What’s new for Devastation in 10.1?

At the time of writing this post, we are one extended maintenance away from the long awaited Dragonflight Patch 10.1, the Embers of Neltharion Content Update, and I could not be more excited. This patch includes all of the usual good stuff like the new raid and new season of mythic plus, but also some pretty big changes to Devastation Evoker, as well as an entirely new PvE gear upgrading system.

Over the coming weeks I’ll be revamping the site to ensure that all of the existing Devastation Evoker content is live and up-to-date, but in the meantime please enjoy this post covering what you need to know about Devastation Evoker in Dragonflight Patch 10.1.

Talent Changes

While much of Patch 10.0 saw the Devastation talent tree relatively unchanged with Blizzard focusing mainly on survivability and class tuning, the new Patch 10.1 features a huge overhaul of the Devastation talent tree, bringing an exciting mix of brand new talents, reworked interactions, and significant changes to the capstone section of the talent tree!

Developer’s note: In Embers of Neltharion, we’re making targeted adjustments to a few key talents to address a nuance of the Dragonrage extension loop where it can be optimal to aggressively cancel and re-cast Disintegrate back to back, in order to maximize the effects of cooldown reduction talents such as Causality. This specific behavior is fairly unintuitive, and these changes are intended to make fully channeling Disintegrate the more rewarding way to play. Additionally, the bottom section of the spec tree has been significantly rearranged. It has fewer 2-point nodes, and some under-used talents have gotten partial or full reworks to introduce new build and playstyle options.

Dragonflight: Embers of Neltharion Content Update Notes

Dragonrage now has a base duration of 18 seconds (was 14 seconds), and Animosity now extends Dragonrage by only 4 seconds per Empower spell cast (was 6 seconds). Meanwhile Causality is now the primary engine for reducing Empower spells cooldowns, reducing the cooldowns of both Eternity Surge and Fire Breath based on damage instances of Disintegrate and Pyre, rather than spell casts.

The result is a rotation largely unchanged for AoE, but one that relies much less on aggressive clipping of Disintegrate in Single Target: Devastation players will now generally avoid losing ticks of Disintegrate unnecessarily, clipping only to cast higher priority spells as they come off cooldown.

One other big change to highlight is the reworked Arcane Vigor talent. While Shattering Star has seen its cooldown increased to 20 seconds (was 15 seconds), Arcane Vigor now causes Shattering Star to grant Essence Burst. This talent is an absolute gem, ensuring that you always have at least one Essence spender available for your Shattering Star window, while also serving to cut filler from the rotation. As it stands, this talent makes Shattering Star particularly versatile, and is likely to see play in all forms of PvE content.

You can click here to find the full list of Devastation changes coming in 10.1.

The “New Build”

Although Patch 10.1 brings a variety of changes to the left-hand side of the Devastation talent tree, the reality is that Firestorm simply remains too frustrating to use in practice, while investment in the bottom left-hand of the tree is not compelling enough to justify the loss in Priority Target value from the right side of the tree, including the standout Arcane Vigor and the versatile Iridescence.

While I always encourage players to experiment with different talents to better understand their class, as it stands I recommend the below talent setup for essentially all Devastation PvE content, with 27 required talents points in Yellow, and the remaining 3 talent points placed either in the Blue Single Target talents, or the Green AoE-oriented talents. For two-target cleave, the one point in Honed Aggression can be moved to Eternity’s Span. As usual, Imposing Presence can of course be swapped for Inner Radiance when a shorter interrupt cooldown is not needed.

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Note that the class talents chosen in these builds are just a starting point; I highly recommend making adjustments to pick up strong utility nodes relevant for the content that you’re playing.

At the end of the day, this setup makes great use of the changes to the capstone section of the tree, leveraging versatile throughput talents without sacrificing single target damage needed to perform effectively on bosses in both raid and mythic plus. While some difficult choices do have to be made when considering the best talents for mythic plus, Devastation brings plenty of AoE damage to the table with Pyre alone, especially when enhanced by Volatility, Iridescence, and the new Tier 30 Devastation set bonus.

Tier 30 Devastation Set Bonus

• 2PC: Disintegrate and Pyre pierce enemies with Obsidian Shards, dealing 12% of damage done as Volcanic damage over 8 seconds.
• 4PC: Empower spells deal 8% increased damage and cause the Obsidian Shards to become supercharged, dealing 200% more damage for 5 seconds. During Dragonrage, shards are always supercharged.

The Devastation Tier Set Bonuses coming in Dragonflight Season 2 are relatively self-explanatory, with the 2-piece bonus adding a strong Ignite-style effect to Devastation’s two Essence spenders, and the 4-piece bonus creating a vulnerability window for 5 seconds following the cast of an Empower spell.

As the “supercharge” effect of the 4-piece bonus does not stack, the only rotational change that you should make once you complete your 4-piece set is to space out your Empower spell casts by 5 seconds while outside of Dragonrage in order to maximize uptime of the effect. Inside Dragonrage you should play as normal, as the supercharge effect is always up, and you want to maximize the number of Empower casts inside of Dragonrage for maximum extension.

Gearing Up in Dragonflight Season 2

In addition to all of the class changes. the Embers of Neltharion patch also completely overhauls the PvE gear acquisition and upgrade system. While I won’t go through all of the changes in detail, I will provide links below to helpful resources that I personally recommend to help you get up to speed, while offering some great suggestions on how to spend your time and resources in the new season.

Video: Dratnos Comprehensive Guide to the New Systems (32:55)

Google Doc: Lairas’s (Advanced) Guide to Min-Maxing Item Level in 10.1

While the best gearing path will always vary from character to character based on things like loot luck, weekly vault drops, and level of progression in the raid, here are some general recommendations around gearing up once Season 2 begins on May 9th.

Secondary Stat Priority

Devastation’s secondary stat priority has not changed dramatically from Season 1, and continues to value Mastery above all else. From there, the general recommendation is a balanced mix of Critical Strike and Haste, while minimizing Versatility where possible.

Mastery > Critical Strike ~= Haste > Versatility

As always, be sure to sim your own character frequently, as stat priorities depend on your current gear setup, and soft breakpoints from stat diminishing returns can absolutely come into play.

Crafting Embellishments

With the upcoming nerf to Elemental Lariat, there truly isn’t a single embellishment choice for Devastation in Season 2 that is unilaterally better than all others. Nevertheless, here are some strong embellishment options to consider as you look to spend your Sparks of Shadowflame in Season 2.

Although choosing to use these bracers over the Engineering crafted option requires giving up access to the Engineering battle resurrection, the Adaptive Dracothyst Armguards crafted mail bracers are the next closest thing to an all-around best embellishment, and are my top pick for general PvE use (in both raid and mythic plus).

The Shadowflame-Tempered Armor Patch represents another strong option, particularly in Single Target, and as a generic embellishment can be crafted on a variety of crafted armour slots, offering some flexibility in your character’s gearing progression.

Elemental Lariat remains a decently strong contender, and has the potential to slightly outperform Shadowflame-Tempered Armor Patch in AoE settings, however the nerf to its effect causes this option to lag others until you have gem sockets in all possible slots. Given that this isn’t usually possible until later in the tier, I would recommend holding off on crafting Elemental Lariat until later in the season.

Acidic Hailstone Treads are getting buffed in Dragonflight Patch 10.1, and have a strong damaging proc along with decent secondary stats. The only caveat is that they give you a permanent 10% movement speed reduction, which can be a non-starter for some players. While some top players swear by this embellishment as a key to their success, I personally will likely be passing on this option.

Blue Silken Lining has always been one of the strongest options in terms of potential, but its high bar of requiring you to stay above 90% health makes this embellishment particularly finnicky in practice, and not something I would ever recommend for progression raid content. That said, if you are considering Blue Silken Lining for easier farm content or for mythic plus progression, you can rest assured that with solid play it should have high enough uptime to be competitive in those settings.

Lastly, while not technically providing any value in damage, the Undulating Sporecloak crafted cloak embellishment features an incredibly strong effect, providing you with passive healing while above 70% health, and granting you an absorb shield when you drop below 30% health (on a 2-minute cooldown). This is widely considered to be one of the strongest embellishment options available this tier, and I would strongly recommend considering this cloak for both raid and mythic plus progression if you feel you can spare the damage loss from using it over an alternative embellishment.

Trinkets and Unique Items

Neltharion’s Call to Chaos the Evoker “class trinket” is particularly strong and should be something all Devastation players strive to obtain in Season 2. Given the new system for upgrading gear is particularly favourable to the “Very Rare” drops from the raid, this is an item that you will likely be farming Normal and potentially even LFR Echo of Neltharion to obtain and upgrade as high as possible.

The other trinket from the Aberrus raid that I would highlight is the Igneous Flowstone from Magmorax, which looks to be a reasonably competitive second trinket option alongside the strong mythic plus offerings.

Of course Season 2 mythic plus brings with it a collection of powerful trinkets that we were introduced to at the launch of Dragonflight, which include Spoils of Neltharus, and Irideus Fragment, both of which involve strong on-use effects that you should align with Dragonrage whenever possible.

The last interesting item to take note of is the Voice of the Silent Star cloak, which is a Very Rare drop from Scalecommander Sarkareth in the Aberrus raid. This cloak has a particularly powerful effect involving borrowing stats from nearby allies, and as a result is certainly best-in-slot from a damage dealing standpoint–the only caveat is that this cloak does not have any Stamina. As long as you feel comfortable dropping roughly 5% of your total health pool in exchange for absolutely unethical stolen power, then this is definitely an item to seek out.

New and Updated Consumables

Shadowed Belt Clasp is a new permanent belt enchant in 10.1 that simply adds some Stamina. This is a welcome addition given the extra danger we’ll be facing from items like Neltharion’s Call to Chaos and Voice of the Silent Star.

There’s a new noisy weapon rune on the block: the Hissing Rune is now available, granting Mastery for two hours when applied to your weapon. Ultimately whether you choose to use this new rune or stick with the existing Buzzing or Howling flavours simply comes down to your individual character’s stats, so as you would with gems and enchants, be sure to sim it!

Lambent Armor Kit has also been added to the game and acts as a direct alternative to Frozen Spellthread as a permanent legs enchant. Strictly speaking, this enchant trades some Intellect and Stamina for a small amount of Versatility, and frankly represents an absolutely negligible difference with respect to both damage throughput and effective health. Still, it’s worth knowing that this item exists, just in case you happen to see it out in the wild.

While not a new item strictly speaking, Iced Phial of Corrupting Rage appears to have been buffed in 10.1, with the downside triggering after receiving 400% of your health in damage (up from 100%). With the change, this seems to be a solid option for all content, and the effect can be somewhat mitigated as an Alchemist. Nevertheless, if the downside proves to be too much of a liability, Phial of Tepid Versatility remains a strong option for throughput and survivability.

Lastly, Elemental Potion of Ultimate Power has been made tradeable and has had its Primal Chaos cost removed, making the best available combat potion much more widely available in Patch 10.1.

Join the Discord!

Have a question that wasn’t covered in this post? Looking for an inclusive, tight-knit Evoker community to call home? Be sure to check out the Jereico Community Discord Server for a place to ask your questions, share your thoughts and achievements, and post pictures of your cute pets.

Have an awesome day, and see you in the Dragon Isles!