wow Blizzard Dracthyr Evoker Feedback: July 18th

[Staff 1,180]

 

Blizzard have responded to some of the feedback regarding Evokers, covering topics from auto-toggled Visage form, to Azure Strike, Empowered spells and more! 

Evokers (Source)

Hi all! I wanted to Soar over and touch on some of the great feedback that’s been posted thus far.

Talents & Talent Builds
There has been so much wonderful discussion about the talent trees, and we’re still digging through all of it. No firm plans to share just yet, but please continue sharing your feedback as we iterate on the trees. We’ll let you know specifics as soon as we have them!

Visage
In the next build, Dracthyr will no longer switch to Visage when getting on a mount, flight path, etc. Additionally, they will have a new racial ability called Chosen Identity that you can “Activate to automatically assume your Visage when you leave combat or after Soaring.” Chosen Identity will stay toggled on until manually deactivated. As a note, existing Alpha characters may not have Chosen Identity learned.

Azure Strike
In a future build, Azure Strike’s targeting will behave more consistently. Currently it is built similarly to Chain Lightning, but it will be updated to be more of a circular AoE, and pick N targets within 6 yards of your selected target.

Empower Spells
It is intended that casting a different spell while Empowering (eg, casting Disintegrate while empowering a Fire Breath) cancels the Empower spell, refunds the resource cost(s) and cooldown, and begins casting the other spell. Empowers have a global cooldown when they finish casting, meaning Fire Breath and Disintegrate can’t be cast at the same moment. Therefore, we have to interpret what a user is trying to do when they cast a different spell while empowering - Some may be trying to use the second spell as a shortcut for finishing their Fire Breath, while others may be trying to react to a situation and change what spell they’re casting as soon as possible. The current version is opting to treat the new spell input as a change in intention.

Thanks for the ongoing feedback and discussion!

[TyZone 406]

 

4 hours ago, Staff said:

In the next build, Dracthyr will no longer switch to Visage when getting on a mount, flight path, etc. Additionally, they will have a new racial ability called Chosen Identity that you can “Activate to automatically assume your Visage when you leave combat

Do Worgen already have this feature too? If not, wondering if they'll get the same treatment.

[Brightamethyst 59]

5 hours ago, Staff said:

Visage
In the next build, Dracthyr will no longer switch to Visage when getting on a mount, flight path, etc. Additionally, they will have a new racial ability called Chosen Identity that you can “Activate to automatically assume your Visage when you leave combat or after Soaring.” Chosen Identity will stay toggled on until manually deactivated. As a note, existing Alpha characters may not have Chosen Identity learned.

 

Awesome. Now do worgen.

[Quindorr 0]

1 hour ago, Brightamethyst said:

 

Awesome. Now do worgen.

And shamans?

[Zuperp 0]

The purpose of this post is to highlight/suggest a gameplay loop change for the Fire variant of Evoker Devastation spec.

After having watched the video about the top players talking about Evoker (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dz8diLXqg2o&t=2954s&ab_channel=Maximum)

A change in a few of the talents could alter the gameplay loop of what fire wants to do, how it plays, and what it focuses on.

It is namely the talent called "Cascading Power" (10% chance to not consume Essence Burst) as main focus, with Snapfire as extra suggestion change because of some negative points made abut it in the video.

At the core of the fire gameplay loop, you spend essence on Pyre, which extends the duration of the Fire Breath dot alongside Living Flame because of the capstone you take (Everburning Flame). Pyre reduces the cooldown of Fire Breath because of Feed the Flames talent. This loop is simple, but aside from the dot lasts longer, which means more damage if the enemy lives long enough, there isn't really more to it. This is were my suggestion comes into play, to change the loop to one that focuses more on the Fire Breath, and having it be the core payoff spell of the spec.

Changing "Cascading Power" talent, to give you a chance to earn Essence Burst when your Fire Breath dot deals damage, would make the gameplay loop focused around Fire Breath, which would be a more interesting loop in my opinion.

The loop would mean that you Fire Breath, and focus on spamming your Pyres and Living flames into the targets with Fire Breath, much like you do now, but you'd want to extent the dot for more Essence Burst procs, rather than only damage. This ties the Fire Breath ability into a more core component that feeds the rest of your gameplay more, and could mean that the payoff spell for the fire variant would be Fire Breath, an empower ability. Unlike the blue spec, which on single target at least, the payoff is your essence spending ability (Disintegrate). That would make a difference between which type of spell that is your "chase" spell aka. the one that you wants to press the most.

Scaling on single target vs AoE is not something I want to touch much on, it should definitely be tuned down to some degree, if have an effect at all. It could work like how the warlock dot used to work, if it doesn't work like that anymore that is, I'm not sure how it works now. But no matter how many different targets your dot was on, you only had a chance to get an instant shadow bolt from the most recent dot. This could be applied to this too, that no matter how many targets you have Fire Breath dot on, it would only prof off of one targets dot. Or have a 1target be a normal % chance, like 10% chance to proc Essence Burst, and each additional target would only increase the 10% by maybe 1% per extra target.

The Snapfire change could be from Living Flame to Pyre, which could proc it. This is because in the video, there is talk that it feels bad to get it back to back when you spam Living Flame, if you change it to Pyre, you would have a chance to react between GCD and change your mind of what to use, so you don't waste a proc. There is also the counter synergy with the talent slightly above (Engulfing Blaze) This increases the cast time of your Living Fire, meaning that you would get less procs of Snapfire, because you cast fewer Living Flames, and that's negative synergy in a direct line of talents, which in my opinion is kind of strange. This could mean that you'd need to take Firestorm on single target, which would be a wrong in my opinion, but that is probably a tuning question, so I will leave it at that.

In total, this would mean that the focus of Fire variant of the Evoker tree would focus a lot more on the Fire Breath and the dot from it, and what that does for you. More synergy could also be added to the tree, because Fire Breath is a core iconic spell of a dragon, so having a spec focus on that seems like a right direction to take.

 

TLDR:

Change the talent Cascading Power to make Fire Breath dot proc Essence Burst so Fire spec focus on an empower ability unlike blue that focus on an essence spender.

Change Snapfire talent to proc off of Pyre so it feels better and there is less counter synergy in the tree.

 

Thank you for your time.