doesnât mention Deep Breath at all.
We still donât know what class/spec tree changes they are making for all the classes. So far they are only telling us the changes they need to in order to make sense of certain hero trees that have been previewed. Firestorm should be fixed within the tree not by 5-10 hero talents making it good.
I feel like it brings a lot of flavor to the table and abilities mesh together well.
But it just doesnât feel HEROIC in the way Scalecommander does. Iâm super excited about Deep Breath being a major cooldown and Mass Disintegrate. Nothing in this tree makes me feel excited about playing it even if it plays really well.
I will say I like the Hover buffs Flameshaper and Chronowarden get and will miss those as a very-likely-scalecommander-main.
I understand wanting the flavor change but thereâs talent interactions that would be effected by the color change so I donât think it would ever make sense to make Blue spells Red or Bronze spells Green etc.
Enkindle: Essence abilities are enhanced with Flame , dealing 20% of healing or damage done as Fire over 8 seconds.
Says theyâre enhanced with flame. If theyâre just âenhanced,â but with no visual change, I think it would feel kind of lame. The whole point of these trees is class fantasy, so not providing a visual would be a huge miss.
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