Devastation Evoker Playstyle and Rotation Guide

Opener

Assuming your talents match any of the ones provided in the talents section this will be your opener for ST:

Note: 10.2 Tierset will change your opener, most likely you’ll be using your active stat-increase trinket with 4 stacks of the new 2-piece buff. This section will be updated once 10.2 goes live. 

1. You’ll want to start the fight with a precast on Living Flame
2. If you’re using Nymue's Unraveling Spindle you can use it right after
3. You’ll then cast Dragonrage
4. Followed by a Rank 1 Eternity Surge
5. Followed by a Rank 1 Fire Breath
6. You will then use Shattering Star
7. Follow this with Disintegrates and then go into your normal priority system.
8. Use your 2nd on use trinket once it comes off CD

For maximum damage you want to use Tip the Scales before your 2nd Fire Breath inside Dragonrage.

For more information on how to maximize the value of your trinkets I recommend checking out the posts pinned in the Evoker Discord Server for Devastation.

General Rotation

Evoker has a fairly easy rotation to pick up. It revolves around using all three of our short cooldowns: Fire Breath, Eternity Surge and Shattering Star as they come up. Disintegrate is used to reduce their cooldowns and spend resources.

This leads to the following basic priority list:

1. Cast Fire Breath (Rank 1) and Eternity Surge (Rank 1) on cooldown. Outside of Dragonrage you want to space out these casts a little bit to make better use of Power Swell and your 4-set
2. Use Shattering Star on cooldown. Ideally you want to use Eternity Surge right after, but it’s not worth delaying either spell to make them line up.
3. Spend Essence Burst and Essences on Disintegrate. Try to chain Disintegrates as this is a net damage increase (Chaining: using another disintegrate after the last line on your Disintegrate castbar).
4. Cast Living Flame as a filler.

Basic Rotation

Evoker has a fairly easy rotation to pick up. It revolves around using all three of our short cooldowns: Fire Breath, Eternity Surge and Shattering Star as they come up.  Disintegrate is used to reduce their cooldowns and spend resources.This leads to the following basic priority list:

1. Use Eternity Surge (Rank 1) on cd
2. Use Shattering Star on cooldown unless you’re at two stacks of  Essence Burst
3. Use Fire Breath (Rank 1) on cd. Note that you might want to delay this if Dragonrage is about to come up.
4. Spend Essence Burst and Essences on Disintegrate. Try to chain Disintegrates as this is a net damage increase (Chaining: using another disintegrate after the last line on your Disintegrate castbar).

Cast Living Flame as a filler. Use Azure Strike instead if you can’t use hover to cast Living Flame on the move.

Multi Target (3+ Targets)

We do a very different rotation on AoE, focusing on our Pyre ability and pretty much never casting Disintegrate.

Empower levels:

1. Eternity Surge: 3-4 targets: rank 2; 5+ targets: rank 3
2. Fire Breath: 3+ targets: rank 3

You would only cast lower ranks of these spells if it allows you to extend your Dragonrage further.

Rotation:

1. You’ll want to cast both Fire Breath and Eternity Surge on cooldown. You can hold them to sync up with Dragonrage when the ability is almost off cooldown.
2. If you have a Burnout proc and have just cast a high tier of Fire Breath, use Living Flame, as you’ll hit extra targets from our class talent Leaping Flames.
3. Use your essence spending abilities, ideally, you’ll be just using Pyre on AoE; however, if there are just 1 or 2 targets, you should Disintegrate instead.
4. Use Deep Breath, ideally when the mobs are low HP, to make the most out of your talent Tyranny. You can opt to take the talent Terror of the Skies to make your Deep Breath stun as well.
5. Other than this, use Living Flame with Burnout procs or Azure Strike as a filler.

Playstyle

Extending Dragonrage

This is probably one of the most important things for an Evoker. The talent Animosity means you can extend your Dragonrage by 4 seconds every time you use an empower ability; with the nerf to this in 10.1, you can always extend Dragonrage 2 times with Fire Breath and Eternity Surge each for a total of 4 extends making the total duration 34s seconds instead of 18s.

If you have sufficient Haste (either Bloodlust or Power Infusion) you’ll manage to get a third extension for both spells for a total of 42 seconds of Dragonrage.

This is a key part of being a master Evoker, especially since our toolkit doesn’t provide any execute, so using Dragonrage during a lust execute phase, for example, is the only way we can keep up with other classes.

The general rule is never cast an empower spell if you have Dragonrage ready, always cast Dragonrage first. Always use your empower spells on cooldown within Dragonrage and make use of Tip the Scales to get an instant empower spell out during the duration as well.

You want to make use of all of your Essences and Essence Burst procs to reduce the cooldown of Fire Breath and Eternity Surge through the talent Causality.

It is worth losing out on Disintegrate ticks (during dragonrage only) to make sure you get every possible extend.

Learning to maximize Hover

One of the strongest abilities in our kit is Hover; this allows us to channel Disintegrate and cast Living Flame while moving. Unfortunately, we still need to be stationary when casting Fire Breath and Eternity Surge. Learning a fight is going to be key as we will pretty much be able to have 0 downtime as a ranged DPS, able to move out of mechanics while continuing to cast. Knowing when you can use Hover and when you have to hold for X upcoming mechanic will separate the top Evokers from the middle of the pack Evokers.

Utilize all that Utility

Evoker has a ton of utility in their toolkit, the most iconic ability being Rescue. There will be several moments for you to make use of this utility, providing strong support to your allies in both raiding and M+. You should always be on the lookout for opportunities to be more than just a DPS!