Preservation Evoker Healing Rotation, Cooldowns, and Abilities — The War Within (11.1.5)

Preservation Evoker has two very distinct ways to play. One focuses on spending essence on Echo; the other focuses on spending essence on Emerald Blossom. Deciding which of these abilities you will want to cast largely depends on the talents you take. Echo builds head towards Time Lord, giving them extra healing output from Echo casts, whereas Emerald Blossom builds select Fluttering Seedlings, Field of Dreams, and Cycle of Life to amplify their output from each Emerald Blossom cast.

While in Mythic+ Echo builds remain the way to go, the best raid build often changes patch to patch, but overall, both remain competitive. Being able to play both unique builds is a valuable skill, as there is a good chance you may need to use both throughout a raiding tier.

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:

• Verdant Embrace offers you very high burst potential, and overall the highest HPS output assuming that you are playing into the Lifebind effect. Because Lifebind shares healing that you deal to yourself with any players having the buff, you will want to follow each Verdant Embrace cast with an Echo on yourself into a Rank 2 Spiritbloom cast on yourself, that way you transfer additional healing to all allies with Lifebind. Outside of this you can perform powerful combos every 3 minutes with Emerald Communion.
• Spiritbloom will offer you a nice amount of burst healing as well as additional HoT healing through Reverberations. In general this will fall behind Verdant Embrace and Lifebind combos but it can be much easier to pull off and is decent at healing longer duration damage windows.
• Dream Breath is a fairly strong choice thanks to Double-time but often falls behind Spiritbloom and Lifebind. That being said, it can be efficient to use when facing very heavy rot damage where the burst healing from the other spells may not be as useful. Keep in mind it will be more difficult to pull off since Verdant Embrace will consume the Echos when you attempt to proc Call of Ysera before casting Dream Breath.
• Reversion is a fairly weak Echo choice that will also require you to talent into Grace Period. 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.

The overall rotation for an Echo build will look like this:

1. Keep Stasis on cooldown as much as possible and avoid putting weak spells (think Echo) within the Stasis. More info about Stasis can be found below.
2. 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.
3. Cast Temporal Anomaly as mana allows to generate Echos through Resonating Sphere.
4. Do not overcap on Essence or waste Essence Burst procs (Cast Echo as much as possible).
5. Consume active Echos with Verdant Embrace to deal with heavy burst damage and when your raid is low health.
6. Cast a single Echo on yourself after triggering the Lifebind effect.
7. Cast Spiritbloom on yourself and before the Lifebind buff falls off. This will allow you to deal a massive amount of extra healing to your raid following a Verdant Embrace cast. It is best to cast this at Rank 2.
8. Cast Dream Breath at Rank 1 before you lose the Call of Ysera buff triggered by casting Verdant Embrace.
9. When facing heavy rot damage and in a situation where Spiritbloom or Lifebind will overheal; you can instead consume Echos with Dream Breath. You would then follow a rotation of using Verdant Embrace, followed by getting Echos out, then consuming with Dream Breath.
10. Cast Fire Breath at max rank to trigger Leaping Flames, follow this cast by using Living Flame to generate Essence Burst.
11. Cast Living Flame to generate Essence Burst procs and Temporal Compression stacks when you have nothing else to do or don't want to consume Echos yet. These living flames should be cast on an enemy in order to save mana and not consume the Echos.

Additional information on Lifebind and how to use it effectively can be found further down the page.

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 can use powerful abilities such as Spiritbloom and Dream Breath. It is also worth considering that every other use of Stasis will line up with the cooldown of Emerald Communion. This means that you can get extra Echos out for a large Lifebind combo by having a Temporal Anomaly at the end of your Stasis.

This build focuses on casting Emerald Blossom as much as possible and generating a ton of Essence Bursts in order to save mana and increase your overall output. While an Echo build will occasionally cast Emerald Blossom thanks to Ouroboros, this build will never make use of Echo. You will simply spend every bit of essence you generate on Emerald Blossom.

1. Keep Stasis on cooldown as much as possible and avoid putting weak spells (think Echo) within the Stasis. More info about Stasis can be found below.
2. NEVER cap on essence or waste an Essence Burst proc. Always press Emerald Blossom whenever you are close to capping or have a proc, regardless of what else is happening.
3. Aim to have 4 stacks of Temporal Compression before each empower cast. This can be done by casting any bronze spell (mainly Chrono Flame).
4. 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.
5. Use Verdant Embrace before casting Dream Breath in order to get the bonus healing increase from Call of Ysera. You will only be casting this at Rank 1 the majority of the time.
6. Cast Fire Breath at max rank to trigger Leaping Flames, follow this cast by using Living Flame to generate Essence Bursts.
7. Cast Emerald Blossom when possible.
8. Cast Temporal Anomaly as mana allows to generate Echos through Resonating Sphere.
9. After casting Temporal Anomaly, you will want to follow with a Living Flame; this will allow you to generate Essence Burst procs reliably.
10. Cast Living Flame to generate Essence Burst procs when you have nothing else to do.

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.

In addition to the rotation listed above, there are a few mechanics you will want to keep in mind in order to maximize your performance, the most important of which involves pooling (not spending) your essence for heavy damage windows. If your raid group is healthy and nothing is happening; there is no real reason to press Emerald Blossom. In these situations, you can break the rule of never wasting essence or a proc and instead focus on generating Essence Bursts so that when the damage does come out, you can press multiple Emerald Blossoms back to back to back, which will give you a ton of healing while also feeding into the next mechanic that will be discussed: Cycle of Life.

In most cases, you won't need to overly concern yourself with Cycle of Life, but you should be thinking about it when you plan on using cooldowns. You are able to have multiple procs of this ability out at once, each feeding into the next one. The healing done by Rewind and Dream Flight also transfers into active Cycle of Lifes. This means that before pressing a major cooldown, you will want to pool your essence so that you can quickly cast multiple Emerald Blossoms as damage hits, giving you anywhere from 1-3 Cycle of Lifes, followed by your healing cooldown. When you are able to pull this off properly, it can result in millions of extra healing.

Finally, you will want to consider what spells to place inside of your Stasis. The general goal is to avoid ever having weak spells within the Stasis, such as Echo, Living Flame, etc. Powerful spells such as Temporal Anomaly, Emerald Blossom and any of your empowers. When playing this build, you can also simply opt into casting 3x Emerald Blossom to guarantee a Cycle of Life proc. Keep in mind that when you reactivate Stasis, the spells will be cast in the order you stored them, meaning if you want to include Temporal Anomaly into your Stasis, you should do so at the end of your Stasis so the Echos won't be consumed by a spell that won't generate Essence Bursts.

The Flameshaper build focuses on maximizing Consume Flame healing through Dream Breath and Engulf. The key interaction to keep in mind is that the healing done by Consume Flame is increased by the healing your Dream Breath does. Call of Ysera is the key interaction you will need to play around. You need to ensure you are pressing Verdant Embrace before each cast of Dream Breath.

It is important to remember the fact that Echo Dream Breaths do not benefit from Call of Ysera. Because of that, it is extremely vital that you never use Engulf on Dream Breaths that have been applied via Echo. Doing so would result in a massive healing loss and completely kill off any viability that the build has. Thankfully, Dream Breath casts have different Spell IDs than Echo Dream Breaths. This means you can easily track both on your raid frame to help you differentiate between the two and ensure you are casting correctly. Given that Dream Breath will always apply to yourself, you can cast Engulf on yourself to always ensure it does full healing.

During downtime, you will aiming to generate as many Echos as possible through spending essence and casting Temporal Anomaly. From there, you will consume these echos with Verdant Embrace in order to trigger the Lifebind effect and proc the 4set tier bonus, Insurance!. You can also choose to cast Engulf during this Lifebind window to deal massive burst healing, just make sure you keep two charges for your next Stasis.

Your overall rotation and priority will look something like this:

1. Use Verdant Embrace before casting Dream Breath in order to get the bonus healing increase from Call of Ysera. You will only be casting this at Rank 1 the majority of the time.
2. Use Engulf on an ally who has a non- Echo version of the Dream Breath HoT. If the raid is still in need of healing you can repeat this.
3. Cast Renewing Blaze when possible and on an ally during heavy damage to maximize Lifecinders healing. Use as much as possible.
4. Cast Spiritbloom when heavy damage is occurring, and you do not have Engulf available.
5. During downtime, cast Temporal Anomaly and Echo and consume the Echo buff with Verdant Embrace to trigger the Lifebind effect and proc the 4set tier bonus, Insurance! on all players.
6. Cast Fire Breath at max rank to trigger Leaping Flames, follow this cast by using Living Flame to generate Essence Bursts.
7. Cast Living Flame to generate Essence Burst procs when you have nothing else to do.

With 20% haste, you will be able to cast two Engulf casts between each Stasis use. This means that you should aim to do two Lifebind ramps where you will cast at least one Engulf within the window. You can always plan to use two charges, but very few damage windows will require that much healing so it can make sense to spread your two charges out. That being said, in situations where you are holding Stasis when it comes off cooldown, you will not gain as much value from 20% haste and maybe better off changing your gear around. The benefit of 20% haste and abusing the Engulf CD comes down to damage pattern and is extremely fight specific. Keep in mind that it is important to have two charges of Engulf for each Stasis cast, meaning that you should not cast Engulf if it means you will not have two charges off cooldown by the time Stasis comes off cooldown. You will always want to maximize your Engulf casts and executing this properly will play a huge role in your overall output.

This Mythic+ build takes more damage, crowd control abilities, and some utility options in the class tree that will help it to excel. This build aims to give you a default talent tree that you can take into any key and be successful. Still, there is debate about potential swaps that can be made depending on the dungeon and affixes. For example, if you find yourself needing a lot of healing, you can opt to talent into Renewing Breath for a bit extra output. Certain talents in the class tree can also be swapped out depending on the weekly affixes and dungeons you are doing.

1. Cast Echo to prepare for damage.
2. Keep Reversion on your party members when damage is going out to gain extra healing through Grace Period.
3. Cast Dream Breath at either Rank 1 (small passive healing) or max rank (large burst healing), depending on what the situation demands.
4. Cast Spiritbloom at max rank during difficult moments.
5. Use Verdant Embrace to deal with single-target damage.
6. Make frequent use of Fire Breath for not only damage purposes but to also generate extra Essence Bursts, proc Afterimage, and proc Life-Giver's Flame. All of these additional effects transform what is normally a damage cooldown into something that can be used to heal your party up quickly.
7. Cast Living Flame to generate extra Essence Bursts and to deal damage.
8. If you ever find your group extremely stacked and you are limited on what abilities you have available, Emerald Blossom can be effective.

In order to further understand the Mythic+ rotation, you should also understand the four 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.
• Dream Breath -- Thanks to Double-time, this becomes a very powerful way to heal in Mythic+ settings. The duration of Dream Breath lasts so long that you can nearly always have uptime on your party from the HoT, and when combined with Reversion gives you a ton of passive healing, giving you more opportunity to deal damage and focus on mechanics.
• 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, or simply providing quick burst healing. This will be one of the best ways to heal your party through Echo usage.
• Spiritbloom -- Echoing Spiritbloom in Mythic+ settings can often be overkill as the healing it offers is so high compared to what is often needed. If you do find yourself facing very, very heavy damage or you simply have time to prep before the damage goes out, then using Spiritbloom with Echo is guaranteed to top your party's health instantly.

As far as Stasis goes, the general rule of thumb in Mythic+ is always to have at least 1 max rank empower. This can mean either a max rank Spiritbloom or a Dream Breath. This will allow you to reactivate it during emergencies and is guaranteed to heal your party for a very high amount. Generally, the preference will be Spiritbloom, but it is not always possible, which is why a max-rank Dream Breath can also be acceptable. You can always put both into your Stasis, but casting them back to back can put you a bit vulnerable to burst damage until they come off cooldown. Temporal Anomaly is another fine choice to include, and Emerald Blossom can even be really good at offering burst healing and quickly filling your Stasis. Keep in mind that the Emerald Blossom will be recast on the player you initially cast it on, meaning that you should try to aim it at a player who is well-stacked when you do find yourself filling Stasis with a cast of it.