DREAMBREATH

Damage

Always be casting. Your ramp does not fill every global, and the gaps are where your damage goes.

Log-verifiedn=1335 runs with cast data
Damage is 14.0% of everything a Preservation Evoker casts in the 30 seconds before a party damage spike, 49,910 casts out of 355,869. Against the 276,815 casts you actually press, it is 18.0%. Ramp buttons are 46.5%.
Two numbers because your log contains casts you never pressed. Twin Flame fires by itself when you consume Essence Burst, and Merithra's Blessing is an upgrade to your next Reversion rather than a button. Between them that is 79,054 casts, 22% of the log. Take those out and you get the share of your actual globals, which is the number worth acting on.

When to press damage

Your heals keep arriving after you cast them. Dream Breath heals instantly and then for up to 16 seconds more. Reversion heals over 12 seconds. Emerald Blossom lands 1.5 seconds after you place it. All of that keeps working while you press something else.

Damage is free in three places:

  1. Walking to the pull. Nothing is taking damage yet.
  2. After your ramp is out and ticking. Standing still and watching frames does not add healing.
  3. While Twin Flame does the work. It costs you no global at all, and it is the single most recorded thing in the window at 55,526 casts across 1254 runs.

Damage costs you in two places:

  1. When it eats a global you needed. Every ramp piece still has to be out before the spike lands, and the logs do not record whether a global spent on damage was one you were about to need. Treat a late global as owed to the ramp until the ramp is finished.
  2. When it eats Essence. Disintegrate costs 3 Essence. So does Emerald Blossom. Every Disintegrate you channel is an Emerald Blossom you did not cast.

What is actually pressed

4 abilities count as damage. Two of them matter: Disintegrate and Fire Breath are 47,146 of the 49,910 damage casts, 94% of them. Learn those two. The third button most players would name is Living Flame, and it is not a damage button at all.

Casts recorded in the 30 seconds before a spike, across the 1335 runs that have cast data. The last column is how many of those runs the ability appeared in at all, which is the difference between a button everybody presses and one a few people press a lot.

Damage abilities by casts recorded before a party damage spike, with the number of runs each appeared in.
AbilityCasts in the windowShare of damage castsRuns it appeared in
Disintegrate26,25653%97% (1299 of 1335)
Fire Breath20,89042%100% (1335 of 1335)
Deep Breath1,6973%66% (881 of 1335)
Azure Strike1,0672%26% (343 of 1335)

Azure Strike shows up in 26% (343 of 1335) of the runs with cast data, at 1067 casts, which is 3.1 presses per run where it shows up at all. It is instant, hits 2 enemies and costs almost no mana, so it is a fine thing to press while moving. It is not a habit worth building.

Deep Breath shows up in 66% (881 of 1335) of the runs with cast data, but only 1697 times, which is 1.9 presses per run where it is used, on a 2 minute cooldown that would allow far more. Press Deep Breath on big pulls. Do not use it as filler.

Living Flame is a heal

The button most players treat as damage filler heals for more than it hits. Preservation's branch of the tooltip leads with the heal: 780% of spell power to an ally, against 232% of spell power as Fire damage to an enemy. It is one button and your target decides which half happens.

Log-verifiedn=1335 runs with cast data
Living Flame is the most pressed real button: 39,871 casts, across 98% (1314 of 1335) of the runs with cast data. Healing filler is 15.3% of what you press, and Living Flame is nearly all of it.
A cast record does not say whether you were pointed at a friend or an enemy, so nobody can split those casts into heals and damage. That is why it is counted as healing filler here rather than being divided: the logs record the button being pressed and nothing else. Reading the Devastation branch of the same tooltip is how it was filed as damage in the first place, which put 39,871 casts on the wrong side of this page's headline figure.

Press it at whatever needs it and stop thinking of it as your damage button. Chrono Flames is the same button on Chronowarden and heals for the same 780%. It has 2616 casts in 6% (81 of 1335) of the runs with cast data, because almost nobody in these runs picked that hero tree. You are not missing a button.

Where damage goes around a ramp

Damage goes out early. The figures below are how far ahead of the spike each ability first appears in a ramp, so a long lead means the button opens the window rather than closing it. Disintegrate's first press lands a median of 21.7s before the spike, which is earlier than most of the ramp itself.

One value per spike, not per run: a key has several spikes and you set up for each one separately. Where an ability was pressed more than once before a spike, the earliest press is the one counted. The middle half is the range the middle 50% fell in, and it is wide on every row, which is the point. Anything used before fewer than 5 spikes is left out.

Seconds before the spike that each damage ability first appears in a ramp, with quartiles.
AbilityRampsMedian leadMiddle half
Deep Breath1,69711.9s6.0s to 19.0s
Azure Strike73916.6s9.4s to 23.7s
Fire Breath13,19217.9s11.1s to 24.1s
Disintegrate9,79321.7s13.4s to 27.0s

There is no fixed ramp order to slot damage into. On the Animated Guardian in Kings' Rest, 175 runs recorded a ramp and 5 different abilities opened one. The most common opener, Temporal Anomaly, went first in 19% (33 of 175) of them. That counts only the abilities appearing in at least 60 percent of those runs, so the real spread is wider than 5. The set of ramp abilities is consistent between runs. The order is not.

So press damage on a gap rather than as a step:

  1. Early in the window. This is the cheapest damage you will get, because none of your ramp is due yet.
  2. Between ramp pieces. If your next ramp button is on cooldown or nobody is in position, fill the global.
  3. Inside the last few seconds. Only if a global is genuinely spare. If any ramp piece is still unplaced, place it instead.

Step 3 is advice. The logs record what was pressed and when. They do not record whether a Disintegrate 3 seconds out cost anybody a life.

Fire Breath

Press it every pull. Fire Breath appears in 100% (1335 of 1335) of the runs with cast data, 20,890 times. It is the damage ability that shows up in the most runs.

Fire Breath heals, and not because of your hero tree. Life-Giver's Flame turns 80% of its damage into healing, split between up to 5 nearby injured allies. That is a Preservation spec talent, so it works on Chronowarden as well as Flameshaper. Leaping Flames is the second route: Fire Breath makes your next Living Flame strike one extra target per empower level. Do not hold Fire Breath waiting for a damage window, because holding it holds healing.

There is no Fire Breath talent package, whatever the take rates suggest. Lifecinders is at 87% of recorded builds and Consume Flame, Conduit of Flame, Renewing Breath and Fire Torrent all sit at 95% or more. None of the five touches Fire Breath. Lifecinders modifies Obsidian Scales. Consume Flame and Renewing Breath modify Dream Breath. Fire Torrent modifies Twin Flame. Conduit of Flame is a flat critical strike bonus. They are the Flameshaper tree, and their take rate is the hero tree split restated.

Fire Breath is empowered, and the rank moves the damage rather than adding to it. Rank I deals its damage over 20 seconds, rank II over 14, rank III over 8, with more of it landing instantly at each step. Rank III is your maximum unless you take Font of Magic, and 1% of recorded builds did.

Tip the Scales makes your next empowered spell cast instantly at maximum empower level. It was pressed 3871 times, across 93% (1238 of 1335) of the runs with cast data. The logs do not record which empowered spell each one was spent on, so it cannot tell you whether those went to Fire Breath or Dream Breath.

How these numbers were measured

Runs come from Warcraft Logs. Preservation Evoker only, Mythic+ only.

Only one report counts per key. Two players in the same group each upload the same run, so the raw data holds that key twice. 0 of 1336 logged rows are a second copy of this kind, and only one of each pair is counted. That is where 1336 comes from.

Runs whose event stream was cut short are excluded, because their totals would be low by an amount nobody can measure. None have hit that yet.

A pull is listed only if it appears in at least 60 percent of that dungeon's runs. What you see is the dungeon's spine, not one group's exact route. If your group skips a pack listed here, or takes one that is not, nothing is wrong.

An ability is called part of the ramp only if it appears in at least 60 percent of the runs with ramp casts for that pull. One player's habit on one key does not reach the page.

Casts are only collected from the 30 seconds before a damage spike. That is a setting, not a finding, so nothing here can tell you whether a ramp starts earlier than that. Where you see a window, it is the window we looked in.

Ramps are worked out one run at a time and then compared, rather than by taking each ability's average timing separately. Doing it the second way produced ramps of six casts inside four seconds, which is faster than the game allows anyone to press buttons.

Damage figures are the whole party added together. Nothing here records who took the damage, and most autoattack damage lands on the tank. Use these numbers to compare one pull against another. They are not an amount you have to heal.