Moth in a Blast Furnace

Classes Evoker
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I have fun playing my Evoker in raids and dungeons, but questing is a horror show in many areas. The Fyrakk Assualts, and the Researchers Under Fire quests especially, point up the classes greatest weaknesses to me. Evokers can do decent damage, often enough to attract an elite mob, but if you’re not in a group good luck surviving the inevitable face-to-face smackdown.

We have no shields, little armor, little mobility, limited self healing, and are always 10 yards closer to being meleed because of the idiotic range limitation.

Running a round the assaults or any of the other high élite areas, with random AOE falling around, I feel like a moth in a blast furnace. if the mob is any more than a garden variety 70 I have to make sure there is a group attacking it before I start doing damage and any lucky crit often has them singling me out, assuming the drive by AOE does not knock my health down by half.

I don’t know why Blizz made so many areas do dangerous in terms of random damage that is often unavoidable. I do know that my lock, my pally, my warrior, my hunter, and my DH are much more survivable and my Evoker is not.
Damage is useless when you are forced to stand closer to a mob than any other caster, with crap armor, crap self healing, and crap mobility. How about some help Devs? Or, are you too busy with every other class to fix the mess you’ve made of Evokers when they have to quest?

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We literally can have 2 stacks of obsidian scales which reduce damage by 30% for 12 seconds. So that right there is 30% damage reduction for 24 seconds. On top of that you have Renewing Blaze that will negate all the damage you take for 8 seconds. That is not to mention the fact that you will be hovering and kiting your mobs around and healing yourself with living flame procs. To claim we have little mobility is crazy.

Are you utilizing all of your defensives while you are out questing?

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As far as open world goes, these are all completely false.

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I don’t know what your gear level is but mine is only 408, since I don’t raid, and those defensives last about ten seconds against an elite at the Fyrakk Assaults, or Researchers under Fire with all the added swirlies that pop up under you while trying to get your empowered casts off. How many of those can you survive by yourself?
Raids are not so bad because it’s hard to draw aggro and all you have to do is stay close, avoid all the spell interrupting crap that casters have to put up with, although 10 yards closer. I’m talking about world questing, especially with the herd of elites that pollute the Caverns. I imagine you can solo those, too.
But hey, I get it. You love the class, think there’s nothing wrong with it, and you always will. Good on ya.

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I’m 428 nowadays, but I’ve been soloing everything in zaralek cavern, including some of the rare elite spawns for achievements, since 410 when the patch first dropped. Evokers have it pretty easy when it comes to world quests and open world content.

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I just upgraded my gear to 420 this week, so I’ve been in the same relative boat as you for a while now.

As far as your question is concerned, I survive those by not standing in them? Try to find times when you don’t have things under your feet to cast an Empowered spell? I don’t think that our class is perfect, but I also don’t expect to be able to live through things that are designed to kill me if not reacted to?

Based on your initial post, I think you might be underestimated what we can do with our toolkit? Not sure here but best of luck to you.

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Which takes ages to come back up once used up. Any fight that lasts longer and has dangerous mechanics you can’t fit within the recovery time of scales is going to be a big problem.

Not sure why, but in dungeons this isn’t the case. You’d not expect your health to keep going lower when you have this active… Yet this is what keeps happening to me even with my healer healing me. Same in PvP, I often die through it.

This “defensive” is very unreliable from my experience.

My experience in the open world is that rares and elites will be on you faster than you can get away with hover due to it having a long cooldown, the speed boost not being enough, and there not being enough room to kite, Renewing blaze also doesn’t heal enough to face tank it tbh.

Evoker has mobility, but ehh it doesn’t feel good. Not only does it cost a whole gcd, it also launches you into a direction when you don’t want it as external movement makes you launch hover forward. On top of that your empowered spells arent’ castable while moving for some dumb reason so you have to stop moving if you want your flame procs. The cooldown on hover also feels long while the hover speed boost feels very weak.

The combination of not being able to use empowered spells while moving with hover, empowered spells bugging out all the time, and the long CD, it feels like Evoker is lacking the mobility it needs. It would be a different story if we were actually 40y distance, but the reality is that we’re only 25y and it takes half the amount of time for a mob to reach us.

Maybe we do have mobility on a technical level… But it certainly doesn’t feel like it. Even my MM hunter feels more mobile than this.

When I was 420~425 elites would smack me into oblivion. Never have I had so much trouble doing rares and elites. I went on my 420 dh and I didn’t have any problems at all. Even on my L67 hunter it was easier to fight rares.

Have fun fighting viridian the crystal king, you keep getting pulled in because you can’t outrange it. Have fun trying to kite in elite areas where every wrong step will add 5 mobs to your pull. Not to mention that you need a ton of damage for certain packs because they shield themselves while channeling massive AoE.

I think evoker needs a “heal on damage” mechanic added. For all I care empowered spells have a 2% leech added per empowered level you cast them at or something.

1 Like
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It costs half a gcd, and that can be covered by using an instant cast before using hover, so that hovers half gcd happens at the same time as your regular gcd. If you don’t want it to move you in a direction, stop moving when you press it.

Your health continuing to drop is exactly what you should expect if you’re not taking the talent to half its heal over time to 4 seconds. 8 seconds is too much time in pvp, though in pve its completely fine if you supplement with self healing to give it the time it needs.

I literally just face tank the rares and only use hover to continue casting while dodging swirlies. The elites in caldera are broken though, and I guarantee if I geared up my warrior, I wouldn’t perform any better against them. viridian king is kinda the exception, because he pulls you even if you’re already standing at his feet, and constantly interrupts your cast. miserable fight as any caster, not just evoker.

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It actually costs more than a GCD, despite not showing a GCD on the actionbars. They light up but you can’t use anything, not even disintegrate. You have to wait until your hover move animation stops before you can actually cast something.

Please read what I said. If there’s external movement on you there’s a chance hover will launch you forward. Just get knocked back on a mechanic, press the button, and your char will move forward instead of using hover in place. This killed me on Altairus, and nearly killed me on Chrono-Lord Deios, and has a chance to ruin the orb mechanic on Sentinal Talondras. Can happen anywhere, but these are just the few recent mechanics that I remember where this was actually an issue for me.

8 seconds of damage taken → 8 seconds of healing that damage back. Unless I’m mistaken, this should result in a 0% hp loss. It goes down, but it comes back up as well. This is not what I’m experiencing as it it keeps dropping faster than it’s healing. I guess their cryptic description with almost 0 info doesn’t help either if I’m misunderstanding this.

The rares are chugging me for 20~30% of my health per hit with auto-attacks, while living flame is only doing 10~15% healing max. Not sure what your ilvl is, but anything below 430 isn’t good enough.

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Our armor is actually greater than plate because of the passive we have that boosts it. It’s mostly just magic damage we’re vulnerable to (which is most damage in a raid or dungeon). Also we’re very mobile and have a lot of self healing.

After your defensives run out you have to basically azure strike spam and kite, but kiting is pretty standard for all ranged classes unless you’re a warlock or hunter.

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It will take 8 seconds to stabilize your health and 16 seconds to fully benefit from renewing blaze. If you’re chilling at 200k hp and take a 50k hit immediately after pressing blaze, you’ll have a hot for 12,500 every 2 seconds for 8 seconds, totaling 50k. If a mob hits you again after 2 seconds, that hot will still have 37,500. If the hit was again 50k, that hot will refresh to 87,500 over 8 seconds. So now you’re down to 113k health, and are healing for 21,875 every 2 seconds. Repeat the process again, and you now have a hot for 115,625, restoring 28k every 2.

So your health can drop dramatically with blaze before it stabilizes at the 8 second mark, which is when the hot stops rolling refreshes

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So it doesn’t negate damage for 8 seconds, and you can still easily die.

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It’s not an immunity, it does what it says it does. If you survive for 16 seconds, all damage in that 8 seconds window was effectively negated if we aren’t counting potential overheating. But that’s why the 4 second hot is so much better in pvp.

Also for this:

Press space bar and glide cancel the knock back. Dunno why you would hover

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Indeed, but Drakonyx claimed it negates all the damage you take for 8 seconds and I was just making sure I wasn’t the one misunderstanding how it works.

Because if I press hover and then cast disintegrate, I’ll keep casting instead of getting interrupted. Sometimes I hover, sometimes I glide. Sometimes my hover does that because I was a split second too late.

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Gotta pre hover the knock back, not hover after being knocked. You’re wasting the half global on hover since you’re not casting anything. Again you should be using hover after an instant, so the hover gcd happens during your normal gcd. If you hover by itself, hover has a half second gcd where you can’t cast anything. So by overlapping that with your regular gcd, you negate it.

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Yes, that’s what I said.

Hover into knockback is more time efficient if you’re otherwise standing around wasting time while waiting for the knockback to happen so you can glide out. Sometimes I don’t have a lot of space to glide and I want to hover in place without pretending to play vengeful retreat and pretend like I’m on crack.

Yes I know…

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You didn’t in your last post. Hover incurs a half second or so gcd. Since hover itself is off gcd you can incur this gcd during your regular gcd, making its gcd cost null. Hover movement does not stop you from casting, this gcd lock does.

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Read:

This is the case even when you don’t cast anything and you move. If you stand still it’s not an issue. The problem is that due to the animation the game won’t let you cast anything until it finished.

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Hover incurs a half gcd regardless of the dash.

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Also onto this, it is never more time efficient to hover after being hit by a knockback as compared to pressing hover before the knockback hits. You ideally hit a burnout living flame, azure strike, or shattering star to trigger gcd, and then hover to nullify hovers own gcd. Then when the knock back hits if you’re channeling disintegrate it won’t be cancelled and you can glide cancel the knock back. Glide does not cancel disintegrate, so you get full channel and no time lost.