Midnight: Devastation's Darkest Hour?

[FyreFiend-2970965 (FyreFiend)]

@Ysondrius-durotan

All in all, I’m fairly content.

There’s a lot I disagree with here, but if you’re happy, I’m happy for you.

@Gerbill-frostmourne

@Dydymus-malganis

Outside of raids, Devastation’s Mastery struggles to finish off targets in dungeons or pvp whenever Dragonrage is not available

That is basically all specs.

This was written about the state of Dev in early Dragonflight, when Giantkiller was 2.5% per point and we stacked Mastery; I had over 100% Mastery which effectively meant my damage decreased by 50% against low hp targets. Other specs do need cooldowns to burst, but Giantkiller is a special kind of self-sabotage. Overall though I don’t disagree with anything you’ve said, I would love a 1-min cd Dragonrage. We are getting Unbound Flame instead, which isn’t exactly an execute but might be useful in pvp since you can save the charges for the right moment.

@Linxy

EVOKER

• Hero Talents
  • Scalecommander
    • Developers’ notes: Wingleader’s cooldown reduction mechanic strongly incentivized spreading Bombardment applications across multiple targets. We feel that this gameplay is unintuitive in isolation, and additionally creates unhealthy behaviors such as Disintegrate clipping and Mass Disintegrate/Eruption pooling. This redesign is intended to retain the multitarget focus of the talent, while addressing those issues. We are increasing some of Scalecommander’s sources of area damage to compensate for the lessened cooldown reduction the new Wingleader will provide, and will be keeping a close eye on Devastation and Augmentation’s performance over the course of PTR to make additional adjustments as needed.
    • Wingleader has been redesigned – Mass Disintegrate/Mass Eruption reduces the remaining cooldown of Deep Breath/Breath of Eons by 0.5 seconds/1 second for each target struck.
    • Command Squadron’s Pyre damage increased by 40%.
    • Maneuverability’s damage over time increased by 40%.

I am taking this as a win, and glad to see my biggest Scalecommander pain point (other than the damage meter) addressed. This means fewer but stronger breaths, a more reliable cooldown, and there’s a choice between optimizing marginal bombardment damage or sending every Mass at the priority target.

Overall, a healthy change for Dev (although I suspect it was motivated by Aug), with some room for tuning and concerns about secondary impacts (mainly to Imminent Destruction), which we’ll figure out on ptr.