Preservation Evoker Healing Guide — Midnight (12.0.1)

Heading into Midnight, Blizzard wanted to simplify the gameplay of Preservation Evoker. One of their goals was to make the spec much more approachable for new players while also removing some of the very tight timings that were required to execute the spec at a high level. Most notably, Lifebind is no longer able to be Echo'd. To compensate for this change, Evoker was given a ton of power in other areas of the kit such Emerald Blossom, Verdant Embrace, and Dream Breath. Additionally, Spiritbloom was removed which means that the Mythic+ rotation will begin to look way different without these two key ways of healing. If you previously found Preservation to be too overwhelming or difficult, it may be worth trying again with the large amount of changes. Below we will list some of the core changes to the spec that are worth noting:

• Lifebind can no longer be replicated to other players through Echo.
• Spiritbloom, Emerald Communion and Cycle of Life have been removed.
• Call of Ysera has changed and now just increases the healing of Dream Breath and Living Flame.
• Engulf has been removed and Consume Flame has been reworked. Rather than healing the entire raid when you proc the effect, you will only heal the player you targetted.
• Dream Simulacrum is a new talent, increasing the healing of Verdant Embrace and also making it so that you do not fly to your target when using Verdant Embrace.
• Wings of Liberty is a new talent, granting you an additional charge of Verdant Embrace.
• Inner Flame returns from The War Within as a new reworked talent. For 15/20 seconds after casting Stasis/ Dream Flight, your healing over time is increased and your chance to generate Essence Burst is increased by 100%.
• Dream Breath will gain two charges when playing Flameshaper.
• Spiritual Clarity will also now reduce the cooldown of Dream Breath.
• Some other talents have received minor changes or changed positions in the tree.

In addition to these changes, you will gain access to the new Apex Talents as well as 3 new Hero Talent choices.

In Midnight, you will gain access to Merithra's Blessing, the new Apex talent. This ability has three 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 Breaths 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.

Flameshaper has received two very important changes as we have briefly touched on. Consume Flame works completely different, no longer triggering an explosion of healing on the entire raid. Consume Flame will be a much smaller part of your rotation and will matter much less overall. A ton of the value in Flameshaper will come through the new Legacy of the Lifebinder talent. This gives you two charges of Dream Breath. Due to Dream Breath always proccing Merithra's Blessing, you can execute consistent ramps and Echo Merithra's for very large healing.

Chronowarden will play largely the same as there are no notable changes/additions that should play a large role in your output. The only one worth noting is Nozdormu Adept which reduces the cooldown and mana cost of Temporal Anomaly. This makes it incredibly important to keep Temporal Anomaly on cooldown as much as possible, to maximize the amount of Echos you generate through Resonating Sphere while also outputting a ton of shields.

In Midnight, you can expect significant rotational changes in every form of content. What contributes the most to these changes are the loss of Lifebind and Spiritbloom. Losing these abilities means that you will not need to execute very precisely timed ramps in order to achieve your full healing output. While Verdant Embrace can still be powerful with Echo for burst healing, you will often find yourself utilizing Echo with Reversion like done in previous patches. Additionally, Twin Echoes creates an interesting change in the rotation where it can be highly valuable to press Emerald Blossom (which has received significant buffs in Midnight) with Essence Burst inbetween your ramps to get free Echo casts. Previously, you were forced into one or the other but with the Twin Echoes talent you have high flexibility with your rotations.

In Mythic+ settings, the loss of Spiritbloom will be even larger and you may find yourself relying on Living Flame even more when Chronowarden. As Flameshaper, you will gain an additional charge of Dream Breath to help you manage difficult moments. Outside of this though, you will focus on using Verdant Embrace for burst healing and Reversion and for standard healing.

The final rotational change worth mentioning is for Flameshaper specifically. Due to changes to Consume Flame, you will no longer be executing large burst heals on the entire raid. Your gameplay will focus on utilizing Dream Breath casts for Merithra's Blessing burst healing and Reversion/ Verdant Embrace otherwise.