[PRESERVATION] Build and Talent Discussion

[Nymrohd]

So here's my problem: you're shutting people down during an important feedback phase while making unverified assumptions on the various experiences and experience levels of the players posting on this forum. And those assumptions paint everyone here with an unfavorable brush.

See feedback is useless if it's not constructive. The main reason people feel that evokers suck is that they tried to level one in the leveling beta server and got wrecked in the Dragon Isles because compared to their mains, the Evoker is about 100 ilvl behind. You cannot really argue that the Evoker is not effective; their damage is very high as is their healing. They have a very strong niche in burst healing that may well make up for the reduced range they have in raids (and doesn't matter much in dungeons); your raid leader will just have to assign the Evoker intelligently.
The only concerns I've seen that are actually valid are:
a) Defensives suck. They heard that feedback and fixed that today. Everyone was reiterating that feedback (including Rage in this thread)
b) Devastation has no build variety. I don't see them fixing that before 10.1

The idea that the healing range might limit their viability for raiding is not problematic but it has not materialized in testing. Really at this point data does not support it; they have a limitation but they make up for it with exceptional performance in one of the most important niches in raid healing (frequent burst healing). It's a natural worry to have but at this point it seems the problem is PR (exacerbated by people projecting that concern which they cannot actually substantiate) which may affect the meta.

[Teriz]

Here you go, buffs to Evoker's defensives:
- Obsidian Scales CD 1.5 min baseline;
- talent increases charges to 2;
- damage reduction (all, not only magic) upped to 30%;
- Renewing Blaze heals over 8 sec (down from 14);
- 75% passive armor bonus.

This is some great news. Good to see Blizzard listening to the feedback about survivability. I did feel that was a legitimate issue.

[Scrysis]

See feedback is useless if it's not constructive. The main reason people feel that evokers suck is that they tried to level one in the leveling beta server and got wrecked in the Dragon Isles because compared to their mains, the Evoker is about 100 ilvl behind. You cannot really argue that the Evoker is not effective; their damage is very high as is their healing. They have a very strong niche in burst healing that may well make up for the reduced range they have in raids (and doesn't matter much in dungeons); your raid leader will just have to assign the Evoker intelligently.
The only concerns I've seen that are actually valid are:
a) Defensives suck. They heard that feedback and fixed that today. Everyone was reiterating that feedback (including Rage in this thread)
b) Devastation has no build variety. I don't see them fixing that before 10.1

The idea that the healing range might limit their viability for raiding is not problematic but it has not materialized in testing. Really at this point data does not support it; they have a limitation but they make up for it with exceptional performance in one of the most important niches in raid healing (frequent burst healing). It's a natural worry to have but at this point it seems the problem is PR (exacerbated by people projecting that concern which they cannot actually substantiate) which may affect the meta.

A quick note -- Blizzard opened up both epic level crafting, and then for M+ they made everyone the same ilevel of 398. You're making unfounded generic comments here; a lot of experienced players who stuck around had the very same criticisms as the less experienced players.

Second note -- I did not observe what you are describing from the raid streams I was watching, but I won't discount it as a possibility. I'm just going to reiterate what I've said previously -- raid testing is to make sure that the servers don't blow up when you fight the boss, or the boss doesn't fall through the world. It's not for balance; it's for making sure the fight mechanics work. They'll get the balance numbers when they have several million people enter the raid for the first time and start fighting the bosses. The only question is of when we'll get further fine tuning.

I am extremely happy to see the improvement to defensives! I saw it earlier on Wowhead and was extremely excited about it. This was a problem point I was hoping they would fix prior to launch, since it's less dependent upon numbers tuning. I even shared it with my tank friend who is probably super tired about hearing about how excited I am about Dracthyr by now.

[shade3891]

If I could give Preservation an extra choice-talent to fix the out of range bad luck positioning it would be:

Time of Need:
Reduces the cooldown of Tip the scales by 60 seconds. And when you activate "Tip The Scales" increase the range of all healing spells by 15 yards for 8 seconds.

vs

Time of Need:
When you or an ally fall below 20% health, a version of yourself enters your timeline and heals them. Your alternate self continues healing for 8 sec before returning to their timeline. May only occur once every 90 sec.

[Rageonit]

Lo and behold, it turned out that Prevoker was used extensively by WF guilds in the race. Where are all the doomsayers now? @Nyel? @Scrysis? And some others names I don't remember anymore. AFAIR the spec wasn't anything special, didn't have a niche, was bad at sustained healing (and not really better in stacking healing than a Shaman) and had no mandatory utility to ever get into a raid. Come on people, don't be shy, rear your heads from the sand.

Even funnier when you hear people like Rogerbrown talk in an interview how most players "didn't realize how powerful Evoker is". Coming back to threads like this one is always enlightening. Thanks everyone for providing the fun and see you all in the near future.