Rotation
Patch 12.0.1 - Midnight Devastation Evoker
Tier Set
Check out all the Midnight Season 1 Tier Sets!
- 2-Set: Azure Sweep damage increased by 50% and its damage against your primary target is increased by an additional 100%.
- 4-Set: Eternity Surge grants 1 additional charge of Azure Sweep.
- Casting Azure Sweep reduces the cooldown of Eternity Surge by 2.0 sec.
Single-Target
- Flameshaper
- Scalecommander
Opener Rotation
The goal of the opener is to maximize your Dragonrage window and extend it with Animosity while trying to avoid overcapping on Essence or Essence Burst.
Prepull
- with Tier set
- with Tier set
Scalecommander Devastation Evoker single-target opener in Raid Check below for the Dragonrage window priority after the initial opener.
Dragonrage Priority List
This is a general priority for your Dragonrage window.
- Cast Deep Breath - with no Melt Armor up on the target or Strafing Run is about to run out.
- Cast Eternity Surge - Rank 1.
- Cast Fire Breath - Rank 1.
- Cast Disintegrate until you are not capped on Essence.
- Cast Azure Sweep - with Tier set
- Cast Living Flame to proc Essence Burst - if you have either Burnout or Leaping Flames.
- Cast Disintegrate until you have no more Essence to cast it.
- Cast Azure Strike to proc Essence Burst.
Priority List
This is a general priority you aim to maintain throughout the fight.
- Cast Deep Breath - with no Melt Armor up on the target or Strafing Run is about to run out.
- Cast Eternity Surge - Rank 1.
- Cast Fire Breath - Rank 1.
- Cast Disintegrate until you are not capped on Essence.
- Cast Azure Sweep - with Tier set
- Cast Living Flame - if you have 2 stacks of Burnout or a single one that is about to run out.
- Cast Disintegrate until you have no more Essence to cast it.
- Cast Living Flame until you have enough Essence to cast Disintegrate.
Multi-Target
- Flameshaper
- Scalecommander
2 Target Opener
The goal of the opener is to maximize your Dragonrage window and extend it with Animosity while trying to avoid overcapping on Essence or Essence Burst.
Prepull
- Target 1
- Target 2
- with Tier set
- with Tier set
Scalecommander Devastation Evoker 2 target opener in Raid On 2 targets as a Scalecommander, the only difference from single-target is that in the opener you should choose different targets with each of the two consecutive Mass Disintegrate following your first two empower spells to apply Bombardments to both. This way you get more value out of Extended Battle as it extends both bombardments.
4+ Targets Opener
- Prepull
- Target 1
- Target 2
- with Tier set
- with Tier set
Scalecommander Devastation Evoker 4+ target opener in Raid Always use Mass Disintegrate after Empower spells even if you are fighting higher target counts.
4+ Target Priority List
- Cast Deep Breath - with no Melt Armor up on the targets or Strafing Run is about to run out.
- Cast Eternity Surge - Empower according to target count.
- Cast Fire Breath - Empower according to target count.
- Cast Pyre as Essence spender
- Cast Azure Sweep
- Cast Living Flame - if you have either Burnout or Leaping Flames.
- Cast Azure Strike until you have enough Essence for your spender.
Deep Dive
Patch 12.0.1 - Midnight Devastation Evoker
Empower spells
Fire Breath
- Flameshaper: Always cast Rank 1 in almost any situation because of Consume Flame and Scorching Embers.
- Scalecommander: Use mostly with Rank 1 Empower on single target as you want to have the DoT effect up all the time for Burnout procs and Catalyze synergy.
Using Fire Breath with a higher Empower rank shortens the damage over time effect in favor of more direct damage, you want to utilize this when your target isn't going to live much longer.
Ranking up Fire Breath more in AoE situations is also generally recommended as Causality shortens the cooldown of the spell much more with Pyre spam and you would be overwriting your pre-existing DoT effect and wasting damage otherwise. In addition, you get better value from Leaping Flames.
Eternity Surge
Deciding what rank to use Eternity Surge on is very straightforward as it only increases the targets hit by 1 for each rank (or 2 with Eternity's Span).
- Rank 1-4: 1/2/3/4 or 2/4/6/8 with Eternity's Span targets hit.
Especially on Flameshaper it's often not worth it to cast this at a higher rank even against more targets because you could be using that time to cast more Pyres instead. In general, you should hold both Empower spells when Dragonrage is about to come off cooldown for proper Animosity extensions.
Disintegrate Mechanics
Baseline Disintegrate has a cast duration of two global cooldowns and four damage ticks occur within this time frame. Utilizing the Pandemic mechanic you can start a new cast of Disintegrate after the 3rd damage tick has occurred which transfers the remaining duration and 4th damage tick of the previous cast to the next one.
This is how you spell queue Disintegrates, minimizing downtime and enabling you to use up Essence slightly faster to prevent overcapping. Because of this you would ideally have Disintegrate ticks shown on your cast bar so you can re-cast at proper timing.
Using Rescue
Rescue is a great part of your toolkit as an Evoker, using it optimally requires fight awareness, especially in raids it can often save your less mobile allies from sticky situations.
12.0 Patch has this change: Twin Guardian has been redesigned – Rescue increases movement speed by 100% and allows spells to be cast while moving for 3 seconds.
Means that Rescue no longer has a defensive cooldown tied to it but is even more potent as a movement ability!
Using Hover
Managing and timing your Hover casts correctly in combat to get more casts in while dealing with mechanics is where you see the biggest difference in your DPS as the actual rotational optimization is not that complex for Devastation Evoker.
- Starting a cast of a spell such as Disintegrate at the very end of a Hover buff still lets you finish that specific cast while moving even if the buff runs out during the cast, keep this in mind to get more benefit from each use of Hover!
- Track your uptime and charges of Hover well on your UI and get really comfortable with utilizing this ability as it is the most significant unique strength of an Evoker.
- With the patch 12.0 Hover can now be used during normal casts (mostly Living Flame and Disintegrate on Devastation) without interrupting them.
Understanding Mechanics
Rotational min-maxing is just one aspect of mastering a specialization, but there are numerous other key mechanics that influence your performance. Use the following guides to improve them.
- Pandemic
- Spell Queue Window
- Stat Diminishing Returns