Preservation Evoker Healing Rotation, Cooldowns, and Abilities — 12.0.5

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. Generally that will mean that you should consume Essence Bursts with Emerald Blossom when talented into Twin Echoes, to apply even more Echoes to players. Similarly, Temporal Anomaly allows you to spread Echo through the talent Resonating Sphere.

In Midnight, Echo usage has simplified significantly and you will almost always be consuming Echoes with Merithra's Blessing in Raid. In Mythic+ settings you will still be prioritizing Merithra's Blessing but you will also need to utilize other spells such as Verdant Embrace to manage burst damage.

Healing as a Preservation Evoker focuses on using Temporal Anomaly, Echo, and Emerald Blossom as effectively as possible. In nearly every situation you will be consuming Echo with Merithra's Blessing.

In general, you should be aiming to maximize Echo generation while consuming them with Reversion or Merithra's Blessing. This means casting Temporal Anomaly on cooldown and not wasting any Essence. Keep in mind that you should use Essence Burst with Emerald Blossom to generate free Echos thanks to Twin Echoes. Outside of this, maintain abilities on cooldown.

When you have absolutely nothing to do and no Essence to spend, you should aim to cast Living Flame on enemies to generate Essence Bursts. Because you cast it offensively, it will refund some of the mana cost. Using it for healing can often be very costly. Additionally, make sure that you are making frequent use of Fire Breath to trigger Leaping Flames, allowing you to generate even more Essence Bursts. Your overall priority will be as follows:

• Keep Stasis on cooldown and aim to combine it with Tip the Scales.
• Keep Stasis on cooldown.
• Use Tip the Scales as often as possible.
• 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 Merithra's Blessing.
• Cast Verdant Embrace after finishing a ramp and when you have no Essence available.
• Consume Essence with Disintegrate when no healing is needed to regen mana.

In general, you should be aiming to maximize Echo generation while consuming them with Reversion or Merithra's Blessing. This means casting Temporal Anomaly on cooldown and not wasting any Essence. Keep in mind that you should use Essence Burst with Emerald Blossom to generate free Echos thanks to Twin Echoes. Outside of this, maintain abilities on cooldown. When you have absolutely nothing to do and no Essence to spend, you should aim to cast Living Flame on enemies to generate Essence Bursts. Because you cast it offensively, it will refund some of the mana cost. Using it for healing can often be very costly. Additionally, make sure that you are making frequent use of Fire Breath to trigger Leaping Flames, allowing you to generate even more Essence Bursts.

FAQHow much should I cast Emerald Blossom?

You will want to cast Emerald Blossom with every Essence Burst proc. With changes in Midnight, Emerald Blossom will no longer consume Echo. Additionally, Twin Echoes causes every Emerald Blossom cast to give you a buff stacking two times. This buff causes Echo to apply to an additional player. With this, you can safely use Emerald Blossom in your healing rotation while also not impacting your ability to get Echoes out for large damage windows. That being said, Emerald Blossom has a very high mana cost and is 1 Essence more expensive than Echo, meaning that you should only cast it when you have Essence Burst active. This will allow you to gain a significant amount of extra healing while also not impacting your mana.

FAQWhat Is a Ramp and When Should I Do It?

Ramping refers to getting as many Echos active on the raid as you can. A ramp typically starts by casting Dream Breath in order to achieve a guaranteed Merithra's Blessing proc. From there you will then cast Temporal Anomaly and spend any Essence you have to get out as many Echos as possible (keep in mind Emerald Blossom should still be used with Essence Burst). When you are out of Essence and Temporal Anomaly is on cooldown typically marks the end of a ramp where you will then want to cast Merithra's Blessing (or Reversion if you have no proc). In a perfect world you will line this up with dangerous moments in the fight, but at times you will be simply going through too many ramps for them all to be lined up with heavy hitting moments. Making the correct decision as to whether you should send your ramp or hold it a bit longer requires intricate knowledge of the fight or looking at your timers for upcoming damage. If you are not minmaxing, simply doing this as much as possible is still bound to output a ton of healing.

FAQHow much should I cast Verdant Embrace?

Utilizing Verdant Embrace effectively can be difficult. In general you will want to prioritize using this ability in-between ramps. There are two difference sequences to cast it depending on whether or not you have a Essence Burst proc.

• Essence Burst proc — Finish your ramp by casting Merithra's Blessing. Follow that by spending your Essence Burst on Emerald Blossom. Cast a single Echo. Cast Verdant Embrace which will consume the two Echoes (from Echo cast and the Twin Echoes proc). This will give you the max stacks of Primacy. Start your next ramp by casting Dream Breath and begin generating Echos.
• No Essence Burst proc — Finish your ramp by casting Merithra's Blessing. Cast Verdant Embrace followed by Dream Breath to start a new ramp.

Keep in mind that you will often find yourself unable to do this on cooldown. It is simply too expensive and you will often find yourself with little downtime between ramps. When deciding whether or not you should do this you will want to ensure that you just casted Merithra's Blessing and are completely out of Essence. This means that you can quickly cast Verdant Embrace without missing out on any Echos that could've been included in your previous ramp.

FAQWhen and How Should I Use Stasis for Chronowarden?

While Dream Flight is extremely powerful, it will not always be used. Most of the value comes from hitting a large number of targets and on some fights it can either be too difficult to hit max targets or simply too dangerous. In these situations, you should swap to Stasis. As Chronowarden, you will store the following spells in Stasis.

• Cast Dream Breath before activating your Stasis.
• Temporal Anomaly — Activate Stasis and cast your first Temporal Anomaly.
• Merithra's Blessing — Due to previously casting Dream Breath, you guarantee that you have a proc available. Cast this ability second.
• Temporal Anomaly — Cast another Temporal Anomaly when it comes off cooldown for your final Stasis spell. You may need to cast Living Flame a few times until it is ready.

The key to this Stasis combo is casting Dream Breath before activating to guarantee a Merithra's Blessing proc. From there you will maximize Echo by getting two casts of Temporal Anomaly off. Ensure that you do not cast any healing spells before casting your second Temporal Anomaly otherwise they will store as your final Stasis spell. You should also be aiming to cast Tip the Scales with your Stasis cast.

FAQWhen and How Should I Use Stasis for Flameshaper?

While Dream Flight is extremely powerful, it will not always be used. Most of the value comes from hitting a large number of targets and on some fights it can either be too difficult to hit max targets or simply too dangerous. In these situations, you should swap to Stasis. As Flameshaper, you will store the following spells in Stasis:

• Dream Breath — Start with a Dream Breath in order to guarantee a Merithra's Blessing proc.
• Temporal Anomaly — Follow up with a Temporal Anomaly in order to generate Echos through Resonating Sphere.
• Merithra's Blessing — Consume the Merithra's Blessing proc as your final spell.

This Stasis is a very simple and easy combo you can do. If you find yourself with extra downtime you can choose to instead cast Dream Breath before starting your Stasis, following that up with two Temporal Anomaly casts and then Merithra's Blessing as the final spell. This combo allows for a very powerful burst healing combo, but due to the large cooldown of Temporal Anomaly it requires you to not cast any spells in-between Temporal Anomaly casts.

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 effectiveness 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.

In Midnight, you will gain access to Merithra's Blessing, the new Apex talent. This ability has 3 separate ranks that all increase its power. Below we will break down what each individual rank does:

• Rank 1 — Abilities that consume Essence have a chance to trigger Merithra's Blessing, causing your next Reversion to be transformed. On top of providing the standard Reversion effects, it will change icon and have a spiritbloom-like effect where healing will shoot out and bounce to players.
• Rank 2 — Reversion now reduces damage taken by 1% per point and also heals them by 1% per point instead. This is both a damage reduction and a heal with the damage reduction portion showing up in damage meters as an absorb.
• Rank 3 — Dream Breath's instant healing is increased by a significant amount and each cast will trigger Merithra's Blessing, allowing you to reliably proc the passive whenever you cast Dream Breath.

Merithra's Blessing is an extremely powerful ability massively enhancing the power of Reversion. Primarily due to Rank 2, you will want to make sure you have Reversion on as many players as possible, as often as possible. Due to Merithra's Blessing providing a large burst of healing in addition to all Reversion effects, you can double dip with Echo usage and this is primarily how you will be aiming to use Echo in Midnight.

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": Dream Breath, Temporal Anomaly, Merithra's Blessing. This will be the Stasis you can always default to regardless of if you are Raiding or in Mythic+. Different hero talents will slightly change this combo as will Mythic+, but executing this means you are at least always getting solid value out of Stasis and not wasting its power.
• The Chronowarden special: Temporal Anomaly, Temporal Anomaly, Merithra's Blessing. With Chronowarden being able to reduce the cooldown of Temporal Anomaly thanks to Nozdormu Adept, you are able to reliably get 2 casts of Temporal Anomaly with minimal downtime. This is a great combo for raiding.
• Mythic+ AoE burst: Temporal Anomaly, Verdant Embrace, Dream Breath. By consuming Echos with Verdant Embrace, you can execute a very quick AoE burst heal. By ending with either Dream Breath or Emerald Blossom, you finish the combo with an additional strong AoE heal.
• 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 targeted 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 front-loaded, 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.