A Reflection on Devastation Evoker in Dragonflight & War Within Wishlist - An Editorial

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. 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 Fire Breath to deal damage over time while using Eternity Surge and spending Essence and Essence Burst in Disintegrate. Dragonrage is the primary cooldown and makes the Evoker gain the full value of Mastery: Giantkiller, while guaranteeing Essence Burst with each Azure Strike and Living Flame. 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, the Dream's Hope 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 Hover cooldown and higher uptime in general due to Mastery: Timewalker. 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.

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 along the lines of, "Isn’t less range a compensation for something else then? We can’t have one with all the things!"

The argument is that the limited range is offset by the class's mobility. However, when you compare Devastation to other ranged DPS specializations, it becomes clear that this argument falls short. Devastation isn't even in the top three most mobile DPS specializations. Plus, mobility doesn't matter when you have to play out of range of the boss. So, making Evoker count as range while having 25 yards is simply 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.

For Aoe, Power Nexus and Engulfing Blaze are dropped for Volatility or Charged Blast. For Single Target, Eternity's Span is removed for Honed Aggression.

In Season 2, the Devastation tree was reworked considerably in the capstone area. Many of the talents, Causality, Imminent Destruction, Feed the Flames, Font of Magic, Arcane Vigor, and Eye of Infinity to name a few, were changed to do different things. The biggest change was to Causality, which is how we get cooldown reduction. With this change, cooldowns are now shortened per tick for Disintegrate and on impact for Pyre. Arcane Vigor was also reworked, making Shattering Star proc Essence Burst. 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 Volatility, has terrible pathing. There should be a link from Volatility to Firestorm. The choice node below should link to Feed the Flames. 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 Imminent Destruction and Engulfing Blaze. 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 Firestorm.

Even with all of the previous buffs and new changes, Firestorm still misses the mark and will continue to disappoint until it is reworked. 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 Firestorm. 12 seconds is a very long time for targets to stay in an 8-yard radius. Compare this to Rain of Fire 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. Snapfire only procs from Living Flame instead of Azure Strike or all Red spells. For an AoE spell, this makes very little sense. Raging Inferno is a cool concept but it doesn't reduce the cast time of Firestorm. This makes it feel really bad in practice, especially during Dragonrage. Even if you assume targets will remain in the Firestorm, and give Devastation a direct path from Volatility to Firestorm on the talent tree, the damage is still lacking compared to other AoE talents. This means that even the best case scenario for Firestorm is worse than other options. The failures of Firestorm 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 Firestorm. My hope in The War Within is that Firestorm is either replaced or reworked completely.

Spatial Paradox and Spec Specific Utility

Spatial Paradox 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 Innervate) 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 Spatial Paradox 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 Spatial Paradox 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:

• Scalecommander Emberthal
• Scalecommander Azurathel
• Scalecommander Cindrethresh
• Scalecommander 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 Disintegrate. They will likely affect Eruption and Disintegrate separately.

The focus here is on damage, so my hope for Scalecommander is that we get added range and improved spells like Glittering Surge, Mass Disintegrate, Searing Breath, and Scorching Bomb. 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 Disintegrate, 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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