Class Wishlists for Midnight
Death Knight Wishlist
Demon Hunter Wishlist
Druid Wishlist
Evoker Wishlist
Hunter Wishlist
Mage Wishlist
Monk Wishlist
Shaman Wishlist
Warlock Wishlist
Warrior Wishlist
For a brief breakdown of the changes coming to each specialization in Midnight, check out our Midnight Class Survival Guide.
Midnight Class Survival Guide
Evoker Wishlists for Midnight
Our Evoker Writers, Jereico (Augmentation), Preheat (Devastation), and Voulk (Preservation), discuss the most significant issues plaguing their specs as well as the must-have changes they'd like to see prior to Midnight's launch in just a few short months.
Augmentation Evoker Midnight Wishlist
Top 5 Midnight Wishlist
Wishlist
1.
Make Ebon Might a Dynamic Aura Effect
2.
Refresh Sense Power
3.
Update Breath of Eons
4.
Check on the Cooldown Manager
5.
Revisit Essence & Resource Tracking
Ebon Might
Ebon Might initially applies to allies within a 100-yard range, but the buff can only be extended on allies within roughly 40 yards. When an ally dies with Ebon Might active, or loses Ebon Might by being outside of extension range, the remaining Ebon Might buff does not recalculate and this damage is simply lost; this can be a nuisance in raid, but is a major downside of playing Augmentation in Mythic+. Additionally, the application range on Ebon Might can be abused using tools like Bestow Weyrnstone to limit the number of initial buff targets and then extend the buff on these targets indefinitely. Ebon Might can also be removed with /cancelaura, which serves no functional purpose but to grief the group's damage output. Making Ebon Might a fully dynamic, aura-styled effect that splits its value evenly among allies within a specified range would ostensibly solve all of these outstanding issues.
Sense Power
With addons no longer able to easily track the status of other players, Augmentation Evokers must rely on Sense Power to communicate when allies are using major cooldowns, which is important for choosing who to target with Prescience or when to cast Breath of Eons. Sense Power does not currently work with all specs' major cooldowns, and in some cases may need to be updated to reflect new additions and recent design changes. While I hope the team at Blizzard continues to iterate and explore the best way to communicate this information to the player, at the moment making sure that Sense Power is fully up-to-date is our best bet.
Bug Fixes and Rough Edges
While there are still a few small bugs, underused talents, and other various nitpicks, I wanted to highlight issues that I think players are most likely to notice. Firstly, abilities without the "allow class ability procs" flag in the spell data do not contribute any damage to Breath of Eons. This has become an increasingly common issue, especially for new or reworked spells, and most notably includes some of Devourer Demon Hunter's hardest hitting abilities like Collapsing Star and Eradicate. Secondly, the Cooldown Manager is still missing or incorrectly tracking certain baseline abilities. It would also be nice to have important buffs that inform gameplay like Command Squadron added to the Cooldown Manager. Lastly, the in-game Essence bar display has been a sore spot for myself and other Evoker players since the class was first released. The spinning circles are not always easily readable in the heat of combat, and the display frequently misrepresents your available resources, leading to failed spell casts. Essence functionally works just like Energy, and it would be nice to have alternate ways to display this information to the player, while hopefully fixing some of the resource display's underlying desync issues.
Augmentation Evoker Guide
Devastation Evoker Midnight Wishlist
Top 5 Midnight Wishlist
Wishlist
1.
Bug Fixes and Cooldown Manager Tweaks
2.
Deep Breath Improvements
3.
More Gameplay Options
4.
Threat Mitigation
5.
Evokers Want Transmog!
Bug Fixes and Cooldown Manager Tweaks
Devastation Evoker has many bugs, but so do most specs. What sets Devastation apart is the severity and impact on gameplay that many of its bugs have. Consume Flame and Catalyze have many broken interactions. Catalyze stops working after the first tick of Disintegrate per Fire Breath. Disintegrate causes Pyre to lose half its Consume Flame damage for the remainder of Fire Breath. Scorching Embers does not apply if the Fire Breath is fully consumed. Consume Flame is also "wireless" meaning that it does not proc off of Pyre, it instead goes off you current target (even if they are 100 yards away). If you are thinking that these are a lot of bugs, keep in mind that they are only the ones pertaining to Consume Flame. Fixes to these bugs are necessary for Flameshaper to be a viable option. Other bugs still persist (Empower Bug), and the Cooldown Manager fails to track Fire Breath or Command Squadron. A more detailed list of bugs curated by Braumritter of Wyrmrest Temple can be found here.
Deep Breath Improvements
In Midnight, Devastation Evoker casts Deep Breath every 20 seconds on average in Single Target. In AoE, its around every 10 seconds. Losing control of your character and being forced into melee this often is very disruptive. Let's give a little background: Deep Breath has always been a weird spell, but it has improved a lot since it released. When Evoker first released it was situational, so you could mostly opt out of using it. Maneuverability added the ability to steer and eject from the ability, vastly improving gameplay for Scalecommander (which it became necessary for). In Midnight we see the doubling down on Deep Breath reliance with talents like Command Squadron and Strafing Run. Stretch Time adds a little insurance by making you take the damage over time, but the spell is still risky and the pressure to use it on cooldown is higher than ever.
Holding Deep Breath even a couple seconds means losing twice the time since each cooldown gives two uses. I would love to see Strafing Run grant flat coodown reduction and make Deep Breath have charges, that way hesitating to fly into your enemies during mechanics (choosing life) will not be as costly.
Other Issues
Other persistent issues remain for Devastation. The high upfront damage with no tools to mitigate threat make even exceptionally patent Evokers rip off tanks (especially Guardian Druids). Gameplay is mostly the same as it always has been, and many talents are just one skill cut up into 3-4 pieces. There's little variety in gameplay aside from Deep Breath with the removal of Engulf. The lack of real Transmog options is something that continues to put many players off of Evoker. There are workarounds to remain in visage form in combat (the technology exists!) but nothing official. Permanent Visage form is something the Evoker community has been begging for since Dragonflight, and it would be an easy win for Blizzard. Just do it already!
Devastation Evoker Guide
Preservation Evoker Midnight Wishlist
Top 5 Midnight Wishlist
Preservation is mostly very happy going into Midnight. Outside of UI issues that the Evoker developer has little influence over there are only a few points that I'd like to see improved before launch. If the expansion went live today you'd find a well designed spec with two competitive hero trees and ample variation in gameplay.
Wishlist
1.
Improved Raid Frames
2.
Central Talent Tree Improvements
3.
Reduced Emphasis on Rewind
4.
Improved Mana Gameplay
5.
Bug Fixes
Midnight Healer User Interface Issues
Healers were particularly vulnerable to the Midnight user interface changes since the Blizzard default raid frames have been very bad for years and custom frames were a forced target of reducing what information you have on other players. Unfortunately, the frames have improved very little over the Alpha / Beta cycle and essential requests like being able to filter which buffs you see, and being able to set locations for specific buffs are still missing. As a result, it is difficult to quickly parse who has an Echo buff and you will overwrite a lot more Reversion casts. Simplifying gameplay while making healing more frustrating from a technical perspective is a risky approach and I hope they prioritize this with the time they have left.
Talent Tree Improvements and Fine Tuning Power
This will likely end in a nerf, but in an expansion trying to reduce cooldown power it is odd that we currently have Rewind (arguably the best healing cooldown) on just a two- minute cooldown due to Temporal Artificer. Speaking of the talent tree, the path through the middle of the tree remains filled with talents that have seen little to no play because they just aren't very good - chiefly Power Nexus, but Font of Magic also finds itself outdated in a world without Spiritbloom. We have other viable ways to path so they can be avoided but our talent tree is otherwise extremely competitive and the two duds in the middle have been there too long.
We don't have a ton of bugs left, but there are a few that affect how much healing high ranks of Dream Breath do, and some of our multi-charge spells like Obsidian Scales can use more than one charge per spell cast under some conditions.
Mana
Preservation is losing one of our chief mana tools in Midnight with Emerald Communion's removal. Energy Loop also restores less of our mana pool than in The War Within. We're also in a position where our most efficient casts also cost the most and we don't really have any gameplay to restore mana. Healer gameplay is very different in Midnight and it is possible this level of mana tension is intended but I always felt mana played better as a concept when you have some related decision making or optional talents. Our only optional mana talent is now Energy Loop which requires casting a lot of Disintegrate but this competes with Echo and now Emerald Blossom for our Essence and Essence Bursts. Trying to include it, especially in raid, can make the rotation unnecessarily complex.
Preservation Evoker Guide
