Feedback: Evoker Updates

In this thread, we’ll be testing and talking about Evokers in The War Within. Look here for posts from the development team as adjustments and bugfixes are made throughout the testing period.

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

Thank You

Before we continue testing The War Within, we’d like to take a moment to thank everyone who read and responded to the Hero Talent previews we posted over the last few months.

Looking to the Alpha

In this first Alpha build, every single class has at least one new Hero Talent tree available for testing, with the rest coming in the following weeks. We’re asking testers to initially keep several things in mind:

• There are UI elements on the talent panel that are placeholder, including things like talent icons, text, or final UI art.
• Some talents may not be functioning yet, or may be marked as not yet implemented (NYI)
• New spell visuals and audio for several new Hero Talent trees are still a work in progress. Many trees are using placeholder assets for now that will be updated over the course of Alpha.
• There are some talents that are not fully tuned yet. This is expected, and we will implement tuning adjustments throughout testing.

The combat design team has two big areas of focus right now that we are prioritizing over other concerns such as tuning or generic class updates/maintenance:

• Finish building the remainder of the Hero Talent trees that are not yet available.
• Fix bugs that are blocking testing of new talents.

With the Alpha build being playable and all of the discussion that will occur around the flood of data, we wanted to reiterate that the responses to our blog previews were highly valuable. The feedback we received allowed us to make some early improvements or revisions while we didn’t yet have a public test environment. It allowed us to take some big early swings on certain trees, and then react to early feedback quickly.

Going forward, we aren’t planning to publish any additional Hero Talent previews in blog form, since we’ll add the remaining classes to the Alpha as soon as they reach their ready-to-test state.

Working from Feedback

Several Hero Talent trees have received changes after reading feedback to the blog posts. Some of these were tuning changes to ensure that the Hero Talent tree felt competitive, while others were significant design changes. The feedback thus far has been of great benefit to us.

Going into Alpha, we feel good about the shape of the Hero Talent tree designs. Keeping a consistent number of utility and defensives nodes across all trees, having parity between number of choice nodes, and the overall structure of the trees are things we’re confident in.

We’re also working on tweaking some core class designs as well. In some cases, it was necessary to make adjustments to the class or specialization talent trees before significant work was done on a Hero Talent tree. In other cases, we did work seeking to improve base class talent tree designs.

Alpha Feedback

Now that we’re in Alpha, we’re looking for feedback on how it feels to playtest these trees. We’re specifically curious about:

• Hero Talents that you feel are “required” for your spec in a type of content, such as raiding or Mythic+, or that push you towards picking a specific tree.
• Hero Talents that create frustrating or unsatisfying gameplay or rotations for your spec.
• Hero Talents whose functionality is confusing, unclear, or difficult to track during gameplay.

Throughput comparisons of Hero Talent trees are helpful, but we’re more interested in gameplay, feel, and choice feedback at this stage. Also, when possible, we appreciate it when you focus posts or articles on a single spec and Hero Talent tree, rather than combining feedback about multiple issues.

Again, Thank You

We greatly appreciate all your feedback on Hero Talent trees and are very excited for you to see everything else we’re working on. Thank you!

– The World of Warcraft Combat Design Team

EVOKER

• Evokers now start at level 10 (was level 58).
• Evokers now unlock the talent pane immediately after choosing a specialization in the Forbidden Reach, and they no longer learn “temporary” talents as they complete the Forbidden Reach experience.
• Several base spells that were previously learned at level 58 are now learned at level 10.
• Mass Return is now learned at level 38.
• Fury of the Aspects is now learned at level 48.

Devastation

Devastation Evoker can generate very high threat at the start of a pull due to a combination of their Mastery: Giantkiller and the burstiness of spells like Fire Breath and Pyre (particularly when used with Dragonrage and Charged Blast). As a result, we’re reducing the threat these spells generate.

• Fire Breath threat generated reduced by 50%.
• Pyre threat generated reduced by 30%.

Preservation

In this update, our goal was to incorporate Lifespark (Season 1 set bonus for Preservation) into the talent tree and expand talent options by improving the pathing of the tree. We also wanted to keep the flavor of the left side of the tree being Green, the middle being Red, and the right being Bronze.

• New Talent: Lifespark – Reversion healing has a chance to grant you instant cast Living Flame and increase its damage/healing by 50%.
• New Talent: Titan’s Gift – Essence Burst increases the effectiveness of your next Essence ability by 25%.
• Life-Giver’s Flame is now a 1 point node (was 2). Its position has been relocated at the bottom middle of the tree.
• Grace Period is now a 1 point node (was 2). Its position has been relocated as a capstone below Timeless Magic.
• Font of Magic and Power Nexus have been relocated to the middle center of the tree.
• Cycle of Life has been relocated as a capstone at the bottom left of the tree.

Devastation Evokers will want to check out today’s updates.

The goal of these changes is primarily to increase the viability of the left side of the Devastation tree. We hope this can allow Devastation to be more flexible in their talent choices and have options to build around Firestorm if they wish.

The cap we added for Animosity was primarily to help keep the extension gameplay healthy and not reliant on effects like Power Infusion.

We’re monitoring feedback around this and understand that it feels like it limits the potential fun of the extension gameplay.