Playstyle & Rotation
Preservation Evoker Gameplay in the Midnight Pre-Patch
The Midnight pre-patch brings a major overhaul to Preservation Evoker’s gameplay. With Spiritbloom removed, many accompanying talents were reworked to instead support Dream Breath, which has now become the spec’s most central healing spell. Furthermore Lifebind can no longer be echoed (replicated with the Echo spell) and now only applies to Verdant Embrace’s primary target. Verdant Embrace and Lifebind were buffed to compensate, making Verdant Embrace the second major pillar of the kit. As a result, Preservation places a stronger emphasis on positioning and directional healing.
The core mechanic of echo replicating spells stays with us in midnight, but with Spiritbloom gone, Echo can now be applied to a smaller set of spells:
As part of Blizzard’s effort to reduce button bloat, Emerald Communion was removed, and Stasis and Dream Flight were placed on a choice node, leaving Preservation with only two primary healing cooldowns: Rewind, and either Stasis or Dream Flight.
While this reduces the total number of cooldowns, the impact of both of those cooldowns has increased. The talent “Temporal Artificer” reduces Rewind’s cooldown to 2 minutes (down from 4), and the new talent “Inner Flame” greatly amplifies HoT healing for a short time when we press Stasis or Dream Flight. Overall, Preservation now has fewer cooldowns, but those cooldowns are either stronger or can be used more frequently.
Overall, these changes shift Preservation away from the highly bursty healing profile seen in The War Within. Spiritbloom-based Lifebind combos in Mythic+ and Flameshaper’s Engulf-driven burst in raid have been removed or reworked. Instead Preservation now delivers smoother, more sustained healing, with a stronger focus on HoTs, while still retaining some now more limited burst potential when needed.
Mythic+
In Mythic+, this means less emphasis on perfectly pre-planning large cooldowns and Lifebind setups, and more focus on moment-to-moment decision-making, especially around Dream Breath and Verdant Embrace.
Raiding
In raid, Preservation Evoker now centers around large 1.5-minute healing ramps, where most of its throughput is delivered through empowered HoTs.
Outside of these windows, healing is more steady and reactive, relying mostly on Dream Breath, Verdant Embrace, the occasional Emerald Blossom and smaller Echo setups.
This style of gameplay and the ability to adapt the healing to each situation rather than following a fixed script make Preservation Evoker so fun to master and very rewarding to play.