Feedback: Evokers

This thread is dedicated to leaving feedback on Evokers in Midnight. Look in this thread and in the Midnight Alpha Development Notes for adjustments and bugfixes made throughout the testing period.

Please note that off-topic or inappropriate posts will be strictly removed.

Apex Talents

Many Apex Talents are available for playtesting and may be selected using specialization tree points in the final specialization tree node. The current User interface (UI) is temporary for playtesting purposes and will be replaced with a final UI later in development. As with any test cycle, we will be adding more Apex Talents to the test over time and not all will be available with the start of the alpha test.

To help us refine Apex Talents, please consider the following questions as you playtest:

  • How gameplay-impacting, exciting, and fantasy forward is your Apex Talent to you?
  • Are your Apex Talents and new Hero Talents meeting the approachability goals laid out in our Combat for Everyone in Midnight article?
  • Are there cases you would consider not selecting your Apex talent?
  • Does the Apex talent disproportionally favor a particular talent build or Hero Talent tree?

For feedback regarding the changes on making the combat system more approachable for players of all skill levels, leave your feedback in the Combat Approachability feedback thread.

Thank You

We greatly appreciate all your feedback and are very excited for you to test out all the changes in Midnight!

1 Like

Augmentation

The goal of Augmentation’s changes is to simplify Ebon Might targeting in raid environments. Since it now applies to all members of the raid, there is no need to micromanage who it should go on. There will still be some buff management gameplay with Prescience, which will continue to have a smart-targeting option for those who do not want to swap targets between enemies and allies frequently. Overall, this should make raid gameplay much smoother and similar to dungeon gameplay.


Destruction

Devastation is one of our simpler caster specializations and we feel most rotational spells and talents already align with our approachability goals. In Midnight, we’re removing Shattering Star and Firestorm and adding some fresh talents in their stead to continue to evolve gameplay, including a talent that allows Deep Breath to be used a second time. We’re also updating Flameshaper talents by removing Engulf and having the keystone grant an additional charge of Fire Breath with some gameplay around managing Fire Breath’s damage over time effect.


Preservation

Preservation’s gameplay has always revolved around planning large healing moments and rotating a series of powerful cooldowns to deliver healing. We would like to simplify the planning gameplay by lowering the number of cooldowns they are juggling and by changing one of their largest healing combos - Lifebind. To compensate for lost power, their bread-and-butter healing spells will be more effective, particularly Emerald Blossom, Verdant Embrace, and Dream Breath. We are also making several quality-of-life adjustments: Dream Breath’s range is increased to 40 yards, Dream Flight now protects the Evoker while they are in flight, and Evokers now have the option to talent into a ranged version of Verdant Embrace. The end goal is that Preservation’s style of delivering healing is more intuitive and easier to pick up, while still being unique and Dragon-like.

2 Likes

I’m maintaining continuously updated feedback including a list of bugs on all things related Aug in Midnight over here: gerritalex .de/blog/augmentation-evoker-in-midnight

1 Like

Exhaustive feedback post over here from Braumritter: https://eu.forums.blizzard.com/en/wow/t/wishlist-for-evokers-from-a-devastation-main-alpha-feedback/589788

And some more for Flameshaper specifically: https://eu.forums.blizzard.com/en/wow/t/improvements-to-the-current-state-of-flameshaper-in-alpha/592844

And another, for Scalecommander and Keys in particular:

https://eu.forums.blizzard.com/en/wow/t/devastation-feedback-from-a-mythic-pusher-perspective-alpha-feedback/594527

1 Like

Edit November 11th:

  • all of the problems below for Aug continue to exist ahead of Beta launch

Further notes for Devastation:

  • Azure Sweep fails to address the problems of:

    • lack of need to empower Eternity Surge in single target
    • lack of need and value to empower Eternity Surge in AoE
  • please make Power Swell pause once you’re at max Essences

    • for example, sending back to back empowers wastes value, spacing them out is unintuitive. it is just a very binary aura you have to actively watch in order to gain value from
    • at a minimum, it should extend, ideally at full value. currently it just fully replaces the aura
  • please consider merging Ruby Essence and Azure Essence Burst talents

  • please consider making Power Nexus and Font of Magic baseline

    • neither are particularily fun or gameplay altering talents. in fact, you can hardly notice either of them
  • please swap the position of Lay Waste with Power Nexus if Power Nexus really has to stay

    • Lay Waste holds zero value for Flameshaper but you’re forced to pick it
  • please consider Causality to bank its cooldown reducing value

    • e.g. it reduces the cooldown of empowers as it does now if the affected ability is on cooldown, but pressing a Disintegrate if Eternity Surge is ready, it accumulates ahead-of-time cooldown reduction up to a point, for example up to 4 seconds. the next Eternity Surge then consumes that aura and starts with 4 seconds reduced cooldown upfront
    • this prevents wasting cooldown reduction but still encourages to use the abilities asap, making it both more forgiving and less affected by Pyre not reducing cooldown on cast, but on hit after travel time
  • please consider reworking/tuning Ruby Embers

    • it no longer has any synergy with anything now that Engulf is gone
    • its incredibly low tuned
    • currently only serves as a gatekeeper to Feed the Flames. we’ve already been there, where it gatekept Firestorm, except now you also have to take Engulfing Blaze to get there, making it incredibly unlikely for either to get picked. the package of Ruby Embers + Firestorm + Snapfire was very good, the package of Ruby Embers + Engulfing Blaze + Feed the Flames (little control over when it procs and reduced value from Pyre being more expensive) is not good

pre Nov 11:

The latest alpha build mentioned Cooldown Manager changes for Aug, so here’s a list of its problems currently:

  • it offers to track Imminent Destruction under Buffs twice
  • it offers to track Oppressing Roar under Buffs, but it doesn’t work (regardless of whether Overawe is talented)
  • it does not offer to track the Temporal Burst buff
  • it offers to track the Mass Eruption buff, but it doesn’t work (and has not ever since 11.1)
  • it does not track the Deep Breath cooldown when not talented into Breath of Eons (largely a leveling concern)
  • it does not track the Breath of Eons cooldown when talenting out of Maneuverability until you relog
  • it does not track the Command Squadron buff
  • it offers to track Unravel under cooldowns but that’s a passive now
  • it offers to track Interwoven Threads, but that’s a passive
  • it does not offer to track the Momentum Shift buff
  • it tracks Duplicate, but using the wrong talent (right side of the apex talents, instead of the center one)
  • it still offers to track the Golden Opportunity buff which is now passive
  • it offers to track Maneuverability under Buffs which is a passive
  • the Bombardments buff does not track how many targets are currently afflicted

Nameplates:

  • Bombardments do not show up as debuff at all
  • Landslide does not show up under Shared CCs
  • Oppressing Roar does not show up under Shared CC
  • the Fire Breath dot of the Duplicate apex talent pet shows up on nameplates despite being irrelevant

General Bugs:

  • Command Squadron does not work when talented out of Maneuverability
  • Timelessness lasts only for 30 minutes (Source of Magic and Blistering Scales last for 60)
  • Prescience from Motes of Possibility via Clairvoyant talent cannot crit when talented into Double-time. this may be intended
  • Obsidian Scales shows the same tooltip as before regardless of whether you’re talented into Renewing Blaze or not
  • despite being technically removed, casting empowers as Chronowarden during Temporal Burst still grants Thread of Fate to allies when talented into Nozdormu Adept

There’s also some thoughts for particularily Scalecommander Deva from me:

  • the apex talents are very very bad for keys. long ramping specs are dead in the water in lower keys, but even for higher keys, in a more coordinated environment, pulls last anywhere from 40s to 75s so you’re guaranteed to lose either the value of the apex talent fully, or at least to a certain degree. this was already evident in DF S3 with the set at the time that the apex talent takes heavy inspiration from. there’s already plenty feedback on the apex talents in other places so I’m just reiterating here to please urgently look at these again and keep cooking.
  • more Deep Breath (in regards to Strafing Run) sounds good in isolation and fits the spec/hero talent fantasy and all but often there’s punishing mechanics preventing you from pressing your basically most important button which also comes with forced movement. now that we’re also forced to fly a mininum duration because of Command Squadron, this is doubly punishing. Please consider Command Squadron - once Deep Breath was started casting - to continue doing its thing even when you cancel DB early so we’re not forced to delay/hold and not forced to spend more time than needed flying
1 Like

My only feedback from playing the Beta so far is this; Revert the changes to Shattering Star.

As it is on Live, it’s a good option for providing more rounded out damage, without having to waste the cooldown on Eternity Surge to get more damage on single-to-two targets. It synergizes well with Dragon Rage and Fire Breath’s DoT, and doesn’t out-stay its welcome.

With the change in Midnight to instead being a passive that affects Eternity Surge, we lose that opener damage and it becomes a much more specialized case. You lose the versatility against single targets in favour of having to fully charge Eternity Surge for the best result, a problem that affects not just fighting against groups of enemies, but was also part of the reason Fire Breath was changed in the Dragonflight Beta.

Not only that, but fully charging an Eternity Surge on a single target specifically for the 50% damage increase, only to then go into combat against a group immediately after (as might happen in Dungeon and Raid runs), tends to feel increasingly frustrating. This isn’t a problem when the two are separated out.

TL;DR: Keep Eternity Surge and Shattering Star separate, as they are on Live. You provide more versatile options that way, instead of causing more problems for “simplicity.”

1 Like

As it is on Live, it’s a good option for providing more rounded out damage, without having to waste the cooldown on Eternity Surge to get more damage on single-to-two targets.

If you were using it for that then you have been doing it wrong.

It synergizes well with Dragon Rage and Fire Breath’s DoT, and doesn’t out-stay its welcome.

It does what ??? SS is a 4s damage amplification. there is no synergy with a 30s dot anywhere.

You lose the versatility against single targets in favour of having to fully charge Eternity Surge for the best result

Not only that, but fully charging an Eternity Surge on a single target specifically for the 50% damage increase, only to then go into combat against a group immediately after (as might happen in Dungeon and Raid runs), tends to feel increasingly frustrating.

With the current damage scaling, you wont be doing that anytime soon.

The only thing you are losing is an amp which never mattered outside of FS Engulf and that interaction was basically limited to press SS > Engulf EVERYTIME.
Every other time SS was a “Give me Essence Burst” button which you pressed on cooldown.

SS has been artificial complexity for a long time now and its rework is much appreciated as it solves the problem of having to deal with a spell that you only press because you need Essence burst NOW.

5 Likes

I’ll meet you halfway and nuke the post haha

Hey, props to you for conceding that you were wrong.
To record it for everyone else:

  • You can cast Hover while casting now. This includes Disintegrate but not Empowers. The only caveat is that you cannot cast a directional Hover mid cast as this cancels the cast
  • Azure Sweep is a standard evoker ranged AoE spell. It has other problems, like the character animation looking goofy and weird as hell.
1 Like

Well since we are in beta now I am gonna give feedback on the issues that I consider the most pressing for Devastation Evoker. You can consider these issues in either category to be in descending order, meaning the first one is the most pressing one
Lets start with the gameplay related issues:

Dragonrage

The Problems:
Animosity has been uncapped in a certain sense and it is not a good thing. Animosity now has a cap of 4 extensions for Fire Breath and unlimited Extensions for Eternity Surge. This results in us being able to get a very solid 90s uptime on Dragonrage. This has 2 issues:

  1. In Dungeons below the +20 mark you are never gonna get full value out of your only cooldown without some majorly degenerate chain pulls.
  2. In Raid you are fine as long as you can just focus on dealing damage. If you need to play any mechanic that forces downtime onto you, you are going to drop of a cliff damage wise.

Both of these are severely punishing for players which are good enough to care about it but not good enough to optimize it to a perfect degree.

My suggestion:
Either re-implement the Animosity cap to limit Dragonrage to a reasonable duration of a maximum of 40s or do away with the extension gameplay entirely, as it is becoming increasingly obvious that it is causing more problems than its worth

Apex

As I already stated in my alpha feedback post: The apex is basically a carbon copy of the DF S3 tier set and as such we know exactly what its pitfalls are.
The problems:
Problem 1: The initial ramp is way to long.

  1. In Dungeons below +15, all mobs will be dead before you even reach maximum stacks.
  2. In Raids you are screwed because Bloodlust is gone before you reach maximum stacks

Either way you are boned.

Problem 2: The post-Dragonrage Essence Burst generation is a good idea in theory but in practice suffers in a few ways

  1. In Dungeons you are most likely getting the benefit when the pull is done and as such its entirely pointless and will most likely not be played
  2. In Raid its fine if Dragonrage had a reasonable duration.

My suggestions:
The ramp needs to top out at 15s maximum. Anything more will feel majorly bad. The post-Dragonrage talent would benefit majorly from being paused if you are out of combat. that way it will start having any benefit in Dungeons.

Pyre

Its still a bit early to say but I am very much not a fan of the 3 Essence Cost pyre as it feels very awkward to use with the 5 Essence we usually have.
For this there are 2 solutions imo:

  1. Just go back to 2 Essence Pyre. It’s worked well this far and will most likely continue working well.
  2. Make Power Nexus baseline so we always have 6 Essence. The talent is basically a quality of life choice anyway and is one of the talents that should honestly be reworked anyway.
  3. As suggested else where you could also swap Lay Waste and Power Nexus

Now lets continue with the bugged and bad interactions that are currently hindering the flow of the rotation or are just in general exhibiting some major missed potential

Catalyze and Consume Flame

Everything described below was last tested on 2025-11-15T16:30:00Z.

In theory Catalyze increases tick speed by 100% while Disintegrate is active and Consume Flame “consumes” a fixed duration of Fire Breath with every tick of Disintegrate.
It doesn’t take a genius to notice that this has the potential for an extremely interesting interaction.
The prefered interaction would be this:

Consume Flame directly benefits from the doubled tick speed and consumes its standard duration, but gets double the damage because of the doubled tick speed.

This also seems like it was intended to be implemented like that but something broke on the way to production.
Currently the interaction looks like this:

The first time Disintegrate triggers Consume Flame it gets the benefit like described above but after that Catalyze stops working until the Fire Breath has run out. Additionally this somehow halves Pyre’s Consume Flame damage ???

I think that this is a bug and I hope that it gets fixed and then works like described above. This would make for some amazing flavor for Flameshaper which is currently a bit aimless and overly bland.

Twin Flame

Currently Twin Flame is a beacon of missed potential. It could have been a Living Flame instead and it would have been infinitely more interesting while also offering either spec some much needed synergy with the Living Flame related talents. Instead we are left with a spell that someone forgot to flag as being a fire spell (its physical rn) that refuses to interact with either pres or dev in any meaningful manner.

My suggestion:
Make it a proc that fires a living flame (that bounces twice with the talent), reminiscent of the shattering star proc we had in TWW S2, and inherits all synergies by our talents.

Unravel

The current implementation of Unravel causes it to deal its damage on Fire Breath cast if the target has a shield.
If the shield is applied after you cast Fire Breath you are out of luck.
The effect of Unravel was also reduced to a third of its old effect which I assume is because it now theoritically could apply to multiple targets ?
In reality this hardly ever applies as shield mobs are isolated occurances so we are just left with less damage on largely the same frequency but without the gcd tax.

My suggestion:
Please spread the effect of Unravel over the full duration of Fire Breath or at least make it retroactively apply the damage if the shield appears when Fire Breath is active on the target. Also please increase the damage as the current state is just not worth taking like ever.

Everything else can most likely be brought in line with some light tuning but I really hope that all of the above gets addressed in one way or another.

1 Like

Scalecommander Devastation Evoker feedback - Midnight Beta

*DISCLAIMER: I have not been able to test the spec out fully at level 90 as of yet, but this post will be edited to include more info when I am able to. Also, I am not sure why my retail characters are missing from the EU wow forums… but my main Evoker is Forgive-Argentdawn
*
——————————————————————————————-

Hi hi, this post is of feedback for mainly Devastation Evoker from a rank 1 pvper’s POV after quite a bit of testing from 80 - 85 in both pve/pvp (both skirmishes AND random BGs).

What I personally think has been done well:

  • The rotation has a bit more flair to it, the new ‘Azure Sweep’ talent feels like a nice addition to include especially as the season 1 tier set heavily leans into it being incorporated into the baseline rotation
  • The uptime Devastation has feels great!
  • The new talent ‘Strafing Run’ is incredibly fun and enhances the class fantasy of being a true dragon and it really starts to open up the skill ceiling of the spec as you can do some crazy outplays with two DBs
  • Strike from Above’ is quite unique and is a very welcome change to aid in Evoker’s standard mobility. I believe this talent will shine situationally a ton in BGs/Blitz and certain arena maps
  • Having the ‘Command Squadron’ tier set baseline on SC is a great choice in helping out Evoker’s when they are solo; before, ‘Rescue’ was entirely useless and it’s a shame as it can be such an incredibly useful spell, but now it is very reassuring to know you can utilise ‘self-rescue’ tech which helps push out the skill ceiling even more

What I believe could be improved:

  • One massive issue with the ‘Command Squadron’ talent is that sometimes the squadron actually hinders you/breaks your entire CC setup, as a standard DB > sleep, but the squadron will automatically start firing off at your sleep target which breaks it
  • The ‘Rescue’ shield being taken away is not ideal. I don’t think a nerf was really needed for it and the replaced benefit of simply being able to cast for three seconds + 100% movement speed is just not really something I’d care about, especially as a SC Devastation Evoker when I have plenty of Hovers at my disposal
  • I could be alone in this, but the idea of ONLY casting ‘Disintegrate’ as the main spender feels a bit dry, perhaps another type of dot could be juggled alongside it? Just food for some thought

Bugs found so far:

  • I’m not entirely sure how to recreate this, but I believe it has something to do with ‘Strafing Run’ where you can literally have infinite DBs which are able to be cast over and over again
  • FB is not at times being reset properly reset on the CD tracker
  • The ‘Mass Disintegrate’ icon sometimes does not reset properly from time to time

Conclusion/Overall Thoughts of SC Devastation so far:

Overall, I actually really like the direction Devastation is being taken! We’ve gotten some great new talents which aid the overall feel of the spec and really help it remain easy and fun to play, but allows for the opportunity to really master the spec in order to create awesome outplay potential. However, I think the squadron really needs to have a look on implementing a way to tell your squadron NOT to attack your target via a bind of some sorts. I also think the shield rescue granted should NOT have been taken out, or at the very least, the replacement for the shield needs to be a bit better of a trade-off.

The commandos from the hero talent do not linger (or at least should not as per description) so the self rescue tech is not there.

The rescue shield being nuked was 100% necessary and part of the defensive pruning. It was too strong and not in line with what blizz laid out in their rework guidelines. The movement speed and casting while moving isnt only for you tho. It also applies to whomever you are rescuing and in turn makes it Spatial Paradox 2: Electric boogaloo.

Fair enough about the squadron not sticking around, must’ve been bugged whilst I was testing. However, with the upmost respect, the rescue shield nerf was NOT 100% necessary nor should blizzard include it as part of the defensive pruning. The shield was actually very balanced and it allowed for leeway which helps the class maintain being approachable, this nerf hurts more casual evokers rather than experienced top range ones. Also, strictly speaking from a pvp pov, those three seconds/movement speed won’t nearly impact them as much as you’re making it out to be; rescue will literally boil down purely due to its ‘freedom’ aspect of getting your healer out of say a rootbeam. Prior to this, rescue helped save games due to having that little bit of help via the shield, of which now the carry potential goes out the window. I see zero harm in why the shield can’t stay.

For the squad:
You probably still had the old tierset on.
For Rescue:
I don’t know about the pvp aspect but the reason why the shield couldnt stay is because well played devokers were close to unkillable in raid content. However the solution for this would be to just make it a pvp talent, I guess.
If we had to lose any defensive then it had to be the external.

The strafing run bug can be triggered by spamming deep breaths keybind
The FB bug happens so often that it might just be the norm

The old tierset is supposed to be disabled post 81 and it still worked when I took it off.

Idk what the shield was like in pve, it’s why I said I’m talking from a pvper’s pov.

yeah I just clarified that I’m using the pve-ers pov to not mislead you.

After a lot of hitting target dummies and the likes, I can now rather confidently say that using Pyre without Power Nexus talented feels very bad. This might very well be because of the established muscle memory that tells me I should be able to chain 2 Pyres without having Essence Burst, but I hope you consider either making Pyre, 2 Essence again or swapping Power Nexus and Lay Waste so that this problem doesnt happen.

Preservation Flameshaper Feedback:

  1. I like that Emerald Blossom is more important again
  2. The removal of Engulf removed the rewarding feedback loop. My main issue is with the Consume Flame Talent. It feels a lot weaker than before. Integrating Engulf mechanics into Breath charges and Verdant Embrace and Emerald Blossom makes the rotation feel more rigid than before and was IMO a mistake. I‘m not saying that Engulf needs to come back, but make Consume Flame feel more satisfying.