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Devastation Evoker: Early Hands-on Review of the New Ranged DPS in Dragonflight
Dragonflight
Publié
16/07/2022 à 17:00
par
Preheat
Dragonflight
Alpha is upon us! Dragonflight Alpha testers can play the new class, Evoker, which has a healer and ranged dps specialization. This class brings a lot of new utility spells to the table, in addition to its unique playstyle. Devastation is best summarized as a mid-range cleave specialist with consistent damage, short cooldowns, and a sizable arsenal of utility. Since Alpha released this Thursday I've enjoyed a lot of time playing Devastation, and am now happy to break down everything I've learned, including my first impressions. Let's get into what makes Devastation so interesting and fun to play!
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
.
Introduction: Initial Expectations & Class Fantasy
This is the first time we have ever seen an expansion release a new class that has ranged specialization. As a ranged enjoyer, this is extremely exciting! I had some concerns about how the class would play, but now that Devastation is playable, a lot of mysteries about the playstyle have been revealed.
Disclaimer: the information in this writeup is based on
EARLY ALPHA
. Impressions are based off of this version of Devastation. Playtesting was conducted by spending hours at the target dummies and by leveling in the new zone. It's very likely that changes will be made, so please keep this in consideration while looking over this initial review. Thank you!
Evoker Customization Preview
Devastation seems to mostly have two
flavors
depending on what talents you pick. Red seems to be more AoE oriented while Blue seems to focus more on Single Target and cleave. Regardless of which build you pick, Devastation is easy to pick up but has an underlying complexity that adds quite a bit of depth. Abilities all feel really good to use, cooldowns feel very powerful, and you have tools for pretty much any situation. The decreased range (25 yard standard) is extremely noticeable however, but with familiarity it becomes less of an issue. Devastation is surprisingly polished, but there are still a few bugs. The most notable at the moment is that Devastation's baseline UI for tracking Essence is very inconsistent and frequently shows an incorrect amount of essence. Because of this there are some instances where the game tells you that you can spend Essence on an ability, but pressing it does nothing. I think it's unlikely this bug sticks around so I won't dwell on it too much!
Empowering abilities feels a little weird at first but it eventually clicks. Empowered abilities have a cast time
and a GCD at the end for some reason
. By default, you empower abilities by holding the button down until you have reached the desired input, but there is also the option to "press and tap" the ability as well. If you have a habit of rapidly pressing a key as an ability is about to be off cooldown, you will likely have to adjust for empowerments since doing this cancels the spell and incurs a delay on reactivating the spell as punishment for your mistake. The whole idea of empowering abilities is neat in theory, but personally I find it to be the weakest aspect of the class. This is tolerable at least, and the rest of Evoker more than makes up it!
Edit: it looks like overnight the GCD at the end of empowered abilities was removed. This goes a long way to improve this casting mechanic.
Devastation Evokers use an assortment of abilities, but mainly focus on Red, Blue, and even Black dragonflight spells. Bronze and Green spells are mainly reserved for utility or healing.
Red vs Blue
The aim of this writeup is to focus on the design, and not focus too much on tuning. After more playtesting, it seems that both builds do competitive single target, cleave, and AoE. The design of the Red talents slants heavily to AoE and Blue slants more cleave. The cleave capabilities for Blue spells are spectacular, and you give up very little boss damage to gain a ton of free AoE. That being said, both seem to have the right tools to cover both areas.
Incandescence
and
Brasier enveloppant
pair very nicely to give Red a ton of single target after using
Souffle de feu
, but it's recommend you spend all essence before going into your burn.
Tempête-de-feu
is the only ability I've found that seems undertuned, but it's possible it's only meant to be used in huge AoE situations.
Resources for Devastation Evoker: Essence
Devastation Evokers have 2 resources that you'll be primarily using:
Mana
and
Essence
.
Mana
is something you are probably already familiar with and is used for healing spells.
Essence
is the class specific resource for Evokers that naturally regenerates over time. At a baseline, you get 1 essence every 5s. You can't build
Essence
but the
Montée de puissance
talent provides a buff that speeds it up. Spender spells typically cost 2 or 3
Essence
.
Baseline Toolkit for Devastation Evoker
The baseline toolkit for Devastation has a bit of variety but is heavily propped up by talents. This shouldn't be an issue, however, since Evoker starts at level 58.
Baseline Damage Abilities for Devastation Evoker
Frappe d’azur
- Instant cast cleave damaging filler. The
Serres allongées
talent gives it an additional target to cleave.
Flamme vivante
- Filler spell with a cast time. Many talents change how this spell works but at a baseline it deals damage or heals (at the cost of mana) after a moderate cast time.
Souffle profond
- AoE damage cooldown that moves your character while providing CC immunity. This spell has an interesting reticle but seems to have a lot of issues with pathing currently. It also has a minimum range, which feels a bit cramped with the 25 yard max range of Evoker. With the
Rappel
talent you can travel back to where you came from within 3 seconds.
Désintégration
- Single target essence spender with a slow that can be further improved with
Froid envahissant
. Without talents, it's not too impressive but for the Blue build it becomes far more powerful.
Souffle de feu
- AoE Empower ability with a short 30s cooldown. Small upfront damage, but the damage over time is strong. Capped at 5 targets. The Red build primarily works by extending the damage over time it provides.
Baseline Healing Abilities for Devastation Evoker
Flamme vivante
- As mentioned before, this heals if cast on allies.
Arbre d’émeraude
- Delayed heal with a short cooldown that you place on the target. After 2 seconds, heals 3 targets.
Baseline Utility & Mobility Abilities for Devastation Evoker
Bénédiction du bronze
- 15% cooldown reduction on your primary movement ability. To see which abilities get reduced, see the preview below.
Blessing of the Bronze Buff Preview
Survoler
- This spell is essentially
Grâce du marcheur des esprits
with the
Esprit gracieux
talent. Can also be used as a dash with the
Vent arrière
talent. This spell is essential for a ranged class with such a short range (25 yards).
Vol prolongé
and
Maîtrise aérienne
in the class talent tree increase the duration and give a second charge.
Glissement de terrain
- Instant cast frontal root with a long cooldown. Improved by the
Forge-montagnes
talent.
Retour
- Standard resurrection ability
Maîtrise : Fléau des géants
for Devastation Evokers
The Mastery for Devastation is straightforward. You deal more damage to high health targets, decreasing as the target loses health. The talent
Rage draconique
with
Tyrannie
causes you to get the full effect of your mastery for its duration.
Notable Class Talents for Devastation Evoker
Evoker has a lot of interesting talents but today I will be focusing on the more notable ones, starting with class talents.
View on Dragonflight Talent Tree Calculator
Class Damage Talents
There are a few talents on the class side of the talent tree that directly affect damage. Most of them either speed up essence regeneration, slightly boost damage for abilities, speed up cast times, or increase targets affected by damage spells. The most notable examples are listed below:
Rugissement d’exaltation
- Provides an incentive to interrupt with
Apaisement
. Successful interrupts return one essence.
Retour de bâton
- Essentially
Présence spirituelle
, this spell makes your next
Souffle de feu
or
Afflux d’éternité
instant cast. This ability also makes it so the spell is also off the Global Cooldown, which is interesting.
Serres allongées
- Brings
Frappe d’azur
to 3 target cleave baseline. Keep in mind that
Tranche d’éternité
on the Devastation side doubles this number into 6 if also talented.
Flammes bondissantes
- In theory this makes
Souffle de feu
increase targets hit by your next
Flamme vivante
by up to 4 (or 5 with
Source de magie
). Currently it is bugged and does nothing.
Fragilisation magique
- Instant cast ability that deals huge damage, but only affects absorb shields. The short cooldown means it could be used more than once per shield mechanic. Example:
Barrière siphonnée
on
Dausegne
or
Cape des flammes
on
Kael'thas Haut-Soleil
.
Utility and Healing Talents
Écailles d’obsidienne
- Physical (via armor) and magic reduction on a long cooldown that can be shortened by
Rempart d’Obsidienne
.
Étreinte verdoyante
- Huge instant single target heal that moves you to the target. This is fantastic for movement and saving friends at low health.
Flamme de cautérisation
- Powerful dispel that can be used on yourself or allies. Removes all bleeds, curses, poisons, and diseases on a target and heals them as well. This is essentially a targeted
Flasque de sérénité
on a 1 minute cooldown. Absolutely busted.
Zéphyr
- Defensive cooldown that reduces damage taken from Area-of-Effect and provides a bit of movespeed. This does not affect the whole raid, just your own party.
Spirale temporelle
- A raid-wide cooldown that allows all players to activate their major movement ability for free.
Spirale temporelle
uses the same list of abilities as
Bénédiction du bronze
. The list can be found
here
.
Source de magie
- Similar to
Focalisation magique
but for healers. Grants minor mana restoration to a friendly healer for every Empower ability you cast.
Secourir
- Fly to a targeted ally, pick them up, then land at a reticle targeted location. You can pick up someone 30 yards from you and place them 30 yards in the opposite direction. With the
Gardiens jumeaux
talent, you also give you and your ally a shield. This ability is extremely powerful,
but with great power comes great opportunity to grief your friends.
This ability is surprisingly flexible when it comes to pathing and can be used to grab people midair, or place people on top of buildings.
Rugissement oppressant
&
Intimidation rugissante
- Increase the duration of crowd control such as
Balayement de jambe
. I could see this being very useful on fights where you CC adds. With the additional talent it is also an AoE Enrage dispel, perfect for
Déchaîné
Mythic+ weeks.
Brasier de rénovation
- similar to the heal effect of
Altérer le temps
, but the healing is over time.
Somnambulisme
- Crowd control that breaks on damage. Targets slowly approach you.
Notable Devastation Talents for Devastation Evoker
All Evokers have access to everything above, but the following talents are only for Devastation Evokers.
View on Dragonflight Talent Tree Calculator
General damage toolkit
As mentioned before, there are at least two main playstyles for Devastation, Red and Blue. These playstyles are dependent on your talent choices but to me the following talents are core to any Devastation playstyle:
Bûcher
- AoE essence spender that lobs a ball of flame at the target and nearby enemies.
Énergie concentrée
makes it cost less essence,
Volatilité
gives it more AoE damage. There are other talents that also affect it, but I won't be listing them all. This is the main spender for the Red build, and is also used to AoE with the Blue build.
Explosion d’essence d’azur
&
Explosion d’essence de rubis
- Two sides of the same coin, these talents give you a chance to gain
Explosion d’essence
, from filler spells, which is essentially
Idées claires
but for
Essence
(it even has the same spell overlay alert ingame).
Rage draconique
- This is our main damage cooldown. Casting this spell incurs a global cooldown but it also fires off 3
Bûcher
s, so the idle time doesn't feel bad at all. This buff makes it so spells that have a chance to grant
Explosion d’essence
always grant it for the duration. With
Tyrannie
also talented, it makes it so you also get the full benefit of your
Maîtrise : Fléau des géants
regardless of boss health.
Montée de puissance
- As mentioned before, the only way to speed up
Essence
regeneration reliably is with this talent.
Montée de puissance
makes it so empowering
Afflux d’éternité
and
Souffle de feu
grants a buff that speeds up essence regen, based on empowerment level. This talent seems very good but I am a bit concerned about how it may affect gameplay. More info on that later.
Capstone Talents of the Devastation Evoker Tree
Capstone talents are the talents at the end of the tree that provide the foundation for various playstyles.
Flamme semperardente
- Strong AoE talent, since it makes your
Souffle de feu
damage over time essentially a permanent debuff. This is a must have for the Red build, and is also extremely powerful for Hybrid AoE builds.
Domination du tisse-sort
- This talent provides cooldown reduction for your biggest cooldowns,
Rage draconique
and
Souffle profond
by 1 second per empowerment level. This talent seems best paired with
Afflux d’éternité
, since this spell can also be empowered.
Source de magie
also has synergy since more empowerment levels means more cooldown reduction. Like
Montée de puissance
, this talent incentivizes always fully empowering spells.
Scintillement
- Extremely strong single target and cleave talent. This makes it so each tick of
Désintégration
has a chance to automatically fire a free
Afflux d’éternité
. The reason why this talent helps in cleave is because
Tranche d’éternité
causes
Afflux d’éternité
to always hit at least 2 enemies. This is a must have for the Blue build, and any hybrid build that has a focus on boss damage.
Sample Talent Tree & Skill Combos for Devastation Evoker
The following are sample builds based on my own experience playing:
Red Build
View on Dragonflight Talent Tree
The above build focuses heavily in Red spells and is a strong AoE setup. With
Flammes avivées
being bugged, its hard to say if
Désintégration
or
Bûcher
is preferred in Single Target.
Incandescence
is very strong for Single Target especially with
Brasier enveloppant
. It seems like spamming
Flamme vivante
after
Souffle de feu
is strong.
Blue Single Target / Cleave Build
View on Dragonflight Talent Tree
This build focuses on amping
Désintégration
with talents like
Scintillement
. As this build you use
Étoile fracassante
on cooldown while maintaining the
Iris de focalisation
debuff.
Désintégration
is the main spender.
Souffle de feu
and
Afflux d’éternité
should always be used at max empower (despite it being single target) since you are running
Montée de puissance
and
Domination du tisse-sort
.
For the cleave version, swap a point into
Tranche d’éternité
.
Tranche d’éternité
makes the
Afflux d’éternité
proc from
Scintillement
cleave, adding considerable damage while focusing on single target.
Hybrid AoE Build
View on Dragonflight Talent Tree
The idea with this build is to take the excellent cleave of the Blue build and combine it with
Flamme semperardente
and the damage over time of
Souffle de feu
to create an AoE build even better than the Red build. Not taking
Scintillement
and other
Désintégration
talents is going to drastically lower your single target, however. Not picking
Tyrannie
feels really bad, so I could see swapping that in.
Empowerment and Incentives to Always Max Out
Montée de puissance
,
Source de magie
, and
Domination du tisse-sort
add considerable incentive to always max out Empowerment casts. For
Domination du tisse-sort
, this isn't a big deal since it is totally expected for a capstone talent to redefine your playstyle.
Alternatively,
Source de magie
and
especially
Montée de puissance
are staple talents you want in pretty much every scenario. Because of this, the whole concept of choosing how much to empower casts goes out the window in favor of
always maxing out casts
. For a spell like
Afflux d’éternité
this feels especially awkward in single target, since charging does not affect the damage.
This is a bit concerning but there is a really easy fix: Make
Montée de puissance
provide a standard duration for the buff, regardless of empowerment level. This would allow us to use the empowerment system as intended, to charge spells only as much as we want to.
Video Review with Gameplay
The Verdict So Far...
In conclusion, the Evoker is looking like a lot of fun. Devastation has some really awesome abilities and the talents feel solid as well. I'm extremely happy to see a new ranged spec that feels fresh and uniquely different while also somewhat familiar. The playstyle is approachable and fun without being too complex, but has a good amount of complexity beneath the surface. As an Evoker, you also get amazing utility skills to assist or troll your allies. I have some concerns about the current design, but it is still very early. What do you think? What Devastation build looks the most exciting to you? Let me know in the comments below and stay tuned for more Dragonflight news!
Dragonflight Alpha News
Power Infusion on Warcraft Logs
Lessons Learned from Sepulcher
Talent Calculator Available
Crendor Interview - More Patches
Taliesin Interview - 2022 Release
Group Interview with Ion Hazzikostas
Battle Pet Clarifications
Dragonflight Loading Screens
Minimap Exploration
Alpha Zone Maps
Dragonflight Alpha Begins Jul 14
Features & Updates
Raid Trinkets & Effects
Vault of the Incarnates Raid
Group Loot Returning in Raid Content
Dungeon Bosses of Dragonflight
Jade Serpent & Court of Stars Mythic+
Hemet Nesingwary, Retired
Turalyon Reaction to Dracthyr
Azure Span Questline
Azure Span Zone Preview
Sindragosa in Dragonflight
500 Mount Reward to Change
New Collection Achievements
Dragonriding Features & Impressions
Professions Preview
Alchemy & Blacksmithing
New Crafting Recipes
New Bags from Tailoring
Fun Alchemy Effects
Combat Potions in Dragonflight
Phials Replace Flasks in Dragonflight
Models & Customization
Body Type, Pronouns, & Voices
Dracthyr Male Visage Customizations
Dracthyr Female Visage Customizations
Dracthyr Dragon Form Customizations
Raid Weapon Models
Dungeon Weapon Models
Quest Weapon Models
Updated World Assets
Titan Watcher Models
Dragon Aspect Models
Tuskarr Tribes in Dragonflight
Ducks in Dragonflight
New Mount Models
Centaur Clans in Dragonflight
Gnoll Model Updates Including Hogger
New Mount Models
New Creature Models
New Dragon Creature Models
Evoker & Class Changes
Dracthyr Racials
Evoker Zenith Tier Token
Evoker Talent Trees
Group Utility - Time Spiral & Zephyr
Blessing of the Bronze Raid Buff
Devestation Review
Preservation Review
Preservation Evoker Gameplay
Devastation Evoker Gameplay
Unholy DK Bluepost
Hunter Bluepost
DH & Warlock Talent Speculation
Mage Talent Speculation
Monk Talent Speculation
Paladin Talent Speculation
Shaman Talent Speculation
Warrior Talent Speculation
Death Knight Tier Apperance
Demon Hunter Tier Apperance
Druid Tier Apperance
Evoker Tier Apperance
Hunter Tier Appearance
Mage Tier Appearance
Monk Tier Appearance
Paladin Tier Appearance
Priest Tier Appearance
Rogue Tier Appearance
Shaman Tier Appearance
Warlock Tier Appearance
Warrior Tier Appearance
UNHIDE AS NECESSARY
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