DREAMBREATH

Preservation Evoker in Mythic+

What Preservation is

Preservation heals ahead of damage instead of reacting to it. You spend the quiet seconds before a pull stacking heals on the party, and the pull lands on a group that is already topped up. Almost everything you press is a slow heal, an empower you hold down, or a damage spell you fit in the gaps.

Take it if you like knowing what is coming and setting up for it. Skip it if you want a healer that fixes a surprise after it has happened. Preservation can do that, but it is the worst part of the kit, and it is why a bad pull hurts more on this spec than on most.

The measured version: 45% of what you choose to press is a setup heal, and 4% is an emergency button.

Strengths and weaknesses

Strengths

  • You can heal a spike before it lands. Ramp casts are 45% of your presses.
  • Stasis banks a ramp and gives it back when you want it.
  • Obsidian Scales is an external. Lifecinders puts half of it on an ally.
  • You do real damage. 19% of your presses.

Weaknesses

  • An early pull wastes the ramp you started.
  • Dream Breath is a cone, Emerald Blossom is a patch. A spread group wastes both.
  • Your best tools are long cooldowns. Saves are 4% of your presses.
  • 23% of your cast log is procs you never pressed.

Stat priority

Take the higher item level in almost every case. Between two of the same, this order.

  1. 1IntellectHealing and damage on every point. Never trade it away.
  2. 2MasteryHeals more the further below your own health percentage the target is. It does nothing for your damage.
  3. 3Critical StrikeBigger heals and bigger damage, at random.
  4. 4HasteFaster empowers and shorter cooldowns, so more ramps per key.
  5. 5VersatilityA little healing and a little damage. Nothing it does is wasted.

The standard build

Flameshaper is the pick. You can play Chronowarden and it works, but we do not recommend it. If you want one build to run in keys, take the first one below. The variants beside it are the other builds people are actually running, and you can copy any of them.

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Class

2/22/22/22/22/2

Preservation

2/22/22/22/24/4

Hero · Flameshaper

Flameshaper
CwbBAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAASSSalkEhISTCoFCAAkIRSiQSISAAAAJJJJSSSEJAQkAFQDkQCoR0ESASCB

Class

2/22/22/22/22/2

Preservation

2/22/22/22/24/4

Hero · Flameshaper

Flameshaper
CwbBAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAASSSalkEhISTCoFCAAkIRSiQSIJBAAAkkkISSEJJAQkAFQDkQCoR0ECgkEB

Class

2/22/22/22/22/2

Preservation

2/22/22/22/24/4

Hero · Flameshaper

Flameshaper
CwbBAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAASSSalkEhISTCoFCAAkIRSiQSISAAAAJJJikkkSkAARCUANQCJgGRTIBIJEA

Class

2/22/22/22/22/2

Preservation

2/22/22/22/24/4

Hero · Flameshaper

Flameshaper

Every talent, with take rates by key level

Ramping

A ramp is the healing you put out before the damage arrives. Start about 19 seconds before the pull.

Press Emerald Blossom, Verdant Embrace, Dream Breath, Temporal Anomaly, Echo and Reversion. Each of those is in at least four of every five logged runs. There is no fixed order and the runs do not agree on one, so learn the set rather than a rotation.

Saves go last. Obsidian Scales lands a median of 13.9 seconds before the hit, against 19 for the heals, so press it as the pack reaches you rather than as part of the setup.

Keep casting through it. Disintegrate and Fire Breath fill the gaps. Your ramp does not use every global.

The full ramp guide, pull by pull

Stasis

Stasis records your next three helpful spells and hands them back on one button. Cast it, cast a ramp into it, then hold the release for the pull you want it on.

It is a short bank far more often than a long one. The median hold across 28878 recorded casts is 22 seconds, which is one pull away, not a dungeon away.

The most popular Stasis combos:

  • Dream Breath, Emerald Blossom and Temporal Anomaly
  • Dream Breath, Emerald Blossom and Emerald Blossom
  • Dream Breath, Living Flame and Temporal Anomaly

Dream Breath is in 84% of banks. If you take one thing from this section, it is that Dream Breath goes in the bank.

Stasis is stored a median of 12.9 seconds before a spike, so it is normally cast inside a ramp rather than before one.

Cooldowns, including what Stasis banked on each pull

How to heal a key

  1. Watch the next pack, not the health bars. Your ramp has to be out before the pull, so the decision gets made while nothing is happening.
  2. Ramp about 19 seconds out. Emerald Blossom, Verdant Embrace, Dream Breath and Temporal Anomaly, in whatever order you get to them.
  3. Damage in the gaps. Disintegrate and Fire Breath between heals. Living Flame looks like a damage spell and is actually your fastest single target heal.
  4. Hold your saves for the hit. Tip the Scales, Obsidian Scales and Time Dilation go out as the pack lands, not with the ramp.
  5. Bank the next ramp while this one runs. Stasis while the party is topped up, then release into the next pack.
  6. If the tank pulls before your ramp is out, abandon it. Stop setting up and start reacting. Ramp again once the pack is dead.

What to press between heals

Healing without a ramp

A ramp needs about 19 seconds of warning. You will not always get it. The tank pulls early, a patrol walks in, someone stands in something. This is what you press when the damage is already happening.

  1. One target, dropping fast. Verdant Embrace for the big instant heal, then Living Flame until they are safe. Echo first if you have a spare global, because it doubles whatever you cast next on them.
  2. Everyone hurt at once. Dream Breath at whatever empower level you can afford. Rank one is instant healing now, rank three is more healing spread over less time. When the group is dying, take rank one.
  3. Someone is about to die. Time Dilation on them, or Obsidian Scales if Lifecinders is putting half of it on an ally. Both are faster than out-healing the hit.
  4. The whole group is about to die. Rewind puts everyone back where they were ten seconds ago. It is the button that saves a pull nothing else can.
  5. The moment it settles, go back to setting up. Reactive healing is what you do when the plan failed. It is not the plan.

Every dungeon

Melee is the tank's problem. It is under 5% of what hits everyone else in 7 of 8 dungeons. Den of Nalorakk is hardest on the rest of the group.

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 2678 logged rows are a second copy of this kind, and only one of each pair is counted. That is where 2678 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.