Please check out the preview and let us know what you think in this thread.
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What does Chrono Flames actually do for the 3 characters it hits? Or did I miss that somewhere?
I’m not sure what I was expecting from this system; but some initial feedback:
- I like how this system is creating change within existing abilities, but I’m wondering if there is room for new active abilities in where it makes sense.
- I’m a little torn between whether or not Hero talent abilities should impact rotational choices; it seems like it might change timings of how we use abilities, which creates friction between shifting between this build and whatever the other build available is.
- If this system expands in the future - if the intent is to add new hero talent pools in the future as an evergreen feature; balancing is going to become challenging and I’d suggest you not care THAT much about it. For competitive players there will always be a “best” build and while there should be balancing passes, don’t be afraid to let one Hero build dominate in a season, and then between seasons change them up a bit to let another one shine.
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It reads like it has a chance to do damage or heal a second time for a lesser amount.
Another question; how will Master of Destiny stack? Right now, for example on pull, Aug evokers use both empowered spells right off. If this doesn’t stack or pandemic or extend the new buff duration, that changes the rotation - and is that a goal or not?
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Please make instability matrix a consistent 5 seconds or a consistent x amount of seconds. instead of a random amount up to 15. The inconsistency is going to make it feel so bad to play with.
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Looking good so far. Like Nidaros said, make Instability Matrix a consistent amount of seconds, its randomness is going to be bad.
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First thoughts, wow, they seem really strong.
Instability Matrix: Each time you cast an empower spell, unstable time magic reduces its cooldown by up to 15 seconds. Echo has a 25% chance to not cost Essence.
^ I thought at first that every CD is 15 seconds, but it’s up to so I guess we can recover anywhere between 1-15. I like this. I like randomly getting a much stronger reward. And getting those important abilities faster is going to be key.
Getting Warp seems super powerful… we’re going to have a Mage blink with which we can dodge boss mechanics?? Sign me up.
Some of the talents that buff allies are going to be great in raid, love that there is a splash of Augmentation here.
Spiritbloom HOT is exactly what I wanted, that was the best part of that 4-piece set.
I’m only guessing that these might get tuned down a bit cause they seem insane to me, this is a great start.
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I’m not sure how other Augs feel about Golden Opportunity but using globals on Prescience already isn’t a super fun mechanic. Adding the ability to use more globals casting it doesn’t sound like fun gameplay. Maybe a 25% chance for a free prescience to be cast on a nearby DPS or something along those lines could be a fun alternative. I know this takes away from the “Skill” of playing Augmentation but I dont think micro managing more prescience’s is the play here.
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Also glad we are not getting new buttons. Honestly, there’s plenty, there’s so many. But giving us the ability to get our important buttons faster is great, and just enough.
I’m guessing Chronowarden will be the more healing option for healers, and Ruby Warden will be the more damage focused? Either way, looks good. Warp and the motes look awesome. Can’t wait!
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Looks great already.
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The left tree seems a bit weaker than the other two, in my opinion. Warp is really interesting, though. Wondering if it comes with a new animation? Either way, the subsequent node seems a tad weak to me (Motes of Acceleration/Interdimensional Phase). See my next bullet point.
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Preservation Season 1 tier set was the best, in my opinion. Do you think you can use some of those buffs in the Hero Tree? e.g. Reversion has 25% chance to crit and can cause Living Flame to be an instant cast. Perhaps, that instead of Echo 25% chance to not cost Essence or instead of Motes of Acceleration/Interdimensional Phase.
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A lot of options to buff Prescience (including Season 3 tier set). For a change, what do you think about a buff that buffs Blistering Scales, instead? e.g. It mini stuns nearby targets every times it explodes and it constantly burns nearby targets (like Immolation). Stuff like that.
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Casting Echo manually is not fun, in my opinion. It is much more fun to cast Temporal Anomaly, which applies Echo for us automatically. Consider a buff like when Echo is applied either manually or via Temporal Anomaly, then it automatically applies an X amount of Echos (on top of the 5 that TA applies) to nearby players, preferring damaged players. (Same smart targeting like Aug)
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It is looking great so far and I completely agree with a lot of the reasoning made in the interview! Here are some more ideas to add to the pot:
- Careful Contemplation: It doesn’t look very fun to take the Augmentation capstone talent Interwoven Threads only to have it undone by this talent.
- Time Convergence: On paper this looks a bit complicated to weave into a rotation, how about we lean into the idea of empowered spells further? Give an intellect buff based on the empower level of your spells. Where empower one spells give a larger intellect buff but a shorter duration then have it scale to a fully empowered spell which gives a smaller intellect buff but longer duration? Giving players more control over the timing of their fight.
- Afterimage: Does this stack with the current 20% chance for essence burst with living flame? Seems redundant for a capstone. Maybe add something similar to the 10.2 Preservation set bonus and have those three Chrono Flames have a chance to apply a weaker Echo/Prescience on the player/nearby player who doesn’t already have the buff?
- Inter-dimensional Phase/Motes of Acceleration: Based on the interview and how IP might unintentionally force people to play hover differently, and MoA will feel bad if no one collects these orbs why not lean into the interplay of Hover. For example you can have one choice to give Hover the ability to break roots, and the other allow the player to return to their original position upon second activation while Hovering. Similar to Recall with Deep Breath.
- Chrono Flame: The Season 1 10.0 Preservation Evoker tier set felt really fun to play and synergized well with the rest of our kit. Could we instead give our Fire Breath ticks a chance to make our Living Flame instant cast, which will now be Chrono Flames because they don’t have the cast time any more!
One thing I have enjoyed about Evoker is the lack of “cruft” in the form of historical talents and ideas just shoved into their talent trees because they were part of the class in the past. An example I would give of this is Mindgames from Priest, or the statues from Monk.
Because of that, I am happy to see that there aren’t a bunch of active abilities and stuff being added to Evoker. I like how Devastation plays SO much and how simple yet fluid it is to play. I implore that you keep it this way going into War Within.
Thank you!
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Its not random, its based on the level of the empowered spell. so 1=3, 2=6, 3=9, 4=12, 5=15.
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Just a quick look.
Temporal Burst is very flavorful, but in particular I wonder about the numbers for cdr. 2% to 40% haste is massive. 2% to 40% movement speed is weird. 2% to 40% cdr is bizarre since by math 1 second of 100% cdr is 2 seconds off a cooldown so you get 2+4+6+8+10+… (assuming it ramps up by second which is implied by the duration and effect) which nets to 420 effective cdr or 4.2 seconds off cooldowns which is not much. I worry that this one is a bit too much flavor not enough function, and not in the sense that its underpowered because 2-40% haste is massive, but because 2/3s of its effect is low impact and hard to notice on paper.
also of immediate notice I just don’t see a use case for ever using careful contemplation over time convergeance. It looks like an attempt to keep it simpliefied but blanket 10% anti-cdr messes with utility and is generally gross. And time convergeance will always be up when you want it to be, especially since as written you can proc it with some unlikely things.
Like as written I’m seeing popping deep breath/landslide/tip the scales on rotation with other heals to basically keep this buff on rotation. Just a plausible example for pres: fight starts pop stasis and lets say we’ll net 18 seconds per cast due to empowered spells so 18 seconds from stasis, tip the scales 36 seconds landslide 54 seconds deep breath 1 min 12 seconds dream flight 1 minute 30 seconds stasis again 1 minute 48 seconds and at this point we still have possibly 2 stacks of rewind and emerald communion at least. And this is leaving out other long cd spells like time dilation, time spiral, rescue, and oppressing roar since I am unsure whether they are defensive or not. Note I know empowered abilities have longer then 18 second cd but I’m assuming some cdr from instability matrix coming in, as well as the possibility of stasis empowered spells adding seconds and preferring napkin math vs the exact equation since this is hobby stuff for me.
I like the bronze theme and look forward to seeing it evolve and in practice on paper I can see some weirdness but I’m just pointing out the weirdest bits in my mind, there is more but I’ll wait to actually try it before commenting beyond this.
These seem to double down on the underlying issues with augmentation. More party buffs more tankiness.
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This Hero tree looks really interesting, especially Warp, which is probably my favorite at the moment. Hover has been my favorite spell since I rerolled Evoker because of how fluid it feels to dash around a dangerous mechanic and then being able to cast while I reposition into a good spot. Turning it into a blink adds more flexibility to Hover that will now allow you to blink through mechanics that would have been otherwise unavoidable with just a dash.
However, I am a little worried about small additions like this furthering the divide between Aug and Dev but since we haven’t seen either of the other Evoker trees yet I’m going to wait before I make any assumptions.
Really excited for Chronowarden!
Talent wise i’m most excited for Warp. I do hope it doesn’t remove the hovering animation that hover gives though.
Please look around the community for all of the assortment of glyphs that can and could be introduced for Drathyr/Evokers. We should have glyphs to change the color of Living Flame as well as our transformation color.
2 Likes
Bringing relevant feedback here from the other thread:
Chronowarden sounds like it’s bringing back a lot of the aspects I have enjoyed about some of the Preservation tier sets we’ve seen so far, which is nice. It also has me hopeful that the Ruby Aspect tree marks the return of instant Living Flame procs for Preservation.
- Can Warp also be extended to Rescue? That would be fantastic.
- I welcome Reverberations, because I already find myself missing the HOT from Spiritbloom.
- Temporal Burst sounds pretty fun to play around, though I have mixed feelings about basically needing to use Tip the Scales on cooldown as a healer. Can we get a second charge of Tip the Scales somewhere so I can at least keep one in my pocket for when I really need it?
- I like the idea of Hover behaving more like Blink and giving you massive DR if your timing is really good. Could this be changed just a tiny bit to be 30% for 1 full second, then fall off over the next 2 seconds?
- Motes of Acceleration is a neat idea for fights where movement is key, something like Painsmith or Soulrender comes to mind. Can we make sure one player can’t run through and waste ALL of the motes so no one else gets any? Like, limit 1 per player, or prevent picking up a second while the buff is already active.
- It’s also nice to see the current Preservation tier set being more or less carried forward in Afterimage (reminder that this is also a Paladin class talent, which may cause confusion).