Prevoker is the least represented healer in M 20+ and the range is a huge reason for it.
No, we can blame augmentation evoker for that.
Representation is a popularity contest, and pres, being the least played healer, is always going to lose.
So then the question you have to ask is “why?” WHY is it the least played healer, in it’s premiere expansion no less?
It was a top performer in S1 and S2, so WHY did it fall into last place? Blaming Augmentation which isn’t even in the top 5 played DPS specs in M 20+ isn’t it, either.
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They still have to spend extra globals and time repositioning. The mobility can help with their short range but it still has a significant cost.
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I mean you’re answering the question yourself, it’s not that complicated.
Healers are like tanks. They have specs they prefer and they also will go to what’s strongest. They’re also very quick to jump back to comfort and a spec they’ve played for years when it’s a strong one, which you can’t do with a new class (duh).
Pres had a ton of players right away in the expansion when it was all sorts of busted. Now that it’s not, that obviously shifts.
Consider that in Vault, there were 14,600 LESS mw monks than there are in amirdrassil. There were also 10,000 less disc priests than there are now.
… And that’s just mythic, those numbers balloon to 85,000 more mw in heroic Amird than Vault. Did I miss where they gave mw more range? Or is it just that they’re tuned much more favorably now?
Yet, there are only 3k less provokers than there were in Vault. Even at a lower overall population, those shifts are less extreme in terms of percentage shifts.
Sure, the range adds a wrinkle of difficulty that other healers don’t have, so it’s even easier to make the decision to swap to something more powerful, but using spec population as an indicator of how a class is actually doing is lazy and misleading.
The meta is what causes these shifts, not range.
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How dare you use data and logic to respond to nonsense?
You mad lad, you.
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If the actual HPS numbers aren’t way off, then why is it that Preservation has seen such a massive drop-off in terms of its player-base?
Mistweaver, Disc Priest, et al aren’t head-and-shoulders ahead of Preservation in terms of performance or actual numbers. So that also still doesn’t answer why the spec is being played so much less.
Even Blizzard just acknowledged that Preservation is, in their exact words, “underutilized, in part due to the range restrictions of the specialization.” I mean, it doesn’t get any clearer, this is from the horse’s mouth. Doesn’t take a brain surgeon or rocket scientist to see that the extra hoops Preservation has to jump through to keep up with its peers isn’t worth it for a great deal of players, hence the population drop-off. Blizzard can keep throwing the spec bones but even top-end Preservation players see the incoming changes as inadequate and don’t address the problems with the spec.
In all your drivel you still fail to acknowledge how or why Preservation went from #1 to #7 in representation in the M+20 range. It’s A FRACTION of the Holy Priest population even, a spec long considered one of the weakest m+ performers.
Metaphor Time: Maybe you can play the piano with 6 fingers. But it’s sure as hell a lot easier to play it with 10. Playing preservation is like chopping off 4 fingers and trying to play the piano when everyone else still keeps 10 fingers.
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Yeah, and yet their solutions have nothing to do with giving more range.
Yes, it does lol. If you’re admitting that pres isn’t that far behind (or even behind at all) those specs, then what you’re actually claiming is that the spec is just harder to play for similar results.
It’s a good thing to have specs with a higher skill floor/ceiling. If they made those actually outperform other specs when played perfectly, it’s all you’d see at the top end.
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TBD if their so-called solutions are adequate and will make Preservation more desirable to play. Would you take that bet? I certainly wouldn’t.
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It’s no longer the best. On top of that it has a particular playstyle and is available to exactly one race.
Because new tanks and healers don’t tend to draw a ton of new players, they tend to draw a ton of existing tanks and healers to try out the new classes that can fill those roles. Some of those people eventually filter back to their mains or go back to main-swapping for meta.
Me, personally, I enjoy Evoker as a healer more than the the other healers I have played and currently play.
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I think a lot of it is novelty combined with it being OP initially
Once it was nerfed it became an average healer with a below average range. Not much reason to play it after that when every other healer can heal the same with more distance
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I think 30yds range limit for most of our spells make sense given our great mobility tools and they probably wouldn’t want prevokers zipping around the battle ground with 40yds Verdant Embrace.
I do think where it starts to be very painful is for dispels. I would like to be able to dispel my team mates without needing to run across a bunch of fire swirlies or tornadoes, or god knows what while the other healers in my raid can be safe. Dispels are more and more used by the raid encounter design team and I’m ok with that but Prevokers are suffering.
So I think you raise a good point and the WoW Dev team should look into it.
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Looks like the scalecommmander hero tree will do a lot to remove the apparent need for better range.
If it functions as it seems it should, then we will be using Deep Breath a lot more, which combined with the mobility talent will reset hover each time it is used. This could mean that with Deep Breath as part of our regular rotation we will effectively have near limitless hover and have to freeze only for our other two breath attacks. That combined with Preheat’s proposed addition of Spatial Paradox could mean that range will only be a problem if there is absolutely no way to safely remain close and Paradox is on cool down.
I can still see range being a problem on bosses like Nymue where you find times when you simply must stay out of our short range to do mechanics AND using Deep Breath is either impossible or greatly inadvisable, but barring situations like that this talent tree could be exactly what we need.
Of course, it’s still too early to be certain as changes are not only still possible but probable, but here’s hoping for a future where hover with an occasional Spatial Paradox truly is all we need, unlike the present where hover is only of temporary assistance and must be used carefully so it is not on cool down when needed and we frequently have trouble maintaining dps while obeying mechanics or avoiding danger, especially in PvP since using Deep Breath more often would mean being able to stun more often while also providing an immediate escape option.
This should be good news to those who steadfastly approve of the short range gameplay and to those who feel restricted by the current limits to mobility on the class that touts mobility as one of its defining features and greatest draws. This could potentially be a very graceful solution to both problems. Mid range without limits.
No offense but this is a fried take my guy. They absolutely would 100% reduce mobility if they gave evoker more range, that’s why most casters can’t cast while moving immediately after a blink with a movement speed increase on top of it. The fact you keep repeating this whole “man what a wild assumption to make” just shows you have no idea how just injecting in more range would completely disrupt the power balance of the class
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My brother, he’s got a tenuous grasp on the class in general, but an even worse grasp on game balance.
The point is moot now in any case as, if you’ll be so good as to read above, they seem to have found another solution to the frequently mentioned problems with evoker range by likely adding even more hovers for our use in combat and finally adding an incentive to stay close by seemingly making Deep Breath a more desirable tool. After a year of effort, they seem to have nailed down the desired form of devastation short-range dps (at least, we hope).
The fact that they are changing the gameplay (again) is proof enough that I and everyone else that you have repeatedly decried are not simply failing to adapt to the short range but have accurately pointed out a problem that needed to be dealt with. The core of how evoker will deal damage is the same (Disintegrate/Fire/Eternity) but with more frequent use of Deep Breath and being able to direct and cancel Deep Breath, along with the perk of an extra hover, it will go a long way towards adding to our mobility, proving that what we have currently is just not as good as you frequently claim.
True, they neatly avoided adding to our range, instead adding to our mobility, but it helps solve the same problem. Unless they DO give us paradox, in which case, well, that WOULD add to our range, albeit briefly.
In other words, with these changes to Deep Breath shorter range WOULD make sense, because it doesn’t currently according, apparently, to the developers. They even include a talent that passively reduces AoE damage, so staying close without the perk of melee defensives/mitigation feels less awful.
Here is a link to Preheat’s take on the Hero Talents for Devastation: Scalecommander.
Devastation Evoker Review of Scalecommander Hero Talents - Devastation is Saved?! - Wowhead News
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The whole point of hero talents is to do this for literally every spec. It’s not proof of anything specifically for evoker.
Preheat is a clickbait creator who somehow has become the bannerman of all the bad evokers in this forum simply because he writes his content seemingly after browsing this forum to see what will resonate with the whine squad the most. And you all chuuuug that Kool-aid and re-post it as gospel.
Preheat’s ability as a player and his content as a creator are mutually exclusive. He makes content for the clicks, not the quality. When Aug first came out, he wrote the world’s worst (and most incorrect) article about how the spec would be played, talented, and received.
Just look at the giant clickbait banner on his video for this, lolol: “DEVASTATION SAVED?!”
There are much better evokers making content out there (and even sometimes posting in this forum), but they don’t pander to those that think we need range.
If you think using deep breath more as dev on Scalecommander “solves” the struggles of those that can’t play around evoker range, you’re more gullible than you even seem. Your previous post (and this one) are actually just complete rips and paraphrases of his post, lol.
It’ll be a complete detriment in raid unless they find a way to implement stretch time for dev, and it’ll likely only be the move in dungeons.
If those that aren’t good with the spec as it plays now think that they won’t instantly kill themselves and get frustrated by way more deep breaths as currently designed, you’re delusional. The entire premise of the “improvements” through maneuverability are COMPLETE conjecture and we have no idea how it will work in practice yet, nor do we know how much control we’ll really have.
The range already makes perfect sense for dev, the data and performance of the spec speak much more loudly than the gaslighting on this forum.
Using hero talents as proof that something is broken is absurd. ALL good hero talents will be ‘changing gameplay’.
Unless you’re doing completely trivial content, there’s no world that you’d ever take Tailwinds for the hover reset over Nimble Flyer.
I really doubt that. It’s obviously a very situational talent, but there are plenty of raid fights that are flooded with adds or require excessive amounts of repositioning.
None that would make an extra charge of hover every ~40 seconds more powerful than a static 10% dr while hovering, lol. Not even close. We can already achieve high hover uptime without even speccing time spiral, which you almost always have in raid anyhow.
If you’re speccing tailwinds in prog, you’re trolling. 40%ish uptime on 10% DR is insanely strong. I can’t think of a single mythic fight in any of the raids where 3-5 extra charges of hover would be more important than all that DR over the course of a fight.
It’s especially strong since it would stack multiplicatively with scales/zephyr. Getting 35% DR from hitting scales while hovering is way too good to pass up in 99.9% of circumstances (outside of trivial content).
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