Saturday, November 12, 2022

Finally Figuring Out the Evoker (Devastation)

 For I believe over a month now, the "Dragonflight Beta" has been open for everyone to create a level 70 Dracthyr Evoker, though you can't actually do stuff in the Dragon Isles.

Getting dumped into a level 70 class, especially with the new, complex talent system, can be a little difficult. But I've started to figure out how this thing works, at least at its most basic level.

The Devastation spec is the Evoker DPS spec, and thus likely to be the more popular of the two.

While you have mana as a resource, much as most casters (other than Arcane Mages) do these days, you don't really need to worry about it. Instead, you'll track a different resource: Essence. This takes the form of six little spheres below your mana bar, and actually works similarly to a Death Knight's runes (I haven't confirmed if it does the thing where only three can recharge at a time, but I believe it does). Essence regenerates over time, and so the rhythm here is that of alternating powerful spenders with filler spells.

Your bread-and-butter single target filler is Living Flame. This is actually both a damage and healing spell, depending on who you're targeting. It has a relatively short cast time and there are talents that will cause it to sometimes be instant-cast.

For cleave situations, there's Azure Strike, which is instant-cast and hits three targets. I believe there are times when you want to use this even in single target, though that's more of a strategy thing than an explicit design.

Both Living Flame and Azure Strike have talents that are triggered by them called Essence Burst, which make Disintegrate and Pyre free.

Your main single-target Essence spender is Disintegrate, which costs three Essence and channels a beam of destructive energy at the target.

For multiple targets, you can spend Essence on Pyre, which lobs a ball of fire at the target and splashes to hit anyone nearby. Like Azure Strike, this is instant-cast.

Eternity Surge is one of your main Empowered spells - you hold down the button (or hit it quickly once and then again to set it off) to scale it between levels 1 to 4. The levels of empowerment here actually only determine how many targets it hits, so on single targets, there's no reason to charge it up all the way. This does a big burst of arcane damage, and I think picks targets based on proximity. This has a 30-second cooldown, so you'll weave it in when it's up.

Fire Breath is another Empowered spell, and this one works kind of interestingly - it does a burst of fire damage in a cone and then puts a DoT on creatures it hits. However, charging it doesn't simply increase the damage. Instead, the longer you charge it, the more damage it does up front, and the shorter the DoT lasts. Essentially, it does the same amount of damage at any level of empowerment (or possibly slightly more at a lower empowerment) but you can pick between sustained damage or burst. On trash, for instance, you might choose to go for a full empowerment to burst enemies down quickly, but on a boss you might pick instead to do a low empowerment to keep the DoT ticking longer.

Dragonrage is your big 2-minute cooldown ability, and buffs your damage, while also doubling the chance to get the Essence Burst proc, and also shoots off several Pyres to start with.

Deep Breath is another 2-minute cooldown, which both does damage in the area and moves you to the targeted location, in a cool animation that has you do the classic dragon breath-strafe.

There are other abilities, but I think these are the basics you'll be using frequently and want easily accessible on your action bars.

Of note, Evokers don't get the 40-yard range of most ranged characters, instead fighting at 25 yards. This will make movement and positioning that much more important. Thankfully, your AoE abilities are mostly instant-cast, so you'll be able to keep up with the tanks and melee on a fast-moving dungeon run.

The nuances of various talents and passives, and other, more niche abilities are something I'll have to get more experience with the class in order to talk intelligently about it.

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