Hero Talent Showdowns in The War Within
Frost DK
Havoc DH
Restoration Druid
Augmentation Evoker
Devastation Evoker
Beast Mastery Hunter
Survival Hunter
Arcane Mage
Brewmaster Monk
Mistweaver Monk
Holy Paladin
Protection Paladin
Holy Priest
Shadow Priest
Outlaw Rogue
Subtlety Rogue
Elemental Shaman
Enhancement Shaman
Affliction Warlock
Protection Warrior
For more information on Hero Talents coming in the War Within, check out our Hero Talents Overview.
The War Within Hero Talents Overview
Devastation Evoker in the War Within
The War Within is quickly approaching, it is time to consider how Hero Talents and other potential changes may shape Devastation Evoker in the years to come. Devastation Evoker is a new spec that was added during Dragonflight, but there was still an evolution of the gameplay throughout the expansion which continues with the addition of Hero Talents.
Lets talk about what you should expect to change when it comes to talents and interactions when you choose your favor of Devastation!
Hero Talent Showdown: Scalecommander vs. Flameshaper
For Hero Talents, Devastation Evokers have to pick between Scalecommander and Flameshaper. Scalecommander Devastation Evokers empower gain access to improved versions of existing spells like Mass Disintegrate and Deep Breath with Maneuverability while barraging enemies with Bombardments. In contrast, Flameshaper Evokers use a new ability called Engulf that uses Fire Breath as fuel for massive explosions.
Mass Disintegrate may go brrr but Engulf goes BOOM!
Scalecommander
When playing Scalecommander, your Deep Breath is much stronger and has a shorter cooldown which makes the talents for this ability (mainly Onyx Legacy & Imminent Destruction) more desirable.
Each time you use Fire Breath and Eternity Surge you gain a buff that changes Disintegrate into Mass Disintegrate, which hits up to three targets at once. With Hardened Scales, your Obsidian Scales becomes a 40% reduction. Nimble Flyer makes your Hover provide mitigation, too.
Flameshaper
When playing Flameshaper, you will be applying Fire Breath to the target with other damage-over-time effects then detonating it with Engulf. Picking Ruby Embers is necessary for Flameshaper since it gives us additional scaling.
With Trailblazer, Hover is faster and sends your further. Lifecinders allows you to share your Renewing Blaze with allies.
What’s Changed?
Scalecommander
Scalecommander has remained mostly the same, aside from some slight tuning for some of its talents.
Flameshaper
Traveling Flame now increases the duration of Fire Breath and spreads it to a nearby target. Other talents were slightly tuned.
And the Winner Is…
- Class Fantasy & Visuals: Scalecommander (Winner)
- Fun & Rewarding Gameplay: Scalecommander (Winner)
Scalecommander has the best gameplay, because having access to Maneuverability makes Deep Breath a lot less of a hassle and Mass Disintegrate is fun to press when multiple targets are present.Flameshaper is basically the same as current Devastation Evoker gameplay, with a button you occasionally hit. Other than re-ordering some spells and making it so you have to track more buffs / debuffs, it feels a bit bland.
- Difficulty: Scalecommander (Winner)
Both hero talents are very easy to play, but Scalecommander is generally easier because Flameshaper requires more setup to make full use of Engulf. - Defensiveness & Utility: Scalecommander & Flameshaper(Tie)
When it comes to defensives, Scalecommander wins hands-down. Hardened Scales is impossible to beat when it comes to your ability to survive damage, and Nimble Flyer provides avoidance damage reduction.Flameshaper brings better utility for healing for allies with Lifecinders, but choosing this talent locks your out of Draconic Instincts. I’m inclined to to say Scalecommander wins this category too, but the value of Renewing Blaze on a tank cannot be ignored.
- Leveling: Scalecommander (Winner)
Being able to control Deep Breath is amazing for leveling, especially since it does such high damage and is constantly up. Mass Disintegrate is also amazing for small packs, and it continues even if your target dies. - Mythic+: Scalecommander (Winner)
Scalecommander is better suited for Mythic+ mainly due to tuning. Its damage in Single Target, cleave, and AoE are higher than Flameshaper and it is way more sturdy.Tuning is fleeting, but the value of Scalecommander defensives beats out the utility of Lifecinders.
- Raid: Scalecommander (Winner)
Scalecommander has better damage tuning and defensives than Flameshaper. The main downside it suffers is less mobility, but this can be overcome with familiarity to raid encounters. - Best Overall: Scalecommander (Winner)
Scalecommander does more damage, takes less damage, is more fun, and looks cooler than Flameshaper. Keep in mind that damage will be the ultimate test for which is meta, but tuning is fleeting. These ranks could easily change.
Hero Talent Feedback
Scalecommander
Scalecommander it is not without flaws. The main pain-point for Scalecommander is that chaining Disintegrate (casting it back to back) into Mass Disintegrate wastes ticks of the channel. Chaining is an important feature of channeled spells because it allows you more wiggle-room, since you cannot queue a spell from a channel. This means that chaining habits need to be broken, and precise timing is needed for Scalecommander to avoid losing damage.
Flameshaper
Flameshaper has its moments but ultimately lacks the identity and coolness factor of Scalecommander. On top of this, it is also more annoying to play, does less damage, and has a harder time staying alive. On one hand I hope they tune it up to match Scalecommander, but I also fear it overtaking Scalecommander because Scalecommander feels so fresh.
Base Devastation Evoker Gameplay & Talents
Devastation Evoker is a new spec that was added during Dragonflight, and has gone through a lot of growing pains already. One of the best recent changes is that Devastation now has an extra talent in the capstone area and access to Spatial Paradox. Other than this, not much is changed.
The gameplay is distinctly different from most Ranged casters in that your range is limited to 25 yards and some of your spells can be empowered to change the effect. It is a very simple spec, but there are still interactions with Hero talents that are fun to consider. I’ve spoken about some of these interactions before, but lets recap:
Scalecommander
Deep Breath with Maneuverability
As many Devastation Evokers know Deep Breath is not a great button to press, especially since it doesn’t even activate due to range or terrain half of the time. When it does work, it is unreasonably dangerous since ground effects still affect you, and once you begin the cast, you are locked in. Regardless of how careful you are, getting unlucky and dying from a ground effect while flying is always possible. Even if you see it coming, all you can do is watch it in horror since you no longer have control of your character.
Scalecommander changes this with Maneuverability, which increases the damage and changes Deep Breath from a reticle ability into an ability with directional movement you can control. This makes Onyx Legacy and Imminent Destruction great talents for Scalecommander!
Causality Interactions with Mass Disintegrate
Each tick of Disintegrate reduces the cooldown of our empower spells: Fire Breath and Eternity Surge. These spells are powerful and are typically used on cooldown. Having more frequent empowers means also having more damage in the form of Bombardments uptime, Iridescence buffs, Power Swell Essence generation, and Dragonrage uptime (to a point) via Animosity. It also means more Mass Disintegrate, since empowers are how we generate them!
The end result is that we will have more damage in general and the possibility of gaining “funnel” (priority damage in cleave) depending on the target count.
Mass Disintegrate and Scintillation procs
Every time Disintegrate ticks, it can proc Scintillation. This damage proc on the target can also cleave an additional enemy if Eternity’s Span is also taken. Each Disintegrate cast will have up to 4 ticks, which means that Mass Disintegrate can tick up to 12 times in a single cast. If targets are clumped, this means that Scintillation procs will have a chance to hit our primary target.
Damage on other targets
Disintegrate is a hard-hitting spell, so Mass Disintegrate hitting more than one target means we get to multiply the damage by up to 3 times. There are other minor benefits of having Mass Disintegrate hit multiple targets at once. Catalyze can potentially affect 3 targets at once, which will increase our Fire Breath damage. This will not contribute more Burnout procs, due to the internal cooldown on the talent.
Unfortunately, many of the cool interactions that Hero talents added where undercut by the change to Animosity which caps the duration of Dragonrage. This talent has been improved, but it still feels bad to miss extensions you would have otherwise gotten with the old version of the talent.
Flameshaper
Setting up Engulf
Engulf is a 30 second cooldown with 2 charges (due to Red Hot) that increases in effectiveness, depending on how many periodic effects you have on your target. Periodic effects mean damage over time debuffs:
In addition to these debuffs, we can also increase the damage of Engulf with Shattering Star, Iridescence, and Scorching Embers. Since we have two charges of Engulf, it is best to set up our ducks in a row then unleash both back-to-back for huge damage.
Should You Play Devastation Evoker in the War Within?
If you enjoy Devastation, then I hope you will continue enjoying it but I’m not going to sugar-coat it: Devastation is a bit of a hard-sell right now. The spec has seen some improvement since the start of the beta cycle but still has many of the same issues as before. Transmog isn’t really an option (if you care about this). Empowered abilities still bug out and refuse to go off, the spec talents are a bit of a mess, having a 25 yard range is annoying, and Augmentation is looking better than ever.
Here’s the short answer:
If you are open to also playing Augmentation: Yes!
If you don’t care about pushing keys: Yes!
If you love Devastation: Yes!
If you don’t qualify for any of these, I think Devastation is still fun as an alt but I’m not sure I would recommend it. Let’s talk a bit more about why:
The 25 yard range experiment
There was a time when having a range of 25 yards wasn’t as bad as it sounded; you could tell that raid boss designers were considering Evoker’s lack of range when designing encounters. So long as this consideration was being made, having less range while being flagged as a Ranged DPS was not too much of an issue. With every patch, we feel this slipping more and more. Many recent encounters, and new ones coming in the War Within feel as if Evoker range is no longer a consideration. Having Spatial Paradox helps a bit, but often this spell is reserved by healers for specific mechanics.
Visual representation of Evoker Range. 25 yards is in green.
When Blizzard addresses players concern about 25 yards, it is often posed as a tradeoff for some other advantage. Unfortunately, this does not reflect reality since many ranged specs are getting more mobile and have further range than ever before. Hover is not adequate compensation for this lack of range when Evoker isn’t even the most mobile class, especially when mobility doesn’t matter when you have to play out of range of the boss. Regardless of the Evoker spec, it is clear that making Evoker count as range while having 25 yards is not fun or flavor. It is just frustrating.
Tuning and viability
When it comes to Raid, I think Devastation is probably still safe so long as the tuning is good. With Mythic+, there’s a bit of a problem. If you play with people who care about performance, the value of Devastation ultimately depends on what it brings to the group. When Augmentation is better than ever, the value of bringing another Evoker goes down. If the damage is not high enough to compensate for the loss of the support features Augmentation brings, it becomes harder to find a slot to fill. This is a challenge many specs face, but Devastation feels it more since it does not bring unique buffs over its overpowered cousin.
Empowers, Talents, and Gameplay
Empowered spells are still a bit funky. Sometimes they just refuse to go off. Most classes have minor bugs, but this is especially annoying for Devastation since Empowered spells are so important.
Many of the Devastation talents revolve around Firestorm. This talent is better than ever, but is still pretty annoying to play since it requires enemies stay in it to get real value. Firestorm also requires a heavy talent investment, so going this route feels especially bad since you give up so much for it. If you don’t like using Firestorm, many of the talents on the left side of the tree are effectively “dead”.
Devastation gameplay also leaves a lot to be desired when compared against other classes and specs in the War Within. The rotation is mostly the same as before, if not slightly watered down. The gameplay feels slower and you spend more time empowering spells and channeling Disintegrate, which makes it less mobile.
Personally, I will continue playing Devastation but I’m not nearly as excited for it as I was when we first got news about the War Within. Devastation made a strong first impression on me and was incredibly fun for the first half of Dragonflight. Many of you who also played Evoker before Augmentation released know what I mean. I hope that someday Devastation can have this feeling again.
About the Author
This guide is written and maintained by Preheat, previously a World First raider and founding member of Liquid. Preheat plays Evoker and Mage and has participated in the MDI and multiple Race to World First events over the years. He has also commentated multiple community events such as the Keystone Masters, numerous charity events, and the Team Liquid Race to World First. For all things Evoker and Mage, you can find him in his Discord, on Twitter, posting videos to YouTube, and streaming on Twitch.
For more information on playing Devastation Evoker, please see our class guide updated for The War Within Pre-Patch:
Devastation Evoker Guide
About The Author
