wow Devastation Evoker Hands-On Impressions

[Starym 3,780]

 

It's the second week of the Dragonflight Alpha and we're taking a look at the Devastation spec of the Evoker class, as our guide writer Panthea has taken some time with it and written up a detailed look! Going through some highlighted abilities and talent combinations, the new DPS spec gets properly examined, so without further ado, here's Panthea!
(You can also check out our Preservation Evoker hands-on article here.)

 

Devastation Evoker as a spec focuses on Red and Blue magic. Red is focused on AoE, and Blue on Single Target and Cleave. You will have a couple of Black, Bronze and Green spells in the Core Talent Tree but these are all Utility and Healing based. It's a mid-range Caster DPS. All of your damaging abilities have a 25-yard range, meaning you will be playing between melee & ranged DPS at a maximum. This does feel a bit strange at first, as if you're familiar with playing Ranged DPS classes you'll find yourself wanting to start casting at 30-40 yards, but you get used to it after a while of playing with it.

Essence

Evokers use a new resource called Essence. By default you start with 5, however this can be increased to 6 with Power Nexus. It recharges over time, similar to DK runes and only one can recharge at a time.

Key Spells

Living Flame (Red) is one of your filler spells as an Evoker. It can heal if cast on a Friendly Player or deal damage if it is cast on an enemy. As far as filler spells go this, can be made even more powerful when combined with talents such as Engulfing Blaze/Ruby Embers (split talent choice); Leaping Flames; or Ancient Flame.

Azure Strike (Blue) is your other filler spell. An instant cast spell which cleaves onto 2 targets, the number of targets can be increased with talent choices.

Pyre (Red) costs 3 Essence (can be reduced to 2). It deals AoE damage around your target and is an instant cast. Pyre has many talent synergies within the Red Build (detailed later on this page).

Disintegrate (Blue) costs 3 Essence. It is a Single Target ability which deals a very high amount of damage and is channeled on your target. Disintegrate can be enhanced further with talents in the Blue Build (detailed later on this page).

Charged Blast (Blue) (Talent) costs 2 Essence. It deals damage to your target and is an instant cast. This ability deals increased damage if you use Azure Strike beforehand and can be turned into a cleave with Expansive Maw.

Deep Breath (Black) is both a high damaging ability and a mobility spell. You also have the option to turn this spell into a budget version of Alter Time   with the talent Recall. This will place a copy of your character where you lifted off from and for 3 seconds after you land if you press Deep Breath again you will teleport back to that location.

Hover is a mobility spell very similar to roll. You will travel in the direction your character is moving, and it has the added benefit of making you cast whilst moving for 6 seconds! You can gain a second  and a temporary third charge of this with talents as well.

Glide is given to Dractyr as a Racial ability and it works exactly the same as the Demon Hunter variant. You can use this to cross gaps or even counter knockback abilities.

Unravel (Blue) (Talent) acts like Shattering Throw where it will only deal damage to enemies with an absorb shield. An optional pick, but when the situation calls for it, it's a powerful spell to use.
 

Utility Spells

Source of Magic is a buff that can only be cast on Healers. Using an Empowered Spell will restore 0.5% mana to them. Over the course of an encounter, this will be equivalent to a Mana Potion or two.

Fly With Me is a mobility cooldown you place on another player which allows you to pick that player up and fly them to another location. This can also be combined with the talent
Twin Guardian to provide both players with a shield which is 30% of your HP.

Oppressing Roar is a conal attack that doesn't deal damage but leaves a debuff on the target, increasing the duration of Crowd Control by 50%. This can be combined with
the talent Overawe which adds an Enrage Removal to it. Additionally with Overawe for every Enrage that is dispelled the cooldown is reduced by 20 seconds.

Blessing of the Bronze (Bronze) (Talent) is your raid buff. It lowers the cooldowns of a movement ability for party and raid members by 15%.

Time Spiral (Bronze) (Talent) gives all party and raid members an additional charge of a movement ability for 10 seconds. After 10 seconds this charge is removed. Use it or lose it!

Zephyr (Talent) gives all party members within 25 yards a buff, reducing AoE damage taken by 20% and increases movement speed by 30% for 8 seconds.

The above list is not every spell but just the key ones for Devastation to consider. All of the spells can be found here.
 

Empowered Spells

These are new types of spells for Evokers. You press the ability and then hold until it's at the rank you want to cast it at. A majority of the time this will be at the maximum rank because of synergies with Power Swell and Tyranny, however, there can be use cases for releasing the spell early such as using Eternity Surge on lower target counts. Something to note for Power Swell is that the buff caps out at 8 seconds, so you do not want to use Fire Breath and Eterenity Surge back to back as you will lose out on some duration of this buff.

These are long cast time spells and you are stationary while casting them, however, you are able to reduce the cast time of Empowered Spells with the Imminent Destruction talent. You can also instantly cast an Empowered Spell at the max Rank every 2 minutes with the Tip the Scales (Bronze) talent.

Each spell has 3 Ranks and can be increased to 4 Ranks with the Font of Magic talent.

Without Font of Magic

With Font of Magic

The Empowered Spells for Devastation Evoker are:

Fire Breath (Red) - This is a conal attack that deals damage (but is reduced after 5 targets) and leaves a damage over time effect on every enemy hit. This damage over time component increases in power based on the Rank.

Eternity Surge (Blue) - This is a talent on the "Blue Side" of the Devastation tree. This deals a high amount of damage to the target and each Rank increases the number of enemies hit. Picking the talent Eternity's Span doubles the number of targets hit up to 8 targets.
 

Essence Burst

Near the start of the Devastation Talent Tree, you will have two options that you will not really avoid. These are Ruby Essence Burst and Azure Essence Burst. These give Living Flame and Azure Strike a chance to proc Essence Burst.

Essence Burst will make your next Pyre/Disintegrate/Charged Blast (if talented) cost no Essence.

You can also pick the Essence Attunement talent to have up to 2 stacks of Essence Burst allowing for more rotational flexibility as you will not need to immediately prioritize spending the Essence Burst proc immediately.
 

Mastery

Mastery: Giantkiller increases the damage of all of your abilities. However, this benefit gets reduced when the enemy is on a lower % of health. From my own testing, the benefit from Mastery stopped at 30% Mob Health.

At 100% HP, you will get the full benefit from Mastery and at 30% and below you get no benefit from it; between these thresholds, it reduces in power gradually.

However, with the Ruin talent you get the full benefit of mastery during Dragonrage and Deep Breath.

You gain 2.5% Mastery per Mastery Point (35 Rating at Level 60) so it's quite a powerful stat, but the downside of this is that when you're fighting a low HP % target and are not in Dragonrage you have no benefit from Mastery. Everything needs a downside.
 

Builds

All of these builds are missing one talent point on the class tree which will be spent on the 2nd Point of Tyranny, and one Talent Point in the Evoker Tree which will be spent on Zephyr.

Blue Build

This build focuses entirely on Blue Magic, excels in Cleave scenarios, and has some good Single Target damage output. I would say that this build is one that you may consider for Mythic+ style scenarios.

Your goal with this build is to provide burst damage on small to medium-sized pulls with Eternity Surge and Charged Blast. Your filler spell with this build is Azure Strike and your Essence Spenders are Disintegrate and Charged Blast.

Whilst it may seem strange to use Disintegrate over Pyre for Cleave/AoE, the talent choice of Scintillation has a chance to trigger a Eternity Surge which will deal damage to 2 targets making it very worthwhile to use. If you are pulling larger target counts or it's a low HP mob pack then Pyre can be used to deal with it.

Red Build

This build focuses entirely on Red Magic and excels in AoE scenarios. It has high prolonged AoE damage, but if targets die too quickly, the damage is not as good as it can be.

Your filler spell with this build is Living Flame and your Essence Spender is Pyre.

Your goal with this build is to cast Fire Breath on as many targets as possible and extend the damage over time effect (Everburning Flame ) with Living Flame and Pyre. Additionally, with Feed the Flames the cooldown of Fire Breath is reduced and you should be able to maintain the Fire Breath DoT quite comfortably. You will also have the talent of Firestorm. While this may seem underwhelming on its own, when the follow-up talent Snapfire is picked you have a chance to both make this an instant cast spell (making it a very powerful GCD to use) and also have it deal 40% increased damage!

In AoE your opener will be to Fire Breath which then gives your Living Flame the ability to bounce to nearby targets with Leaping Flames talented. You can go even further with this by talenting into Scarlet Adaptation and any healing you do with Living Flame (if it bounces to friendly targets with Leaping Flames, or you cast it to heal before the pull) will buff the damage even further!

Single Target DPS/Raid Build

This build I have not playtested as there are no prolonged Single Target encounters as of writing, however I did simulate a boss scenario on target dummies. Comparing this build to the other two , it provided me with the most Single Target DPS.

The main difference between this build and the Red/Blue builds is that you use Living Flame as your filler spell as it is buffed here, and you spend Essence on Disintegrate both to maintain the Focusing Iris debuff and as it's your highest DPS Essence spender.

Conclusion

It's a fun and very mobile spec and I can see it finding a way into a raid team quite easily. You are fairly immobile when DPSing for the most part, but you have the option to move and cast with Hover as the situation calls for it. However, I will say that the Red some tweaks to be stronger in Single Target scenarios. The Blue Build just performs better in Single Target and Small-Mid sized AoE.

The biggest strength of Devastation Evoker is that it has the flexibility to fill any damage profile that is lacking in a group composition. Need big AoE? Red Build. Need Single Target? Hybrid/Raid Build. Need low target count cleave? Blue Build. Other classes overcome this challenge by changing specialization, but Devastation just changes talents.

It also has low downtime between cooldown periods. With 2 points spent in Tyranny you can expect to use Dragonrage every 1m30s.

Devastation Evoker doesn’t have a solid defensive toolkit, but with high damage output, there must be a weakness.

You can check out Panthea here:

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[Dejo93 992]

Can you this same article, but for Enh Shaman?

It's my main

[Teufel 331]

Can't say I'm sold on "mid-range" thing.

Any tactic that would require ranged to stack at the *filtered* end of nowhere and bait something (Skolex, Jailer, etc) would be a major "F U" to Evoker