[Soapy]

There is no one specific problem plaguing Evoker.

As stated earlier, anyone completely unprepared won't stand a chance at all, but anyone somewhat prepared has the odds stacked heavily in their favor - at least in single fights.

Evokers are still the kings of straight-up damage in group PvP, although it still depends heavily on the opponents.. Hexers give up a small bit of that damage for debilitating effects (Wretched Oil, Black Bubble, Spirit Pain), and are generally considered to be one of, if not the strongest class in PvP.


Here's everything wrong with Evoker:

• Skill Point deficiency.
  You're either spread thin in both damage and skill slots, or you're just limited in variety. Which is fine in theory, as most classes have similar issues, but..

• Elemental resists.
  Most Evokers I've seen are only packing three, maybe four elements at a time. If you drop a CM Sear on someone that just happens to have 57% Fire Resistance, well.. It won't be much fun.
  Hexer works around this with effects, Priest sidesteps it with Graft and Sanctuary, Void Mage is more about map control than damage, Summoner wins with variety and Wilglas negates this entirely.

• Guard.
  Charge Mind? More like Guard Time. Nothing can be done to stop it other than HSDW Lazarus Wind, which means you not only have to end your turn in dangerously close range, but remain there until your next.
  Hexer, again, works around this with effects, Priest isn't exactly known for losing battles of attrition, while Summoner, Void Mage and Wilglas are both somewhere in the middle of this. None of these classes have anything remotely as telegraphed as Charge Mind.

• Evasion.
  Generally speaking, magic will never fail to be Evaded, outside of HSDW Lazarus Wind (see previous point). This is due to a lack of skill, a lack of hit buffs, a lack of accuracy, and so on.
  See the previous two, for the most part.

• Resistance.
  Less of a problem for Evoker than the other magic classes.. at least in theory. In reality, Priests and Hexers both deal a large amount of unresistable damage (Needle, Poison), and have massively increased survivability in comparison (Spirit Pain, Fellel's Fumble, Strangling Etacof, Sanctuary, Graft, Silent Prayer) so they aren't nearly as affected by it as you'd think.
  Summoner can throw out Byakko and pray, while Void Mage and Wilglas essentially have no way of dealing with this.

• Silence.
  Goodbye Charge Mind, goodbye Invoking. Unless you have Silent Prayer and stay far away from any Hexers, this will be the end of you. Especially against skills that do it as a secondary effect, such as Cutthroat, Black Bubble or even weapons like Tsukikage. I'd say the recent Screamer 'change' somewhat solved this, but I don't believe limiting an entire class to using the same rare weapon is too helpful.
  Priest gets Silent Prayer, Summoner gets a few non-spells along with Youkai, Void Mage can still use frayed gates and Wilglas doesn't have any spells in the first place.

• Focus.
  Outside of using Grand Summoner for the free +15 FP per round (which I still think needs to be addressed), an Evoker that relies on HSDW Invocations - the only real way to deal damage as of late - will not only find themselves quite literally burning Focus, but additionally feeding some to all enemies thanks to Capacity.
  Priest gets the laughably cheap Curate spells, Void Mage has access to potentially more FP than Summoner, and Wilglas' only serious weakness shows its head.

• Damage focus.
  The 'meta' has been more survivability over pure damage for.. well, probably ever since Magaisendo and Overload got the nerfs they deserved. Evoker is a class quite literally focused on pure damage output, with no regard for its own safety or additional affects (other than Intensify Cold) - meaning it actually falls behind in a damage race compared to, say, Hexer, which can do the same (if not more) damage, while all but completely removing the enemy's ability to fight back. (Since God Rod means Kel does more damage than Sear to the same target, I figured this would be a better example.)
  Priest gets ridiculous survivability and more DPT, Hexers get survivability and roughly equal DPT with debilitating effects, Summoner gets an extreme variety of skills and effects.

And here's what you can do to fix it:

• I don't know.

I really have no idea where to start. There are so many problems on both sides with this class, I don't think it's possible for two or three changes to fix all of it.

I think lowering Guard's effectiveness to half (and the silly evade penalty, too) would be a step in the right direction, but I honestly don't know what else to do, and that's more a general grievance than one with Evoker specifically.