If you’re admitting that you don’t think range would increase DPS potential(even though this isn’t correct), think about adds on fyrakk for the clearest example), then why do you think it’s something that should be increased?
Do you not think a melee spec with 25 yards would have more dps potential?
If the answer is simply “because some people don’t like it”, then those people should play a spec that has the range they want, shouldn’t they?
Why would people that understood the range when they made their character, learned to play the kit and enjoy it, and are doing well with it be penalized because the people that opted in knowing what the spec was decided they didn’t like the range?
They can also voice their opinion on not liking it, this is a forum after all.
I mean we’ve seen this happen before. Plenty of people, mained voidform shadow priest in legion/BFA and loved it. They worked on perfecting their positioning and maximizing voidform uptime, but in the end their voices were drowned out by the people screaming on the forums about not liking voidform.
It happened with affliction too. Soul Effigy functioned well, but everyone hated it. So it was removed.
Specs can change because popular opinion demands it, the spec does not have to be broken to do so.
100% agreed. My aim is not to say those people don’t have a voice, it’s simply to add my own thoughts (and actual data) into the mix.
There’s a difference between “I don’t like the range” and “this doesn’t work” or “this was a failed experiment”. The latter two statements are proven wrong by an entire expansion’s worth of data.
All of the specs you’re mentioning were old specs undergoing reworks.
Evoker is a brand new class that has functioned/performed well all expansion and is brand new. Not only that, increasing the range by 60% is apples to oranges with spell reworks.
Additionally, these forums are a drop in the ocean of the player base and skew heavily in favor of those that have complaints–trying to assume majority opinion from this is beyond absurd.
As I’ve said ad nauseum on this topic, I’m very okay with them creating a choice node that drops hover if you want 40 yds. Shockingly, the majority of the “more range” complaint crowd sees no reason to sacrifice anything for an extra 15 yards, which is laughable.
Right. I mentioned this can be the case but that I don’t think that evokers who use their mobility and know the fights well will suffer greatly from this.
Dps tax seems like a weird take. As I’ve mentioned in other posts, with the damage output of different classes, there is no way that blizzard balance damage based on mobility. They have even said that they tune classes based on how they perform. If BM hunter is performing dismally and is well below other classes, they will buff it regardless of mobility. If it is performing well above other classes, they will nerf it. Damage tuning is related to performance, not mobility.
This brings us back to my question which was not answered.
I don’t necessarily think that dev should get a range increase (though I would prefer it personally) following our previous discussions. Neither am I asking you to justify once more why you feel dev should keep its medium range. The questions I’m asking are to challenge the statement you made that increased range would make the class busted.
My point remains: I challenge someone to show through either data, sims or otherwise that specifically increasing the range of evoker would make the very top players deal so much additional damage that they become crazy powerful.
I’m not saying this because I don’t believe it will make any difference at all. I am saying this because putting forward a sensational statement should be backed up with evidence.
Mobility directly informs a portion of damage performance for a lot of specs. If suddenly kill command had a cast time, BM mobility would suffer and in turn so would its DPS.
You don’t have to look any farther for proof that range would increase DPS than the fact that the speed enchants on gear are the only enchants (vs avoidance, leech etc), that have any technically positive direct effect (albeit a small one) to DPS.
This is because being able to get into range of something faster than you could without it is a direct buff to your DPS.
Now imagine that you give 60% extra range to devastation. Not only are they safer, but on a flight with add spawns (think assault in aberrus) they are now able to deal damage instantly to targets that they previously had to move towards or wait for them to enter their effective range.
This is very obviously a buff to their power, because:
They can hit things farther away instantly.
Because of that, they don’t have to use hover to get into range of things, so it’s literally always going to be available to them.
They can position more safely to avoid mechanics, which also lets them save charges of hover.
In essence, the class would have zero weakness.
If you’re asking me for a sim that shows “here’s what would happen with 40 yds”, you should know that the data isn’t available. You can’t sim that.
All you have to do to know that range is a direct and large DPS buff is to think about if you gave havoc DH 20 yard range. Do you honestly not see how powerful that would make it?
It’s confusing to me that this is such an abstract idea though… Like do you genuinely not see that this would be a buff?
That we can agree on. My point is that the mobility, if used correctly, for evoker is already so strong that I don’t believe that a range increase would on its own have a dramatic effect on the usual damage of the best dev players.
Quite the opposite. I’ve stated several times that I do think it would be a buff.
Currently my belief is that a range increase would mean that players who aren’t as good at dealing with mechanics / range issues would benefit the most, and that the best players who are already utilizing the spec fully will gain very little, so that in essence a range buff would close the performance gap.
Am I suggesting that this is a good or bad outcome? Nope.
My personal view is that evoker would feel more fun to play with range, true. But I’m only one person, and my belief is that Bliz should craft classes to create what the biggest proportion of players from all skill levels would enjoy most, possibly skewed towards players who are more committed to playing the game longer term because that would make the most sense business wise.
With all this said, if I were Bliz, I’d follow this logic:
What would most evoker players enjoy more?
Answer prediction: Increase in range, especially for pres.
Would this break evoker and make it way better than everything else?
Answer prediction: No, but if the performance is too high, it can be tuned like we have seen so many times with classes, so this is a non-issue and should not be considered when focusing on designing a class to feel good to play.
Will there be some people who are upset with a range increase?
Answer prediction: Yes, but likely a very small number of (very vocal) people.
Solution?
Answer prediction: Careful design of talents with choice nodes to enable skill expression while allowing more simple and feel-good play for those who wish to have an easier life.
This is actually more likely for those wanting a range increase, given that these forums are basically wow’s version of Yelp, and the majority of the forum regulars are here to complain about what they don’t like, versus defending what they do. A cursory scanning of the GD forum makes this relatively irrefutable.
Literally any buff stands to benefit the best players the most, this is erroneous.
Whether it shortens the performance delta or not (it most likely would) is irrelevant, because this point directs the next point you made:
This is exactly what people in favor of keeping the range are trying to avoid. A throughput nerf because of a range buff is counterproductive to the performance of the spec.
None of this even touches on the fact that we are getting a TON more mobility and survivability with hero talents, so an increase in range would further compound the issue.
As ever, I don’t get the logic of saying mere range would increase evoker damage or somehow make them OP.
Stand 10 feet away and cast a spell that does 30 damage and the spell does 30 damage.
Stand 40 feet away and cast a spell that does 30 damage and the spell does 30 damage.
It’s not like spell damage is scaled by distance. All that would change would be that you could chuck a fireball from farther away and probably have more room to dodge poo. Wowforum is right, it wouldn’t help great players be greater since they’re expected to be able to dodge mechanics while dpsing, but it would help not as great players focus better on dps because they would have more room to work with without losing concentration on doing damage. There would likely be an increase in evokers.
Spatial Paradox will help with this, but a flat increase would be kinder to players. Even if they did add range, Spatial Paradox would still be a useful tool for emergencies.
A fight where you have to stand 40 feet away, now you do zero damage instead of 30. That is a dps increase.
Then again, logic is not your strong point.
I’m sure if melee specs had 40 yards, they’d get an increase in players too.
If you can put a price on the range buff, name it, if you can’t, I guarantee, everyone will play evokers if they one shot everything. So, what is your price?
Your logic is that being able to hit something, no matter how hard, is a dps increase vs not being able to hit something that is too far away being…what? A dps loss that’s meant to be for only one ranged class?
That’s not logic, it’s making an excuse for a bad design.
Further range would not “increase dps” it would simply allow it. What we’re talking about here is uptime, not a strengthening. And before you say more time attacking the boss does mean more dps, that makes no sense since by all accounts the class is functional more or less 100 percent of most fights. As Wowforum said, an increase in range would simply be a QoL change, not something that would effectively break the class.
The fact that you refuse to understand simple logic makes me think you’ve just devolved into a troll, if you were ever even anything else. You’re missing the very simple difference between damage and DPS.
It’s clear you don’t understand this and probably refuse to, but I’m a masochist at heart so I’ll try anyways. If you can do 400k single target and an add that spawns 40 yds away from you-- currently, you’re not doing damage to it with 25 yd range.
For the sake of argument let’s say it takes five seconds seconds to get into range and five seconds to kill while doing 400k DPS. You’re doing zero DPS for the first five seconds and 400k for the next five. Your DPS for that 10 seconds is 200k, because you couldn’t hit it 50% of the time.
Now, you get 40yd range. The add spawns and you can hit it immediately. Your DPS is 400k on that add, because you could do full damage the whole time. Yes, you did the same amount of damage to it, but you killed it in 5 seconds instead of 10, essentially doubling your DPS.
Another example I can give is my kurog mythic fight last night. There were several times that earth adds spawned and pre-charging a full FB, I either had to miss 1-2 adds or wait for them to get into range so I didn’t. It wasn’t worth wasting the cast time to only miss 1-2 so I let the cast go off on everything else.
If the range were 40 yds and that breath hit those extra few adds every time, I would have ended the fight with more DPS and damage done.
Come on dude, this isn’t complex. “Allowing” DPS where before it wasn’t allowed before is a DPS increase, full stop.
In theory if you made a boss that had a one-shot circle 10 yds around it for half of a fight, a warrior would only be able to DPS it half the time, right? Now you add 10 yards of range to that warrior and they can hit it the whole time.
That’s right, their DPS goes up!
I don’t know why I’m wasting time with you as I’m pretty sure you’re just trolling now. This has been explained several times and you either lack the cognitive capacity to grasp it or you’re choosing not to on purpose.
As Wowforum said, an increase in range would simply be a QoL change, not something that would effectively break the class.
We can add endless utility to underpowered specs, and they would still not be overpowered. But if they’re remotely tuned competitively, they’d become instantly overpowered.
You have fallen back on this bizarre “argument” throughout this discourse. It’s a meaningless statement that you, for some reason, thinks is a relevant/valid point to make.
Ret Paladin and Feral Druid have talents that give them more range on their abilities than their melee counterparts. By your “logic”, they should then be head-and-shoulders above their other melee peers by this “advantage”, correct? That’s been your whole schtick here, that by creating parity between evoker and all other ranged peers that it would catastrophically make them imbalanced.
But in looking at the most recent DPS rankings on WoWhead, even with the additional range granted to Retribution and Feral, both Arms and Unholy are beating out Retribution. Assassination is right next to Retribution. And Feral Druid, with access to increased melee range compared to it’s melee counterparts, is the LOWEST ranked melee DPS in this list.
Something isn’t adding up here, and it’s your faulty “argument.”
Reading comprehension on your end must be sorely lacking, or you’re being intentionally disingenuous/misleading, as it’s very very clear that is not what I am saying at all.
You’re comparing apples to oranges here. Those classes were tuned around their kits and range. You’re not even speaking to range here, you’re speaking to balance. Worse yet, you’re speaking to balance in a complete meme tier where Blizzard has very little skin in the game to be turning knobs on said balance.
Are you also in this absurd category of people arguing that an increase in range would not include an increase in power?
If you gave arms and unholy 15 more yards, that would just increase the delta between them and the classes you’re mentioning. Survival hunter has a lot more range capability than many of these specs too, and it’s in a pretty awful spot this tier.
The question isn’t whether classes with more range capabilities are inherently more powerful or not (they aren’t, or dev wouldn’t be stronger than a lot of them), it’s whether giving 15 yards of range to any class without any other changes whatsoever would result in larger dps potential (it would).
You recognise there are fights where dps evoker specifically is outranged due to mechanics when no other ranged classe are.
You like this feature.
You also recognise that on fights where range is NOT an issue (most of the game’s content), the best players who use their mobility effecftively would not see any real benefit from a range increase.
Your fear is that, due specifically to these rare occasional range limited fights, evoker would be significantly nerfed if they were to have greater range?
If Bliz were to tune an entire class because of a specific encounter designed in a quirky way when the class is tuned well throughout the rest of all of the game’s content, this would be a huge fail on their part. That would be like nerfing shadowpriest into the ground just because they are particularly good on the Council of Dreams encounter.
How about mythic+. Do you think that an increase in range would break dev in m+?
Give Evoker parity with range and adjust other things as needed, it’s as simple as that. I’m not arguing that it wouldn’t effectively increase uptime and thus damage. So adjust damage/mobility as needed.
This issue is especially egregious for Preservation, which is one of, if not the, least represented healer in m+ currently. In part due to the headache the lack of range has compared to it’s peers. Even with the so-called “mobility” of the toolkit it’s not enough to cover the gap/weakness. And it certainly doesn’t have the throughput to justify the weakness either.