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A Look Back at Devastation Evoker in Dragonflight & War Within Wishlist - Editorial
Live
Publié
02/02/2024 à 05:44
par
Preheat
With the sun setting on Dragonflight and The War Within on the horizon, our Devastation Evoker Writer, Preheat, offers a retrospective highlighting Devastation's journey in Dragonflight and shares their hopes for the spec's next evolution with a War Within Wishlist.
Our Guide Writers have reviewed their specs throughout Dragonflight and share wishlists of what they'd like to see in the War Within. Check out all of our released editorials below.
Dragonflight Retrospectives & War Within Wishlists
Blood DKFrost DKUnholy DK
Havoc DHVengeance DH
Balance DruidFeral DruidGuardian Druid
Restoration Druid
Augmentation EvokerDevastation EvokerPreservation Evoker
BM HunterMM HunterSurvival Hunter
Arcane MageFire MageFrost Mage
Brewmaster Monk
Mistweaver MonkWindwalker Monk
Holy PaladinProtection PaladinRetribution Paladin
Discipline Priest
Holy PriestShadow Priest
Assassination RogueOutlaw RogueSubtlety Rogue
Elemental ShamanEnhancement Shaman
Restoration Shaman
Affliction WarlockDemonology WarlockDestruction Warlock
Devastation Retrospective & War Within Wishlist
Now that Dragonflight is coming to a close, and The War Within is approaching, it is time to consider how Hero Talents and other potential changes may shape Devastation Evoker in the years to come. But before we look forward, let's take a moment to recap Dragonflight. Devastation Evoker is a new spec that was added during Dragonflight, but there was still an evolution of the gameplay throughout the expansion. The best way to summarize this evolution is by looking at the talent tree and changes to it. By looking at these changes, we can see the direction Devastation has taken and perhaps make some predictions about Hero Talents, too.
Devastation Evoker Gameplay
Devastation Evoker is very simple on the surface, but has an amazing amount of depth with intersecting interactions. The gameplay is distinctly different from most Ranged casters in that your range is limited to 25 yards and some of your spells can be empowered to change the effect.
Devastation Evoker primarily deals damage by applying
Souffle de feu
to deal damage over time while using
Afflux d’éternité
and spending
Essence
and
Explosion d’essence
on
Désintégration
.
Rage draconique
is the primary cooldown and makes the Evoker gain the full value of
Maîtrise : Fléau des géants
, while guaranteeing
Explosion d’essence
with each
Frappe d’azur
and
Flamme vivante
. This is the core gameplay loop of Devastation, and has been since its release.
The 25yd Experiment
For most of the expansion, having a range of 25 yards wasn't as bad as it sounded. At the start of Dragonflight, you could tell that the raid boss designers were considering Evoker's lack of range when designing encounters. So long as this consideration was being made, having less range while being flagged as a Ranged DPS was not too much of an issue. With every patch, we feel this slipping more and more.
Unfortunately,
Amirdrassil, l’Espoir du Rêve
has many encounters that feel as if Evoker range is no longer a consideration. Being forgotten like this is exactly what Evokers like myself were afraid of when Blizzard demonstrated that they were unwilling to reconsider the 25 yard limitation. If you have played
Nymue
on Mythic as Devastation, you know exactly what I'm talking about. Most of the soaks you need to do as ranged in the encounter are beyond 25 yards from the boss, and the lines on the floor that damage you are almost exactly at our max range. Doing this encounter with a 40 yard range is a completely different experience that leaves you wondering how you could ever be considered for the same role.
There are other examples in the current raid where being limited to 25 yards as a caster is needlessly frustrating, but the point is that 25 yards only works when you design the game around it. Augmentation also suffers from the 25 yard range limitation, but the spec is far less reliant on uptime since most of its damage comes from its peers. Augmentation also has a shorter
Survoler
cooldown and higher uptime in general due to
Maîtrise : marcheur du temps
. Having the short range on buffing allies is a serious concern (I'm not going to get into this since this article is about Devastation), but it feels similarly affected otherwise.
Visual representation of Evoker Range. 25 yards is in green.
Mobility Tradeoff
A talking point you will frequently hear when it comes to Evoker range, is that 25 yards is a tradeoff for some other advantage. When lack of Evoker range gets brought up, usually you see a response like this:
"Isn’t less range a compensation for something else then? We can’t have one with all the things!"
I'm here today to put this argument to rest. Below is a chart of the least mobile to most mobile ranged DPS specializations ranked based on the rough percentage of their rotation in Single Target that is instant cast or able to be cast while moving.
As you can see, Devastation isn't even top 3, and this is without even considering
Iceberg
and
Chatoiement
, which could easily put Frost ahead of it as well.
Survoler
is not adequate compensation for this lack of range when Evoker isn't even the most mobile class, especially when mobility doesn't matter when you have to
play out of range of the boss
. Regardless of the Evoker spec, it is clear that making Evoker count as range while having 25 yards is not
fun
or
flavor
. It is just
frustrating
.
Dragonflight Talent System
Dragonflight introduced the new talent tree system and we have had plenty of time to get familiar with it. This system has been somewhat successful for Devastation Evoker, but there is a lot of room for improvement. The main issue here is that of the 14 options we don't pick from in a typical build, only 3 of them are worth considering.
This means that 11 of the 14 (78.5% of them) are dead talents
in PvE. Only two of these dead talents are even used for PvP, the rest are completely ignored. Hopefully we see some changes in The War Within.
Devastation Evoker has one main build with some minor changes depending on how many targets you can reliably hit. Due to how similar talents are for Raid and Mythic+, thankfully, we are able to achieve a healthy balance of Single Target, Cleave, and AoE simultaneously with our standard build. The Evoker Class talents actually have a bit of variety since most of the options are changed based on what sort of utility you are looking to bring.
Raid
General AoE
For Aoe,
Nexus de puissance
and
Brasier enveloppant
are dropped for
Volatilité
or
Explosion chargée
.
For Single Target,
Tranche d’éternité
is removed for
Agression cinglante
.
In Season 2, the Devastation tree was reworked considerably in the capstone area. Many of the talents,
Causalité
,
Destruction imminente
,
Flammes avivées
,
Source de magie
,
Vigueur arcanique
, and
Œil de l’infini
to name a few, were changed to do different things. The biggest change was to
Causalité
, which is how we get cooldown reduction. With this change, cooldowns are now shortened per tick for
Désintégration
and on impact for
Bûcher
.
Vigueur arcanique
was also reworked, making
Étoile fracassante
proc
Explosion d’essence
. These were
mostly
great changes that greatly improved Devastation gameplay.
Dead Talents & Bad Pathing
I've spoken about this before, but the biggest problem after the rework that persists to today is that the area on the left of the tree, below
Volatilité
, has terrible pathing. There should be a link from
Volatilité
to
Tempête-de-feu
. The choice node below should link to
Flammes avivées
. The only reason I see why these aren't linked is due to the visual aesthetic of the tree being symmetrical. In AoE, picking these talents feels hard to justify due to the additional cost of routing through weak talents such as
Destruction imminente
and
Brasier enveloppant
.
Every class has dead talents, but the sheer amount of them for Devastation is staggering.
78.5% of the talents we don't take are never taken in PvE; 64% of them if you include PvP.
Having so many dead talents greatly limits choices and undermines the Dragonflight talent system as a whole. I believe the root of this problem is
Tempête-de-feu
.
Firestorm is Still Bad
Even with all of the previous buffs and new changes,
Tempête-de-feu
still misses the mark and will continue to disappoint until it is reworked. I mentioned above how the pathing issues make
Tempête-de-feu
more expensive than it should be, but
even with better pathing it is still not really worth it.
The issue is with the design of the spell itself.
All stationary ground effects have an issue where they require the target to stay in the circle, but few have it to the same degree as
Tempête-de-feu
. 12 seconds is a very long time for targets to stay in an 8-yard radius. Compare this to
Pluie de feu
or
Blizzard
, both of which are primarily instant cast, have much shorter cooldowns, and generate resources or reduce cooldowns. Having mobs that aren't slowed stay a full 12 seconds in an 8-yard radius is rare. Too many swirlies on the floor, frontals, and other mechanics cause movement for tanks to ever see this actually deal full damage.
The choice nodes can help a little, but they have issues too.
Morsure du feu
only procs from
Flamme vivante
instead of
Frappe d’azur
or all Red spells. For an AoE spell, this makes very little sense.
Brasier infernal
is a cool concept but it doesn't reduce the cast time of
Tempête-de-feu
. This makes it feel really bad in practice, especially during
Rage draconique
. Even if you assume targets will remain in the
Tempête-de-feu
, and give Devastation a direct path from
Volatilité
to
Tempête-de-feu
on the talent tree, the damage is still lacking compared to other AoE talents.
This means that even the best case scenario for
Tempête-de-feu
is worse than other options.
The failures of
Tempête-de-feu
are having a downstream effect on the tree, which can be seen in the cluster of dead talents on the left side. Many of these talents have some interaction with
Tempête-de-feu
. My hope in The War Within is that
Tempête-de-feu
is either replaced or reworked completely.
Talents in red are not used in PvE. These are considered dead talents. Note:
Ravager
&
Héritage d’onyx
get play in PvP.
Spatial Paradox and Spec Specific Utility
Paradoxe spatial
is a spell from the Augmentation spec tree that allows healers to cast while moving and increases their range. It is a very strong utility spell (similar to
Innervation
) that most strategies for the harder Mythic encounters require. Because this talent is Augmentation only, many guilds will opt for Augmentation even if Devastation is better overall for the encounter. Augmentation does not need additional advantages over Devastation, and utility spells like this should not be specific to a single DPS spec.
I believe the only reason this talent isn't on the class side of the talent tree is because Augmentation came out after Evoker. It's not too late to fix this; if
Paradoxe spatial
is here to stay it should be moved to the Class Tree. There are other Augmentation talents that should probably also get this treatment, but
Paradoxe spatial
is by far the biggest example.
Hero Talent Trees Wishlist
Devastation will have access to Scalecommander and Ruby Adept Hero talents. We don't really know what this entails yet, but what I'm hoping to see for Devastation are Hero talents that help level the playing field, and allow Devastation to see some of the success it had before Augmentation was added to the game, again. Chronowarden, the Hero talents that Devastation does not have access to,
have already been revealed
. If you missed it, be sure to check out our
interview with Blizzard developers to discuss the new Chronowarden Hero Talents
.
It's always a bit hard to predict what Blizzard will come up with when it comes to new talents, but the names of these Hero talents each carry a heavy aesthetic and fantasy to pull from. Based on Chronowarden talents, the names, and our knowledge of Evoker design, let's take a moment to daydream.
Scalecommander
After the dracthyr were created by Neltharion and enlisted in his army, they were divided into Weyrns, or factions. Each Weyrn had a leader, referred to as a Scalecommander. We know of 5 Scalecommanders, each with their own distinct skills and appearance:
Squammandante Ardenthal
Squammandant Azurathel
Squammandant Cendrécraz
Squammandante Viridia
Sarkareth
(Former Scalecommander)
There's not a lot to go off of here, but we know that Scalecommanders are strong leaders and that these Hero talents are only available to DPS Evokers. We have also fought
Sarkareth
and seen his abilities (although many carry void influence). Based on how most of the Chronowarden talents have a focus on Bronze magic, it is likely that these focus on Blue instead. In the teaser for Hero Talents, Scalecommander is shown with a Blue background but an interesting wrinkle in this is that Augmentation does not have access to many of the Blue spells that Devastation and Preservation share, like
Désintégration
. They will likely affect
Éruption
and
Désintégration
separately.
The focus here is on damage, so my hope for Scalecommander is that we get added range and improved spells like
Intensification scintillante
,
Désintégration de masse
,
Souffle incendiaire
, and
Bombe brûlante
. Improved mobility and defensives are also a must if Scalecommander is meant to match the power we have seen with Chronowarden. Also, give me a giant laser. Thanks!
Ruby Adept
Ruby Adept is shared with Preservation, so there will likely be an emphasis here on Red magic. Again, not much to go off of here. The Red Dragonflight is most known for their charge to protect and nurture life so it is likely that this tree will enhance your spells in some way, maybe recoloring some of our signature damage abilities to also provide healing (or added Fire damage). I imagine this tree will give us an alternative version of
Désintégration
, since the spell is shared by Preservation and Devastation.
My hope is that Ruby Adept’s focus swings more towards Fire than Life with the Red themes, and that it provides us with interesting and distinctly different playstyle options than Scalecommander, while being competitive. I'm not really looking forward to this one but would love to be surprised!
I have been cautiously optimistic about the future of Devastation ever since the release of Augmentation, but think that this is a great time to fix some of the longstanding issues with Devastation and open up new and exciting avenues with Hero Talents. What do you think of the Hero talents coming in The War Within? Leave a comment below with your own theories!
About the Author
This guide is written and maintained by Preheat, previously a World First raider and founding member of
Liquid
. Preheat plays Evoker and Mage and has participated in the MDI and multiple Race to World First events over the years. He has also commentated multiple community events such as the
Keystone Masters
, numerous charity events, and the
Team Liquid
Race to World First. For all things Evoker and Mage, you can find him in his
Discord
, on
Twitter
, posting videos to
YouTube
, and streaming on
Twitch
.
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