Preservation Evoker PvP Rotation and Playstyle — The War Within (11.0.5)
PvP requires you to perform various actions during a duel, match, or battleground: interrupting/silencing enemies, healing your teammates and yourself, defending yourself, keeping yourself alive, etc. It is a game mode that fully utilizes your kit, especially spells that are rarely used in PvE. On this page, we go through all the spells you need to use in PvP as a Preservation Evoker, how you should use them, and explain your playstyle.
This page is part of our Preservation Evoker PvP Guide.
Playstyle for Preservation Evokers
The main role of a Preservation Evoker, besides keeping your team alive, is always to keep your team offensive and deal damage when your team is using their burst cooldowns. You also want to use your mobility to help avoid crowd control.
To keep your team offensive, you will push in with your team to try to get Sleep Walk on the enemy healer. After this, you will focus on dealing damage with spells like Living Flame, Deep Breath, and Disintegrate.
Taking advantage of your mobility is crucial. Preservation Evokers can be hard to catch, but once they are stunned, you will quickly have to trade cooldowns to stay alive. Use spells like Hover and Deep Breath to move around the map and reposition near a pillar. If a teammate is in trouble and needs to get away from the enemy team, use Rescue to save them.
Empowered Spells
Preservation Evokers have a new mechanic to their healing: Empower Level. This makes it so the longer you channel a spell, the stronger the initial damage/healing is. Using the talent Tip the Scales makes it so your next empowered spell will be instant at its max empower level. Here are the 3 spells you can empower and how to use them:
- Fire Breath deals damage and puts a DoT on the target. The longer you channel it, the more initial damage it will deal. However, it will weaken the DoT. Ideally, you will channel this to rank 3 because the DoT is normally dispelled and will not deal much damage. Use Tip the Scales with this if you want to deal a large amount of damage to enemies that are grouped up. Note: This spell is normally used with Tip the Scales because of the PvP talent Scouring Flame. This will purge nearly all beneficial magic buffs that the enemy team has.
- Dream Breath heals are teammates in front of you and puts a HoT on them. Like Fire Breath, the longer you channel this spell, the weaker the HoT. Ideally, you will want to use Echo on your teammate right before you use this spell so that you get the HoT twice.
- Spiritbloom heals a target for a large amount of healing. This healing is split depending on how many allies are within 30 yards. The more you empower this spell, the more teammates it will heal. Normally, you will not use Tip the Scales with this spell.
Note about empowered spells: you have a talent called Flow State that makes it so you move faster, recharge essences faster, and have a faster cast speed after using an empowered spell. Keep this in mind when you use these powerful spells.
Healing Techniques
This section will tell you what spells to use in different situations.
Sustained Damage Healing
Use this to heal sustained damage throughout the fight (damage done when the other team does not have burst cooldowns available).
- Echo is your primary heal that you want to use before any other healing spell. This will double the healing of the next healing spell you use on your target.
- Maintain Reversion on your teammates so you get the 10% healing buff from Grace Period.
- Use Verdant Embrace for an instant heal and to move around the map. This will also help with the spread healing from the talent Lifebind. This makes healing received from either you or your target go to the other. This spell also increases the healing of your next Dream Breath or Living Flame from the Call of Ysera talent.
- Use Echo.
- Channel Dream Breath. It is okay only to get a rank 1 with this spell because it will put two strong HoTs on your teammates.
- Use Time Dilation if your teammate is still taking damage. This causes half of the damage they take to be spread out. If you use the Just in Time talent each Echo will reduce the cooldown of Time Dilation.
- Spiritbloom is a great heal if you need to heal spread damage
and have time to channel it. Because there is a travel time, you can use
Echo into a Spiritbloom, then use Echo again; your target will get
healed multiple times.
- Note: Spiritbloom is incredibly important for Essence recharging with the Empath talent. This makes it so that after you use Spiritbloom, you regenerate Essences 100% faster for 8 seconds. Use Spiritbloom to heal and gain back Essence to use more Echos.
- Living Flame is a filler healing spell you should use if your other healing spells are on cooldown. It is also the Fire school, so you can use this to heal if you get kicked on a green spell. This spell can also proc Essence Burst that makes your next Essence spell free. You can use this proc on a Disintegrate to deal damage or an Echo.
Burst Healing
Because Preservation Evokers have so many different ways to keep their teammates alive, below are various healing spells you can use to keep your team alive:
- Use Echo on your teammates taking damage. From here, you can
do any of the following:
- Use Verdant Embrace and Echo then Dream Breath. This heal can be used for either single target or spread healing. With Echo active on the target, Dream Breath will put 2 HoTs on the targets it heals. The reason you want to use Verdant Embrace before Dream Breath is because of the Call of Ysera talent making it so whoever you heal with Verdant Embrace will heal you or your target for a part of the healing done.
- Time Dilation is a one-minute cooldown and should be the first cooldown you use if someone is taking heavy damage. With a 70% stagger from damage taken, most teams should not be able to kill through it. Rotate it with the next healing cooldowns on the list, and you will be able to keep your team alive for a very long time.
- Spiritbloom is a great heal if you need to heal spread damage and have time to channel it. Because there is a travel time, you can use Echo into a Spiritbloom, then use Echo again; your target will get healed multiple times.
- Use Emerald Communion. This cooldown by itself is incredible when you have Echo on all of your teammates. As long as you are at full health, this will heal all your teammates, even if you are stunned, feared, or silenced. You can also use this while moving if you are using the Dreamwalker talent.
- Rewind is another powerful team-wide cooldown that heals all the damage your team just took in the last 5 seconds. Use this after a team uses their primary burst cooldowns to recover instantly.
Dealing Damage
Dealing damage in arena is crucial. Preservation Evokers are perfect for keeping their team aggressive to land a kill. You can use multiple damage spells, and the rotation is simple.
- Use Fire Breath off cooldown. This deals damage and puts a DoT on the target. The longer you channel and do damage, the weaker the DoT is. Ideally, you will channel this to rank 3 and make the DoT weak because it is dispellable. Note: If you are playing against classes with many magical buffs that you want to purge with Scouring Flame, you will want to pair this with Tip the Scales.
- Deep Breath deals a large amount of damage to the team and stuns anyone it hits with the Terror of the Skies talent. However, it is also great for avoiding crowd control when the enemy team is pushing towards you. For example, you will want to use this to avoid a Priest's Psychic Scream when they run towards you.
- Azure Strike does not deal the most damage, but it is instant and is perfect for slowing enemies and killing Shaman totems.
- Disintegrate is a channeled damage spell that deals a moderate amount of damage. This is normally used when you get an Essence Burst proc.
- Living Flame is your filler damage spell that deals a decent amount of damage from range. Use this if your other damage spells are on cooldown.
- Landslide is an instant spell that roots all enemies it hits. Although the root is dispellable, it is perfect for helping you or your teammate get away from the enemy team.
- Quell is not a damage spell, but it is your ranged interrupt that you should use to stop incoming crowd control on you or interrupting the enemy healer.
- Sleep Walk is your primary crowd control spell that will sleep the target for 5 seconds. Be careful when using this, as it is in the green school for casting. You cannot use most of your healing spells if you get kicked on green.
Defensives
- Obsidian Scales is one of your primary defensives. This reduces the damage you take by 30%. If you use the Obsidian Mettle PvP talent, it will also make you immune to interrupts, silences, and pushbacks.
- Renewing Blaze is another defensive you will want to Rotate with your Obsidian Scales. This will heal 100% of any damage you take while it is up over 8 seconds. It is important to use this right before you start taking damage and not after, or the heal will not be strong.
- Deep Breath deals a large amount of damage to the team and can be used to do damage. However, it is great for avoiding crowd control when the enemy team is pushing toward you. For example, you will want to use this to avoid a Priest's Psychic Scream when they run towards you.
- Preservation Evoker's mobility is an incredibly important defensive.
Here are some spells that you should master to help keep your team alive:
- Hover launches you forward and increases your movement speed. It also makes you immune to slows with the PvP Talent Unburdened Flight.
- Rescue swoops you to an ally and allows you to bring them to a location. Use this to help your teammate reposition and get away from the enemy team.
- Wing Buffet/ Tail Swipe are the Dracthyr racials that will help you get away from the enemy team targetting you.
- Cauterizing Flame removes all bleeds, points, curses, and diseases from a teammate. This is a crucial spell when you play against specializations like Feral Druids, Assassination, Rogues, or Warlocks.
Macros
It is advised to use Macros to use abilities on enemies or allies without having to target them. For this reason, we have a page dedicated to them.
Changelog
- 18 Nov. 2024: Reviewed healing rotations.
- 21 Oct. 2024: Reviewed for Patch 11.0.5.
- 09 Sep. 2024: Reviewed for The War Within Season 1.
- 21 Aug. 2024: Reviewed for The War Within.
- 23 Jul. 2024: Updated for The War Within Pre-Patch.
- 07 May 2024: Reviewed for 10.2.7.
- 22 Apr. 2024: Reviewed for Patch 10.2.6.
- 15 Jan. 2024: Reviewed for Patch 10.2.5.
- 06 Nov. 2023: Reviewed for Patch 10.2.
- 04 Sep. 2023: Reviewed for Patch 10.1.7.
- 10 Jul. 2023: Reviewed for Patch 10.1.5.
- 06 May 2023: Reviewed for Patch 10.1.
- 21 Mar. 2023: Reviewed for Patch 10.0.7.
- 30 Jan. 2023: Reviewed for Patch 10.0.5.
- 11 Dec. 2022: Page created.
Other PvP Guides
This guide has been written by Mysticall, a seasoned PvP player who has repeatedly achieved 3000 rating. You can watch his stream on Twitch, and you can also check out his YouTube channel.
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