Hi. Hello there. It's me. Paint. The t is silent.
Yeah, I'm doing this again. I think I've already mentioned that Evocation Specialist on the heels of my Transmutation Specialist topic from awhile ago, actually. Additionally, a lot of the problems Evocation Specialists suffer from are the same problems Transmutation Specialists suffer from. So why am I making a topic about it now if I've already talked it to death?
Spellcasters have undergone a lot of changes since that topic, the meta has evolved, and with the rise of Invokers, we have a pretty good reason to reevaluate where Evocation Specialists are at. Additionally, I think what I value in PVP and PVE has shifted both as breakpoints have changed for new content, and what's in-season for PVP has changed, too.
I expect I'm going to ruffle a few feathers, but I'm going to -try- to organize this around a couple of bullet points;
One, I'd like to discuss the experience of -playing- an evo spec from 1 to 30, both solo and group for PVE.
Two, the viability of evo specs in PVP.
Three, evo specs out of a vacuum. What is it that they struggle with? What is the identity here?
Four, what evo specs can tell us about what it's like to play any kind of wizard right now.
Five, me complaining about there being no good options for good/neutral evo specs again, because that's obligatory.
Six, why you shouldn't play an evo spec right now.
Before I get started though, the last time I had a conversation about this, some people were quick to bring up that specialist wizards have always been terrible, and therefore, we should never expect them to be good and there's no point in talking about it. This, I find, is fundamentally worthless rhetoric, especially given the nature of a feedback forum. While I understand this might be your opinion, it adds nothing of value to the conversation. And thusly stated, you don't need to worry about stating it down the line, no?
For reference, here's what you get for being an evocation specialist wizard from the wiki:
Passive bonus: IGMS can hit single targets with up to 11 missiles instead of 10 and does 21 total instead of 20; IMS can hit up to 11 instead of 10.
Signature spell: Isaac's Greater Missile Storm and Bigby's Forceful Hand(Three minute cooldown)
GSF bonus: +1 to Evocation spell DCs
ESF bonus: Evocation spells no longer consume spell components
Additionally, you gain Arcane Defense(Evocation), which provides a small bonus to saves against evocation spells at level 10, and one additional spell per spell level.(Evey specialization gets this.)
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The Experience
This is going to mirror my opinions on Transmutation Specialist quite a bit with some key changes. Your summon options are undead, shadows, Mordenkainen's Sword, or the Blood Homunculus since you are barred from conjuration. Being barred from conjuration isn't as bad as it used to be, but perhaps, for the wrong reasons. You still miss out on Acid Sheathe, which is a powerful reprisal tool, but the aggressive conjuration spells -- mainly the AOEs -- have been gutted by the spellcraft change, and probably won't ever be as powerful as they used to be.
If you use undead, you're going to have a fairly normal wizard experience. The undead will do most of the work, you can mop everything up, and your higher evocation DCs mean that some of the punchier evocation spells will land more reliably in PVE. If you take advantage of the relatively new arcane flux feature, as well as the spellbound wands, your stamina in dungeons is healthy, and you probably won't find yourself running out of steam. Necromancy is also becoming a very strong and varied spellschool. It pairs well with Evo, I think, if you want to have a spellbook filled with damaging spells.
Mordenkainen's Sword was rebalanced to be used by invokers at a spell level two lower than wizards. It can be infinicast by invokers, meaning that losing it in a fight isn't much of a problem, since you can immediately replace it. It's also only a holdover until you get to the more powerful elementals, and finally PC or Mummy Dust. It has since not been changed to function differently for wizards or sorcerers, and is currently a -trap option-. It costs spell components, lasts turns per level, lost the mechanical interactions it once had with enchant weapon, and has stats that are too low to make it worth using right now. Do not use Mordenkainen's Sword. It is not good. Full stop.
The shadows, however, interestingly, can get you some mileage. They're obnoxious to babysit, but as an evocation wizard, you -do- have quite a salvo to expend. If you're patient, don't mind burning healing kits, and are good at micromanaging, they can be a pretty decent option, as their knockdown spam will deal with most enemies. A caveat though, is that against spellcasters, they tend to wilt pretty quickly, as they have no defense against elements, a low HP pool, and no regen. You will need to target spellcasters first, or you will not make it through a dungeon with enough spells to deal with more difficult encounters.
So let's talk about the blood homunculus. In order to get the blood homunculus on a wizard, you need to have a BASE CON of 18, Empowered False Life, and Toughness, mostly achievable by races that have a +2 Con score on creation, to get the tier 3 homunculus. This is by design, as the homunculus is designed to be used primarily by Hemomancers. I spoke with the dev that did the work on discord briefly about whether or not it was intention to make it this difficult for wizards to get the tier 3 homunculus, and yes, this is intentional. The rationale is thus: Hemomancers don't have access to mass zoos or protection from spells, nor the Enchantment Specialist's Good Hope. Essentially, a tier 2 wizard homunculus can be buffed to a level comparable to a hemomancer's tier 3 homunculus. You still have the worse duration, of course, but it will perform... -about- the same? I'm not sure if I believe this after some of the testing I did, since the tier 3 seems to have a much deeper healthpool and meatier AC. Which. Does matter.
So how does it perform? Uh, not great. In many instances, despite having transmutation foci, I found myself using the shadows over the blood homunculus because the homunculus's AC is so low that in some situations -- areas where enemies have blindfight or high APR, against a pack of four or more mobs, it would get shredded fairly quickly. It may work better if you have a monk dip and are willing to put yourself in harm's way to guard your homunculus -- which is fairly insane for a class that has a d4 hitdice, but you do you -- but otherwise, it just doesn't survive long enough to be useful.
The big TL;DR here is that you should just use undead.
One more note is that all of your good summon options are mind immune so if you have the GSF illusion infinicast, color spray e v e r y t h i n g. Now that GSF infinicasts proc arcane flux too, you have literally zero reason to not lockdown PVE mobs as hard as you can if they're not mind immune.
How AWESOME is it that you don't use spell components for evocation spells, though? Well, let me tell you the strategy here; You prepare exactly one meteor swarm and one Bigby's Crushing Hand, burn cantrips until you get an arcane flux, and then use meteor swarm. It will, at high levels, do about 120 damage to each enemy as long as they fail the save, half if they don't fail the save or if they have improved evasion, or none if they do have evasion. Surprisingly, a lot of enemies have evasion or improved evasion. Who'd've thought? Fire is also a commonly resisted element. Bigby's Crushing Hand is great when you have exactly one enemy you'd like to lockdown. If you're careful, you can go through an entire dungeon without spending a single spell component, as long as you're willing to bring pots or wands of barkskin, and don't mind having about 10 less AC than you realistically should because you're deciding not to use EMA, which can be risky.
IGMS/Forceful Hand on a three minute cooldown is actually more useful than it feels like it should be. Before arcane flux and infinicast cantrips, it felt really bad because three minutes is a long time to wait. But now you can fill that void with damage. Averaging like, 65 damage per round when hasted and spamming cantrips against an enemy that doesn't resist them isn't... great? But it's supplemental, and you're just fishing for another arcane flux anyways. You will be using that arcane flux a lot, by the way. And when I was pacing myself, I got about six to seven a dungeon. Sometimes you can get unlucky and not get a flux for fifteen minutes and that sucks. But as long as you're haste-spamming cantrips, you have a 1 in 20 chance every three seconds to get a flux. (I do believe, however, there is an invisible cooldown to prevent you from getting too many fluxes too quickly, but someone can well ackshually me on that if I'm wrong.)
In groups, you'll be going a little too fast to worry about thinning your spellbook out and proccing too many arcane fluxes. On average, in a group of three to five, I'd get 2-4 arcane fluxes per dungeon. The pace is just too quick to get more than that. The only thing that'll probably happen is everyone looking at you funny if you forget to pack Mind Blanks and Mass Hastes. If you set up your spellbook right, despite not getting a lot of fluxes however, you'll have plenty of spells to deal damage if you really want to ride the evo dream. However, if you happen to be paired with a hemomancer or elementalist. Be prepared to feel... inadequate. Because. W-well. I'll get to that later.
You really feel the lack for damage in some of the later dungeons however. Stuff designed for the current meta -- the more difficult runic dungeons -- are going to test your patience and your sanity, and even in a group you -will- struggle to contribute. The higher enemy saves get, the worse your DCs are going to feel and your 120 damage meteor swarm is suddenly doing a -lot- less. You'll end up using empowered or maxed IGMSes. This is not something that other casters struggle with as much, either because they don't rely on damage spells, or they don't have to worry about rationing those damage spells out. You, as an evocation wizard, have both of those problems. You can mitigate this a bit with spellbound wands, but they're prohibitively expensive for leveling and difficult to attain unless you Know a Guy or decided, irrationally, to become a carpenter when you know -- you KNOW that you need spell components. Remember, the average cost of a set of five spell components is 650 GP right now. Every time you cast EMA, it costs you 650 GP. Every time you cast premo, it costs you 260. Shadow Shield? 130. Mind Blank? Protection from Spells? Timestop? MORDS? It adds up unless you make your own spell components. I mean, nowhere near the cost of a mundane's woes, but you still pay more than any shaman, druid, cleric, or fvs ever will for the sin of being an arcanist. You deserve it. You monster.
Do I have fun playing the evo spec I made? Yeah, actually. It makes for interesting problem-solving when you run up against a wall you can't just plow through with antfrog. It's just also frustrating to find at the end of the day that there are problems you simply have no answer for that are easy for almost any other class to overcome. You'll end up kicking yourself for not just being a generalist or an illusion spec so you could have access to a reliable source of damage and tanking with no caveats.
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Evo Spec in PVP
This is admittedly going to be a brief section, because evo specs suffer from what wizards suffer from in general, except that you don't get ANTFROG. Mummy Dust can be a pretty competent replacement for ANTFROG, but it's just not the same, man. It's just not the same. The shadows are also actually pretty damn menacing if you can get haste on them. Especially if your opponent has lower disc or doesn't have NEP. They will aggressively spam knockdown, there's three of them(!), you can get their AB to about +44 or +45 with the right buffing and foci(Which is likely going to be +47 if two of them manage to attack your target in the same round), and they will relentlessly hound. Additionally, they're cheap and easy to replace, so if they get WoF'd, instead of being screwed, you can just resummon them. A smart opponent might try to use Banishment on you instead to prevent you from summoning them again, as their saves are nothing special.
The main attractions of evo spec don't do you any favors in PVP. Eschew components? Who cares about burning components when you're fighting for your life. One extra missile on IGMS? Now that shield can block some of the damage of IGMS, your breakpoints are worse against anyone who's prepared, and against anyone who has an HP pool of 600+, you're not going to kill them anyways unless they -let- you. You have one big gimmick, and that's the hellball gruin combo, and this combo tends to do about 300ish damage after resistances. You get to do this once a fight. You can do this, of course, without being an evocation specialist, by just taking ESF evocation, or the loremaster secret.(Do not dip loremaster on wizard, it's a trap -- because discipline. If you want to know why, ask in the Official Discord or the build advice subforum.)
Things that can save your life are knowing when to run, investing in Hide/MS, knowing when to run, always keeping Gsanc, Timestop, Mords, and hastepots on your hotbar, and knowing when to run. If you see a barbarian, run. Just. Run. The only way you're going to kill a barbarian is if they forgot to bring any amount of healing and you are far, far away from them when the fighting starts. Even if you feel confident the barbarian can't kill you, you're going to waste money fighting them. Any class that gets a high healthpool is forbidden to you unless they're stupid or haven't hit their gear tolerances. Thunderclaps are free for you, so if you're feeling plucky, throw one or two out, test their saves, and if you find any lacking, hammer it.
Despite spellcraft save benefits being reduced for a number of rounds for spells of a given descriptor, you are probably never going to see the benefit of this. Your spellbook in PVP is going to be tight, the spells you need to cast to reduce saves are all higher-circle, and the effect lasts about three rounds if it isn't constantly refreshed. There are some classes that have historically abysmal will saves or reflex saves, and there -are- ways to make hitting reflex saves easier. You might want to study up on those.
You can kill in PVP. You can even be scary, but most of the time, you probably won't be.
TL;DR Your summon choices are limited and you're going to be relying on them to harry your opponents. Most of your damage spells are not an option because of high savess, and your spellbook in PVP is going to be too tight to spam enough spells to kill someone with a high healthpool as long as they bring a healpot and remember to -pray.
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What the hell does Evo Spec Actually Do and What Do They Tell Us About Other Wizards?
You sacrifice the ability to use the most powerful caster spell on Arelith right now -- ANTFROG -- for slightly higher DCs and the ability to spam Crushing Hands and Meteor Swarms without burning a hole in your wallet. In the CURRENT meta, if we removed invokers from the equation, the meta is high saves anyways, so your high DCs, outside of Iceberg, probably aren't going to trip that many people up unless they're undergeared. Essentially, when you play a wizard, the people you get to kill are the people who are bad at PVP because they haven't had much experience with it, the underleveled, or the undergeared. You do not kill people who know what they're doing, and evocation specialization does -not- provide you with any edge against them. I'm not saying that it should, either. But if you're hoping that evo spec'll dig you out of the DC wasteland that wizards find themselves in, where they simply don't have the spellcasts to kill anyone because they're doing half to zero damage with most of their spellbook, and IGMS has a fairly easy to obtain counter, it won't.
Most of your spellbook is balanced around invokers right now -- I genuinely believe that -- and the problem with that is that you have a spellbook full of cool-sounding trap options that are utterly ineffectual in your hands because you cannot possibly use them enough to get returns from them. Damage spells on a wizard are bad. This is not new. They have always been bad when pitted against buffs, which last much longer. Spellbound wands were meant to be a solution to this, but unfortunately, outside of being useful in some PVE cases, against many problems in PVE, they won't cut the muster, as most spells you can plop into a spellbound wand as a wizard will do a damage type that is commonly resisted.
Sorcerers have more spellcasts than wizards do, and despite their limited spell selection, they're already a solved game. Sorcerers can put out more damage, more consistently, and more safely. Invokers, similarly, can cast more spells than wizards do, though arguably less safely since they don't have gsanc or timestop, but with better healthpools and generally higher AC. Spellswords can breach just as well as wizards do, and similarly, do it more safely and with a better healthpool, and their biggest damage ability(left clicking on the opponent) doesn't run out of charges. The spellsword's delayed timestop can also, in some circumstances, be better than a wizard's timestop, since it allows a moment for setup and can often scare opponents into fleeing.
Everything that an evocation specialist wants to do is done by some other class better than the evocation specialist can ever hope to do right now. Full stop. In essence, it has an identity crisis, because it has no identity. No place in the meta. Not for PVE or for PVP.
This, unfortunately, extends to most wizard builds outside of enchantment specialist, which contends with warlock right now for best summoner, now that warlock's summon gets HASTE SYNERGY and WoF resistance, making it a much more reliable tool for summons. ANTFROG is undeniably very powerful when buffed by an enchantment specialist, but since it can be breached and WoF'd with much more consistency than a warlock's summon, it's a lot less reliable.
Wizards are just not in a great place right now, despite the dev team's consistent efforts to give it the tools required to -be- in a good place. I don't think I really have an answer for what wizard wants outside of more spells that do consistent damage that's difficult to resist, or spells that provide them more battlefield control that don't rely so much on DCs. Do wizards win fights? Yeah. I've been beaten by a wizard or two. I've beaten people on wizards before, too. But I can still see the writing on the wall. And that writing says to tell people not to roll up a wizard if they want to PVP all the time. If they're dead set on an arcane caster, I'll probably recommend div sorc right now.
TL;DR Evo spec reminds us all that wizards are mid right now.
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The Undead Complaint
It's back from the Transmutation Specialist discussion, but I'm going to keep it brief. Evocationists should be known for their evoking, not their animating, but animation is so stigmatized on Arelith -- fairly, because of the lore -- that if you animate, you are not an evocationist, you are a necromancer. That's just how it is. That's just how it be. Animation consumes class identity. There's no good options for evocation, transmutation, or abjuration specialists who want to use summons right now and not die, both in PVE or PVP. The shadows get you some mileage, the blood homunculus is balanced around hemomancer and doesn't have the sustain to protect a wizard, and mord's sword is uh. Mord's sword. May it rest in peace.
I appreciate SK's attempt at throwing wizard a bone with allowing them access to the blood homunculus actually, and I did use it to some good effect in some lower level dungeons, so this isn't me saying that nothing has been done to remedy that problem, but I do wish that people barred from conjuration had healthier summoning choices even if they're not comparable to ANTFROG or MUMMYDUST.
Really, this whole complaint goes away if someone from the team comes down and says, "No, we want abjuration, transmutation, and evocation specialists to primarily be animators, that's by design, that's how we want it to be, they should be that." Because then we can slap that on the wiki, tell people who ask about these specs they're balanced around being paired with the school of necromancy, and I can stop complaining about it. But until someone does that, I have to keep complaining about it.
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Why You Shouldn't Play an Evo Spec Right Now
I feel like I covered it pretty well above, but honestly, if you want to be an evoker, go play an elementalist or a hemomancer. They're tons of fun, get great summon options, and the ebb and flow of both are incredible. Hemomancers never feel like they run out of juice, and elementalists can power through pretty much any obstacle through sheer force of repetition.
What's that? You want the wizard roleplay? I uh, I've been told several times to just. Lie about it. Call yourself a wizard. Say you're a studied arcanist. Invest some points into intelligence. Invokers aren't very prescriptive classes beyond being innatists. But even innatists have to study magic to get good at it, and some innatists go on to be great wizards.
I'll admit it brings me some pain saying this, because I really do enjoy the class mechanics of wizard. But like with the transmutation spec, it's at best, cutting you off from options for some spellslots if you're an evil character who doesn't have to worry about necromancy, and is at worst, a very, very painful trap.
Go play an invoker.