Soar finally feels great, Evoker not so much

Classes Evoker
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So I came back to wow at the start of Dragonflight cause Dracthyr/Evoker looked interesting, and I like the look of Dracthyr. I like the look of my visage form though I’ll never use it since you can’t battle in it. I will agree with those of you who say that the overall customization options for Dracthyr is lackluster. There’s a laundry list of reasons, limited visage races, poor gear options, unable to have separate transmog for Dracthyr/visage form, and so on. I’m not gonna rehash these old arguments anymore than this since we all know and so does the dev team.

Playing (dev) Evoker itself is… clunky to say the least. It just doesn’t feel good, there’s no flow to the skillset, empowered spells are awkward, and so on. It’s passable at least, it just doesn’t wow me or make me excited to play. This can be fixed though and hopefully the devs can rework it eventually. I do like the spell effects though, it looks good to me at least, just doesn’t flow well.

But to me, the most egregious error they made with Dracthyr was the inability to fly using our dragon wings, especially when npc Dracthyr can fly, they even taunt you with it! Plus in cutscenes we can fly, but we as the player could not. Just baffling that this decision was made. Sure we had soar, but the first live iteration of it was… bad. So I just quit a few weeks into Dragonflight.

I checked in every few months and when they finally changed soar to just be the Dracthyr version of dragonriding, I had to try it out, and it feels great! It looks great! I love it! Flying around the Dragon Isles is fantasy fulfilled, finally!

I’m on the fence about giving praise for something like this that should have been a no brainer to add in the original release of Dracthyr, or when the initial backlash for not adding it was so massive. Instead you waited this long to add it. Probably makes me sound like an butt, but oh well.

On the other hand with the game developer landscape being the craphole that it is, especially for companies like this one, I wholeheartedly believe there are a great many game devs working on this game that do want to make this game the best they can and give the players what they want, but they just can’t because of management. So I do appreciate your work and I wish you the best in your career.

Here’s to hoping you can fix the other issues with Dracthyr cause the potential is here for something amazing.

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I’m new to this party, but I agree wholeheartedly. Soar is head and shoulders above dragonriding and every other racial passover in the game. [EDIT: Autocorrect, but F it, Easter pun; I’m leaving it.] The only thing even close is druid flight form.

Evoker is … good? Sort of? I mean it’s fine. The long casts for the empowered spells aren’t my favorite, and I despise ground targeted anything, BUT it’s fun, at least questing and leveling up. I wonder if that’s a function of the class, though, or if my experience has just been bouyed by Soar: any class would be my favorite if it could launch itself and fly on demand. [Technically they all can with dragonriding mounts, but the value of that free launch on the jump is impossible to overstate.]

If it had a tank spec or a pet spec it would be the only thing I’d ever play. [Overworld soloing and legacy is just the kind of content I like.]

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Ooooh man imagine turning aug into a pet spec! Rather than empowering allies, you empower your pets, and pump like beast mastery with molten elemental minions. That sounds so lit. I think I’ll make a new post for it. :rofl:

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Idk what you’re on about, Devastation has an incredibly smooth rotation.

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Yeah I was about to say the same thing.

Dev plays ultra smoothly, not sure how you’re playing it that it isn’t feeling that way lol, but if it feels clunky you’re doing it wrong.

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It’s the kitchen sink rotation. It’s got instant cast, channeled, hard cast, random instant proc chance, and empowered. The only “combo” is shattering star into disintegrate/pyre. It’s fine and logical, but it doesn’t have a flow to it. “Cast these on cooldown, use instant proc, dump essence, filler.” It’s just… fine.

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No, it’s not. There aren’t nearly enough abilities for this to make any sense.

Good kits have a variety of tools to give you something to use in any situation. This is a good thing for specs, not bad.

All this is telling me is that you don’t leverage iridescence.

It has great flow to it, and chaining disintegrate makes it incredibly smooth.

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You and I have different opinions on what flow means in a rotation. A “variety of tools” is one thing, but it’s not a variety of tools, they literally all do the same thing, deal damage, just with different forms of casting and little to no interaction otherwise, outside of a random proc chance to make a different spell instant cast or consume no resources. Spamming one ability also isn’t a flow. It’s one ability.

Although the empowered spells are a variety of tools in their own right just because you empower it to the most useful level for the situation.

Spells that flow from one to the next in a predictable pattern of empowerment is what feels nice and fulfilling to me.

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Once you get to 70 and get a tier set report back on how it feels?

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Oh wow I assumed this guy had a different evoker and actually did some real content…

That’s actually ridiculous if homie is complaining about the spec before it’s even geared lol.

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You guys, lmao. smh

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What? Is it a weird suggestion to ask that you fully try the spec at max level?

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You guys, says the person trying to trash a spec without even having all of its tools… These forums never cease to amaze.

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Well let’s take a gander at what I’m missing from my kit. A couple of talent points that, let’s face it, this late in the game are just for utility talents. I’ve got all my spells. So, tier bonus from the current set gives me, under optimal play, 5 extra essence burst over the course of about 3 minutes. Oh, and a buttload of damage that is irrelevant to the discussion at hand.

So my rotation isn’t going to change much and my spells aren’t going to change how they interact with each other. So what exactly am I missing to be able to evaluate how the class feels to me? This is an honest question, cause it doesn’t seem like I’m missing any spec or rotation defining tools.

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Saying the spec “isn’t smooth” when you aren’t doing anything but grinding quest mobs and doing free content is ignorant and foolish. You could literally have ALL of the abilities (and even tier) and the spec would feel like trash at your stat levels.

You also claimed that the spec isn’t smooth/doesn’t flow, and you don’t have iridescence which combats your complaint about spamming one ability, as well as creating the progression of abilities that you’re talking about.

Iridescence

Passive

Casting an empower spell increases the damage of your next 2 spells of the same color by 20% within 10 sec.

You have 7% haste and 14% crit, lol. Haste itself is somewhat rotation defining once you get into dragonrage extensions.

Playing the spec at anything less than about 17% haste feels unreal sluggish, and you’re at 7%. Having no crit with Spellweaver’s Dominance also feels bad. Do you not understand how this game works?

Obviously you don’t have control over how low these stats are while in leveling gear, but if you honestly think specs play the same while in trash gear while leveling and at top end with proper stat distribution you’re beyond clueless.

Devastation is legitimately a blast. Try actually getting to max level and get a little gear before ignorantly crying on the forums about how it plays.

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Dev is fun for me, and I have been very lazy this season. :frowning:
Possibly my favorite spec I have played.

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Alright fine. I had a level 70 boost from preordering the war within that I used on my Evoker. While 424 gear isn’t the best and I don’t have the extra essence burst from the tier set. plus 26% haste is still under the 30% soft cap. Afterwards I surfed icy-veins and youtube for builds, rotations, nuances I might have missed, and seeing dev evokers in action from practiced players. Then I spent about half an hour at the training dummy practicing, here are my thoughts:

You mentioned Iridescence like it would fundamentally change the rotation and… it just doesn’t. The goal is to keep dragonrage, firebreath, eternity surge, and shattering star on cooldown, and shoot as many disintegrates as possible. It’s obviously a little more nuanced than that but I don’t need to break it down for a 1337 pro like you. In any given 10 seconds in your rotation you don’t cast an empowered spell there’s a 95% chance you cast living flame at least once already. So to get the full effect of Iridescence you’d need to weave in one more living flame every 30 seconds, that’s hardly game changing. No need to change anything to cast 2 disintegrates in 10 seconds after an eternity surge. Plus I question whether it would even be a dps gain since an unbuffed disintegrate is so much stronger than even a buffed living flame, so would you really forgo an extra disintegrate for a slightly buffed living flame? I couldn’t crunch the numbers even if I wanted to so I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt and change my whole rotation by casting one more living flame every 30 seconds.

Also, you flaunted haste like it’s going to be another game changer. Yes, it definitely feels nice to go faster, but it doesn’t change the rotation anyway.

Two things I was missing though, from watching the videos, was clipping disintegrate after it’s final tick. I can see that adding quite a bit in a long fight. But once again it just speeds up the rotation, not changes it. I also forgot Shattering Star increases the damage your target takes from you by 25% for 4 seconds, but it’s unlikely that you wouldn’t be casting 2 disintegrates anyway, so very little impact there as well.

So, final thoughts, it’s basically just a faster rotation than I was playing yesterday and it feels fine. It doesn’t feel amazing. Jumping back and forth between hold to cast, hard cast, and channeled is like I said, a little clunky, it’s kinda like a QTE. The spells don’t really flow from one to next, anything that’s not disintegrate is just filler till your next disintegrate. It does feel good to sit there laser beaming your enemy for 5-8 seconds at a time, and the spell effects really do look great. It’s very aesthetically pleasing. I will add that hovering while spamming disintegrate and death spiraling around the enemy does feel amazing. Overall 8/10, would dragon again.

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The fact you would use a boost on an evoker says all anyone needs to know about your deductive reasoning.

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An evoker that was already level 67 to boot. Oh the shame of it all… Anyway.