Looks good for aug, better then Chronowarden for smaller keys/raid. I dont play dev anymore so will only say that.
I find this tree pretty disappointing.
Bombardment doesn’t sound like fun to play with in aoe setting where I’m tab targeting non-priority targets to ensure the Bombardment debuff is on them.
I don’t think Deep Breath is a meaningful enough part of the devastation kit to be worth investing into for a hero talent. The talents that do buff it are quite weak and have never been taken, and more importantly do not tie into the actual fun parts of the spec (the Dragon’s Rage / Animosity loops + Causality recycling empowered spells). Even if deep breath was strong, I don’t even want to cast it.
CDR for Breath of Eons is largely irrelevant for Aug since I need to hold it for other people’s cooldowns, and most classes are already aligned with a 2m cooldown. I can’t imagine I’d ever want to cast it more often than that.
As Aug I can’t imagine ever taking this over chronowarden just purely because chronowarden has much stronger defensive benefits and better synergizes with the support playstyle.
It also feels weird that this hero talent tree is likely going to push pyre completely out of the devastation tool kit which seems silly to me? Like, it’s the core devastation ability at the top of the tree and now I don’t even want to use it.
I don’t even know if there’s a talent here that I do like. Maybe mass disintegrate if I can get triple causality procs?
6 Likes
Yeah, it’s just not a fun button to press.
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I was not expecting the talents to focus on Deep Breath and not sure I’d like to spam that ability. “No Path Available” can already be annoying as it is, I don’t want to cast it more than necessary lol. I think I will wait and see what Ruby Adept does.
Also, personally, I feel like the actual theme of this hero spec is pretty weak and unfocused but that might just be due to expectations.
4 Likes
Another thing I’d hate to see with maneuverability: I’d hate to see some kind of weird debuff refresh / pandemic effect on the dot or even the upfront damage of deep breath where the right thing to do is try to do as narrow circles as possible on top of a pack to get the most possible uptime. Or getting a tank to try and make mobs follow your path with deep breath.
That does not sound fun at all.
Posted in the other thread before this one was created
Speaking primarily from the perspective of a Devastation main, Mass Disintegrate looks amazing. Onslaught and Unrelenting Siege are just more cowbell, and I’m mostly fine with that. Bombardments looks interesting, but I’m tentative without more concrete information regarding its proc rate.
That said, I think certain parts of the Scalecommander tree (broadly speaking, most of the lower half) could do with some tinkering. Might of the Black Dragonflight offers Dev almost literally no value, as we’ve only one ‘black’ spell. Apropos of that…
Deep Breath is, in my experience at least, a spell with more than a few issues that make it relatively low priority and low impact in most circumstances. First and foremost, the talent nodes that positively interact with DB are in direct competition with ‘mandatory’ nodes that are required for pretty much everything else. In most circumstances, opting to talent into stronger deep breaths is mechanically and numerically disadvantageous. The way Dev’s talent tree is currently arranged, and the number of talent points necessary to build properly, do not allow for either Lay Waste or Onyx Legacy to be taken without sacrificing more impactful talents elsewhere. Deep Breath is also a difficult spell to work into a rotation because of its mechanics. Being functionally locked into a channel while flying (and therefore unable to react or adjust) not only presents the risk of taking unnecessary damage or dying, but also forced channel time that could’ve been spent on abilities with none of the inherent risk and comparable or better damage overall.
All of that is to say, Deep Breath just really shouldn’t be the focus of Scalecommander’s capstone—even if that sacrifices parity with Aug, given the fundamental differences in both spec’s toolkits. It’s barely a part of Dev’s toolkit, and has precisely zero interaction with the core of Dev’s playstyle (being Dragonrage, the extension minigame while it’s up, and playing around causality/iridescence, which all emphasize empower spells and spenders). While including the ability to steer does somewhat address one of the biggest and most prevalent issues with using Deep Breath, the ability itself just isn’t a button that’s fun or rewarding to press often.
I would instead suggest reorienting the focus of the capstone to similarly emphasize empower spells, whether that be adding new/unique mechanics (man would I love to see something akin to sarkareth’s Glittering Surge in the place of Eternity Surge) or simply giving them additional effects.
The survivability buffs are by and large nice to see, but they’re very barebones both mechanically and thematically compared to those displayed in Chronowarden’s tree. I don’t necessarily expect parity between all the trees, but it would be nice to see a little more going on in the lower three choice nodes.
8 Likes
Hard pass on this tree. Nobody cares about Deep Breath; why would you focus on this? Mass Disentigrate is okay, I guess.
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I think it has potential if it makes Deep Breath fun to use, which means that this is going to make or break based on how the steering is. Because I have no idea if the steering is going to be proper steering or just a really minor nudge, it feels hard to give input on it other than mass disintegrate sounding really cool.
The node that just boosts black spells is kinda really unexciting when Aug doesn’t really care about dps and Dev only has one black spell.
2 Likes
The tree overall doesn’t seem too useful for Devastation. The first option on the left side provides no measurable benefit for Dev as they have only one black damaging spell. The right side of the tree is also not great. A one time benefit, one that takes 50 seconds to cap and buffs the weaker filler spells is not very interesting or useful. The end talent is fine for synergizing with the middle tree, but overall the left and right sides are not good for devastation.
The tree overall just seems like it would force devastation into a single build once again.
Its overall fine for augmentation, but onslaught as it is presented is not a good talent. It either needs to trigger on a regular timer, or be replaced.
3 Likes
We seem to have reached a consensus on what this tree’s biggest problem is…
I already posted my idea on how Deep Breath could be changed. I’d love to see some more ideas. 
4 Likes
Agree that the capstone on Deep Breathe seems to have came out of nowhere. Bombardment, on the other hand, is pretty interesting though, only if it had more effect other than a split-damage proc. An actual in-game controllable Focus-Fire ability is very themetic for Aug/Dev
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Replace every instance of Deep Breath with Dragon’s Rage and it’s pretty much solved.
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Eh, I don’t think Deep Breath is unsalvageable. It’s a bad skill, but it doesn’t have to stay bad.
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You’d have to pretty radically change it though, I think. Like have it reset empowered abilities. But that seems too strong.
I also wonder if the capstone forces you in the air for the maximum duration of deep breath? That’s less time casting other spells which is weird.
The problem is that deep breath is has anti-synergy with devastation. You want uptime for causality so you can cycle empowered spells and maximize dragon’s rage, so you have to offset that by turbo-buffing deep breath.
EDIT: And if you make deep breath too good it makes the entire tree worthless on a fight like Nymue where you can’t really use breath abilities without dying.
I also realize now that bombardment is only set up after you cast an empowered spell. Does that in mean in single target I potentially want to sit on an cast of fire breath or eternity surge to not waste uptime on bombardment?
My idea was to just make it work more like Ultimate Penitence. No weird movement.
This class is still very new, so I don’t think radical changes are off the table. Such as the range, or Deep Breath being awkward to use.
That’d definitely be an improvement, but it doesn’t solve the “you’re not casting empowered spells / essence abilities while channeling” problem.
EDIT: I’d be upset if that was also just in one hero tree when it should be a baseline.
Gonna be the outlier here I guess. I’m impressed with this tree for both Dev and Aug.
2 Likes
They could always make Deep Breath an essence spender, and actually make it interact with the tree, instead of being this weird “other” skill.
And yes, I’m talking about changing Deep Breath baseline. Has nothing to do with Scalecommander. Breath of Eons and Dreamflight need changes too.
Interesting. Are there other spenders that have a cooldown?
The one comes to mind is Breath of Sindragosa and now I’m thinking about how that’d be a neat way to rework Deep Breath, but that’s probably out of the scope of this hero tree.
I think adding synergy with the rest of the spec is ultimately what needs to happen (and address the weird movement thing which is not fun).
1 Like