The Evoker is maybe the weirdest class they've added to the game.
Kind of.
In a few ways, the class broke precedents. In now just about 20 years of World of Warcraft, there has only ever been two ranged DPS specs added to the game, and both are Evokers.
Evokers are also the only class to be released that is mutually exclusive with its playable race - one cannot make an Evoker who is not a Dracthyr, but likewise one cannot make a Dracthyr who is not an Evoker (though this latter stipulation is one I can imagine changing in the future).
It also is the only class to have a full additional spec added in the middle of an expansion, with Augmentation not available until the second raid came out.
Furthermore, it's the only class to have a "support DPS" spec, which strongly emphasizes buffing allies' damage rather than maximizing their own (while some specs, like Enhancement Shamans, have long had powerful ally-buffs, the balance of the spec is still meant to allow them to bring a comparable amount of damage as pure-dps specs).
Finally, it's the only class built around "mid-range," requiring not quite as careful positioning as a melee character, but more careful positioning than a full-range character.
Because of the mutual exclusivity, it can be hard to talk about Evokers without talking about Dracthyr. Indeed, at least the last time I checked, the Evoker talent tree actually has some talents that affect Dracthyr racial abilities.
I've been playing a Devastation Evoker through Dragonflight. I think I pushed up his priority in the alt list due to his novelty, but I think he's likely to remain in kind of the middle of the pack. When Augmentation came out, I tried it for a bit - I love its aesthetics, which focus on the Black and Bronze dragonflights (the Bronze flight has always been my favorite by far, but that shouldn't come as a surprise given my obsession with time travel and chronomancy). However, the maintenance-based gameplay, which mirrors in some ways Breath of Sindragosa-based Frost Death Knights, stresses me out a bit (admittedly there's a similar mechanic in Dragonwrath for Devastation, but this is a rather short window and in my experience can only really have its duration extended twice - first immediately after you cast it and then when it's about 75% complete is when I tend to be able to use my empowered spells again to extend it further - but once that's over, I consider myself satisfactorily done). (Oh, and also, for some reason back when Shadow Priests were all built around Void Form, I think during Legion, I didn't mind that style of gameplay - perhaps because it was trivial to build up the Insanity required to return to it, so if you messed up one Void Form phase you could get back on your feet pretty easily.)
I'll also confess that there's a certain satisfaction in seeing your numbers on the damage meters rise, and Augmentation is built to expect you're significantly behind others in damage (indeed, you're inflating theirs, which is kind of the whole point!)
Devastation is a spec that can feel a little odd when soloing - the rotation makes the most sense when you have long-living enemies. Fire Breath is a bit counter-intuitive, because you need to spend longer empowering it in order to do a quicker burst of damage. Sometimes, especially when in groups, I find myself doing the longer-burn low empowerment simply in order to get the cast off before my allies kill the target. Perhaps it would be best to just save the ability in such cases?
Indeed, through much of Dragonflight, I found myself surprised at how good my DPS was with a rotation that was new and unfamiliar. I think in large part this is just that it's actually a simpler rotation than most, so executing it well is not terribly difficult. I do wonder if the class was also allowed to be a little more powerful in order to encourage players to try it out - which would likely mean a slight nerf moving forward.
It's funny, because other than the Death Knight, every new class added to the game has had mobility as a theme. Monks were rolling around, Demon Hunters have their Fel Rushes, and Evokers have Hover, which honestly feels a bit more unique of an ability.
On an aesthetic level, I have beef with the class/race.
It is infuriating that you can collect these new class sets, often with really cool design, but they're only on display when you're in your visage form (other than the shoulders and I believe belt). The customization options for the actual Drathyr appearance are cool, but they feel like something from a different game. I'd happily have every Dracthyr's "unarmored" appearance just be a naked reptilian dragon-person (well, with underwear) if it meant allowing our actual armor pieces to fit on our actual bodies.
This is a problem with the Druid class as well, but at least one of the Druid's four specs gets to use their primary form. Evokers just cannot show off their nice duds.
I also might have liked to see a beefier version of the Dracthyr - I realize that there's a certain adolescent boyishness to needing always to have hulking muscle-bound characters, and especially given that the Dracthyr are all basically spellcasters, it kind of makes sense. I guess I had just thought that if we were going to get WoW's take on D&D's Dragonborn, we'd get something more akin to the Drakonid, who of course got an updated model in Dragonflight (and unlike a lot of model updates, this one looks like it was rebuilt from the ground up).
Now, that said, I'm very happy with the change to their racial ability, Soar, that now lets them simply fly with all the same mechanics as normal Skyriding. My Dracthyr looks very cool when he's flying around on his own wings. And while the ability does have a 10-second cooldown, it's one that I barely ever even notice because I think the cooldown starts not when you land, but when you first take off.
Looking again at Devastation, I am curious to see if we'll see some complications added to the rotation. Even counting their Dragonwrath cooldown, there's only like 8 buttons to push (ok, 9 if we add Deep Breath, which feels only worth using on big packs of enemies) in the core rotation - with all other abilities being situational. This... honestly might be fine. There are some specs (Enhancement, for example) that sometimes feel like they have too many buttons to worry about (it's difficult when I have both Crash Lightning and Ice Strike in the same build because I've historically put them on the same keybind).
While I still hold out hope that Demon Hunters could eventually become available to other races (though I'm not holding my breath, and honestly I'm attached enough to my Night Elf DH that I wouldn't want to change him) I really cannot imagine Evokers ever being available to any other race, which makes them even more exclusive than the Vanilla-to-Wrath Druids (interestingly, Paladins were also only available to two races in vanilla, but that got doubled in BC with Blood Elves and Draenei, the former also introducing the class to the Horde for the first time. What did Horde groups do when they found intellect on plate back in the day? I mean, I know that all the stats did something for every class back then, but intellect was still only very marginally useful, helping your weapon and armor skills level up faster - a concept that must sound utterly alien to anyone who started playing WoW in the last decade).
I have not been keeping up nearly at all with any of the War Within beta stuff, so I don't know how Hero Talents will affect the class, but I'm eager to see how the class will evolve. The Death Knight underwent some huge changes after its first introduction (when initially pitched, Frost was actually presented as the tanking spec, Blood being a sort of PvE DPS spec, and Unholy was the utility/pvp spec. Then, during Wrath, all three specs could be built as both tanks and DPS. As a relic of the original intent, the "tank stance," was Frost Presence. By the end of Wrath, most DK tanks were going Blood and Frost was considered better at DPS, so you ironically had a lot of Blood DKs in Frost Presence and Frost DKs in Blood Presence. It was in Cataclysm that they killed Frost and Unholy tanking and Blood DPS. Also, you had specific types of runes - two blood, two frost, and two unholy, which would be used for different abilities. They massively simplified the class in... I want to say Legion?)
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