Preservation Evoker Healing Rotation, Cooldowns, and Abilities — The War Within Pre-Patch
On this page, you will learn how to optimize the rotation of your Preservation Evoker, depending on the type of damage your group is receiving. We also have advanced sections about cooldowns, procs, etc. in order to minmax your healing output and your mana efficiency. All our content is updated for World of Warcraft — The War Within Pre-Patch.
Foreword
Welcome to our Rotation page for Preservation Evokers. On this page, you will find everything you need to know about playing the spec in Raiding and Mythic+ scenarios.
Easy Mode
If the rotations below seem overwhelming to you, you might benefit from visiting our Easy Mode page, which outlines a close-to-optimal rotation in simpler terms.
Rotation / Playstyle for Preservation Evokers
Healing as an Evoker will take a lot of practice no matter which
type of content
you find yourself doing. While other classes have powerful abilities that can
help you the moment a situation turns dire, Evoker lacks these, making
it really
suffer when things get tough. The key to this class is to stay ahead of these
moments by having a plan for every major damage event that your party or raid
will encounter. This will allow you to save your few emergency abilities, such as
Verdant Embrace and
Rewind for the moments you did not
anticipate.
Evoker has a lack of strong single-target spells as well as
emergency buttons,
making it difficult to actively keep individual targets alive during moments of
danger. You must rotate through your cooldown abilities as much
as possible to help ease this pain and make active use of Time Dilation
on anyone in significant danger to help make the situation more manageable.
When casting Dream Breath, you would naturally assume that a higher
empower means more healing, but this is not the case. This ability always does
the same amount of total healing, regardless of empower level. What changes
depending on the empower level is how much of that healing is upfront vs. how
much comes in the form of a HoT. Higher upfront healing can result in more overhealing,
meaning that you will benefit more from the high-duration HoT provided by Rank 1.
Rank 2 is a nice balance between upfront healing and the HoT effect that could
be good situationally.
Echo Raid Build Rotation
Your goal is to generate as many Echos as possible through both spending
essence and casting
Temporal Anomaly with
Resonating Sphere.
Once you have your
Echos out, you will then consume them with one of the four
following spells:
Spiritbloom,
Dream Breath,
Verdant Embrace
and
Reversion. Here is how you can decide which spell to use:
Spiritbloom is the best way to consume
Echos when you have access to the
Evoker Preservation 10.1 Class Set 2pc. This offers extremerly strong burst healing assuming that you are ramping correctly for the damage. When you know raid damage is coming and you aren't going to use
Verdant Embrace, you can prep many
Echos and then time your
Spiritbloom to land right as the damage hits.
Reversion is a solid choice for consuming
Echos when you have
Grace Period selected and aren't using Echo for
Spiritbloom. Even without high critical strike, it is relatively easy for the duration to be extended to the max, and it also gives you
Grace Period value and extra
Essence Bursts.
Verdant Embrace is another decent choice for spending
Echos. While it may offer slightly less burst healing than
Spiritbloom, it will proc
Lifebind, which at the very worst can put it on par and, when significantly playing into it, makes it the best choice for echo consumption. Not to mention the potential to combine with
Emerald Communion with as many echos as possible for a massive raid cooldown.
Dream Breath is a fairly weak choice and only really usable when the raid is taking passive damage. Even then, it remains weaker than
Reversion and also much more difficult to pull off since
Verdant Embrace will consume the
Echos when you attempt to proc
Call of Ysera before casting Dream Breath.
In general your priority list should look like the following:
- Do not overcap on Essence or waste
Essence Burst procs (Cast
Echo as much as possible).
- Cast
Temporal Anomaly as mana allows to generate
Echos through
Resonating Sphere, consume these
Echos with
Reversion in order to gain
Grace Period and generate
Essence Burst.
- Use
Verdant Embrace before casting
Dream Breath in order to get the bonus healing increase from
Call of Ysera.
- Cast
Dream Breath as frequently as possible and only empower it to Rank 1 (sometimes Rank 2).
- Cast
Spiritbloom,
Fire Breath and of course
Dream Breath as much as possible to proc the tier set bonus.
- Cast
Living Flame to generate
Essence Burst procs.
It is important to consider that Call of Ysera has a 15-second long duration.
Even when using
Verdant Embrace for
Echo, you should have plently of time
to still cast
Dream Breath. When you are also attempting to play into the
Verdant Embrace
and
Lifebind interaction, there are a few things you should do to maximize your healing
output. Generally, casting a few
Living Flames on yourself will be the most consistent
way to get good value out of Lifebind. However, you can also choose to simply cast
Spiritbloom
on yourself at Rank 3/4 to transfer all of the healing to your Lifebind targets. If you aren't
directly trying to maximize your Lifebind window then it will fall behind to
Spiritbloom
or
Reversion, but with a bit of effort it is extremely powerful. For more information
on how this interaction works, you can scroll further down the page to our "Using Lifebind" section.
Normal Temporal Anomaly casts will be consumed with
Reversion as this
will give you 5 chances at proccing
Essence Burst, giving you more total echos to
play with, not to mention that it will provide allies with the
Grace Period buff.
When you are attempting to have a lot of
Echos out at one moment for a
Emerald Communion
or a very spikey damage window, then it makes sense to not consume the
Echos
after the
Temporal Anomaly cast with reversion and instead use them on another
ability.
Emerald Blossom Raid Build Rotation
The key to the Emerald Blossom build is generating as much
Essence Bursts
as possible. It is important that you are making an effort to cast
Living Flame
as well as
Fire Breath in order to help generate more procs. This will
not only increase your overall output but also help your mana costs.
- Use
Verdant Embrace before casting
Dream Breath in order to get the bonus healing increase from
Call of Ysera.
- Cast
Dream Breath as frequently as possible and only empower it to Rank 1 (sometimes Rank 2).
- Cast
Fire Breath on cooldown to proc
Leaping Flames.
- Use
Spiritbloom on cooldown.
- Use
Emerald Blossom as damage demands it and prioritize casting it on clumps of allies to prevent it from healing only one ally.
- Cast
Temporal Anomaly as mana permits, consume the
Echos with
Reversion.
- DPS with
Living Flame to generate
Essence Bursts that you can then spend on
Emerald Blossom.
When using Fire Breath, we want to cast it at max rank in order to
generate the max possible
Living Flames from
Leaping Flames.
It does not matter if you then consume the Living Flames for damage or healing; we
only care about having extra chances to generate
Essence Bursts. It is also
important that you are rotating casts of
Emerald Blossom and
Living Flame.
By rotating casts, you will be able to make use of the
Ancient Flame talent,
giving you quicker casts of Living Flame.
To really minmax the Emerald Blossom rotation, you will ideally
want to rotate between casting
Emerald Blossom and
Living Flame.
By doing this, you will be able to make full use of
Ancient Flame, reducing
the cast time of Living Flame by 40%, allowing you to generate quicker
Essence Bursts.
When facing heavy damage, it may be better to just fully spend essence as soon as you
get it rather than rotating between the two casts.
Cycle of Life will transfer ALL healing. This includes both
Rewind
and
Dream Flight. For that reason, you will want to make sure that you have
an active
Cycle of Life buff before casting either of your cooldowns, that
way you can transfer the healing your cooldowns do to the entire group.
Choosing to consume the Temporal Anomaly
Echos with
Reversion
will not only give you multiple chances to proc
Essence Burst, but will
also allow you to gain the
Grace Period healing bonus.
5-Man Healing
5-man healing can be quite difficult as an Evoker. In general, you should be
trying to heal through the hardest moments by rotating casts of Dream Breath
and
Spiritbloom at max rank. Between these two cooldowns, you will want
to ensure your allies have
Reversion on them so they are constantly being
healed. Given there is no rotation you can follow in M+, it is important that
you understand how you can fully use your abilities to their max effectiveness
in Mythic+. Your overall priority will look somewhat like this:
- Cast
Echo to prepare for damage.
- Keep
Reversion on your party members when damage is going out.
- Cast
Dream Breath at either Rank 1 (small passive healing) or max rank (large burst healing) depending on what the situation demands.
- Cast
Spiritbloom at max rank during difficult moments.
- Use
Verdant Embrace to deal with single-target damage.
In order to further understand the Mythic+ rotation, you should also understand
the three 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.
Verdant Embrace -- Using this ability to consume your
Echo will allow you to do quick burst healing, as well as give you and everyone with the echo buff
Lifebind, which then gives you the option to press
Emerald Communion during very dangerous moments, making your group nearly invincible.
Dream Breath -- Out of all your options for consuming echo, this will be one of the least frequent choices. When facing heavy tank damage, it can be beneficial to apply 2x
Reversions and 2x
Dream Breath, just to ensure that the tanks have as much healing as possible.
For more information on how the class changes both rotationally and talent wise in Mythic+, please visit our dedicated page below:
DPS Rotation
Dealing with damage as a Preservation Evoker is extremely simple. The only major change
comes from Energy Loop and
Disintegrate. With these two talents,
you will be casting
Disintegrate; without these two abilities, you will not be.
Assuming you are taking these talents, your rotation will look like:
- Cast
Fire Breath on cooldown and at max rank.
- Consume the
Leaping Flames buff by casting
Living Flame.
- Cast
Azure Strike on 3+ targets.
- Spend Essence on
Disintegrate.
- Cast
Living Flame.
Using Lifebind
Lifebind is an extremely powerful tool in the Evoker kit. Whenever
you cast
Verdant Embrace on an ally, you both will gain the Lifebind
buff. When you have a lot of
Echos out, every player with an Echo will
also get a Lifebind buff. There are two main ways to abuse this for massive healing.
The very first involves
Emerald Communion. This cooldown causes you to heal
for 20% of your health per tick, but it also transfers healing to every player
we had
Lifebind on. This means that every 3 minutes we should aim
to get as many
Echos out as possible, cast
Verdant Embrace
and then cast
Emerald Communion. This will provide you with a massive
amount of healing over the 5-second window and should be treated as a major
raid cooldown as long as you can execute it properly. Outside of this,
Lifebind
serves as a large part of our rotational healing. In order to maximize the healing
it does during a fight you will obviously want to cast
Verdant Embrace right
after large damage spikes (with as many
Echos out as possible), followed
by one of two abilities:
Living Flame or
Spiritbloom. When
possible, you can cast
Spiritbloom on yourself at Rank 3/4 for quick
healing that fits within the Lifebind duration, followed by a
Living Flame
cast. Given the long cast time of Spiritbloom, you should always ensure the cast
finishes before your Lifebind ends, otherwise it is ok to cast it at a lower rank
just to ensure it fits within the window. When Spiritbloom is on cooldown, you can
simply spam heal yourself with
Living Flame until the Lifebind buff falls off.
Both will result in very powerful healing as long as you are able to get
Echos
out beforehand.
Using Essence Burst
Essence Burst should be used on the best Essence-spending ability
for your content type and your build. In situations where absolutely no one
could benefit from healing, you can instead choose to use Essence Burst on
Disintegrate. This will increase your damage output by a small margin.
That being said, in many raiding situations, you will want to sit on your
Essence Burst buff for when damage is coming out.
Cooldown Usage for Preservation Evokers
One of the largest differences between a strong healer and a weaker one is how cooldowns are used and managed. Preservation Evoker has many options available through both the spec tree and class tree.
Dream Flight is a powerful cooldown located in the spec tree. With only a two-minute cooldown, you will want to be making use of this ability frequently and you will want to hit as many allies as possible with it. You should aim to use this as soon as damage comes out and, ideally, when the HoT effect will have good value.
Stasis is a very strong ability, allowing you to essentially store three heals for later use. Only on a 1:30 cooldown, this ability should be used often, especially when you consider that once you collect 3 heals, they will stay with you for the next 30 seconds. You should prioritize powerful heals in your stasis such as
Dream Breath,
Spiritbloom, and
Temporal Anomaly. If you need to get three spells into it quickly, it is also acceptable to use a
Emerald Blossom in the stasis just to fill it up quickly, allowing you to return to casting weaker healing spells without them taking up space in your stasis.
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.
Tip the Scales is the other emergency button for Preservation Evokers. In most cases, you should save this cooldown for when your party takes damage that you did not anticipate. Once this happens, you can easily press this button followed by
Spiritbloom or
Dream Breath to get a quick but powerful heal off to save your party members or raid's life.
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, but 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.
Emerald Communion is a great way to regenerate mana, and for that reason, you will want to cast it as much as possible. There are some things you can do with
Lifebind, but they require you to talent into some choices that you may not normally. If you do end up talenting into those options, then you will want to pair this cooldown with the full combination every time you can to maximize your healing. Otherwise, using it on cooldown to maximize your mana return will be your best decision.
Where Evoker struggles in consistent healing, it makes up for in
cooldowns.
Every ability listed, as well as Spiritbloom and
Dream Breath
are very powerful in helping you manage difficult and dangerous situations.
The biggest mistake you can ever make on Evoker is not rotating
through these
cooldowns appropriately and trying to save them for too long. Use them as you
feel the need to help ease some of the weaknesses in Evoker's healing
kit.
Changelog
- 23 Jul. 2024: Page Updated for War Within Pre-Patch.
- 07 May 2024: Reviewed for 10.2.7.
- 22 Apr. 2024: Page updated for Season 4.
- 19 Mar. 2024: Reviewed for Patch 10.2.6.
- 16 Jan. 2024: Rotation changes.
- 15 Jan. 2024: Rotations updated for 10.2.5.
- 06 Nov. 2023: Updated for 10.2.
- 04 Sep. 2023: Reviewed for Patch 10.1.7
- 08 Aug. 2023: Extra information added for Emerald Blossom rotations.
- 10 Jul. 2023: Updated for Patch 10.1.5.
- 01 May 2023: Updated for Patch 10.1.
- 20 Mar. 2023: Updated for Patch 10.0.7.
- 24 Jan. 2023: Rotation updated for 10.0.5.
- 28 Dec. 2022: Rotation updated to include differences between emerald blossom and reversion builds.
- 11 Dec. 2022: Reviewed for Dragonflight Season 1.
- 28 Nov. 2022: Updated for Dragonflight launch.
- 15 Nov. 2022: Page added.
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This guide has been written by Mytholxgy, who plays healer in Liquid. He is a Templar in the Paladin class discord. You can reach him on Twitter and watch him stream on Twitch.
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