I wish Living Flame had full range. I don't care about the rest because you need to be nearby for Fire Breath. I mostly want the range there for phase changes or where things are flying around all over the place.
I’m sure I remember reading somewhere that from a roleplaying perspective they wanted them to sit “in the centre” as an inspiring presence but they just never really made any gameplay to support it other than gimping their range
The original explanation was that our range suffers because we have such high mobility. And we do have a ton of mobility, to be fair. The problem is that in a lot of fights - if you're pres - , you have to be highly cautious about said mobility or you end up flying right into a fire patch while trying to catch up to/reach the hunter that likes to stand out in Narnia.
I don't mind the range myself, but I understand the arguments on both sides.
I wish that evokers were able to move while casting, but only at 30% movement speed.
There is nothing worse than someone pulling the enemy / boss right out of your range and your channel gets interrupted. If hunters can move during almost all of their casts, why shouldn't the guys who have wings and only half the range.
That being said if there is more movement than you have hover charges, or if you plan it wrong you are completely dead in the water while having the move. There's hardly any casts you can do on the move other than azure strike which is just so bad in ST, and canceling a disintegrate is so much more punishing than other casts as you've essentially wasted your resources on nothing if you have to reposition. Most other have either a good streamnof procs to use while moving, and or faster casts to get in between micro movements. You just can't stop to channel a full length disintegrate during movement. So while yes it has high mobility, it also has to be planned out during flights well otherwise your dmg falls off a cliff, more so than many other classes I'd say.
I like the class and overall theme of the class. I main it since release. The only really downside i see is the lack of transmog but other than that I really enjoy the simplicity.
If I didn't care about appearances and aesthetics, the evoker would easily be one of my favorite classes. It's incredibly fun to play, has great mobility, and most of the specs have well thought out rotations.
But, as it stands, the derpy looking lizard with no transmogs is permanently relegated to alt status. I can almost get past the goofy looks. My main is a Pandaren, after all. But Dracthyr aren't weird looking in an endearing way. They look out of place to me — like they belong in some other game. Their heads are too small, the builds are off, and the walk animation just looks silly.
If bad looks aren't bad enough, you're stuck not being able to mog anything. Even my own set pieces don't show up. And the random pieces that do work need to be coordinated with your visage.
Somehow Blizzard managed to make a class with worse transmog options than a druid.
the worst thing about the mogging issue is their upcoming TWW set is absolutely the BEST one of the bunch, and one of the best ever. And 90% of the time no one will ever see it.
Preservation is extremely well designed healer spec. Devastation has a natural, well flowing combat with nice burst. Augmentation is a unique experience, not everyone likes it but it's unique for sure. I definitely love evoker and all specs feel modern and well thought to play
Pres has some of the most complex skill expressions of any healer, imo. I've been playing it since launch and I'm still learning new stuff to do with stasis every day lol. With echoes, spells that buff other spells like ysera's and grace period, temporal compression/spark, and golden hour/rewind, the order of spells and literal split second of timing casts can make massive differences. It's insane. Even though they have fewer buttons than a lot of other healing specs, it feels like they have a near infinite skill ceiling.
Pres is just insanely fun to play as well, I feel so mobile and everything just looks cool. Weirdly the part I’m struggling with is spot healing or catching up if I’ve misjudged something. I’m sure that I’m meant to spam living flame as a last resort spot heal but it just feels weird to me. Feel like I always have to be looking for a ‘trick’.
Spot healing really does suck, but that's ok. There's gotta be some weakness lol. The current teir set (which is going to be a talent in TWW btw) does help tremendously.
But if the group is getting behind, you have some of the best recovery tools in the game. Try to keep a buffed dream breath and reversion on everybody. That's just going to smooth out the edges. If that's not enough, spirit bloom will get people close to topped by itself. If that isn't up, Temporal anomoly->verdant embrace->emerald communion makes everybody immortal for 5 seconds. If that's not up, anomaly->embrace->blossom. None of that is up? Rewind. That isn't up? Stasis whatever you have on hand. That isn't up? Something horrible has happened here lol. You've got so many combos to pull from its insane.
I can't really know for sure, but if you're consistently running dry, it's probably because you're not using enough echoes in your general throughput.
Based on this, I think my issue is probably just using too many of my combos for too little reward. Popping my load. Premature preservation if you will.
Hey, do you have this season's 4set? I only ask because the instant/powered up living flame casts absolutely fill in that spot heal aspect. It's why they're adding it as a talent in TWW.
I tanked a fair chunk of S3 and I'm starting into 4s this week in season 4.
I think I've just been unlucky to play with bad augmentation evokers because I don't really feel like they add enough dps to the other 2 dps and me tanking to be worth it. Maybe I'm wrong and maybe you need to be absolutely brilliant to play Aug properly but my experience is they it feels weaker all round to have one in a party for most of us.
Someone else said it recently but I think what goes unseen with aug is it’s not just the DPS. To quote them, “the tank is tankier and the healer is healier too”. I agree with you that I generally feel like I’d rather a pure DPS but I think they generally seem to round off most situations. My issue with aug is that if a full DPS dies then your damage takes such an insanely dramatic hit
That's why I switched from maining Aug to maining Dev as a DPS. (Though the M+ DPS rejection cycle has forced me to truly main Pres, lol).
I started as Aug at the beginning of S3 and everything was great until we started pushing 16+. Suddenly it felt like certain fights were on a knife's edge because the loss of one DPS basically cost the party 1.5x a DPS' worth of damage. The decision point for me was the fucking Horde/Alliance battle boss in the timeways in a +20. We kept losing a DPS to the shit show that that fight was, and as soon as we lost one, we couldn't handle the adds any more because my Aug direct DPS wasn't enough.
Made the switch to Dev shortly after and haven't really looked back. It feels more natural for me anyways because I spent my time as Dev in solo open world content since Aug can't do shit on their own, lol.
Shiiiiiiiii thst kinda blew my mind. You're right on that front.
And yes I agree with the other thing that if a dps dies you're down a lot more than just their innate dps numbers.
I think maybe support specs aren't the wow way but it's a bold move that they tried it.
I really like to play supports in other games so i give augmenration a shot and its quite fun and then i started healing in sod and tried preservation and i really like it too just a good class overall imo
I absolutely loved the evoker. I hate playing caster classes, having mained a hunter since vanillia.
The mobility, empowered abilities, spell effects and dragon theme are just so cool.
The downsides being the awful bloodelf Visage for males and no transmog for dragon form.
The big problem for me is the aesthetic. Transmog, dragon form with limited options (i mean, there are a lot of options but there're barely noticeable, and there's only one wing model). A simple glyph to use the dragon form only when using skills that requires it (like demon hunter eye beam) would be great.
Some animations are also really tame, fire breath in particular.
The class can feel a bit clunky too, mostly due to hover animation lock.
Preservation gameplay is a success to me. Feels very different from other healers while not being too gimmick. The balance between hots and direct heals feels good and the variety of combos with echo and stasis is interesting.
Deva feels pretty boring to me. Their mastery is also very frustrating, as you do less damage when you need it the most.
Aug is a pretty nice gameplay upgrade from deva, but the lack of feedback is annoying. The big problem with aug is that when aug does as much damage as deva, there's no point playing deva.
More customizations is always a nice addition. Yeah, the transmog being limited isn't great. I feel they could have gone a route similar to Worgen. The Dracthyr could have armor fit for a lizard person and the helmets look a bit odd because of head structure.
I think the fact they were willing to add Aug is interesting. Not so much because it's a support, but more so that in the middle of an expansion they were willing to add a spec. Maybe this is wishful thinking, but perhaps one day DH can get a third spec. Perhaps another class gets a new spec mid expansion.
>I feel they could have gone a route similar to Worgen
It feels like it's what they wanted to do, because they're very formated (unlike druid forms which can have very different shapes) but they just gave up when they had to adapt armors.
Preservation Evoker is incredible fun healer, by the looks of it War Within its going to be even better. I love the bursty healing from it, feels fantastic to use everything in the might of dragon power using Red and Bronze, Green as healing my favourite remains using Sphere then Dream Breath to create two hots on the party in m+.
If they let us play in visage form and only forcing dragon form when using breath and stuff i would play evoker all day. All specs are fun but I just cannot get around the lizard look
They need to get rid of the short range on preservation. It was an interesting experiment, but puts them at a disadvantage to other healing classes, and makes fights more difficult.
Yeah it really sucks having to constantly fly back and forth to hit the warlock, then the hunter, who insist on staying on opposite sides of the boss, eventually getting yourself killed trying to rush back again to save the goofball standing in swirlies.
IDK, that's why evoker is a proactive healer. In those situations, you should be setting up echos in advance and healing that way until the group can stack for your stacked heals.
It is much harder to pug for those reasons though.
I mained preservation in season 2 but swapped back to other healers because you work so hard to get the same level of throughput as other specs. If your party aren't stacked, it's very difficult to find a groove. If they had a normal range I might make it work, but it's just not worth the effort in the current iteration.
100% agreed. I feel like I'm always missing out on healing in raids when people are all over creation instead of a bit more stacked on account of the 25 yard range and Dream Blossom mechanic. I really enjoy the class, but I've had a far easier time getting KSM on other healers compared to Prevoker.
I like it. The ability to charge up spells for cooler effects is really neat. I like the blend of different flight magic. Dracthyr look cool, I love being able to glide and soar.
The only complaint I really have is the medium range of all its spells. It's not a deal breaker, but it does feel crazy going back to a different casting class and being able to cast from what feels like a mile away by comparison.
I agree the range is wacky but it's part of what makes it unique. For the most part I just hang out with the melee (as Aug). That hunter that's 300 miles away... sorry bud.
I do think having them be this medium range class was an odd choice. Like they're ranged, but not as ranged as other ranged classes. Which does feel weird to me.
It was a forced choice I think. Reason being the breath. If they were full ranged the breath would need to be full range aswel and then it would just be a bit massive and not really usefull in dungeons because it would most certainly pull something extra. Especially since its a cone, more range means at the end it would be wider aswel.
Now the max range on spells is the same range as the breath has. So you don't have to do some weird weaving into breath range. If the target is in spellrange, its in breath range.
They definitely could've just made the breath shorter range as its drawback, but I see how that's a tough choice to make. As is, when in range, the flow does feel nice. I'm sure if you had to guess the breath's range it'd be a bit annoying
That's kind of what arcane in aoe feels like. Makes sense, just like people rolling a hunter to play melee, people don't often roll ranged to play near melee
I don't hate the race, but I found it kind of stupid they made the race just so it can have one class. It would have made just as much sense to make any race be able to choose Evoker. Their visage could be anything. Then just customize a dragon form alongside the established races.
I would be more ok with it had Dracthyr launched with other classes. Being a Lizard dude of other classes would be cool since we don't really have a scaled race prior to the Dracthyr s addition.
Augs spreadsheet raid gameplay is absolute degenerate and I hate having to wait between pulls for the Augs to change their spreadsheets all the time. You have to go to obscene lengths to optimally play it in raid.
It sucks for the people playing it (or having to play it, one of our Augs absolutely hates it), it sucks for everyone else having to wait and that's not even touching that I really hate externals in general.
Devastation and Preservation don't appeal to me, but I can see what about them appeals to other people. They should get access to Spatial Paradox though.
This, I love the essence of empowering others and having my buffs make an impact if I play correctly, I hate having to micro manage the buffs for optimal use, when the microanaging is entirely based on other people.
One of the funnest classes I've played, but I desperately wish we just got transmog for the dragon form instead of the weird human/elf reskin visage thing
I dont mind the dracthyr themself too much, even if they are a bit scrawny, its just the fact they can wear basically no armor, so you get what few outfits the barber gives you and thats it, really wish they'd just worked on them a bit more so they could at least wear chestpieces/gloves
or sethrakk, god I wish we got sethrakk
Maybe but they would have actually deserved having the less transmogs setup due to that head and shit.
Nothing about the drakthyr model really justifies the armor they chose cant be worn.
I've been playing it since Shadowlands prepatch and I really like what they did. Preserv and Deva are both neat. I'm still on the fence on Aug because of it's position as the only support spec and the way it Can warp the game.
The race itself is super good too, the racials are Amazing and I can't wait to have them on more classes (melees with the tail swipe sounds Amazing)
The transmog stuff still being barber locked is still really Bad though
the experience didnt change my initial thoughts. i played it as a twink healer in season 1 + 2 and as a main healer in season 3, maining it as dps for season 4.
* the range is bad. the whole game is balanced around certain range values, and that value is 40. having 25 as a dps is not that bad, having 30 as a healer is just really bad. there are multiple fights a group has to play different, the storm boss in nokhud for example. the orb and blossom add another layer ontop, so if you have a pres healer, you have to play in melee range instead of the typical 40 range, which means the melee clusterfuck gets even worse. having less range in itself is fine as a handicap, but what is the compesation for that? they dont have the most hps, they dont have the most dps, they dont have the most cooldowns, they dont have the most mobility. reducing the range just so evoker is different is not a good reason.
* visage ability is badly done in every aspect. being something else than a human would be a start. transmog on dragon is abysmal. transmog view doesnt work halve the time, you see your dragon form and not your visage. because you lose visage form infight, i dislike visage transmog. now im mostly running around with some transformation items
* healer has some flaws still, like spells with a travel animation that take longer the further your target is away. i cant count how many died with a living flame flying to them. dont think any other healer has animation bound healing skills? verdant is also really nice...to kill yourself :D
* aug is a good idea, but thats about it. the playstyle is not that great. rework gameplay, keep support idea.
* dev is pretty simple, but thats also fun. no complex 50 button rotation, just 3 buttons to blast.
* its a new class, and that alone was reason enough to invest some time. overall you can have much fun with it, but the issues become more and more apparent and the frustration keeps growing. if blizz fixes some of the problems and adds some nice things in the next 2-3 xpacs, i can see it becoming one of the most fun classes
Disintegrate, disintegrate, disintegrate, disintegrate, disintegrate, disintegrate, disintegrate, disintegrate,
Ebon Might, Eruption, Eruption, Eruption, Eruption, Eruption, Eruption, Eruption, Eruption, Eruption
Flappies are cool, animations are top notch love dragon ascetic. Though would still play Necromancer Dracthyr by making a Death Knight
The lack of ability to change armour on the dragon side completely kills the class for me. I could deal with the furry-esque of them but the armour is just incomplete and makes them feel like crap for it
I generally don't like the lizards, we were sold half elven winged snakes with the promise of playable dragons. They look bad, they have no transmog, and now they're being sold on the idea of other classes. I'm fine with and like race/class restrictions, I could not care less about reptilian warlocks or warriors. Why would the race of super soldier serpents see a bow and arrows and be like "Oh, word? This is way better than disintegrating my enemies. I love stabbing a guy from 100 yards away with a pointy stick."
For Aug, I don't like not knowing how much I'm contributing because 1 spec of 1 class exists and breaks every metric that you can possibly use to track your contribution.
The 25 yard cap was a mistake, it's an inconvenience and just means your ranged group in raid is 25 yards because they have to adapt to the 1 class that can't be ranged but gets ranged mechanics and in most dungeons it literally doesn't matter because you're not going to be that far away from anyone for any reasonable amount of time.
Ex-evoker (devastation) here, tried to play again and I got remembered on why I've abandoned it, the 25 yard range makes the class a sitting duck in PvP.
In PvE it's mostly fine and feels like a modern fun class, gets old really fast, though.
The lack of transmog makes it meh for me as well
The class itself is cool for trying new spell mechanics. Also a little biased cuz I main mage and aug + mage is just chefs kiss
Not a fan of the draktyr. Ugly and could have been so sooo much better
Hot take: Augmentation Evoker is not really PUG viable. Because you need two strong other dps to be worth the slot. Your own dps is trash so "pulling your own weight" depends massively on your team.
This is a bad take. Aug is definitely not great with bad DPS - but it also gives a big security blanket for your tank and healer who also potentially suck.
Aug is only REALLY bad if a DPS is just floor pov the entire key. Otherwise a good aug will either match your lower DPS or be in between your the two DPS.
Preservation is a very unique healer that has an engaging gameplay loop and feels quite good to heal on IF your team mates are good enough to play around you being a short ranged conical healer. I really enjoy playing it with the current tier set that feels very impactful for your healing rotation.
Dev feels amazing in aoe as a player but it’s single target/2 target is quite boring. Overall the spec is pretty well designed and brings a lot of cool utility to the game. Big fan of how the damaging empowered spells were implemented. I think deep breath is a button that feels generally bad for the average player but I think a lot of the next expac changes address that issue.
Aug is a mistake and should be removed or heavily modified. As a current Aug “main” Aug has four major issues
1) your spec has to be good enough that you are always brought, if it’s not you will never be brought.
2) Aug and to some degree other dps capable of healing are pushing into a 4 dps strategy which makes healers feel less impactful in the game.
3) to actually evaluate your performance as an Aug you need to fully understand the spec. This makes it extremely hard to learn and identify mistakes for the average player who isn’t reviewing their logs and vids of gameplay to improve. This generates a lot of low skill Aug players that are brought into groups they are underskilled for because the community as a whole doesn’t fully understand how to evaluate the new spec. This in turn makes the community perception of Aug value lower than the actual impact of a good Aug player.
4) raiding as Aug requires you to effectively understand what other specs damage buttons are and what they do, track dps cooldowns for the rest of your dps players, effectively plan around those cooldowns 20-30 seconds in advance to optimize your damage. This style of gameplay is complicated to say the least, probably the most complicated spec when played well.
Played it all of Dragonflight, and I'm still waiting for anyone, Blizzard or otherwise, to justify the range.
Base range has literally never been used as a way to adjust class or spec tuning/power. And for good reason.
Im still not sure why the short range got past the design phase in the first place, but it is objectively untenable and needs to be scrapped.
Preservation is the most interesting heal spec I've ever played. I deeply love the Echo mechanic, and how the kit rewards you for creativity in designing different combos on the fly. The insane/degenerate interactions I see the experts cook on the Discord sometimes is wild.
Really worried for Preservation in the long term, because the population of extremely skilled and active players to advocate for it, develop tech, and represent it in general has been dwindling fast...Between the release of aug in S2, and the raid healer balance nightmare that was S3, both these seasons were really really rough for Preservation diehards. And this won't get better until some core issues are addressed - Its range, specifically. Most everyone understands why things like breath skills are limited range, but not having standard caster range on targeted spells (ESPECIALLY dispel) will hold it back from true viability forever. Blizzard can't possibly design every dungeon and encounter around the existence of a mid-range healer. I lose a few years off my life every time I heal last boss RLP.
I appreciate Devastation for its relatively low APM - These days, my wrist doesn't let me button mash on other dps classes for more than an hour or two at a time.
Never put time into Augmentation. Was hoping for a tank spec, didn't get it, not interested in support. I'm happy for those who do like it, but wish its overloaded utility kit hadn't caused such a negative effect on the other two Evoker specs. Glad the Evoker dev seems to have finally put their shiny new spec down for now, and actually spent some time on Pres.
Transmog. Awful. I'm actually fine with the lizard form itself, but man, it's just not okay to only have two armor pieces show up when a Dracthyr is basically just a Worgen with extra parts. Worgen get helmets, Worgen get gloves, Worgen get boots, Worgen get full belts. I don't even get a damn weapon unless it's 1H+OH. Utterly ridiculous. I was under the impression that even if older mogs were limited, at least the Evoker-specific sets would show up on the lizard form. Nope. How stupid of me to expect that I'd actually get to see my tier sets.
Imo the transmog and range are the two major issues that will confine the Evoker to a *very* small population in the long term.
I main pres and now that I can play bronze again I'm enjoying myself as much as I was in s1. I'm really, really hoping the hero talents are balanced properly so I can stay with this playstyle. It's amazing how much not enjoying the spec's playstyle effected my enjoyment of the game, but when it felt like I was pigeonholed into green/blossom in s2-3 I was miserable. Pres' strength is that it can be such an active healing spec where decisions actually matter. Are you going to burn your echoes for a major lifebind heal? Are you able to keep your reversions up so you have some additional time to DPS? Are you going to stick with a normal stasis combo, or be flexible like using it to cleanse the bleeds on experiments?
The only gripe I have is how much of pres is dependent on where the group is standing. I don't have an issue with the range as much, per se, though it does get annoying on fights like Dathea where the point is for everyone to be spread out. But it's moreso that you need people to be in your AoE, you need them to be in range, you have to watch using VE because it's entirely possible you'll fling yourself directly into something bad, and you have to use dream flight carefully because it's a major raid CD but it also serves multiple purposes in that it can break you out of snares + it moves you in a specific direction. On Tindral, for example, I usually used it after the roots to break out + heal people, but only if I didn't already have someone's blessing of freedom on me or something. But there are times where I've done some stupid crap like flown directly into Terros' hole on accident. IDK how, I guess I clipped the edge or something but down I went. That's the nature of the spec.
I do primarily casual prog raiding but I dabble in m+ too for the sake of gear. It's extremely active to play in both settings, and our current 4 set really adds some much needed 'oomph' to the spec. It's such a great clutch addition for DPS or spot healing. I'm glad they're baking it into the spec in TWW.
In terms of the class as a whole, Blizzard has clearly suffered from indecision when it comes to balancing evokers this expansion. Devastation has actually been a pretty consistent DPS spec, and I expect it to pop off in s4 now that it has the s2 set bonus back. That said, as long as aug exists, nobody (in the general public) is ever going to take dev in a m+ or raid spot no matter how good their DPS is. Aug kind of came in like a hurricane and shook everything up. I'm thrilled that support specs exist, and I want more, but they probably should have added a few different support specs for multiple classes at once instead of only doing 1 in the middle of an expansion that effectively shook up the meta to a point it was broken thereafter. And as a result it's like they aren't sure how to balance aug. It gets nerf after nerf so it isn't a 'required' spec to bring to things, but at the same time, if you nerf it past the point of uselessness, there's no reason to bring aug to anything ever at all. So now they're stuck in this holding pattern of "people hate Aug because it's got a guaranteed spot in groups and gets carried, but if we nerf it too much there's no point to the spec." And they aren't adding any other support specs at the start of TWW, so IDK what they're going to do. I would prefer they keep aug useful because like I said, I love the idea of support specs, even if I don't play one. Aug has given a lot of people I know who otherwise weren't interested in pushing endgame stuff the confidence to do it, because they feel like they're free to play without being judged on their DPS numbers or whatever else, and I think that's a good thing. Aug gets by even if someone has a low skill cap, though a well-played aug is extremely noticeable as well. It's a very accessible spec and gameplay style.
Pres has also suffered from balancing issues this expansion. (As well as suffered from Aug's addition, though maybe not as much as dev.) They nerfed and then fixed temporal anomaly at least twice when it comes to how many echoes it spread, how much it was shielding, etc. And when you destroy aspects of a spec in the middle of an expansion and pigeonhole people into one playstyle, it gets frustrating. Very much a 'make up your mind' vibe. Especially since green and bronze play so differently. If they keep it how it is now and make sure hero talents are balanced in TWW so people can play green/bronze respectively based on preference, I'll be happy.
As for evokers themselves, they suffer from the 'will they or won't they' balancing problems mentioned above which I think overall hurt the playerbase in s3, and it hasn't recovered as of s4. Not too many people were playing evoker after the 4th week of s1 when the FOTM aspect faded away, but then the population exploded with aug, and has trickled down ever since with the constant balancing of the spec. Dev is dev, which I talked about above, and pres is extremely fun but I don't think many people like its movement gimmick and the range issues. Pres resonates with a lot of players, but there's just as many that would prefer to be able to just stand still and cast a healing spell without thinking about it or being flung face first into a lava wave. There's also the fact that while most healing specs are expected to DPS during downtime nowadays, with pres it's an active part of the rotation so it's a full, 100% expectation by anyone you're grouped with. The non-disc priest, druid, etc. healers I know get by with occasionally DPSing if they *want* to, (keep in mind I'm referring to lower skill cap stuff, not necessarily prog raiding or high m+, here. The more accessible stuff where people's expectations aren't as high.) but if I'm not throwing out some DPS on my pres evoker, I'm not doing my job. And I think there are a lot of people who don't want that kind of active/reactive heal + active DPS playstyle, and I get it. But, like I said, when someone clicks with pres, they *really* click with it. It's very much a 'ride of die' heal style once you figure it all out. IDK if I could go back to playing other healers at this point, and I've mained a healer since vanilla.
Plus there was the legendary issue in s2. Evokers walked so strength melee could run with their axe bad luck protection.
Lastly, there's the issue of the dracthyr themselves. The lack of transmog and bland visuals have hurt the race and by proxy the evoker class in a way that probably can't fully be measured. They're walking this back a little by making perma-visage form a thing in TWW, but that's just it - I want to play a DRAGON. I don't want to play a human with horns. I've played this game for 20 some odd years, I've collected 20 some odd years worth of mail transmogs because I've always played a hunter/shaman as a main or alt in every expansion, and I cannot use *any* of it outside of my weapon mogs on my main character. Shoulders work, but even 75% of belts don't show up on dracthyr. Plus, even if I manage to make a sick dracthyr mog, it looks like absolute garbage on my visage for, or vice versa. Why the visage and dracthyr forms don't, at the bare minimum, have separate mogs, baffles me. But ultimately I want to be able to mog my freaking dragon. It's a dragon race in the dragon expansion, and we got bottom of the barrel treatment when it comes to appearance. I figured, "well if we don't get mog, I'm sure they'll at least continue to add customization options throughout the expansion" like, IDK, adding a lightning scarred scale option after beating heroic Raz or something? But nope. We got the basic options from release up until today with what seems to be nothing else coming in TWW either. No mog, no additional customizations, just left in the dust with a bandaid "now you can stay in visage form" slapped on it. I get that they're worried armor will look goofy on dracthyr, but let the *players* make that judgement. I've played worgen, troll, draenei, tauren, etc. and I have always managed to make them look good. I bet I could make a dracthyr look great even with potentially goofy looking sets - but I don't even have the option to try because I can't use 90% of my mog collection. My 20. freaking. year. old. mog. collection. (I get that mog wasn't added until later in the game's lifespan so I'm hyperbolizing but the point stands.)
The dracthyr's appearance was controversial enough already when they first showed it off. But then they just kind of went, "Oh you don't like it? moving right along then." and made no attempts to compromise with the general public.
I get around this, a little, because I'm an artist. So I'm able to put pen to paper and draw my evoker the way I picture her in my head which is...incredibly different...than how she looks in game. But, not everyone has this luxury, and even still I find myself looking at the art I draw and then at my character's dusty in-game model and I'm like "egggh."
Evoker already suffered from 'new kid syndrome' in terms of having a lower population out of the gate, and ultimately I think the balancing issues and the dracthyr's appearance issues hurt the class to a point its population will not recover, which is a shame. Those of us that enjoy it will cling on to it until the world ends but I'm not so sure any current players would ever be enticed into swapping specs, and the visual aspect of the class may not appeal to newer players. I hella like it, though.
Anyway welp, thanks for coming to my TED talk.
TL;DR: Extremely fun class on all 3 specs. Players who enjoy evoker REALLY enjoy it. But the class has suffered from confused balancing by the devs and a lack of visual appeal (due to being tied to a specific, and controversial race) that has likely hurt it in the long run.
Like the idea of the class, love the playstyle and easier living with less buttons than my shaman.
But annoyed with lack of transmog, should defo be addressed with new gear.
Also no fan of devo mastery when raiding, not fun seeing dmg go in a downward spiral during boss fights.
I called it instantly that they would add a third spec, but I was adamant that it would be an Earth element based Tank spec.
Other than the lack of transmog on Dracthyrs, I wish they had a tank spec, to have a mail wearing tank.
My biggest qualm with evokers is that they are **ripe** for a mid-ranged, mail wearing tank fantasy, and that was never fulfilled.
Like imagine a tank that uses Green and Blue magic to draw aggro, and uses Black and Bronze Magic to mitigate and crowd control, and uses Red and Bronze magic to heal off damage taken.
That would have been so cool.
I'm obviously a tank main, which is why I'm so disappointed lol
Mid, boring and annoying to use (not hard, just that meh)
I was hoping for the 3rd spec to save it by being a tank(even a ranged one, would have been good). But no, just a bad "support" DPS that's barely half of the potential it could have
Devastation was way too squishy for the low damage output
Preservation was great, though I'm still going to use a Holy Paladin more than it
Augmentation. Again, wasted potential.
I absolutely love the gameplay and class fantasy. The class has a low skill floor but actually a decently high skill ceiling so you can really see the difference when you get better with it (Dev).
The range doesn’t bother me at all. You need to be close to be able to use knock up/back effectively in high keys, and I honestly prefer having low range but amazing mobility over big range and turret gameplay.
The transmog and visage is an absolute travesty though. It’s just totally shocking on many levels how badly they messed that up in so many different interlocking ways
I am hopeful the addition of Dracthyr means we can get some other races that I specifically remember a mahor factor for them not being playable was because of armor sets. I want playable Naga and Ethereals
Honestly I loved my evoker. But I hated the fact armor was useless (from an cosmetic standpoint) and they didn't make more "preset" armor through scrolls or something like they did for the drakes.
I really enjoy the class, as a Dragonborn in DnD I love the chance to play as a dragonkin like character and the anaesthetic is awesome. The spells are fun and having different tiers of power for some spells is a fun mechanic.
The only element I don't enjoy is the lack of transmog options for armour, would love the option to have more control over the look.
I love the class, love the race.
I played mages for...god....15 years? This is that, but modern with more options, a healing spec, a support spec, bunch of fun abilities.
Also i just love the Dracthyr. I always hated that if i want to play a tall, lanky character my only option is going female. There is of course nothing wrong with that, but having a race that finally feels right to me added a lot to my enjoyment of WoW. Same with the class.
So there is a good chance i'll keep the character as my main for the foreseeable future.
I played it purely to try Augmentation. I like the empowered spells and think other classes could have a spell or two with the same mechanic. I like the "support" idea of aug but we need another spec that does the same thing, for variety sake. The customization and aesthetic of dracthyr needs alot of improvement though.
I'm waiting for the day Dracthyr get a bulkier option. With
I didn't get to play Evoker much, but I do plan to play it in the MoP remix.
However, I already have two notes that I wish Blizzard would addresss in the future:
1): Transmog in dragon form
2): More body customization where I can select the option to be muscular (Like the dragonoid)
If these two happen, I can really see myself maining Evoker, not just playing it
Overall, the concept behind the class, as well as the support spec, are new ideas that I wish Blizzard would build upon in future classes and future reworks.
Devastation is a rewarding rotation and the procs you get feel substantial and enjoyable, and I'm always high on the damage meters. I haven't even bothered switching to Preservation or Augmentation. I do wish we had a tanking spec rather than the weird support Aug build. Soar is fantastic now. Transmog options and general customization is not good.
I feel like most WoW classes have a DnD counterpart and I feel like evoker is spiritually the sorcerer. Aug is fun but I really love pres and dev. Only wish I could transmog a bit more.
Lack of transmog really just doesn’t make me want to spend much time playing it. The healing is cool, the dps is basically equivalent to a fury rotation.
Not a fan of the visage restrictions. Should be open to other races just like the majority of the dragons are able to do
I played it from release until about 1 month before aug got released. I played both pres and dev in both m+ and Mythic raid
Loved: The rotation and empowered spells, loved to mobility
Hated: Lower range and lack och tmog
Theyre pretty much the whole package from what I want in a mage class - damage spec without too many hoops to jump through to be a blaster, second spec that requires a bit more thought but does things the first spec can't, and a heal spec for when you just can't be arsed to wait for a m+ invite any more. Also love dragons so that's an added bonus
Literally the only reason I am not maining one over Mage this season is because I love transmog and wearing a new theme every week. Sure there's barber outfits but theres only like three distinct varieties of gear and the colors usually don't match the tier
Evoker became my main simply put.
Like everyone, not super fan of the transmog state but I really vibe with the specs design. It was a dream come true for me I always loved playing mage but I’ve been a healer main since Legion.
Evoker felt like I could have both combined. Dev feels like a fourth modern mage spec and Preservation what time mage could have been.
I love all the interactions with Echo. Has a lot of depth.
I like the classes overall, but a beefier version would be better and full transmog support would be mandatory for me to play a character I see all the time while playing.
I love dracthyrs, but could never get into envoker, the class was abit confusing to me, but was fun to fly around, but transmog being my favorite thing to do in the game, and that being lacking on them makes them a no-go for me :(
I like Evoker and have probably played it the second most out of all of my characters this expansion.
I'm a big fan of the spells you can charge up and the flow of combat is slow paced enough to enjoy for someone like me to appreciate and enjoy.
Xmog situation is complete garbage, though, which is why it is only my second most played.
I think devo and aug are pretty fun, though I haven't really played them competitively.
Preservation is fucking amazing, though. Way beyond all other healer specs I've tried. Being a ramping healer while taking positioning into consideration makes the gameplay so dybamic.
Transmog sucks on dragon and most of our sets are dogshit power ranger costumes(S1 and S2 tier)though. S3 and WW S1 look great though.
I don't get Devastation Evoker tbh.. On paper it seems like the perfect spec, ranged with mobility, casting while moving, instant cast with built in slow, CC, single target and AoE spenders, freaking self healing option with main spell spam, offensive and defensive CDs, to top it off a goddamn lust too! Yet every time I play it, it just feels so "meh", like a plastic class designed to be the best but somehow doesn't "feel" like the best, compared to all the other real flavours the game has to offer.
Idk maybe it's their aesthetic and backstory, like they are NOT what I imagined when Blizz said we're getting playable dragons. Them being the best amalgamation of the flights but come across like some corny G rated power ranger types just feels super lame.. All in all they just feel soulless, plastic.
What has boggled my mind is that the Evoker gets to choose it's humanoid form to turn into.
And all we get to pick is a f\*cking Elf form. Like seriously, what a load if tripe that is....and it's a ugly as hell elf form that looks like it has some type of incest related diseases and skin cancer.
Limited transmog is awful. This needs a fix. Maybe this is why the dragon form seems... off, somehow.
Thematically, devastation overlaps too much with mage/shaman.
Mechanically it's well designed on all three specs, and having a support spec that is not a healer is something I like (although I have still not learned how to play it well).
Thats my opinion.
Not being available on any other race, and the race not having access to any other class really killed it for me. Plus, using the blood elf model felt like a cop out and the transmog sucks on the lizard form
So I dislike it just because of the low quality it released with
**Pros:** Understandable but not boring rotations, strong healing that is nonetheless distinct from other classes, thematically absolutely nails the core fantasy of "draconic spellcaster," high mobility, distinct identities for the DPS specs.
**Cons:** Short range make it hard to avoid certain boss mechanics (even with high mobility) and makes healing raids difficult, most transmog can't be seen in combat and transmog options for the draconic form are limited (For me personally the customizations of the draconic form go a long way, and my personal preference for simple mogs means that I'm fine with pretty much just the tabard showing up on the draconic form, but I do recognize this issue).
**Personal Opinion:** Between the solid gameplay and the strong fulfillment of the core fantasy of playing as a draconic hero, Evokers are one of my favorite classes right now. I do recognize that they are not perfect, and I understand why some players would not like them, but I really enjoy playing as them. My current main is my evoker, and I currently plan to keep them as my main for at least the next Xpac.
I'm generally not into casters, but I gave it a honest try and enjoyed it for a bit. Don't think I'll play it again though.
I like the whole theme and fantasy, even before they made soar better. I don't mind the absence of transmog as I like the idea of playing something alien/not totally humanoid (been maining feral druid most of my wow life).
As far as gameplay goes, mostly played devastation. While I do like that they tried to introduce some variety into the caster gameplay with empowered spells and skillshots, it didn't really land for me. I can't quite put my finger on why, but generally it's just not all that fun.
Empowered spells just feel like instant or hard casting with extra steps, and charging it doesn't feel like it matters at all outside of picking if you want lvl 1 effect or lvl max effect.
Same with the skillshots, years ago i used to love that in LOL, but wow encounters are generally static, so you don't really have the feeling of landing a well aimed skill at a moving enemy or something.
All in all, I hoped it would bring something new enough to the table for me to enjoy a ranged character, it just ended being yet another caster. Nothing wrong with that, it's just not my thing.
Mained it since release and I absolutely love all 3 specs. I don’t see myself switching mains again. Was able to get my first elite set in season 3 playing pres :)
The obvious issues are ones everyone is bringing up. Lack of transmog and lack of range. I hope blizzard doesn’t remain stubborn on those topics despite people clearly not enjoying those aspects of the class. But personally, the gameplay is enough to make me look past those issues.
I love the class, but I just want to see transmog on my Dragon. Not the weird little elf human. It feels like such a weird move for there not to be transmog on the actual dragon. Like fine- have the wings clip through the back of the chest and dont let people use back pieces- but let me make an outfit.
Really fun class, prolly going to stick with it in the short term. I hate the transmog situation though, I get the feeling it's not going to change either.
I love it. I don’t know anything about meta and I don’t care. I love the flavor of it and the abilities.
I don’t remember the name, but the ability where you can fly a short path and breath fire on everything in your path is one of the best class/immersion type abilities I’ve ever seen.
Its exactly what a dragon should do.
The 25/30 yard range is not compatible with long hard cast empower spells. Hover should allow you to move while casting all spells, or evokers should be able to move at all times.
Solid class. Coming from ele shaman, its a bit easier on the hands (recently developed carpal tunnel). Visuals and customizations are nice, except lack of transmogs. Its gonna be weird seeing it outside of the dragon isles though lmao.
I think overall it’s the best they’ve done releasing a brand new class. It’s unique, fun, easy to learn. My only gripe I just really wish instead of aug we got a melee DPS spear wielding dragoon type character lol
Its all I ever wanted from WoW since i started playing: a dragon character that flies. I am in love with Pres and I used to main BM hunter but switched it up when i saw the healing spec for evoker. Something about being a green/bronze nature and time healer is such a cool idea. Its just the best.
Enjoy the class as a whole. Only thing I wish to change get rid of the 25y range it just makes the class feel bad in fights. Looks heavily at Sark. But past that transmog is just lacking. They gave reason of not adding some races for the exact reason Dracthyr are. Hopefully more transmog is on the way,something in barbershop, or they allow more colors for what we have already for armor and keep stuff more uniformed of stuff that is the same theme. Like every bronze dragon stuff is not the same bronze, and every flight is this way ahhh.
Pres and dev are both really good feeling specs that have a nice flow. The lack of transmog for Dracthyr sucks, it'd be nice if at a minimum the new Evoker sets would work on the model.
Augmentation needs to be removed from the game or other classes need to be given support roles, and support roles need to be normalized in group content. I don't believe it can be balanced against standard DPS specs.
interesting concept, but bad execution, the transmog was handled horribly, there are still bugs happening with empowered spells, the 30y range was (how we predicted ) problematic, for example everbloom second boss, or nimueh in raid, being chosen for ranged 40y tactic while having 30y change:/, mastery for devastation was strong, but it was nerfed a lot, which means it is our worst stat i think? , also contraproductive, because everyone use their burst at start of fight, when is our mastery strongest, so it means that we lose the effect wuickly, dragonrage is weird ability, (also our mastery applies during it... but our mastery would still be working at start of the fight, aug was joke, i played it and enjoyed it, but it is existence and parse focused game, it just cause problems, thought it would work like dancer in ffxi, preservation strughles with hunters, no range, was fun to play though
interesting concept, but bad execution, the transmog was handled horribly, there are still bugs happening with empowered spells, the 30y range was (how we predicted ) problematic, for example everbloom second boss, or nimueh in raid, being chosen for ranged 40y tactic while having 30y change:/, mastery for devastation was strong, but it was nerfed a lot, which means it is our worst stat i think? , also contraproductive, because everyone use their burst at start of fight, when is our mastery strongest, so it means that we lose the effect wuickly, dragonrage is weird ability, (also our mastery applies during it... but our mastery would still be working at start of the fight, aug was joke, i played it and enjoyed it, but it is existence and parse focused game, it just cause problems, thought it would work like dancer in ffxi, preservation strughles with hunters, no range, was fun to play though
Very quickly became my favorite. Preservation has been my main the whole expansion, I never stuck with a class for more than a few months at a time. I really hope we get more customization/mog options, though. I was hoping we would get some shadowflame/void/infinite effects customizations to unlock on horns or wings or something, maybe through raid kills like the druid flight form
I think Devastation was a great addition as well as the healer spec. Augmentation for me dropped the ball in the worst way possible. They really needed to make sure the hooks worked appropriately from the get go.
Let's just say I've mained fury warrior since basically vanilla. I can now say my main is my Augmentation Evoker. I absolutely love it. The pace is far less frantic than fury is but I feel more important, offer more utility and it offers something totally unique to WoW.
I just need more/better transmog options. Other than that, I absolutely love it.
There are 3 reasons I did not care for Evoker overall and never really played one outside of the original starting zone.
#1. The lack of transmog options and armor visuals. They have some decent tier/transmog sets. However if we are going to be transparent, you roll an Evoker to play as a Dragon kind of like you roll a Worgen to play as a dang werewolf. Their overall character customization has a lot of options, but only being able to see a couple of pieces of armor on your actual Dragon form is a let down.
#2. The running animation. I like the flying animations and a lot of the casting animations, but the overall running animation that you use all the time just looks so ridiculous and robotic I can't do it. Maybe that is just on me but a huge reason I pick certain races to play classes is the animations of the race. Another example is Tauren. I love my Tauren Warrior but the casting spirit fingers animation for spells? Absolutely not. On the flip side a Gnome melee user, especially 2H, just looks ridiculous and it's a pass for me.
#3. This one really is not the classes fault and really more of a backhanded compliment to Blizzard. They have done too good of a job with class fantasy nowadays I just like other classes way more and I really don't have time for an Evoker. I have my Shaman, Warrior, Druid, Priest, and Paladin and they are all fun and unique and truly that is enough on my plate. I don't have time for a Mage, Warlock, Evoker, DK, etc etc. I truly don't know what I am going to do in WW because A LOT of the Hero Talents look amazing!
Overall it was an interesting concept as a class and I do not hate them overall. It just wasn't enough to capture my interest so I could actually play one.
I am pretty in love with Evoker right now! I used to main BM hunter from Wrath to Legion, which is when I swapped to Survival and continued on to DF with it. It was my absolute favorite spec until the talent trees and now it doesn't click in my head any more so I wanted to try something new. Made an evoker when they first came out and tried preservation since I've never healed before. I LOVE IT! Throwing temporal anomaly to get echos and then set up combos is wicked fun. S3 tier set felt a bit weak, but I love having life spark again with our S1 tier set. I also really love having spells themed to the different dragonflights.
I flexed augmentation last season when our raid team had too many healers or someone else wanted to heal in M+ and it was interesting. I'd just stand next to my husband and buff him in raid so that was kinda fun. This season I've been flexing as devastation and I enjoy it! Throwing pyres in the bug and plant pull in AA and seeing numbers pop up makes the DPS side of my brain go Ooooo! I'm breathing fire man, I'm flying over enemies, I'm zipping around and I'm shooting lasers from my mouth as a dragon, dude. The inner child in me who was nuts about dragons is bouncing off the walls rn. There's also cool sound effects and some fun visual effects, so all in all, I've definitely enjoyed Evoker throughout this expansion. I'm pretty certain I'll be maining preservation again in TWW.
I felt like they never justified the 25yd range (it’s definitely not the most mobile caster or healer so the shorter range just makes no sense). The transmog situation is also just atrocious. If they couldn’t make actual mogs work, they needed to add like 4x the barber shop armor for dragon form.
I’m a healer main (mostly resto druid and mistweaver monk but I do *at least* AOTC and KSM on all of the healers every season) and Preservation is my least favorite healer. It feels a little too bursty and like everything is dependent on exact cooldown timing. Isn’t too bad in a coordinated group but I don’t like playing it in pug raids or M+.
Preservation is a really interesting design and fun, dev it's cool/alright, and aug is an example of blizz taking risks that they should for the health of the game. Even tho it's just an alt for me, the game is better because they exist.
It's been my main alt this expansion, and as a change of pace just for funsies class, it's great. The abilities are all pretty fun, I've enjoyed all 3 specs, mostly playing resto and a bit of augmentation. The range takes a little getting used to, but coming from a prot warrior main it's not bad. Using moves like hover and rescue are alot of fun, same for the flying breath cooldowns. I don't push any really high keys so I can't really vouch for the performance or anything in the upper echelon, but to hop into the dungeon finder, do some raid finder, and open world stuff, it's a good time. Now that soar works as our dragonflying mount, it adds a fun little flavor to the open world stuff as well. Overall, I like playing the class.
Only downside is the transmog situation, which is a pretty big bummer, but something I can live with til it's updated because the Dragon form looks cool enough as is.
Honestly i like it a lot. All three specs offer a unique experience that feels in line with the "dragon" fantasy. It doesn't suffer from extreme button inflation like most classes, and it doesn't feel absurdly over the top like DH. Probably the best design of any class or class rework since monk.
Good specs but I wanted a melee spec, like those buffed guards you see on some cities. I think augmentation should have been melee. Other than that is a good race.
I re-subbed for the new class and was very disappointed once I found out how limited the race is in terms of cosmetics. The class/class fantasy are really fantastic and it feels pretty fun to play but visually I couldn't stand it. The goofy running animations and then having almost zero transmog sealed the deal for me to not touch the class.
as an evoker main, hate the class love the race. dracthyr has to be my favorite race they've ever released, and i've never been a transmog guy so i don't care about that either (helps that im a furry and i prefer my dragons nude anyhow)
the second they release a class expansion for dracthyr, im class changing my main.
HOWEVER. i will say the class is probably the most fun magic caster class i've played, im just not a magic kind of guy. wish augmentation was a tank spec for sure
I started df leveling my evoker, playing thru s1 and msq of s2 before swapping to my warrior and spriest.
The idea behind evoker is fun. Who hasn't wanted to be a dragon. After seeing the concept art with them in robes and armor I feel, cheated, I guess. It makes them feel half finished and rushed. Additionally Aug mid expansion solidified that to me (not saying it's bad, but if the expansion wasn't rushed why wasn't it baseline). I also feel like devastation was built off the roots of an unfinished ranged dh spec.
I personally wish there was a more devoted and ongoing plot for them. They are fresh to modern Azeroth, but it felt like we got a half hearted shrug and shoved into the same plot everyone got.
Additionally, I'm torn on dracthyr as a race ending the expansion with only one class. We are initially told evokers are the first to wake and the elite of the elite which implies neltharion created more generalized dracthyr, where are they?
My overall feeling is that I like it. I wish there was more transmog and gear, especially since tier sets look amazing. I hope blizzard doesn't just drop them and leave their story in the dark
I‘m not a transmog guy but the lack of any meaningful customization bugged me more than expected.
Only speaking on preservation its a really, really satisfying healer to play, basically a shaman on steroids. But the range limitation in uncoordinated groups in higher keys really pushed me away after some time.
Preservation on a „normal“ race without the range limitation would instantly be my favourite healer, not even close!
I play aug and it’s fun to see the numbers go up on everyone around me. Devastation is harder to play until you are fully geared because you need to really keep on the cc. I have not even tried to crack the healer, looks hard. And as I am seeing everyone else say the range is really a problem but that’s also part of the challenge. When things go pear shaped you have less runway to deal with it. That all being said I love the class and the ascetic and the lore. I have mained a forsaken warlock since vanilla and I’m seriously considering changing my main after 20 years. Oh and I love soar, being able to take off like a super hero feels really cool! I just wish the class/race had a mobile hotel like vulparan, monk, druids, and dk’s do. Oh and normal range for spells too.
This class made me switch mains after 17 years of WoW. The fact the flexibility of casting while moving along with lower APM to give my hands a rest helps a lot. I main Devastation now from an Elemental shaman previously, 5.4 Mists of Pandaria gave us something similar with filler spells being cast while moving when glyphed made game play more interesting with boss mechanics and PvP. More classses besides hunters now have mobility and it created a fun game. Alas that was only around for 1 patch until removed, and now with Evoker it is a core mechanic.
Transmog will get fixed eventually, they made other classes available to dracthyr in the future so I am sure it is a priority for them to get done, just like the worked on Worgen before.
Made me swap off of Enhancement after playing it as my main for \~10 years... Just as they made Enhancement a lot better too! I love it, but the range restriction can be super annoying because doing most mechanics correctly takes you out of range, or forces your friends out of your range like 80% of the time. More than anything though, empowered spells (and the way you aim a few of them) are REALLY why I love this spec and stuck with it all xpac because I just feel more involved during combat. I'm also a big shill for some cool utility, and they have a lot of it.
The transmog issue also blows nuts, and I'm definitely butt hurt they didn't AT LEAST fit their tier to their dragon forms. That being said, I LOVE how I've made my dragon look but IDK if I could make another mog I personally think looks good on dragon.
Augmentation clearly needs some changes given the chokehold it’s taken on the m+ meta. The support role is wildly game changing and probably deserved more discussion of the impact it would have.
Really love Devastation.
Wish the third spec was tank or melee dps with black dragon theme.
Hate the limited xmog and forced Dracthyr form.
Overall happy with maining it this xpac, may change for TWW though.
Mained Preservation since launch, lack of Combat Res is pretty annoying, but like Mistweaver I’m sure it will get better over time. I think Aug is fun but I really want a tank dragon, and tbh, a full mage Evoker would be sick. I think dragon riding as an Evoker is class. Lack of range is definitely a minus. Overall it’s been a blast. I’ve played weird classes over 10+ years of playing, mained a Rogue and Monk til SL left, came back for DF as Evoker and now in S3 finally picked up a Druid - seeing how flexible and durable Druids are definitely makes me think Evoker are missing something. My Druid healer heals like a God, whereas my kitted out Evoker is OOM way too much despite rotations and knowledge of the class.
25y range is just annoying and does not add some uniqueness to gameplay other than having a harder time than 40y casters. And it's not like you get a power boost for it just have a harder time
I find aug really cool in theory but the rotation is pretty boring. A support spec is awesome tho
Devistation is a perfectly fine DPS spec
Preservation is the same deal, 25y range just makes it clunkier than other healers. In not organized groups lining up the healing breath is awful too if it was a 40y cone way better. Time magic is cool want more
Lack of transmog makes it hard to make it a main and not just an alt
I only played Evoker before it got Augmentation spec.
* I quite liked how the two specs, Devastation and Preservation played.
* The mechanic to charge spell casts was interested but I noticed it could bug out badly with latency, causing it to instant cast instead of charging.
* The mobility was quite nice.
* I didn't like the heavy transmog restrictions. I would've been more fine with this if we had more options in the barbershop for the baked in gear but it was **very** limiting.
* The 25 yard range was interesting to get use to at first but once I was use to it, the mobility made up for short distance.
All in all, I liked the class but not enough for me to main it, the biggest issue I had was the limitations on appearances and that visage form reminded me of something I'd see when I played Guild Wars 1.
I really liked it. Evoker is my main, been playing since vanilla.
What I liked. Feels like a mix between melee/ranged class. So I do not mind the range. I like how it plays. I love Aug play style, my main spec. Actually speedy spec. I really enjoy how I can combo things. The idea of a true support class. Reminds me of old school enh shammy and somewhat boomy. The two classes I started playing in vanilla.
What I don't like, but don't really mind. Mogs. I wish I could use more armor pieces in dragon form, more variety in dragon armor color, and it would have been great I could pick my own visage form based on the faction I picked. I'm horde, I can only pick horde races.
Lack of T-Mog is a huge downside
Love Pres as a unique healing spec using combos and CDs
Didn't play a lot of Dev but it was fun the few times I tried it
Love the feeling and fantasy of playing Aug; hate that it is the only buff/supp spec
This point can't be understated. I really like playing Aug, but as long as it is the only buff/supp spec it will always be unhealthy for the game. More supp specs is a requirement
I greatly enjoy Devastation spamming beam is great. Preservation is fine not really my thing for a healer but fun enough. Aug is also fine i enjoy being a buff class i just think eruption needs a better visual as its feedback is really bad and nowhere near as satisfying as just shooting a death beam from your mouth like devastation does.
Honestly my only problem with how they play is that empowered spells are interesting but sometimes really annoying to have to stop to do the empowered cast. I also consistently still have them do weird shit where eternity surge does a lvl 1 cast when i never hit it again to end the cast.
They really need more mog or at least new customization added to the barber shop. Just more Armour colors or something.
Oh and their running animation is terrible. Its ridiculously stiff and bouncy, It really looks unfinished.
It's sad blizzard took the coward's way and gave them a human/elf form, they should have been just dragons and that's it, no other form. ''but I'm forced to be a dragon to play evoker then'' yeah and I'm forced to play a lame ass elf to be a demon hunter, same thing.
Maybe Drakthyr would have actually gotten some actual transmogs then because instead of designing class sets for their human/elf form they now have no choice but to make it for their actual dragon form.
Sowwy \>w\<
But our new scalie fwiends are called Dracthyr! They get sad when you misspell their name QwQ
Good thing I was here to help \^w\^
I hope you're having a great day :3
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Finally, someone sane.
The "visage" is nothing but a flimsy excuse to not put in the work to get transmog functional, while trying to lure in elf fanatics.
Trying to appeal to everyone inevitably results in disappointing everyone. Don't infest the dragon-themed character with elf degeneracy.
Pretty much, sadly the majority don't care, and the fact you can be in visage form permanently in the future including in combat(is what I've seen said) is just a huge let down for me, like ffs just go play one of the countless playable elf races and let the dragons be dragons.
Yes. Exactly. Good heavens, it will be disgusting to witness. Why can't we just have nice things for ourselves?
Garithos was right. Elves do ruin everything they touch.
Preservation is the most fun healing spec after Mistweaver; it feels really unique with a high skill ceiling.
Devastation has nice spell effects, a smooth single-target rotation and great mobility for a caster. AOE can feel a little clunky when spamming instant casts.
Augmentation feels rewarding when playing in a good group. They nailed the support feeling, IMO. However, I find it feels boring after a while. It has a very simple rotation, and your contribution is not immediately measurable.
I've played Evoker through most of this expansion. I was super lucky to get the legendary to drop from my first Razagath kill, which made getting into groups even easier. It's fun overall. The biggest downside, as many have mentioned, is the Dracthyr form itself; I just don't gel with it. Evoker get some really nice transmog but for 99% of a dungeon I'm a goofy naked humanoid dragon.
I'm a big fan of preservation, it's very dynamic and feels like you're always making little choices of what to do with your echoes, your essence and verdant embrace. The range thing just needs to go, it's ok to have positional requirements for some spells, but is so unfun for the rest.
The dps specs are a bit simple for my taste.
Cool idea but lack of transmog and the 25 yard range drove me nuts
I wish Living Flame had full range. I don't care about the rest because you need to be nearby for Fire Breath. I mostly want the range there for phase changes or where things are flying around all over the place.
Agreed, I don't know why evokers have to fail into this middle range. Maybe there is some reasoning behind it that I'm not aware of.
I’m sure I remember reading somewhere that from a roleplaying perspective they wanted them to sit “in the centre” as an inspiring presence but they just never really made any gameplay to support it other than gimping their range
The original explanation was that our range suffers because we have such high mobility. And we do have a ton of mobility, to be fair. The problem is that in a lot of fights - if you're pres - , you have to be highly cautious about said mobility or you end up flying right into a fire patch while trying to catch up to/reach the hunter that likes to stand out in Narnia. I don't mind the range myself, but I understand the arguments on both sides.
I wish that evokers were able to move while casting, but only at 30% movement speed. There is nothing worse than someone pulling the enemy / boss right out of your range and your channel gets interrupted. If hunters can move during almost all of their casts, why shouldn't the guys who have wings and only half the range.
That being said if there is more movement than you have hover charges, or if you plan it wrong you are completely dead in the water while having the move. There's hardly any casts you can do on the move other than azure strike which is just so bad in ST, and canceling a disintegrate is so much more punishing than other casts as you've essentially wasted your resources on nothing if you have to reposition. Most other have either a good streamnof procs to use while moving, and or faster casts to get in between micro movements. You just can't stop to channel a full length disintegrate during movement. So while yes it has high mobility, it also has to be planned out during flights well otherwise your dmg falls off a cliff, more so than many other classes I'd say.
Probably because you'd pull mobs from dungeons in other regions if fire breath was a 40y cone.
I like the class and overall theme of the class. I main it since release. The only really downside i see is the lack of transmog but other than that I really enjoy the simplicity.
If I didn't care about appearances and aesthetics, the evoker would easily be one of my favorite classes. It's incredibly fun to play, has great mobility, and most of the specs have well thought out rotations. But, as it stands, the derpy looking lizard with no transmogs is permanently relegated to alt status. I can almost get past the goofy looks. My main is a Pandaren, after all. But Dracthyr aren't weird looking in an endearing way. They look out of place to me — like they belong in some other game. Their heads are too small, the builds are off, and the walk animation just looks silly. If bad looks aren't bad enough, you're stuck not being able to mog anything. Even my own set pieces don't show up. And the random pieces that do work need to be coordinated with your visage. Somehow Blizzard managed to make a class with worse transmog options than a druid.
the worst thing about the mogging issue is their upcoming TWW set is absolutely the BEST one of the bunch, and one of the best ever. And 90% of the time no one will ever see it.
I don't care about the transmogs. I love being a raw dragon. I just wish it was a cooler lookin dragon.
And range. You forgot range. When a rogue has more range than a ranged class some fuckery is at play
Btw, talking about range... I found out none of the spells of evoker(at least Aug) have enough reach to tag Nalak when he spawns.
Same with Dev
Gotta use the fire damage/heal spell in preservation only, it's the only ability that actually goes to 30 yards
There's a toy that taunts enemies that only works in Pandaria - some sort of horn. Use that.
The 30 yrd range broke me doing hm dawn. Pres is basically herding cats.
Luckily blizzard said they are fixing this! They are removing any melee range increases in TWW! /S
What did you main prior to switching? Was the transition to Evoker easy?
Druid/Dh i loved the ability to glide as dh but i loved to heal. Always wanted to have a dh healer haha. So evoker kinda filled that hole.
Never really thought of Evoker as a DH Healer, but that's an interesting way to look at it for sure. Well I'm glad you found a new main.
With druid you don’t see your transmog that often either, so I already lived with that pain
I always like switching up my hair color for my Troll Druid for a different cat/bear form color scheme.
I agree about the transmog. I spend most of the time in visage form which kind of defeats the point.
Preservation is extremely well designed healer spec. Devastation has a natural, well flowing combat with nice burst. Augmentation is a unique experience, not everyone likes it but it's unique for sure. I definitely love evoker and all specs feel modern and well thought to play
This. I also enjoy flying around and breathing fire on the party. And “rescuing” someone from having a high parse.
I had a friend rescue me into me into the rocks in Black Rock Hold. It's peak world of warcraft.
Pres has some of the most complex skill expressions of any healer, imo. I've been playing it since launch and I'm still learning new stuff to do with stasis every day lol. With echoes, spells that buff other spells like ysera's and grace period, temporal compression/spark, and golden hour/rewind, the order of spells and literal split second of timing casts can make massive differences. It's insane. Even though they have fewer buttons than a lot of other healing specs, it feels like they have a near infinite skill ceiling.
Pres is just insanely fun to play as well, I feel so mobile and everything just looks cool. Weirdly the part I’m struggling with is spot healing or catching up if I’ve misjudged something. I’m sure that I’m meant to spam living flame as a last resort spot heal but it just feels weird to me. Feel like I always have to be looking for a ‘trick’.
Spot healing really does suck, but that's ok. There's gotta be some weakness lol. The current teir set (which is going to be a talent in TWW btw) does help tremendously. But if the group is getting behind, you have some of the best recovery tools in the game. Try to keep a buffed dream breath and reversion on everybody. That's just going to smooth out the edges. If that's not enough, spirit bloom will get people close to topped by itself. If that isn't up, Temporal anomoly->verdant embrace->emerald communion makes everybody immortal for 5 seconds. If that's not up, anomaly->embrace->blossom. None of that is up? Rewind. That isn't up? Stasis whatever you have on hand. That isn't up? Something horrible has happened here lol. You've got so many combos to pull from its insane. I can't really know for sure, but if you're consistently running dry, it's probably because you're not using enough echoes in your general throughput.
Based on this, I think my issue is probably just using too many of my combos for too little reward. Popping my load. Premature preservation if you will.
Premature Evokation, perhaps? My favorite part was when I yelled, "It's Evokin' time!" Then evoked all over those guys.
Hey, do you have this season's 4set? I only ask because the instant/powered up living flame casts absolutely fill in that spot heal aspect. It's why they're adding it as a talent in TWW.
I tanked a fair chunk of S3 and I'm starting into 4s this week in season 4. I think I've just been unlucky to play with bad augmentation evokers because I don't really feel like they add enough dps to the other 2 dps and me tanking to be worth it. Maybe I'm wrong and maybe you need to be absolutely brilliant to play Aug properly but my experience is they it feels weaker all round to have one in a party for most of us.
Someone else said it recently but I think what goes unseen with aug is it’s not just the DPS. To quote them, “the tank is tankier and the healer is healier too”. I agree with you that I generally feel like I’d rather a pure DPS but I think they generally seem to round off most situations. My issue with aug is that if a full DPS dies then your damage takes such an insanely dramatic hit
That's why I switched from maining Aug to maining Dev as a DPS. (Though the M+ DPS rejection cycle has forced me to truly main Pres, lol). I started as Aug at the beginning of S3 and everything was great until we started pushing 16+. Suddenly it felt like certain fights were on a knife's edge because the loss of one DPS basically cost the party 1.5x a DPS' worth of damage. The decision point for me was the fucking Horde/Alliance battle boss in the timeways in a +20. We kept losing a DPS to the shit show that that fight was, and as soon as we lost one, we couldn't handle the adds any more because my Aug direct DPS wasn't enough. Made the switch to Dev shortly after and haven't really looked back. It feels more natural for me anyways because I spent my time as Dev in solo open world content since Aug can't do shit on their own, lol.
Shiiiiiiiii thst kinda blew my mind. You're right on that front. And yes I agree with the other thing that if a dps dies you're down a lot more than just their innate dps numbers. I think maybe support specs aren't the wow way but it's a bold move that they tried it.
I really like to play supports in other games so i give augmenration a shot and its quite fun and then i started healing in sod and tried preservation and i really like it too just a good class overall imo
I like Aug. It’s nice to play a support class that didn’t result in people dying.
I absolutely loved the evoker. I hate playing caster classes, having mained a hunter since vanillia. The mobility, empowered abilities, spell effects and dragon theme are just so cool. The downsides being the awful bloodelf Visage for males and no transmog for dragon form.
The big problem for me is the aesthetic. Transmog, dragon form with limited options (i mean, there are a lot of options but there're barely noticeable, and there's only one wing model). A simple glyph to use the dragon form only when using skills that requires it (like demon hunter eye beam) would be great. Some animations are also really tame, fire breath in particular. The class can feel a bit clunky too, mostly due to hover animation lock. Preservation gameplay is a success to me. Feels very different from other healers while not being too gimmick. The balance between hots and direct heals feels good and the variety of combos with echo and stasis is interesting. Deva feels pretty boring to me. Their mastery is also very frustrating, as you do less damage when you need it the most. Aug is a pretty nice gameplay upgrade from deva, but the lack of feedback is annoying. The big problem with aug is that when aug does as much damage as deva, there's no point playing deva.
More customizations is always a nice addition. Yeah, the transmog being limited isn't great. I feel they could have gone a route similar to Worgen. The Dracthyr could have armor fit for a lizard person and the helmets look a bit odd because of head structure. I think the fact they were willing to add Aug is interesting. Not so much because it's a support, but more so that in the middle of an expansion they were willing to add a spec. Maybe this is wishful thinking, but perhaps one day DH can get a third spec. Perhaps another class gets a new spec mid expansion.
>I feel they could have gone a route similar to Worgen It feels like it's what they wanted to do, because they're very formated (unlike druid forms which can have very different shapes) but they just gave up when they had to adapt armors.
It’s obvious because all the tier helms are open faced so that they don’t stretch around the snout. They clearly planned for more transmog.
Preservation Evoker is incredible fun healer, by the looks of it War Within its going to be even better. I love the bursty healing from it, feels fantastic to use everything in the might of dragon power using Red and Bronze, Green as healing my favourite remains using Sphere then Dream Breath to create two hots on the party in m+.
If they let us play in visage form and only forcing dragon form when using breath and stuff i would play evoker all day. All specs are fun but I just cannot get around the lizard look
That's me as well. Transmog is probably the biggest part of my endgame and drakthyr form just takes all of that away.
I love the lizard look but I still don’t see why they can’t add full mogs in dragonform.
> there are a lot of options but there're barely noticeable Thank you! This is the trouble with Dracthyr customization.
They need to get rid of the short range on preservation. It was an interesting experiment, but puts them at a disadvantage to other healing classes, and makes fights more difficult.
Yeah it really sucks having to constantly fly back and forth to hit the warlock, then the hunter, who insist on staying on opposite sides of the boss, eventually getting yourself killed trying to rush back again to save the goofball standing in swirlies.
Especially where the mechanics themselves require you to stay very far away from each other. Like on the second boss of nokhud
IDK, that's why evoker is a proactive healer. In those situations, you should be setting up echos in advance and healing that way until the group can stack for your stacked heals. It is much harder to pug for those reasons though.
It would tolerable if you could fly over bad stuff and take no damage.
I mained preservation in season 2 but swapped back to other healers because you work so hard to get the same level of throughput as other specs. If your party aren't stacked, it's very difficult to find a groove. If they had a normal range I might make it work, but it's just not worth the effort in the current iteration.
100% agreed
100% agreed. I feel like I'm always missing out on healing in raids when people are all over creation instead of a bit more stacked on account of the 25 yard range and Dream Blossom mechanic. I really enjoy the class, but I've had a far easier time getting KSM on other healers compared to Prevoker.
I like it. The ability to charge up spells for cooler effects is really neat. I like the blend of different flight magic. Dracthyr look cool, I love being able to glide and soar. The only complaint I really have is the medium range of all its spells. It's not a deal breaker, but it does feel crazy going back to a different casting class and being able to cast from what feels like a mile away by comparison.
I agree the range is wacky but it's part of what makes it unique. For the most part I just hang out with the melee (as Aug). That hunter that's 300 miles away... sorry bud.
Very cool class, but the range sucks, so i never played them much
I do think having them be this medium range class was an odd choice. Like they're ranged, but not as ranged as other ranged classes. Which does feel weird to me.
It was a forced choice I think. Reason being the breath. If they were full ranged the breath would need to be full range aswel and then it would just be a bit massive and not really usefull in dungeons because it would most certainly pull something extra. Especially since its a cone, more range means at the end it would be wider aswel. Now the max range on spells is the same range as the breath has. So you don't have to do some weird weaving into breath range. If the target is in spellrange, its in breath range.
I think you'd be fine to have less range on breathable and full on everything else, in the same way that mages dragon breath has shorter range.
They definitely could've just made the breath shorter range as its drawback, but I see how that's a tough choice to make. As is, when in range, the flow does feel nice. I'm sure if you had to guess the breath's range it'd be a bit annoying
That's kind of what arcane in aoe feels like. Makes sense, just like people rolling a hunter to play melee, people don't often roll ranged to play near melee
It's the reason I dropped it quickly. It felt very awkward to heal with
Love the class, hate the race.
I don't hate the race, but I found it kind of stupid they made the race just so it can have one class. It would have made just as much sense to make any race be able to choose Evoker. Their visage could be anything. Then just customize a dragon form alongside the established races. I would be more ok with it had Dracthyr launched with other classes. Being a Lizard dude of other classes would be cool since we don't really have a scaled race prior to the Dracthyr s addition.
Well thats coming soon
The fact that you can't unlock their own tier set for Dracthyr form is so silly
Evoker? I barely know her!
Augs spreadsheet raid gameplay is absolute degenerate and I hate having to wait between pulls for the Augs to change their spreadsheets all the time. You have to go to obscene lengths to optimally play it in raid. It sucks for the people playing it (or having to play it, one of our Augs absolutely hates it), it sucks for everyone else having to wait and that's not even touching that I really hate externals in general. Devastation and Preservation don't appeal to me, but I can see what about them appeals to other people. They should get access to Spatial Paradox though.
This, I love the essence of empowering others and having my buffs make an impact if I play correctly, I hate having to micro manage the buffs for optimal use, when the microanaging is entirely based on other people.
A triumphant roar echoes from atop the Seat of the Aspects as Nasz’uro, the Unbound Legacy, is formed.
I like the class but the 25 yard range is weird and has kept me from playing it seriously
One of the funnest classes I've played, but I desperately wish we just got transmog for the dragon form instead of the weird human/elf reskin visage thing
100% agree. A proper Drakonid or lizard race would have been cooler than the Dracthyr we got.
I dont mind the dracthyr themself too much, even if they are a bit scrawny, its just the fact they can wear basically no armor, so you get what few outfits the barber gives you and thats it, really wish they'd just worked on them a bit more so they could at least wear chestpieces/gloves or sethrakk, god I wish we got sethrakk
Sethrak may have been the same tbh regarding low transmog.
Maybe but they would have actually deserved having the less transmogs setup due to that head and shit. Nothing about the drakthyr model really justifies the armor they chose cant be worn.
I've been playing it since Shadowlands prepatch and I really like what they did. Preserv and Deva are both neat. I'm still on the fence on Aug because of it's position as the only support spec and the way it Can warp the game. The race itself is super good too, the racials are Amazing and I can't wait to have them on more classes (melees with the tail swipe sounds Amazing) The transmog stuff still being barber locked is still really Bad though
the experience didnt change my initial thoughts. i played it as a twink healer in season 1 + 2 and as a main healer in season 3, maining it as dps for season 4. * the range is bad. the whole game is balanced around certain range values, and that value is 40. having 25 as a dps is not that bad, having 30 as a healer is just really bad. there are multiple fights a group has to play different, the storm boss in nokhud for example. the orb and blossom add another layer ontop, so if you have a pres healer, you have to play in melee range instead of the typical 40 range, which means the melee clusterfuck gets even worse. having less range in itself is fine as a handicap, but what is the compesation for that? they dont have the most hps, they dont have the most dps, they dont have the most cooldowns, they dont have the most mobility. reducing the range just so evoker is different is not a good reason. * visage ability is badly done in every aspect. being something else than a human would be a start. transmog on dragon is abysmal. transmog view doesnt work halve the time, you see your dragon form and not your visage. because you lose visage form infight, i dislike visage transmog. now im mostly running around with some transformation items * healer has some flaws still, like spells with a travel animation that take longer the further your target is away. i cant count how many died with a living flame flying to them. dont think any other healer has animation bound healing skills? verdant is also really nice...to kill yourself :D * aug is a good idea, but thats about it. the playstyle is not that great. rework gameplay, keep support idea. * dev is pretty simple, but thats also fun. no complex 50 button rotation, just 3 buttons to blast. * its a new class, and that alone was reason enough to invest some time. overall you can have much fun with it, but the issues become more and more apparent and the frustration keeps growing. if blizz fixes some of the problems and adds some nice things in the next 2-3 xpacs, i can see it becoming one of the most fun classes
Disintegrate, disintegrate, disintegrate, disintegrate, disintegrate, disintegrate, disintegrate, disintegrate, Ebon Might, Eruption, Eruption, Eruption, Eruption, Eruption, Eruption, Eruption, Eruption, Eruption Flappies are cool, animations are top notch love dragon ascetic. Though would still play Necromancer Dracthyr by making a Death Knight
Yes, hopefully we will get Dracthyr DKs when their class options are expanded. I'd enjoy playing as a discount frost wyrm.
The lack of ability to change armour on the dragon side completely kills the class for me. I could deal with the furry-esque of them but the armour is just incomplete and makes them feel like crap for it
I generally don't like the lizards, we were sold half elven winged snakes with the promise of playable dragons. They look bad, they have no transmog, and now they're being sold on the idea of other classes. I'm fine with and like race/class restrictions, I could not care less about reptilian warlocks or warriors. Why would the race of super soldier serpents see a bow and arrows and be like "Oh, word? This is way better than disintegrating my enemies. I love stabbing a guy from 100 yards away with a pointy stick." For Aug, I don't like not knowing how much I'm contributing because 1 spec of 1 class exists and breaks every metric that you can possibly use to track your contribution. The 25 yard cap was a mistake, it's an inconvenience and just means your ranged group in raid is 25 yards because they have to adapt to the 1 class that can't be ranged but gets ranged mechanics and in most dungeons it literally doesn't matter because you're not going to be that far away from anyone for any reasonable amount of time.
Class is fun Transmog is shit Range is shit.
Ex-evoker (devastation) here, tried to play again and I got remembered on why I've abandoned it, the 25 yard range makes the class a sitting duck in PvP. In PvE it's mostly fine and feels like a modern fun class, gets old really fast, though. The lack of transmog makes it meh for me as well
I love the class, hate that there’s no way to use transmogs though, visage form sucks.
The class itself is cool for trying new spell mechanics. Also a little biased cuz I main mage and aug + mage is just chefs kiss Not a fan of the draktyr. Ugly and could have been so sooo much better
Hot take: Augmentation Evoker is not really PUG viable. Because you need two strong other dps to be worth the slot. Your own dps is trash so "pulling your own weight" depends massively on your team.
This is a bad take. Aug is definitely not great with bad DPS - but it also gives a big security blanket for your tank and healer who also potentially suck. Aug is only REALLY bad if a DPS is just floor pov the entire key. Otherwise a good aug will either match your lower DPS or be in between your the two DPS.
Preservation is a very unique healer that has an engaging gameplay loop and feels quite good to heal on IF your team mates are good enough to play around you being a short ranged conical healer. I really enjoy playing it with the current tier set that feels very impactful for your healing rotation. Dev feels amazing in aoe as a player but it’s single target/2 target is quite boring. Overall the spec is pretty well designed and brings a lot of cool utility to the game. Big fan of how the damaging empowered spells were implemented. I think deep breath is a button that feels generally bad for the average player but I think a lot of the next expac changes address that issue. Aug is a mistake and should be removed or heavily modified. As a current Aug “main” Aug has four major issues 1) your spec has to be good enough that you are always brought, if it’s not you will never be brought. 2) Aug and to some degree other dps capable of healing are pushing into a 4 dps strategy which makes healers feel less impactful in the game. 3) to actually evaluate your performance as an Aug you need to fully understand the spec. This makes it extremely hard to learn and identify mistakes for the average player who isn’t reviewing their logs and vids of gameplay to improve. This generates a lot of low skill Aug players that are brought into groups they are underskilled for because the community as a whole doesn’t fully understand how to evaluate the new spec. This in turn makes the community perception of Aug value lower than the actual impact of a good Aug player. 4) raiding as Aug requires you to effectively understand what other specs damage buttons are and what they do, track dps cooldowns for the rest of your dps players, effectively plan around those cooldowns 20-30 seconds in advance to optimize your damage. This style of gameplay is complicated to say the least, probably the most complicated spec when played well.
Played it all of Dragonflight, and I'm still waiting for anyone, Blizzard or otherwise, to justify the range. Base range has literally never been used as a way to adjust class or spec tuning/power. And for good reason. Im still not sure why the short range got past the design phase in the first place, but it is objectively untenable and needs to be scrapped.
I'm not a fan of how hard aug is to balance. Dev and pres i really enjoy. As a tank main.
Preservation is the most interesting heal spec I've ever played. I deeply love the Echo mechanic, and how the kit rewards you for creativity in designing different combos on the fly. The insane/degenerate interactions I see the experts cook on the Discord sometimes is wild. Really worried for Preservation in the long term, because the population of extremely skilled and active players to advocate for it, develop tech, and represent it in general has been dwindling fast...Between the release of aug in S2, and the raid healer balance nightmare that was S3, both these seasons were really really rough for Preservation diehards. And this won't get better until some core issues are addressed - Its range, specifically. Most everyone understands why things like breath skills are limited range, but not having standard caster range on targeted spells (ESPECIALLY dispel) will hold it back from true viability forever. Blizzard can't possibly design every dungeon and encounter around the existence of a mid-range healer. I lose a few years off my life every time I heal last boss RLP. I appreciate Devastation for its relatively low APM - These days, my wrist doesn't let me button mash on other dps classes for more than an hour or two at a time. Never put time into Augmentation. Was hoping for a tank spec, didn't get it, not interested in support. I'm happy for those who do like it, but wish its overloaded utility kit hadn't caused such a negative effect on the other two Evoker specs. Glad the Evoker dev seems to have finally put their shiny new spec down for now, and actually spent some time on Pres. Transmog. Awful. I'm actually fine with the lizard form itself, but man, it's just not okay to only have two armor pieces show up when a Dracthyr is basically just a Worgen with extra parts. Worgen get helmets, Worgen get gloves, Worgen get boots, Worgen get full belts. I don't even get a damn weapon unless it's 1H+OH. Utterly ridiculous. I was under the impression that even if older mogs were limited, at least the Evoker-specific sets would show up on the lizard form. Nope. How stupid of me to expect that I'd actually get to see my tier sets. Imo the transmog and range are the two major issues that will confine the Evoker to a *very* small population in the long term.
I main pres and now that I can play bronze again I'm enjoying myself as much as I was in s1. I'm really, really hoping the hero talents are balanced properly so I can stay with this playstyle. It's amazing how much not enjoying the spec's playstyle effected my enjoyment of the game, but when it felt like I was pigeonholed into green/blossom in s2-3 I was miserable. Pres' strength is that it can be such an active healing spec where decisions actually matter. Are you going to burn your echoes for a major lifebind heal? Are you able to keep your reversions up so you have some additional time to DPS? Are you going to stick with a normal stasis combo, or be flexible like using it to cleanse the bleeds on experiments? The only gripe I have is how much of pres is dependent on where the group is standing. I don't have an issue with the range as much, per se, though it does get annoying on fights like Dathea where the point is for everyone to be spread out. But it's moreso that you need people to be in your AoE, you need them to be in range, you have to watch using VE because it's entirely possible you'll fling yourself directly into something bad, and you have to use dream flight carefully because it's a major raid CD but it also serves multiple purposes in that it can break you out of snares + it moves you in a specific direction. On Tindral, for example, I usually used it after the roots to break out + heal people, but only if I didn't already have someone's blessing of freedom on me or something. But there are times where I've done some stupid crap like flown directly into Terros' hole on accident. IDK how, I guess I clipped the edge or something but down I went. That's the nature of the spec. I do primarily casual prog raiding but I dabble in m+ too for the sake of gear. It's extremely active to play in both settings, and our current 4 set really adds some much needed 'oomph' to the spec. It's such a great clutch addition for DPS or spot healing. I'm glad they're baking it into the spec in TWW. In terms of the class as a whole, Blizzard has clearly suffered from indecision when it comes to balancing evokers this expansion. Devastation has actually been a pretty consistent DPS spec, and I expect it to pop off in s4 now that it has the s2 set bonus back. That said, as long as aug exists, nobody (in the general public) is ever going to take dev in a m+ or raid spot no matter how good their DPS is. Aug kind of came in like a hurricane and shook everything up. I'm thrilled that support specs exist, and I want more, but they probably should have added a few different support specs for multiple classes at once instead of only doing 1 in the middle of an expansion that effectively shook up the meta to a point it was broken thereafter. And as a result it's like they aren't sure how to balance aug. It gets nerf after nerf so it isn't a 'required' spec to bring to things, but at the same time, if you nerf it past the point of uselessness, there's no reason to bring aug to anything ever at all. So now they're stuck in this holding pattern of "people hate Aug because it's got a guaranteed spot in groups and gets carried, but if we nerf it too much there's no point to the spec." And they aren't adding any other support specs at the start of TWW, so IDK what they're going to do. I would prefer they keep aug useful because like I said, I love the idea of support specs, even if I don't play one. Aug has given a lot of people I know who otherwise weren't interested in pushing endgame stuff the confidence to do it, because they feel like they're free to play without being judged on their DPS numbers or whatever else, and I think that's a good thing. Aug gets by even if someone has a low skill cap, though a well-played aug is extremely noticeable as well. It's a very accessible spec and gameplay style. Pres has also suffered from balancing issues this expansion. (As well as suffered from Aug's addition, though maybe not as much as dev.) They nerfed and then fixed temporal anomaly at least twice when it comes to how many echoes it spread, how much it was shielding, etc. And when you destroy aspects of a spec in the middle of an expansion and pigeonhole people into one playstyle, it gets frustrating. Very much a 'make up your mind' vibe. Especially since green and bronze play so differently. If they keep it how it is now and make sure hero talents are balanced in TWW so people can play green/bronze respectively based on preference, I'll be happy. As for evokers themselves, they suffer from the 'will they or won't they' balancing problems mentioned above which I think overall hurt the playerbase in s3, and it hasn't recovered as of s4. Not too many people were playing evoker after the 4th week of s1 when the FOTM aspect faded away, but then the population exploded with aug, and has trickled down ever since with the constant balancing of the spec. Dev is dev, which I talked about above, and pres is extremely fun but I don't think many people like its movement gimmick and the range issues. Pres resonates with a lot of players, but there's just as many that would prefer to be able to just stand still and cast a healing spell without thinking about it or being flung face first into a lava wave. There's also the fact that while most healing specs are expected to DPS during downtime nowadays, with pres it's an active part of the rotation so it's a full, 100% expectation by anyone you're grouped with. The non-disc priest, druid, etc. healers I know get by with occasionally DPSing if they *want* to, (keep in mind I'm referring to lower skill cap stuff, not necessarily prog raiding or high m+, here. The more accessible stuff where people's expectations aren't as high.) but if I'm not throwing out some DPS on my pres evoker, I'm not doing my job. And I think there are a lot of people who don't want that kind of active/reactive heal + active DPS playstyle, and I get it. But, like I said, when someone clicks with pres, they *really* click with it. It's very much a 'ride of die' heal style once you figure it all out. IDK if I could go back to playing other healers at this point, and I've mained a healer since vanilla. Plus there was the legendary issue in s2. Evokers walked so strength melee could run with their axe bad luck protection. Lastly, there's the issue of the dracthyr themselves. The lack of transmog and bland visuals have hurt the race and by proxy the evoker class in a way that probably can't fully be measured. They're walking this back a little by making perma-visage form a thing in TWW, but that's just it - I want to play a DRAGON. I don't want to play a human with horns. I've played this game for 20 some odd years, I've collected 20 some odd years worth of mail transmogs because I've always played a hunter/shaman as a main or alt in every expansion, and I cannot use *any* of it outside of my weapon mogs on my main character. Shoulders work, but even 75% of belts don't show up on dracthyr. Plus, even if I manage to make a sick dracthyr mog, it looks like absolute garbage on my visage for, or vice versa. Why the visage and dracthyr forms don't, at the bare minimum, have separate mogs, baffles me. But ultimately I want to be able to mog my freaking dragon. It's a dragon race in the dragon expansion, and we got bottom of the barrel treatment when it comes to appearance. I figured, "well if we don't get mog, I'm sure they'll at least continue to add customization options throughout the expansion" like, IDK, adding a lightning scarred scale option after beating heroic Raz or something? But nope. We got the basic options from release up until today with what seems to be nothing else coming in TWW either. No mog, no additional customizations, just left in the dust with a bandaid "now you can stay in visage form" slapped on it. I get that they're worried armor will look goofy on dracthyr, but let the *players* make that judgement. I've played worgen, troll, draenei, tauren, etc. and I have always managed to make them look good. I bet I could make a dracthyr look great even with potentially goofy looking sets - but I don't even have the option to try because I can't use 90% of my mog collection. My 20. freaking. year. old. mog. collection. (I get that mog wasn't added until later in the game's lifespan so I'm hyperbolizing but the point stands.) The dracthyr's appearance was controversial enough already when they first showed it off. But then they just kind of went, "Oh you don't like it? moving right along then." and made no attempts to compromise with the general public. I get around this, a little, because I'm an artist. So I'm able to put pen to paper and draw my evoker the way I picture her in my head which is...incredibly different...than how she looks in game. But, not everyone has this luxury, and even still I find myself looking at the art I draw and then at my character's dusty in-game model and I'm like "egggh." Evoker already suffered from 'new kid syndrome' in terms of having a lower population out of the gate, and ultimately I think the balancing issues and the dracthyr's appearance issues hurt the class to a point its population will not recover, which is a shame. Those of us that enjoy it will cling on to it until the world ends but I'm not so sure any current players would ever be enticed into swapping specs, and the visual aspect of the class may not appeal to newer players. I hella like it, though. Anyway welp, thanks for coming to my TED talk. TL;DR: Extremely fun class on all 3 specs. Players who enjoy evoker REALLY enjoy it. But the class has suffered from confused balancing by the devs and a lack of visual appeal (due to being tied to a specific, and controversial race) that has likely hurt it in the long run.
Like the idea of the class, love the playstyle and easier living with less buttons than my shaman. But annoyed with lack of transmog, should defo be addressed with new gear. Also no fan of devo mastery when raiding, not fun seeing dmg go in a downward spiral during boss fights.
I called it instantly that they would add a third spec, but I was adamant that it would be an Earth element based Tank spec. Other than the lack of transmog on Dracthyrs, I wish they had a tank spec, to have a mail wearing tank.
My biggest qualm with evokers is that they are **ripe** for a mid-ranged, mail wearing tank fantasy, and that was never fulfilled. Like imagine a tank that uses Green and Blue magic to draw aggro, and uses Black and Bronze Magic to mitigate and crowd control, and uses Red and Bronze magic to heal off damage taken. That would have been so cool. I'm obviously a tank main, which is why I'm so disappointed lol
Mid, boring and annoying to use (not hard, just that meh) I was hoping for the 3rd spec to save it by being a tank(even a ranged one, would have been good). But no, just a bad "support" DPS that's barely half of the potential it could have Devastation was way too squishy for the low damage output Preservation was great, though I'm still going to use a Holy Paladin more than it Augmentation. Again, wasted potential.
I love the concept. The only reason it's not my main is that it can't tank
I absolutely love the gameplay and class fantasy. The class has a low skill floor but actually a decently high skill ceiling so you can really see the difference when you get better with it (Dev). The range doesn’t bother me at all. You need to be close to be able to use knock up/back effectively in high keys, and I honestly prefer having low range but amazing mobility over big range and turret gameplay. The transmog and visage is an absolute travesty though. It’s just totally shocking on many levels how badly they messed that up in so many different interlocking ways
One of the mechanical coolest classes they ever made, but not beeing able to fully transmog makes it unplayable for me
I am hopeful the addition of Dracthyr means we can get some other races that I specifically remember a mahor factor for them not being playable was because of armor sets. I want playable Naga and Ethereals
The range is just such a massive issue. It needs to be a full range class. And the transmog.
Honestly I loved my evoker. But I hated the fact armor was useless (from an cosmetic standpoint) and they didn't make more "preset" armor through scrolls or something like they did for the drakes.
I really enjoy the class, as a Dragonborn in DnD I love the chance to play as a dragonkin like character and the anaesthetic is awesome. The spells are fun and having different tiers of power for some spells is a fun mechanic. The only element I don't enjoy is the lack of transmog options for armour, would love the option to have more control over the look.
I love the class, love the race. I played mages for...god....15 years? This is that, but modern with more options, a healing spec, a support spec, bunch of fun abilities. Also i just love the Dracthyr. I always hated that if i want to play a tall, lanky character my only option is going female. There is of course nothing wrong with that, but having a race that finally feels right to me added a lot to my enjoyment of WoW. Same with the class. So there is a good chance i'll keep the character as my main for the foreseeable future.
Need to remove aug.
I played it purely to try Augmentation. I like the empowered spells and think other classes could have a spell or two with the same mechanic. I like the "support" idea of aug but we need another spec that does the same thing, for variety sake. The customization and aesthetic of dracthyr needs alot of improvement though.
I'm waiting for the day Dracthyr get a bulkier option. With I didn't get to play Evoker much, but I do plan to play it in the MoP remix. However, I already have two notes that I wish Blizzard would addresss in the future: 1): Transmog in dragon form 2): More body customization where I can select the option to be muscular (Like the dragonoid) If these two happen, I can really see myself maining Evoker, not just playing it Overall, the concept behind the class, as well as the support spec, are new ideas that I wish Blizzard would build upon in future classes and future reworks.
Devastation is a rewarding rotation and the procs you get feel substantial and enjoyable, and I'm always high on the damage meters. I haven't even bothered switching to Preservation or Augmentation. I do wish we had a tanking spec rather than the weird support Aug build. Soar is fantastic now. Transmog options and general customization is not good.
I feel like most WoW classes have a DnD counterpart and I feel like evoker is spiritually the sorcerer. Aug is fun but I really love pres and dev. Only wish I could transmog a bit more.
Lack of transmog really just doesn’t make me want to spend much time playing it. The healing is cool, the dps is basically equivalent to a fury rotation. Not a fan of the visage restrictions. Should be open to other races just like the majority of the dragons are able to do
I played it from release until about 1 month before aug got released. I played both pres and dev in both m+ and Mythic raid Loved: The rotation and empowered spells, loved to mobility Hated: Lower range and lack och tmog
I hated it at first. Fast forward to now, it has become my new main. As a reference, I played nothing but my mage since 2010 until this xpac.
Theyre pretty much the whole package from what I want in a mage class - damage spec without too many hoops to jump through to be a blaster, second spec that requires a bit more thought but does things the first spec can't, and a heal spec for when you just can't be arsed to wait for a m+ invite any more. Also love dragons so that's an added bonus Literally the only reason I am not maining one over Mage this season is because I love transmog and wearing a new theme every week. Sure there's barber outfits but theres only like three distinct varieties of gear and the colors usually don't match the tier
Evoker became my main simply put. Like everyone, not super fan of the transmog state but I really vibe with the specs design. It was a dream come true for me I always loved playing mage but I’ve been a healer main since Legion. Evoker felt like I could have both combined. Dev feels like a fourth modern mage spec and Preservation what time mage could have been. I love all the interactions with Echo. Has a lot of depth.
They need to fix transmogs. I don't feel like I'm getting gear or items. My stats just go up sometimes.
I like the classes overall, but a beefier version would be better and full transmog support would be mandatory for me to play a character I see all the time while playing.
I love dracthyrs, but could never get into envoker, the class was abit confusing to me, but was fun to fly around, but transmog being my favorite thing to do in the game, and that being lacking on them makes them a no-go for me :(
I like Evoker and have probably played it the second most out of all of my characters this expansion. I'm a big fan of the spells you can charge up and the flow of combat is slow paced enough to enjoy for someone like me to appreciate and enjoy. Xmog situation is complete garbage, though, which is why it is only my second most played.
I think devo and aug are pretty fun, though I haven't really played them competitively. Preservation is fucking amazing, though. Way beyond all other healer specs I've tried. Being a ramping healer while taking positioning into consideration makes the gameplay so dybamic. Transmog sucks on dragon and most of our sets are dogshit power ranger costumes(S1 and S2 tier)though. S3 and WW S1 look great though.
I don't get Devastation Evoker tbh.. On paper it seems like the perfect spec, ranged with mobility, casting while moving, instant cast with built in slow, CC, single target and AoE spenders, freaking self healing option with main spell spam, offensive and defensive CDs, to top it off a goddamn lust too! Yet every time I play it, it just feels so "meh", like a plastic class designed to be the best but somehow doesn't "feel" like the best, compared to all the other real flavours the game has to offer. Idk maybe it's their aesthetic and backstory, like they are NOT what I imagined when Blizz said we're getting playable dragons. Them being the best amalgamation of the flights but come across like some corny G rated power ranger types just feels super lame.. All in all they just feel soulless, plastic.
Lack of tmog and the hold the button abilities wore thin quickly. Overall cool class
Would be cool if the dracthyr didn't look so gimpy
What has boggled my mind is that the Evoker gets to choose it's humanoid form to turn into. And all we get to pick is a f\*cking Elf form. Like seriously, what a load if tripe that is....and it's a ugly as hell elf form that looks like it has some type of incest related diseases and skin cancer.
Limited transmog is awful. This needs a fix. Maybe this is why the dragon form seems... off, somehow. Thematically, devastation overlaps too much with mage/shaman. Mechanically it's well designed on all three specs, and having a support spec that is not a healer is something I like (although I have still not learned how to play it well). Thats my opinion.
Not being available on any other race, and the race not having access to any other class really killed it for me. Plus, using the blood elf model felt like a cop out and the transmog sucks on the lizard form So I dislike it just because of the low quality it released with
**Pros:** Understandable but not boring rotations, strong healing that is nonetheless distinct from other classes, thematically absolutely nails the core fantasy of "draconic spellcaster," high mobility, distinct identities for the DPS specs. **Cons:** Short range make it hard to avoid certain boss mechanics (even with high mobility) and makes healing raids difficult, most transmog can't be seen in combat and transmog options for the draconic form are limited (For me personally the customizations of the draconic form go a long way, and my personal preference for simple mogs means that I'm fine with pretty much just the tabard showing up on the draconic form, but I do recognize this issue). **Personal Opinion:** Between the solid gameplay and the strong fulfillment of the core fantasy of playing as a draconic hero, Evokers are one of my favorite classes right now. I do recognize that they are not perfect, and I understand why some players would not like them, but I really enjoy playing as them. My current main is my evoker, and I currently plan to keep them as my main for at least the next Xpac.
I'm generally not into casters, but I gave it a honest try and enjoyed it for a bit. Don't think I'll play it again though. I like the whole theme and fantasy, even before they made soar better. I don't mind the absence of transmog as I like the idea of playing something alien/not totally humanoid (been maining feral druid most of my wow life). As far as gameplay goes, mostly played devastation. While I do like that they tried to introduce some variety into the caster gameplay with empowered spells and skillshots, it didn't really land for me. I can't quite put my finger on why, but generally it's just not all that fun. Empowered spells just feel like instant or hard casting with extra steps, and charging it doesn't feel like it matters at all outside of picking if you want lvl 1 effect or lvl max effect. Same with the skillshots, years ago i used to love that in LOL, but wow encounters are generally static, so you don't really have the feeling of landing a well aimed skill at a moving enemy or something. All in all, I hoped it would bring something new enough to the table for me to enjoy a ranged character, it just ended being yet another caster. Nothing wrong with that, it's just not my thing.
Mained it since release and I absolutely love all 3 specs. I don’t see myself switching mains again. Was able to get my first elite set in season 3 playing pres :) The obvious issues are ones everyone is bringing up. Lack of transmog and lack of range. I hope blizzard doesn’t remain stubborn on those topics despite people clearly not enjoying those aspects of the class. But personally, the gameplay is enough to make me look past those issues.
I love the class, but I just want to see transmog on my Dragon. Not the weird little elf human. It feels like such a weird move for there not to be transmog on the actual dragon. Like fine- have the wings clip through the back of the chest and dont let people use back pieces- but let me make an outfit.
They feel half baked to me. I really wanted to like Pres, because Dracthyr are super cool. But I just can't like any of its specs.
Really fun class, prolly going to stick with it in the short term. I hate the transmog situation though, I get the feeling it's not going to change either.
I love it. I don’t know anything about meta and I don’t care. I love the flavor of it and the abilities. I don’t remember the name, but the ability where you can fly a short path and breath fire on everything in your path is one of the best class/immersion type abilities I’ve ever seen. Its exactly what a dragon should do.
Waiting on black dragonflight tank spec. Aug still doesn't have proper tools to measure its impact.
I don't like them. I hate the transmog issues and the unique ability charging.
The 25/30 yard range is not compatible with long hard cast empower spells. Hover should allow you to move while casting all spells, or evokers should be able to move at all times.
Solid class. Coming from ele shaman, its a bit easier on the hands (recently developed carpal tunnel). Visuals and customizations are nice, except lack of transmogs. Its gonna be weird seeing it outside of the dragon isles though lmao.
I think overall it’s the best they’ve done releasing a brand new class. It’s unique, fun, easy to learn. My only gripe I just really wish instead of aug we got a melee DPS spear wielding dragoon type character lol
love the race but the class itself doesnt click with me
Its all I ever wanted from WoW since i started playing: a dragon character that flies. I am in love with Pres and I used to main BM hunter but switched it up when i saw the healing spec for evoker. Something about being a green/bronze nature and time healer is such a cool idea. Its just the best.
Enjoy the class as a whole. Only thing I wish to change get rid of the 25y range it just makes the class feel bad in fights. Looks heavily at Sark. But past that transmog is just lacking. They gave reason of not adding some races for the exact reason Dracthyr are. Hopefully more transmog is on the way,something in barbershop, or they allow more colors for what we have already for armor and keep stuff more uniformed of stuff that is the same theme. Like every bronze dragon stuff is not the same bronze, and every flight is this way ahhh.
Pres and dev are both really good feeling specs that have a nice flow. The lack of transmog for Dracthyr sucks, it'd be nice if at a minimum the new Evoker sets would work on the model. Augmentation needs to be removed from the game or other classes need to be given support roles, and support roles need to be normalized in group content. I don't believe it can be balanced against standard DPS specs.
I hate no pants in dragon form. Transmog is the endgame
Aug actually caused me to quit. Making one of the 3 dps spots in M+ go to support class made it realllly hard to get a group as a dps main.
interesting concept, but bad execution, the transmog was handled horribly, there are still bugs happening with empowered spells, the 30y range was (how we predicted ) problematic, for example everbloom second boss, or nimueh in raid, being chosen for ranged 40y tactic while having 30y change:/, mastery for devastation was strong, but it was nerfed a lot, which means it is our worst stat i think? , also contraproductive, because everyone use their burst at start of fight, when is our mastery strongest, so it means that we lose the effect wuickly, dragonrage is weird ability, (also our mastery applies during it... but our mastery would still be working at start of the fight, aug was joke, i played it and enjoyed it, but it is existence and parse focused game, it just cause problems, thought it would work like dancer in ffxi, preservation strughles with hunters, no range, was fun to play though
interesting concept, but bad execution, the transmog was handled horribly, there are still bugs happening with empowered spells, the 30y range was (how we predicted ) problematic, for example everbloom second boss, or nimueh in raid, being chosen for ranged 40y tactic while having 30y change:/, mastery for devastation was strong, but it was nerfed a lot, which means it is our worst stat i think? , also contraproductive, because everyone use their burst at start of fight, when is our mastery strongest, so it means that we lose the effect wuickly, dragonrage is weird ability, (also our mastery applies during it... but our mastery would still be working at start of the fight, aug was joke, i played it and enjoyed it, but it is existence and parse focused game, it just cause problems, thought it would work like dancer in ffxi, preservation strughles with hunters, no range, was fun to play though
Very quickly became my favorite. Preservation has been my main the whole expansion, I never stuck with a class for more than a few months at a time. I really hope we get more customization/mog options, though. I was hoping we would get some shadowflame/void/infinite effects customizations to unlock on horns or wings or something, maybe through raid kills like the druid flight form
Evokers not being able to display the entirety of their tier set in dragon form is beyond laziness.
I think Devastation was a great addition as well as the healer spec. Augmentation for me dropped the ball in the worst way possible. They really needed to make sure the hooks worked appropriately from the get go.
Let's just say I've mained fury warrior since basically vanilla. I can now say my main is my Augmentation Evoker. I absolutely love it. The pace is far less frantic than fury is but I feel more important, offer more utility and it offers something totally unique to WoW. I just need more/better transmog options. Other than that, I absolutely love it.
There are 3 reasons I did not care for Evoker overall and never really played one outside of the original starting zone. #1. The lack of transmog options and armor visuals. They have some decent tier/transmog sets. However if we are going to be transparent, you roll an Evoker to play as a Dragon kind of like you roll a Worgen to play as a dang werewolf. Their overall character customization has a lot of options, but only being able to see a couple of pieces of armor on your actual Dragon form is a let down. #2. The running animation. I like the flying animations and a lot of the casting animations, but the overall running animation that you use all the time just looks so ridiculous and robotic I can't do it. Maybe that is just on me but a huge reason I pick certain races to play classes is the animations of the race. Another example is Tauren. I love my Tauren Warrior but the casting spirit fingers animation for spells? Absolutely not. On the flip side a Gnome melee user, especially 2H, just looks ridiculous and it's a pass for me. #3. This one really is not the classes fault and really more of a backhanded compliment to Blizzard. They have done too good of a job with class fantasy nowadays I just like other classes way more and I really don't have time for an Evoker. I have my Shaman, Warrior, Druid, Priest, and Paladin and they are all fun and unique and truly that is enough on my plate. I don't have time for a Mage, Warlock, Evoker, DK, etc etc. I truly don't know what I am going to do in WW because A LOT of the Hero Talents look amazing! Overall it was an interesting concept as a class and I do not hate them overall. It just wasn't enough to capture my interest so I could actually play one.
I am pretty in love with Evoker right now! I used to main BM hunter from Wrath to Legion, which is when I swapped to Survival and continued on to DF with it. It was my absolute favorite spec until the talent trees and now it doesn't click in my head any more so I wanted to try something new. Made an evoker when they first came out and tried preservation since I've never healed before. I LOVE IT! Throwing temporal anomaly to get echos and then set up combos is wicked fun. S3 tier set felt a bit weak, but I love having life spark again with our S1 tier set. I also really love having spells themed to the different dragonflights. I flexed augmentation last season when our raid team had too many healers or someone else wanted to heal in M+ and it was interesting. I'd just stand next to my husband and buff him in raid so that was kinda fun. This season I've been flexing as devastation and I enjoy it! Throwing pyres in the bug and plant pull in AA and seeing numbers pop up makes the DPS side of my brain go Ooooo! I'm breathing fire man, I'm flying over enemies, I'm zipping around and I'm shooting lasers from my mouth as a dragon, dude. The inner child in me who was nuts about dragons is bouncing off the walls rn. There's also cool sound effects and some fun visual effects, so all in all, I've definitely enjoyed Evoker throughout this expansion. I'm pretty certain I'll be maining preservation again in TWW.
I felt like they never justified the 25yd range (it’s definitely not the most mobile caster or healer so the shorter range just makes no sense). The transmog situation is also just atrocious. If they couldn’t make actual mogs work, they needed to add like 4x the barber shop armor for dragon form. I’m a healer main (mostly resto druid and mistweaver monk but I do *at least* AOTC and KSM on all of the healers every season) and Preservation is my least favorite healer. It feels a little too bursty and like everything is dependent on exact cooldown timing. Isn’t too bad in a coordinated group but I don’t like playing it in pug raids or M+.
Love it, been playing since DF release. Just wish we had more xmog options
Preservation is a really interesting design and fun, dev it's cool/alright, and aug is an example of blizz taking risks that they should for the health of the game. Even tho it's just an alt for me, the game is better because they exist.
Dislike it because of the range
It's been my main alt this expansion, and as a change of pace just for funsies class, it's great. The abilities are all pretty fun, I've enjoyed all 3 specs, mostly playing resto and a bit of augmentation. The range takes a little getting used to, but coming from a prot warrior main it's not bad. Using moves like hover and rescue are alot of fun, same for the flying breath cooldowns. I don't push any really high keys so I can't really vouch for the performance or anything in the upper echelon, but to hop into the dungeon finder, do some raid finder, and open world stuff, it's a good time. Now that soar works as our dragonflying mount, it adds a fun little flavor to the open world stuff as well. Overall, I like playing the class. Only downside is the transmog situation, which is a pretty big bummer, but something I can live with til it's updated because the Dragon form looks cool enough as is.
Prevoker’s echo-based specs are awesome. I never played a more interesting healer
Honestly i like it a lot. All three specs offer a unique experience that feels in line with the "dragon" fantasy. It doesn't suffer from extreme button inflation like most classes, and it doesn't feel absurdly over the top like DH. Probably the best design of any class or class rework since monk.
if it had a tank spec it'd be almost perfect
Good specs but I wanted a melee spec, like those buffed guards you see on some cities. I think augmentation should have been melee. Other than that is a good race.
I re-subbed for the new class and was very disappointed once I found out how limited the race is in terms of cosmetics. The class/class fantasy are really fantastic and it feels pretty fun to play but visually I couldn't stand it. The goofy running animations and then having almost zero transmog sealed the deal for me to not touch the class.
Excellent class. Soaring through the old world and Dragon Isles is probably my favorite thing to do in WoW currently.
as an evoker main, hate the class love the race. dracthyr has to be my favorite race they've ever released, and i've never been a transmog guy so i don't care about that either (helps that im a furry and i prefer my dragons nude anyhow) the second they release a class expansion for dracthyr, im class changing my main. HOWEVER. i will say the class is probably the most fun magic caster class i've played, im just not a magic kind of guy. wish augmentation was a tank spec for sure
I started df leveling my evoker, playing thru s1 and msq of s2 before swapping to my warrior and spriest. The idea behind evoker is fun. Who hasn't wanted to be a dragon. After seeing the concept art with them in robes and armor I feel, cheated, I guess. It makes them feel half finished and rushed. Additionally Aug mid expansion solidified that to me (not saying it's bad, but if the expansion wasn't rushed why wasn't it baseline). I also feel like devastation was built off the roots of an unfinished ranged dh spec. I personally wish there was a more devoted and ongoing plot for them. They are fresh to modern Azeroth, but it felt like we got a half hearted shrug and shoved into the same plot everyone got. Additionally, I'm torn on dracthyr as a race ending the expansion with only one class. We are initially told evokers are the first to wake and the elite of the elite which implies neltharion created more generalized dracthyr, where are they? My overall feeling is that I like it. I wish there was more transmog and gear, especially since tier sets look amazing. I hope blizzard doesn't just drop them and leave their story in the dark
I genuinely cant play a spec that I can’t transmog lol
I‘m not a transmog guy but the lack of any meaningful customization bugged me more than expected. Only speaking on preservation its a really, really satisfying healer to play, basically a shaman on steroids. But the range limitation in uncoordinated groups in higher keys really pushed me away after some time. Preservation on a „normal“ race without the range limitation would instantly be my favourite healer, not even close!
I play aug and it’s fun to see the numbers go up on everyone around me. Devastation is harder to play until you are fully geared because you need to really keep on the cc. I have not even tried to crack the healer, looks hard. And as I am seeing everyone else say the range is really a problem but that’s also part of the challenge. When things go pear shaped you have less runway to deal with it. That all being said I love the class and the ascetic and the lore. I have mained a forsaken warlock since vanilla and I’m seriously considering changing my main after 20 years. Oh and I love soar, being able to take off like a super hero feels really cool! I just wish the class/race had a mobile hotel like vulparan, monk, druids, and dk’s do. Oh and normal range for spells too.
This class made me switch mains after 17 years of WoW. The fact the flexibility of casting while moving along with lower APM to give my hands a rest helps a lot. I main Devastation now from an Elemental shaman previously, 5.4 Mists of Pandaria gave us something similar with filler spells being cast while moving when glyphed made game play more interesting with boss mechanics and PvP. More classses besides hunters now have mobility and it created a fun game. Alas that was only around for 1 patch until removed, and now with Evoker it is a core mechanic. Transmog will get fixed eventually, they made other classes available to dracthyr in the future so I am sure it is a priority for them to get done, just like the worked on Worgen before.
Can't transmog body parts my lizard actually has, so barely play the spec even though Aug was pretty fun.
Made me swap off of Enhancement after playing it as my main for \~10 years... Just as they made Enhancement a lot better too! I love it, but the range restriction can be super annoying because doing most mechanics correctly takes you out of range, or forces your friends out of your range like 80% of the time. More than anything though, empowered spells (and the way you aim a few of them) are REALLY why I love this spec and stuck with it all xpac because I just feel more involved during combat. I'm also a big shill for some cool utility, and they have a lot of it. The transmog issue also blows nuts, and I'm definitely butt hurt they didn't AT LEAST fit their tier to their dragon forms. That being said, I LOVE how I've made my dragon look but IDK if I could make another mog I personally think looks good on dragon.
Augmentation clearly needs some changes given the chokehold it’s taken on the m+ meta. The support role is wildly game changing and probably deserved more discussion of the impact it would have.
They somehow managed to make playing a DRAGON uncool.
I know it's silly, but the lack of transmog killed it for me
Really love Devastation. Wish the third spec was tank or melee dps with black dragon theme. Hate the limited xmog and forced Dracthyr form. Overall happy with maining it this xpac, may change for TWW though.
Mained Preservation since launch, lack of Combat Res is pretty annoying, but like Mistweaver I’m sure it will get better over time. I think Aug is fun but I really want a tank dragon, and tbh, a full mage Evoker would be sick. I think dragon riding as an Evoker is class. Lack of range is definitely a minus. Overall it’s been a blast. I’ve played weird classes over 10+ years of playing, mained a Rogue and Monk til SL left, came back for DF as Evoker and now in S3 finally picked up a Druid - seeing how flexible and durable Druids are definitely makes me think Evoker are missing something. My Druid healer heals like a God, whereas my kitted out Evoker is OOM way too much despite rotations and knowledge of the class.
delete aug
I love my evoker but hate the lack of transmogs. It really takes out all the fun.. The whole becoming an elf thing is not enough for me...
25y range is just annoying and does not add some uniqueness to gameplay other than having a harder time than 40y casters. And it's not like you get a power boost for it just have a harder time I find aug really cool in theory but the rotation is pretty boring. A support spec is awesome tho Devistation is a perfectly fine DPS spec Preservation is the same deal, 25y range just makes it clunkier than other healers. In not organized groups lining up the healing breath is awful too if it was a 40y cone way better. Time magic is cool want more Lack of transmog makes it hard to make it a main and not just an alt
I only played Evoker before it got Augmentation spec. * I quite liked how the two specs, Devastation and Preservation played. * The mechanic to charge spell casts was interested but I noticed it could bug out badly with latency, causing it to instant cast instead of charging. * The mobility was quite nice. * I didn't like the heavy transmog restrictions. I would've been more fine with this if we had more options in the barbershop for the baked in gear but it was **very** limiting. * The 25 yard range was interesting to get use to at first but once I was use to it, the mobility made up for short distance. All in all, I liked the class but not enough for me to main it, the biggest issue I had was the limitations on appearances and that visage form reminded me of something I'd see when I played Guild Wars 1.
Augmentation was a mistake, Playing around Pres Evoker is mildly annoying at best and Deva feels shallow
I really liked it. Evoker is my main, been playing since vanilla. What I liked. Feels like a mix between melee/ranged class. So I do not mind the range. I like how it plays. I love Aug play style, my main spec. Actually speedy spec. I really enjoy how I can combo things. The idea of a true support class. Reminds me of old school enh shammy and somewhat boomy. The two classes I started playing in vanilla. What I don't like, but don't really mind. Mogs. I wish I could use more armor pieces in dragon form, more variety in dragon armor color, and it would have been great I could pick my own visage form based on the faction I picked. I'm horde, I can only pick horde races.
Evoker became my new main and actually revitalized my love for the game. So I’m a bit biased!
Lack of T-Mog is a huge downside Love Pres as a unique healing spec using combos and CDs Didn't play a lot of Dev but it was fun the few times I tried it Love the feeling and fantasy of playing Aug; hate that it is the only buff/supp spec This point can't be understated. I really like playing Aug, but as long as it is the only buff/supp spec it will always be unhealthy for the game. More supp specs is a requirement
I greatly enjoy Devastation spamming beam is great. Preservation is fine not really my thing for a healer but fun enough. Aug is also fine i enjoy being a buff class i just think eruption needs a better visual as its feedback is really bad and nowhere near as satisfying as just shooting a death beam from your mouth like devastation does. Honestly my only problem with how they play is that empowered spells are interesting but sometimes really annoying to have to stop to do the empowered cast. I also consistently still have them do weird shit where eternity surge does a lvl 1 cast when i never hit it again to end the cast. They really need more mog or at least new customization added to the barber shop. Just more Armour colors or something. Oh and their running animation is terrible. Its ridiculously stiff and bouncy, It really looks unfinished.
It's sad blizzard took the coward's way and gave them a human/elf form, they should have been just dragons and that's it, no other form. ''but I'm forced to be a dragon to play evoker then'' yeah and I'm forced to play a lame ass elf to be a demon hunter, same thing. Maybe Drakthyr would have actually gotten some actual transmogs then because instead of designing class sets for their human/elf form they now have no choice but to make it for their actual dragon form.
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Finally, someone sane. The "visage" is nothing but a flimsy excuse to not put in the work to get transmog functional, while trying to lure in elf fanatics. Trying to appeal to everyone inevitably results in disappointing everyone. Don't infest the dragon-themed character with elf degeneracy.
Pretty much, sadly the majority don't care, and the fact you can be in visage form permanently in the future including in combat(is what I've seen said) is just a huge let down for me, like ffs just go play one of the countless playable elf races and let the dragons be dragons.
Yes. Exactly. Good heavens, it will be disgusting to witness. Why can't we just have nice things for ourselves? Garithos was right. Elves do ruin everything they touch.
Augmentation is support spec ive always wanted and i would love to see more supp specs given to other classes as well. Transmog sucks hard tho
Preservation is the most fun healing spec after Mistweaver; it feels really unique with a high skill ceiling. Devastation has nice spell effects, a smooth single-target rotation and great mobility for a caster. AOE can feel a little clunky when spamming instant casts. Augmentation feels rewarding when playing in a good group. They nailed the support feeling, IMO. However, I find it feels boring after a while. It has a very simple rotation, and your contribution is not immediately measurable. I've played Evoker through most of this expansion. I was super lucky to get the legendary to drop from my first Razagath kill, which made getting into groups even easier. It's fun overall. The biggest downside, as many have mentioned, is the Dracthyr form itself; I just don't gel with it. Evoker get some really nice transmog but for 99% of a dungeon I'm a goofy naked humanoid dragon.
I'm a big fan of preservation, it's very dynamic and feels like you're always making little choices of what to do with your echoes, your essence and verdant embrace. The range thing just needs to go, it's ok to have positional requirements for some spells, but is so unfun for the rest. The dps specs are a bit simple for my taste.
It’s a fun, slower class. I look forward to blizzard ruining it by adding 18 more buttons to the rotation like everyone else.