Preservation Evoker Healing Rotation, Cooldowns, and Abilities — Midnight Pre-Patch (12.0)

Preservation Evoker gameplay focuses on buffing players with Echo. When this buff is active on players, the next healing spell you do will also be cast on any player with Echo. The exception to this is Emerald Blossom, which will no longer consume Echo. In many cases you are using Emerald Blossom with the Twin Echoes talent to apply even more Echoes to players. Similarly, Temporal Anomaly allows you to spread Echo through the talent Resonating Sphere.

Deciding how to consume Echo can be very difficult as it often changes depending on the situation. Verdant Embrace remains a top choice when burst healing is a necessity, otherwise you can consume with Reversion typically.

In Pre-Patch, both Flameshaper and Chronowarden play fairly similar. For that reason, we have focused the Flameshaper build on Emerald Blossom to offer a bit of variety in rotation before Midnight.

Your overall rotation will look something like this:

• Keep Temporal Anomaly on cooldown as much as possible.
• Keep Dream Breath on cooldown as much as possible. Remember that you will want to cast this at Rank 1.
• Spend Essence on Emerald Blossom.
• Consume Echos with either: Reversion.
• When you have nothing else to do, attempt to generate Essence Burst by casting Living Flame on an enemy.
• Make sure to keep Fire Breath on cooldown to proc Leaping Flames and generate additional Essence Bursts.

When it comes to Stasis usage, it is important to keep in mind that the order in which you store spells will be the order in which they are cast when you end up reactivating Stasis. For that reason, you will generally want to use Temporal Anomaly at the end of your Stasis in order to not have the Echos instantly consumed by a spell you did not want. Prior to casting the Temporal Anomaly, you will want to make sure that you at least have Dream Breath, and the other spell is relevant but Emerald Blossom can be a solid choice.

Chronowarden builds focus on Temporal Anomaly and Tip the Scales. Nozdormu Adept is a new talent in Midnight which reduces the mana cost and cooldown of Temporal Anomaly, making it even more important to ensure that you are keeping the ability on cooldown as much as possible. Tip the Scales gains importance due to Temporal Burst, which gives you haste, movement speed, and increased cooldown reduction during the duration. Your goal should be to line this ability up with dangerous moments while also maximizing uses.

• Use Tip the Scales as often as possible and ideally right as you are about to do large healing to get max effectiveness from Temporal Burst.
• Keep Temporal Anomaly on cooldown as much as possible.
• Keep Dream Breath on cooldown as much as possible. Remember that you will want to cast this at Rank 1.
• Aim to consume Essence Burst with Emerald Blossom to trigger Twin Echoes.
• Cast as many Echos as possible, whenever you have the Essence to do so.
• Consume Echos with either: Reversion or Verdant Embrace.
• When you have nothing else to do, attempt to generate Essence Burst by casting Living Flame on an enemy.
• Make sure to keep Fire Breath on cooldown to proc Leaping Flames and generate additional Essence Bursts.

When it comes to Stasis usage, it is important to keep in mind that the order in which you store spells will be the order in which they are cast when you end up reactivating Stasis. For that reason, you will generally want to use Temporal Anomaly at the end of your Stasis in order to not have the Echos instantly consumed by a spell you did not want. Prior to casting the Temporal Anomaly, you will want to make sure that you at least have Dream Breath, and the other spell is relevant but Emerald Blossom can be a solid choice.

Flameshaper has become a viable choice in Mythic+ largely due to two new talents: Legacy of the Lifebinder and Lifecinders. Legacy of the Lifebinder allows you to have 2 charges of Dream Breath. Due to the removal of Spiritbloom, you may often find yourself having large gaps in your healing ability. Having two charges of Dream Breath can really help to fix this. Lifecinders will allow you to place Obsidian Scales on a player, providing them a large amount of damage reduction which can be very valuable in Mythic+ settings.

Your overall rotation and priority will look something like this:

• Cast Echo to prepare for damage.
• Keep Reversion on your party members when damage is going out to gain extra healing through Grace Period.
• Cast Dream Breath at either Rank 1 (small passive healing) or max rank (large burst healing), depending on what the situation demands.
• Use Verdant Embrace to deal with single-target damage.
• Make frequent use of Fire Breath for not only damage purposes but to also generate extra Essence Bursts and proc Leaping Flames.
• Cast Living Flame to generate extra Essence Bursts and to deal damage.
• When players are stacked and you are in need of healing, don't be afraid to cast Emerald Blossom.

In order to further understand the Mythic+ rotation, you should also understand the main ways that you will be consuming Echo:

• Reversion — This will be your most used ability to consume Echo. Keeping the passive healing on your will make every pack more manageable, as well as providing the Grace Period buff. Thanks to Golden Hour, it can be very powerful in terms of overall healing and also dealing with burst damage. After your party takes large damage, Golden Hour by itself can provide a ton of extra healing.
• Verdant Embrace — Using this ability to consume your Echo will allow you to do quick burst healing. Due to Evoker struggling with single-target healing specifically, being able to Echo this ability during difficult moments will be very valuable.

Healing Mythic+ in Midnight will feel different with the removal of Spiritbloom, forcing you to be more reliant on other tools. Leaping Flames will continue to be a very valuable way to deal additional healing in emergencies, but more importantly Emerald Blossom has gained significant value. This ability has been buffed significantly heading into Midnight and it has become a powerful tool to deal with heavy damage. You will often find yourself with an overabundance of Echos, which means that you can afford to spend Essence on Emerald Blossom instead, even if it may not hit full targets. Being flexible with your approach and not hesitating to use Emerald Blossom can help you get through difficult situations.

With Stasis, you will want to make sure that you always have at least Dream Breath and Temporal Anomaly. From there, your remaining spell matters much less, but Emerald Blossom is a solid choice. Verdant Embrace can even be good if you know a player will be in need of a little bit of extra healing.

Chronowarden continues to be a powerful choice in Mythic+ largely due to the damage it provides, but additionally the extra healing through Chrono Flame is incredibly noticeable with the loss of Spiritbloom. It is not uncommon for you to find yourself running low on spells to use, especially if you have no Essence for Emerald Blossom. Being able to have that little bit of extra healing potential from Chrono Flame can be incredibly nice. Just be careful to not find yourself overly relying on this ability compared to your other much strong healing abilities.

Your overall rotation and priority will look something like this:

• Cast Echo to prepare for damage.
• Keep Reversion on your party members when damage is going out to gain extra healing through Grace Period.
• Cast Dream Breath at either Rank 1 (small passive healing) or max rank (large burst healing), depending on what the situation demands.
• Use Verdant Embrace to deal with single-target damage.
• Make frequent use of Fire Breath for not only damage purposes but to also generate extra Essence Bursts and proc Leaping Flames.
• Cast Living Flame to generate extra Essence Bursts and to deal damage.
• When players are stacked and you are in need of healing, don't be afraid to cast Emerald Blossom.

In order to further understand the Mythic+ rotation, you should also understand the main ways that you will be consuming Echo:

• Reversion — This will be your most used ability to consume Echo. Keeping the passive healing on your will make every pack more manageable, as well as providing the Grace Period buff. Thanks to Golden Hour, it can be very powerful in terms of overall healing and also dealing with burst damage. After your party takes large damage, Golden Hour by itself can provide a ton of extra healing.
• Verdant Embrace — Using this ability to consume your Echo will allow you to do quick burst healing. Due to Evoker struggling with single-target healing specifically, being able to Echo this ability during difficult moments will be very valuable.

Healing Mythic+ in Midnight will feel different with the removal of Spiritbloom, forcing you to be more reliant on other tools. Leaping Flames will continue to be a very valuable way to deal additional healing in emergencies, but more importantly Emerald Blossom has gained significant value. This ability has been buffed significantly heading into Midnight and it has become a powerful tool to deal with heavy damage. You will often find yourself with an overabundance of Echos, which means that you can afford to spend Essence on Emerald Blossom instead, even if it may not hit full targets. Being flexible with your approach and not hesitating to use Emerald Blossom can help you get through difficult situations.

With Stasis, you will want to make sure that you always have at least Dream Breath and Temporal Anomaly. From there, your remaining spell matters much less, but Emerald Blossom is a solid choice. Verdant Embrace can even be good if you know a player will be in need of a little bit of extra healing.

Added in Patch 11.1.7, the combat assistant is a one-button ability intended to cast your rotational abilities. Unfortunately for healer specs, this does not function well. As a Preservation Evoker, the combat assistant will not cast healing spells. Instead it will only cast Fire Breath and Living Flame. This creates a unique situation where it is possible to use the Combat Assistant as a single key instead of needing two keys for each respective ability, but this is not recommended as there are times you will want to Living Flame without casting Fire Breath, and the Living Flames being cast will only be dealing damage.

Echo is the most core ability of Preservation Evoker. When cast on an ally, players will gain the Echo buff. Anytime you have an Echo buff active, the next healing spell you cast will also be cast on any player with an Echo at that moment. This does not apply to major cooldowns such as Rewind, but any core ability can Echo.

Below we will break down the ways that you can use Echo:

• Reversion
  Reversion continues to be one of the most common and strongest methods of consuming Echo. While it provides a consistent source of healing, it also benefits from many different talents. Specifically: Golden Hour will also applying to any target who received Reversion from Echo, adding even more power to this ability. In Mythic+ and Raiding it has also become a staple due to Grace Period, allowing you get the extra healing bonus on many different targets.
• Merithra's Blessing
  In Midnight, Merithra's Blessing is the new Apex Hero Talent. This ability is procd from Dream Breath and Essence abilities. It offers quite a large amount of burst healing that is entirely controllable since you can reliably proc it through Dream Breath. In Midnight, this will be one of if not your strongest choice for consuming Echos in both Raid and Mythic+.
• Verdant Embrace
  Without Lifebind, Verdant Embrace has lost a bit of its power. With buffs to its healing, it remains a solid choice for burst healing, especially in Mythic+. In raid it will often fall behind Merithra's Blessing due to Merithra's also providing the Reversion benefits to the player, giving you both styles of healing at once. But that being said, when you are in need of the burst healing and do not have access to Merithras at a given moment, it can be powerful.
• Dream Breath
  Dream Breath has typically fallen behind Reversion due to the extra effects granted by Reversion and that continues to be the case. Where it gains most of its value is in Mythic+ settings where you already have Reversion on a ton of players, so by using Echo on Dream Breath, you are just applying even more HoT effects on your group, making it easier to manage constant damage.
• Emerald Blossom
  In Midnight, Emerald Blossom no longer consumes echo.This means that you can continue to cast Emerald Blossom without interrupting any ramps you are doing. You are even encouraged to cast it when talented into Twin Echoes, which will grant you free Echos.
• Living Flame
  You should only every consume Echo with Living Flame during truly desperate single-target healing moments. This should never be done in raid and is primarily a Mythic+ situation where you do not have access at that moment to stronger spells.

While spending Essence on Echo is great, most of your Echos will come through Temporal Anomaly thanks to the Resonating Sphere talent. This causes Temporal Anomaly to generate Echos on players that it passes through. It is incredibly important that regardless of build you are pressing this ability as much as possible for not only the Echoes but the shields as well. And remember, the best choice of consuming Echo will always change depending on the patch, the content you are doing, and what type of damage is occurring. One of the keys of Evoker is to be flexible with your approach and adapt to what the situation demands.

In addition to Mana, Preservation Evoker has Essence as an additional resource that will need to be managed. As is the case with any Healer, you will want to avoid wasting Essence as much as possible, but sometimes it is unavoidable when you are facing downtime where not much is happening. There are three different abilities that you can consume Essence on:

• Echo
  Costing 2 Essence, Echo will be your primary way of spending Essence. It is the foundation of Preservation Evoker gameplay, allowing you to execute large ramps or output a ton of healing at once.
• Emerald Blossom
  Costing 3 Essence, Emerald Blossom provides a solid amount of healing to a player and anyone else within the radius of its effect. In Midnight, this ability no longer directly competes with Echo when you are running the Twin Echoes talent. Allowing you cast Emerald Blossom and not miss out on potential Echo buffs. Additionally, Emerald Blossom will no longer consume active Echos..
• Disintegrate
  Disintegrate is your way of dealing damage through Essence. By itself this ability is quite weak, but when combined with the Energy Loop talent, it becomes a nice way to deal damage, spend extra Essence, and generate Mana. In most raid builds, you won't take this talent meaning that you almost never press Disintegrate, but in Mythic+ it is a staple.

Now that these abilities have been discussed, it is important to discuss Essence Burst and how they are generated. Below we will discuss the main things that you will want to keep in mind:

• Living Flame and Reversion
  Both Living Flame and Reversion have a chance to generate a Essence Burst when cast. Typically you will find yourself using Living Flame for damage in downtime as it will refund some of the mana cost when used offensively, also giving you the opportunity to generate Essence Bursts during downtime. Reversion is one of our most commonly used abilities, meaning that you are constantly feeding into a cycle of spending Essence, generating Essence Burst, and then consuming to continue the process.
• Leaping Flames
  When talented into Leaping Flames, your Fire Breath will cause your next Living Flame to cast on multiple targets (increasing based on the rank at which you cast Fire Breath). Casting a max rank Fire Breath followed by Living Flame is a sure-fire way to generate 1-2 Essence Burst.
• Inner Flame
  While not taken in every build, the Inner Flame talent is triggered by casting either Stasis or Dream Flight. Once triggered, for a short duration you will generate increased Essence Bursts.

When spending Essence Burst, there are multiple factors that you want to consider. Emerald Blossom and Disintegrate have a 3-Essence cost compared to Echos 2 cost. This makes it more efficient to consume Essence Bursts with either Emerald Blossom or Disintegrate. That being said, we are often not casting Disintegrate in raid, making our choice a bit easier. Echo will help us to get out additional Echoes needed to execute a large ramp in a quick fashion, but again costs must be considered. Emerald Blossom has a very high mana cost, furthering the effectivenes of casting it a Essence Burst proc. Not to mention, when you are using Twin Echoes, which is common in most builds, you are effectively getting both Echo and Emerald Blossom at once, making it the correct choice in most situations. Of course if you are aiming to execute a quick ramp it can be faster to just cast Echo, but you will again want to be flexible in your approach and how you decide to consume your Essence Bursts.

Stasis is an extremely powerful cooldown in both Raiding and Mythic+. When activated, this cooldown will store the next 3 healing spells that you cast. Any damage spells or major cooldowns such as Rewind will not be stored. You have an infinite amount of time to store spells, but once 3 spells have been stored, you will have only 30 seconds to either reactivate the ability or they it will reactivate itself. It is important to note that the order in which you stored the abilities is also the order in which they will be cast once you reactivate the ability. This is specifically relevant for Temporal Anomaly. When talented into Resonating Sphere, Temporal Anomaly will obviously generate free Echos. If you were to cast Temporal Anomaly at the start of your Stasis, then the free Echoes would be instantly consumed by your next spell. For that reason it is always best to end your Stasis with Temporal Anomaly, rather than casting it early and wasting the Echoes.

Below we will break down some common Stasis you may see:

• The "Default": Emerald Blossom, Dream Breath, and Temporal Anomaly. This will be your most commonly used Stasis, allowing you to ensure you get two core abilities: Dream Breath and Temporal Anomaly and filling with an Emerald Blossom for extra healing.
• Temporal Anomaly, Temporal Anomaly and Temporal Anomaly. This can be useful if done right before pulling a boss, allowing you to quickly generate massive shields on your raid at the start of a fight. Keep in mind that you will want to only cast the first 2 Temporal Anomaly and wait until you are pulling to cast the 3rd so your Stasis doesn't expire early.

It is also important to note that Stasis will preserve the targets you originally casted the healing spell on. In other words, if I cast Emerald Blossom on my co-healer Youtee during my Stasis storing phase, when I reactivate Stasis the ability will again be cast on Youtee. This is what heavily prevents abilities such as Echo from ever being good, they offer low healing and will be cast on the same target. This of course would also apply to an ability like Verdant Embrace, but that can be a fine choice still for small group settings when specific targetted healing is needed.

Rewind should be used after an extremely heavy damage window. Its healing is determined by how much damage you have taken in the last 5 seconds, meaning the more that your raid or party took, the more it will heal. This cooldown is one of the few true emergency buttons that Preservation Evokers have; you should use it as best you can in truly dire situations.

One of the most common mistakes that players make is holding Rewind for too long. While it is an extremely powerful cooldown, you should still aim to use it anytime you are falling behind. Using it proactively when you begin struggling will prevent you from having to scramble to catchup later.

Dream Flight is a powerful cooldown but shares a choice node with Stasis, which makes it significantly less seen. It can be a viable choice for players who do not want to deal with the Stasis mechanics, but it will often be worse.

Dream Flight has two main mechanics you need to keep in mind. First, it will deal large healing on the initial cast while you are flying over players. This means that you should aim to use it in situations where you can get strong value from the initial healing portion. Additionally, it will leave a long HoT on any players hit meaning that it can be good for extended damage windows. Ideally, you are casting this ability in situations where both areas of the healing are powerful, but this is not always achievable and you should still aim to use the ability as much as possible.

Tip the Scales gains most of its value through Chronowarden. While Flameshaper will still have access, the only benefit comes in being able to quickly get max rank empowers off.

As Chronowarden, you gain access to Temporal Burst which provides you with a large amount of haste, movement speed, and cooldown reduction that decreases every second over the duration. With most of the power being frontloaded, you want to ensure that you are using this ability right away during difficult movements to massively empower you. Because Chronoboon also reduces the duration by 30 seconds and the long duration of the buff itself, it is important that you are making frequent use of it.

Zephyr causes you and your 4 closet allies to take 20% reduced Area-of-Effect damage for 8 seconds. Given that this only targets your 4 closest allies, it will be easier to use in Mythic+ than raid. However, you will still want to make active use of it when you know that you are going to take a large AoE hit in the next few seconds. Not every damage event is considered AoE, so you must have a good understanding of what type of damage you will be taking to ensure you do not waste the effects of the ability.