Feedback: Evokers

#1 - July 14, 2022, 6:36 p.m.

Please use this thread to post feedback on the Evoker class, once you’ve tested it in the Dragonflight Alpha.

Thank you!

#26 - July 18, 2022, 11:04 p.m.

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!

#81 - July 29, 2022, 11:43 p.m.

Greetings and well met, Evokers! Some big changes are coming to the Devastation specialization talent tree in the next Alpha build, and I wanted to talk through some of the philosophy behind them and how your feedback is helping to shape the tree. Please note that this is not an exhaustive list of every change, and more will be changed than just what is listed here. That said, let’s dive in!

With the current Devastation tree, a few things stood out to us amongst the discourse here and in other parts of the community. Namely:

• The tree strongly signals that there is a “Red dragonflight build” on the left, and a separate “Blue dragonflight build” on the right.
• Effects that scale with empower level, such as Power Swell and Tyranny, remove gameplay by indicating that it is always correct to fully empower your spells.
• Feed the Flames & Everburning Flame are an awkward combination.
• Scarlet Adaptation is having a larger impact than intended on builds.
• Blue-focused single-target builds don’t flow as well as they could.

To dig in a little deeper to each of these, let’s go through them one by one.

The tree strongly signals that there is a “Red dragonflight build” on the left, and a separate “Blue dragonflight build” on the right.

Having thematic groupings on either side is a great introduction to the talent tree. It resonates as something you would expect for the specialization, and makes it easier to know where to look for modifiers to certain abilities. However, Devastation utilizes both Red and Blue magic, and the current tree isn’t celebrating that theme well enough. Builds that use both types of magic should be the norm, with all-Red or all-Blue being much more niche. To make using both colors more effective, we’ve adjusted many talents’ locations or function, as well as added new nodes. A few examples:

• Honed Aggression now affects both Azure Strike and Living Flame, increasing their damage by 5% per rank.
• Catalyze is a new, 1-rank passive on the left side of the tree. “While channeling Disintegrate your Fire Breath on the target deals damage 100% more often.”
• Iridescence is a new, 1-rank passive at the bottom of the right side of the tree. “Casting an empower spell increases the damage of your next 2 spells of the same color by 15% within 10 sec.”

Effects that scale with empower level, such as Power Swell and Tyranny, remove gameplay by indicating that it is always correct to fully empower your spells.

We’re excited about the possibilities of empower spells and have experimented internally with many varied effects, including Power Swell. As a broad concept, attaching more effects to empower spells seems cool – lean into empower levels even more! What we’ve seen on Alpha, though, is that having even small effects get linearly better with empower level, without situational considerations to change up decision making, detracts too much from core empower gameplay. We see (and share) the excitement for choosing talents that make empower spells better, so Power Swell is being adjusted to not disrupt the moment-to-moment gameplay decisions of empower spell level.

• Power Swell is now a 2-rank node that reads, “Empower spells increase your Essence regeneration rate by 50% for 2 sec or 4 sec [based on talent rank].”

Feed the Flames & Everburning Flame are an awkward combination.

Taken together, these two talents quickly push Devastation into a space of having Fire Breath off cooldown for a length of time while an existing Fire Breath damage over time effect gets extended. That said, both talents offer interesting potential gameplay and impact builds in different ways. They will now be in a choice node against each other, and Feed the Flames is being redesigned to fit into more builds:

• Feed the Flames now triggers whenever you consume an Essence Burst effect, instead of whenever Pyre is cast.
• Everburning Flame now triggers from all Red damage spells, instead of only Pyre and Living Flame.
  • This means that damage from Firestorm will extend Fire Breath. Damage from Ruby Embers will continue to not trigger Everburning Flame, and Fire Breath will not extend itself.

Scarlet Adaptation is having a larger impact than intended on builds.

The current value of Scarlet Adaptation causes a warping effect on how Devastation builds their talent loadouts, in particular due to the interaction with Leaping Flames – when Living Flame hits additional targets via Leaping Flames, all of the Living Flames benefit from any Scarlet Adaptation damage the Evoker has. The Leaping Flames interaction is intended, and the response to it has been one of excitement. However, it is important for there to be multiple options for how to build your character for area-of-effect damage situations.

The intent of Scarlet Adaptation is to encourage, and reward, hybridization for both specializations. Preservation Evokers who enjoy dealing damage can easily access the node, but aren’t required to pick it up in their path to other high-power healing talents. Devastation Evokers who want to help their group with additional healing can take it to be rewarded for taking action when their group is in a dangerous situation. To better meet those goals, Scarlet Adaptation’s damage cap is being reduced to 2x Spellpower, down from its current value of 6x Spellpower.

Blue dragonflight-focused single-target builds don’t flow as well as they could.

Two key talents to these builds are Charged Blast and Focusing Iris, both of which have been the subject of insightful discussion and concern.

• Charged Blast is intended to be something that can spice up single-target gameplay for those who want an additional layer of complexity within the rotation. Many of you have expressed that the current design, requiring 2 Azure Strikes before casting Charged Blast, isn’t quite hitting the mark because although it does add complexity, it doesn’t add interaction.
• Focusing Iris is intended to be a more passive option that accomplishes similar goals as Charged Blast. However, the combination of timing an ability immediately after finishing a channeled spell, with the relatively high uptime of the debuff, makes Focusing Iris both more burdensome & less potent than it could potentially be.

To address this, we’re combining what we feel are the best parts of both into a new ability! Charged Blast and Focusing Iris as they currently exist are being removed, and replaced with a spell called Shattering Star.

• Shattering Star has a 15 sec cooldown, is instant cast, and does not cost Essence. “Exhale a bolt of concentrated power from your mouth for Spellfrost damage that cracks that target’s defenses, increasing the damage they take from you by 20% for 4 sec.”
• The options in the choice node following this ability are also being redesigned:
  • Focusing Iris is a passive that increases the duration of Shattering Star’s damage taken effect by 2 sec.
  • Arcane Vigor is a passive that causes Shattering Star to generate 1 Essence.

As always, thank you for your playtesting and feedback. We’re excited to hear how about your experiences with the Devastation tree in the next Alpha build!

#139 - Aug. 25, 2022, 1:14 a.m.

In today’s update:

• Class Tree
  • Damage of all abilities reduced by 8% except Azure Strike, Shattering Star, and Unravel.
  • Disintegrate damage reduced by an additional 5%.
  • Living Flame damage reduced by an additional 12.5%.
  • Enkindled reduced to 3% per rank (was 5%).
  • Scarlet Adaptation damage cap reduced by 19.5% (matches total Living Flame damage reduction).
• Devastation
  • Pyre damage reduced by an additional 14%.
  • Azure Strike damage increased by 5%.
  • Shattering Star damage increased by 7%.
  • Arcane Intensity reduced to 8% per rank (was 10%).
  • Might of the Aspects reduced to 7.5% per rank (was 10%).
  • Volatility reduced to 10% per rank (was 15%).
  • Charged Blast reduced to 5% per stack (was 7%).
• Preservation
  • Temporal Anomaly absorbs damage, rather than healing. Absorb shield stacks up to 3 times and lasts 15 seconds. Now only shields 2 allies at a time (was 3).
  • Temporal Anomaly will immediately slow down upon reaching an ally, even if they are full health. Speed adjusted to 10 yards per second base, 2.5 yards per sec when reaching an ally.
  • Temporal Anomaly mana cost reduced to 7.5% base mana (was 11.5%).
  • Temporal Disruption removed.
  • Flow State renamed to Rush of Vitality.
  • New: Flow State – Empower spells cause time to move 5/10% faster for you for 5 seconds. In Resonating Sphere’s old position.
  • Nozdormu’s Teachings causes Temporal Anomaly to shield 1 additional target, for a total of 3 targets each pulse.
  • Resonating Sphere now an A/B choice against Nozdormu’s Teachings. Causes Echo to be applied by Temporal Anomaly at 30% value.

#664 - Sept. 22, 2022, 12:02 a.m.

Hello Evokers,

A quick note for today’s build: We’ve updated Soar to used a “bonus action bar” like Dragonriding Drakes do, allowing Surge Forward and Skyward Ascent to be dragged around on the action bar. New characters will automatically have the two abilities on the action bar when Soar is learned. However, existing characters will need to drag them out of the spellbook, under the General tab. Apologies for the inconvenience!

#728 - Sept. 23, 2022, 6:11 p.m.

In the next beta build, we are making some updates to address concerns regarding Preservation Evoker’s healing range. We have been reading feedback and observing playtests, and agree that the 25 yard range is a little too prohibitive when combined with the frequent casting requirements of empower spells. To address this, we’re doing the following:

• All of Preservation Evoker’s healing and utility spells will now be at 30 yards baseline.
• The cooldowns for Dream Breath and Spiritbloom are being increased slightly, with Preservation’s overall healing efficacy being increased to compensate.
  • This should mean you have to stand still and cast empower spells less often, but when you do they will be more impactful, and your healing in-between those moments will also be more impactful.
• Hover will now have a shorter lock-out time, so you can more quickly cast spells after using Hover.

We are interested in delivering on a mobile, mid-range healer. We want to make sure tools like Hover, Verdant Embrace, Echo, and Rescue are flexible and powerful enough to compensate for a lower range. Please continue testing and providing feedback, and let us know if these tools are working well alongside the changes above. We will continue to listen to feedback and make sure Evoker is a powerful and exciting new class to play!

#788 - Sept. 23, 2022, 9:51 p.m.

Will Living Flame for Preservation have a 30 yard healing range, and a 25 yard damage range?

Living Flame’s range will be 30 yds for both the damage and healing effect, for Preservation.

Will Devastation also see a 30 yard range for its shared healing and utility spells, or will those remain at 25 yards?

All of Devastation’s spells, including Living Flame, will remain at 25 yd range (ones that are already higher, like Deep Breath and Time Spiral, are not changing). Raid frames will be updated for both specializations to show allies as out-of-range based on their primary range - frames will dim for Devastation when allies are more than 25 yds away, and they will dim for Preservation when allies are more than 30 yds away.

On a related note, the change to Hover’s lock-out time does apply to Devastation.

Empowered spells are not affected by haste. Is there a reason for this?

It is a bug that empower spells’ tooltips do not update their cast time to reflect haste. We’ve verified internally that empower spells are charging faster with haste, as intended.

Is there any consideration for letting us Hover mid-cast, and/or Hover cast Empowered spells?

We are not planning to make Hover castable while casting at this time, for a few reasons. Philosophically, activating an ability is a decision that should have some cost. Costs are an important part of what allow an ability to be both powerful & balanced. Costs also add depth, and the potential for skill growth: A player who has learned an encounter, or correctly identifies that an engagement is imminent in PvP, can plan when to activate Hover without disrupting their own spell flow, and thereby express mastery.

On the technical side, Hover requires you to be inputting a direction in order to determine which way your character dashes. Even if it were castable while casting, if a player wanted to dash sideways during Disintegrate, the game requires that they input a strafe command before casting Hover, and that movement input would cancel Disintegrate. Hover can be cast “in place” without causing a dash, but we feel that the disconnect there (being able to Hover-in-place, but not dash-Hover, while casting) is an unintuitive middle ground that would be frustrating for many.

#1580 - Oct. 6, 2022, 12:14 a.m.

Today’s Evoker updates:

• Devastation
  • The starter build has been updated to use more appropriate talents.
  • Fire Breath has been redesigned – Empowering Fire Breath now shifts the proportion of damage between the instant effect and the periodic effect. Damage coefficients have been reduced by 15%, but total damage dealt has been increased by ~15%.
  • Blast Furnace has been redesigned – Fire Breath damage over time lasts 2 seconds / 4 seconds longer.
  • Heat Wave – Now affects all damage, not just periodic damage.
  • Eternity Surge – Damage radius has been increased to 12 yards (was 8 yards).
• Preservation
  • The starter build has been updated to use more appropriate talents.
  • Lifebind has swapped places with Call of Ysera in the tree.
  • Lifeforce Mender – Now a 2 point node (was 3).

#3568 - Nov. 11, 2022, 4:47 a.m.

Some players have noted that the Evoker PvP ability Divide and Conquer is no longer available on the Beta. Due to an issue with the art asset for this ability, we have decided to delay its addition until a later content update.