Dragonflight Alpha/Beta General Discussion

[Gigantique]

I'm just crossing my fingers that the shoulders from my visage transmog work with the body armor on Dracthyr and doesn't clash horribly -.o

[Wangming]

The gameplay is pretty smooth either way and structured well.

Blue spec - you have a weak instant filler that cleaves and a strong spender/CDs and it's mostly ST/cleave oriented.
Red spec - you have a strong casted ST filler and full AoE spender/CDs.

There is also potential mixed spec of mostly Red with some Blue. All of them play very smoothly.

That's pretty clear so far. So what's the central class mechanic?

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The more I see of evoker the further behind my Hunter is falling... Yikes I can't believe after 16 years I'll be moving on from Hunter!
.

That's pretty much a standard with old races and classes.

1. New stuff comes and is better than old stuff.
2. Old stuff is updated to be newer stuff.
3. New stuff is now old stuff and needs to be updated.
4. Repeat

[loras]

Remember guys: Do not engage and just report.

Anyway:

I am a bit confused by the Evoker rotation. They have two filler spells and both of them don't really do... anything? Azure Strike seems to be an Ice Lance with no actual Fingers of Frost mechanic.

Yeah, seems they're running a bit dry on the mechanical department.
Hopefully those guys from Proletariat and the HotS team can help with that.

[Makabreska]

Fixed lock set, looks really good:

[Valysar]

Priest, lock, DK and druid look good, but the rest... meh

[Revamp Man]

Remember guys: Do not engage and just report.

Anyway:

I am a bit confused by the Evoker rotation. They have two filler spells and both of them don't really do... anything? Azure Strike seems to be an Ice Lance with no actual Fingers of Frost mechanic.

The essence burst mechanic is the closest thing

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Priest, lock, DK and druid look good, but the rest... meh

Monk with the gold color instead of white

[huth]

Remember guys: Do not engage and just report.

Anyway:

I am a bit confused by the Evoker rotation. They have two filler spells and both of them don't really do... anything? Azure Strike seems to be an Ice Lance with no actual Fingers of Frost mechanic.

That's what i'd expect from a filler. The other spells get the spiffy mechanics, this is just what you do when you have nothing better available.

Frost Bolt isn't the most interesting thing to cast either. Ice Lance is not a filler.

[Makorus]

That's what i'd expect from a filler. The other spells get the spiffy mechanics, this is just what you do when you have nothing better available.

Frost Bolt isn't the most interesting thing to cast either. Ice Lance is not a filler.

Except Frost Bolt has a purpose. Arcane Blast has a purpose. Fireball has a purpose.

[Kiria]

That's pretty clear so far. So what's the central class mechanic?

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That's pretty much a standard with old races and classes.

1. New stuff comes and is better than old stuff.
2. Old stuff is updated to be newer stuff.
3. New stuff is now old stuff and needs to be updated.
4. Repeat

Not really with myself, Death knight, Monk and Demon Hunter I havent even touched never had an interest in them to begin with so always stuck with my Hunter.

[infinitemeridian]

Priest, lock, DK and druid look good, but the rest... meh

Warrior, shaman, and mage are also great.

[Veluren]

There are 8 dungeons, but they're gonna switch between 4 new ones and 4 old ones for M+ each season.

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Am I the only one that saw and read the Dev stuff?

Ignore them, they're posting in bad faith to troll, it makes these threads much easier to read.

[Makabreska]

Except Frost Bolt has a purpose. Arcane Blast has a purpose. Fireball has a purpose.

They do nothing, not even building up a resource?

[Makorus]

They do nothing, not even building up a resource?

Frost Bolt procs Fingers of Frost + Brain Freeze. You don't just cast it because there is nothing else to cast.

Arcane Blast builds up Arcane Charges + Clearcasting. You don't just cast it because there is nothing else to cast. (Then again, that is less of a point if you play Kyrian, but let's disregard that).

Fireball builds up Pyroblasts. You don't just cast it because there is nothing else to cast.

[Veluren]

They do nothing, not even building up a resource?

From what I understand, their resource is on a 5sec timer per regen, but they get a buff that gives them freecasts very frequently and other ways to mitigate or manipulate it along their talent trees.

So their filler spells would end up being cast in a situation where you have really unlucky rolls of the dice on freecasts, and not something you're using because X is on cooldown persay like other caster's basic spells.

[Makabreska]

Frost Bolt procs Fingers of Frost + Brain Freeze. You don't just cast it because there is nothing else to cast.

Arcane Blast builds up Arcane Charges + Clearcasting. You don't just cast it because there is nothing else to cast. (Then again, that is less of a point if you play Kyrian, but let's disregard that).

Fireball builds up Pyroblasts. You don't just cast it because there is nothing else to cast.

I was asking about those Evoker fillers.

[huth]

They do nothing, not even building up a resource?

They proc Essence Burst, completely erasing Makorus' point.

[Revamp Man]

We are set for a 2022 release
The dungeons look cool from the journal
The raid looks cool
The gear looks cool
Story is dragons which I like
Devs have a different attitude towards feedback which is refreshing and definitely welcome since for the last 4 years we've had "no you're wrong...wait you're right please don't leave"
We have them saying they won't make the game needlessly complicated just to slow down the top guilds
We get group loot back which personally I'm just happy the ilvl restrictions are being removed
We get them saying you won't feel the need to log in every day but when you do log in you'll have a bunch of stuff to do

Idk what happened but I'm happy with it

[Gaidax]

That's pretty clear so far. So what's the central class mechanic?

1) Essence - spender skills require essence to cast which is a resource on timer, you can speed up essence generation with Empower skills and occasionally get a free essence skill use via filler spells. There are 3 general spender skills as DPS - main AoE spam spell, ST channel spell with big dam and ST instant nuke on CD.

2) Empower Skills increase essence regeneration and decrease cooldown of your DPS CDs - Dragonrage and Deep Breath.

3) Dragonrage and Deep Breath allow you to use 100% of your mastery value and provide big AoE nuke and/or Essence Burst procs from fillers guaranteed.


It works pretty damn smooth.

The gameplay would be to cast Empower Skills on CD (but paced at 8 seconds gap of each other because of Power Swell talent to maximize uptime on essence regeneration buff), then use spenders when you proc burst or capped or need to pump ST or AoE and finally use either of two fillers when you have nothing else depending on spec and circumstance.

You want to fit as many Empower Skills as you can with various CDR talents, so your Dragonrage and Deep Breath CD gets reduced and you can use it again sooner. Then of course you don't want to waste essence/burst charges by sitting on them capped

It's like a mix of Fire Mage and Destrolock.

[Nyel]

While Empower seems to be the core standout for Evokers, it's universally rated as the weak point of the class as of now because it's clunky and there are some questionable design choices (making a single target skill an AoE when it's empowered for example, which is worthless in a ST fight; usually lacking a strong empower ST skill in general etc.) - this is the case for both Preservation and Devastation and has been criticized by quite a lot of Alpha testers already.

I too like the concept of Evoker and how they play, especially Preservation, but they really need to improve or change Empower skills. They have time to do so, though.

[Gaidax]

making a single target skill an AoE when it's empowered for example, which is worthless in a ST fight

This is what clueless people say.

You would want to channel ES for full even ST because doing so gives you 8 seconds of Power Swell and -8 seconds CD on Dragonrage and Deep Breath.

So it is assuredly a DPS increase even ST. The bonus is that you can cut it early and fuck off from incoming boss ability early and still get the damage.

The other empower ability is nobrainer - more channel = longer DoT.