The Secret They Don't Want You To Know
For months, the Evoker community has been sleeping on a game-changer. While everyone was busy arguing over stat weights and trinket sims, a player known only as 'Chronos' was labbing in a corner of the Valdrakken training dummies. What they discovered wasn't a new talent build. It was a technique. And it's adding a staggering 11% average uptime to Hover on fights where you're constantly running for your life.
From "Useless Bug" to Meta-Defining Tech
You know the drill. Fyrakk is breathing fire everywhere, the ground is lava, and your precious cast times are getting griefed by RNG mechanics. You pop Hover, get a few casts off, and then the movement stops. You're left with 4 seconds of Hover... and nothing to use it on. A dead GCD. Wasted potential.
Chronos asked the forbidden question: "What if we could get that time back?"
The answer is Hover Canceling. By using a specific sequence—activating another movement ability or interact command at the precise moment—you can cancel the Hover buff without triggering its full cooldown. The remaining duration is converted into a chunk of cooldown reduction.
The Math That Will Blow Your Mind
This isn't just theory. Chronos logged hundreds of pulls on fights like Smolderon, Larodar, and Tindral. The data doesn't lie.
- Standard Play: Hover uptime averaged 22% on high-movement fights. You use it, you drain it, you wait.
- With Cancel Tech: Uptime skyrocketed to an average of 33%. That's nearly a third of the fight where you're a turret on wings.
- The Kicker: This translates to more Disintegrate channels, more empowered spells landed on the move, and less DPS lost to mechanics. Early sims suggest a 3-5% overall damage increase for Preservation and Devastation, just from this one trick.
Why wasn't this found sooner? Because it looks and feels like a bug. Most players who stumbled onto it assumed it was unintended and ignored it. Chronos saw an opportunity to min-max the very fabric of the spec's mobility.
The Verdict: How to Do It (Without Getting Nerfed)
Blizzard hasn't commented. Is this an exploit or emergent gameplay? For now, it's the hottest tech in the game. Here's the basic rundown, but mastering the timing is key:
- Activate Hover as you would normally to handle movement.
- The moment your movement need ends and you could stand still, prepare to cancel.
- Immediately use Deep Breath, Fire Breath (while facing away), or interact with a non-existent object (right-click the ground). This consumes the remaining Hover buff.
- Watch your Hover cooldown. A portion proportional to the canceled duration will be instantly refunded.
Warning: The timing is tight. Do it too early and you waste Hover. Do it wrong and you might not get the refund. Practice on dummies first.
The cat is out of the bag. While the theorycrafters scramble to update their guides, the elite Evokers are already using this to push their logs into the pink and purple percentiles. Is it intended? Who cares. It works. And in the race for world first, an 11% uptime edge isn't just an advantage—it's a weapon.
Get out there and practice. Before the hotfix hits.