Preservation Evoker: Early Hands-on Review of the New Healer in Dragonflight

Dragonflight Posted 2022/07/16 at 2:59 AM by Jaydaa

DragonflightIntroduction: Initial Expectations & Class FantasyTime WarpPower InfusionStasisEchoBefore we review Preservation Evoker, I do want to acknowledge that almost all testing was done either on target dummies or while questing. Content was limited in the current Alpha environment, so how Preservation Evoker performs in dungeons and raids remains highly inconclusive. In addition, Evokers will likely undergo significant iteration before and even after launch, so take this initial review with a grain of salt. Thanks!Resources for Preservation Evoker: Mana & EssenceManaLiving FlameEssenceEmerald BlossomEchoEchoEmerald BlossomEmpathInnate MagicEssence BurstBaseline Toolkit for Preservation EvokerBaseline Healing Abilities for Preservation Evoker

Living Flame - Essentially your single target healing filler that splits the difference between Flash Heal and Heal in terms of cast time at 2s, but also is cheaper than most single target fillers in terms of mana. This is likely due to it doubling as your single target damaging filler. Nothing too crazy here except that the spell seems to be filling multiple roles at once. An interesting experiment for sure, which if successful might be something to explore for other single target heals for other classes.

Emerald Blossom - Your primary AoE heal that thanks to the rank 2 Improved Emerald Blossom costs essence and removes the cooldown. It's still unclear whether it's intended to cost 2 essence as it's listed in the rank 2 or whether the alpha behavior of 3 essence cost was the correct cost. Overall an okay heal baseline, but requires significant talent support from Bountiful Bloom, Fluttering Seedlings, and Field of Dreams to really become a powerhouse ability. Due to the 10 yard AoE range, you'll likely cast this into melee or a ranged clump and rely on your Fluttering Seedlings to heal solo players standing out in Africa.

Dream BreathBaseline Damage Abilities for Preservation Evoker

Azure Strike - Cleave damaging filler that really doesn't gain a lot of traction competing against Living Flame for damage unless you're looking for mana efficiency or pick up Protracted Talons in the class talent tree.

Deep Breath - An AoE damage cooldown that also provides mobility and CC immunity. You likely won't win the meter with this but it's interesting to have a DPS cooldown on a healer base toolkit.

Disintegrate - Single target channeling damaging mana-free essence spender. Beats out Living Flame in terms of damage and it should for the essence and channel cost. Ideally, I'd like to see a bump in the 30% slow for investing that much essence on a non-healing spell as Preservation, but it's okay otherwise.

Fire Breath - AoE Empower ability with a short 30s cooldown. While the upfront damage remains the same regardless of empower level, the remaining DoT increases in strength and length depending on Empower level. Capped at 5 targets but can still do a sizeable amount of damage. Combine this with the talent Life-Giver's Flame and you transform this damage ability into sizable healing tool under the right circumstances. Beautiful animation to top everything off. Very happy with this being baseline.

Baseline Utility & Mobility Abilities for Preservation Evoker

Blessing of the Bronze - 15% cooldown reduction on your primary movement ability probably not game-breaking for most, but will probably prove invaluable for the more immobile classes among us. If you're interested in what abilities get reduced, see the preview below.

Hover - Incredibly similar to Spiritwalker's Grace with the Graceful Spirit talent though with a shorter cooldown and rotation, you'll be able to cast on the move with a slight move speed increase. For added mobility, extend the duration with Extended Flight or add an extra charge with Aerial Mastery , both talents in the class talent tree. Big thumbs up for repositioning on a class that requires a lot of specific positioning.

Naturalize - The standard 8s dispel for Preservation Evokers that removes both magical and poison effects. While this does feel like fewer debuff types compared to other healers, they'll can pick up a few other dispel options in the class talent tree. We'll cover that a bit later but be excited!

Mass Return - The standard mass resurrection ability that comes with most healing specializations flavored with a Bronze animation.

Mastery: Life-Binder for Preservation EvokersObsidian ScalesHealthstoneNotable Class Talents for Preservation Evoker

View on Dragonflight Talent Tree CalculatorClass Healing Talents

Verdant Embrace - Absolutely enormous instant single target heal with a 18s cooldown for Preservation that gets further reduced by haste. Do not sleep on this ability because it's one of the few ways for Preservation Evoker to instantly heal up single target damage, and this boy is a chonker; maybe not quite Holy Word: Serenity levels of chonk but definitely still up there. The closest analog would likely be Swiftmend. They both have a relatively similar cooldown, do relatively similar healing, and fill a similar role in their respective toolkits.
Notably, Verdant Embrace repositions you next to your target which could potentially be either a boon or a curse. Consider that this ally you're healing with Verdant Embrace just took massive damage from standing in fire. Now you're on a one-way flight to not only your ally but also the fire he may have been standing in. Positional awareness will be critical in ensuring you don't end up in same trouble as your ally when using this ability. It should be noted that you do stop just shy of your ally instead of directly on top of them which is excellent positioning for a follow up Dream Breath.

Cauterizing Flame - Remember when I mentioned that Naturalize felt a bit limited? Well Cauterizing Flame is probably the reason why. Cauterizing Flame is a ridiculously powerful dispel that removes all bleeds, curses, poisons, and diseases on an ally and provides moderate heal upon removing any of these debuffs. Sure it may have 1 minute cooldown, but every minute you become a debuff dispelling machine that includes bleeds, something no other healer can do. Ok, sure Paladins might have something with Blessing of Protection, but does that really count? Take the W and and let your tank rejoice in having a dispel for all occasions including a disease dispel in dungeons like Plaguefall. Of note, this dispel works similarly to other dispels where it will not actually cast unless a player has one of the above debuff types that can be dispelled. You'll still consume the mana and GCD but the ability won't actually go on cooldown.

Tip the Scales - While not strictly a healing ability, you'll typically pair this off-GCD ability with either Dream Breath or Spiritbloom. Consider it like a Nature's Swiftness but for Empower skills. Instead of channeling for up to 3.5s you'll be able to instantly perform one of these big hitting abilities at max power and on the move. At a 2-minute cooldown you likely won't get many uses on most encounters, but should be a nice quality of life option for Empower skills.

Utility Talents

Zephyr - A party-wide cooldown that provides a minor move speed increase and reduces damage taken from AoE attacks. This ability fits perfectly in between the damage reduction and positioning requirements of Aura Mastery+Devotion Aura (40yd range & 15% DR) and Power Word: Barrier (8yd range & 25% DR). However, where those other cooldowns are raid-wide, Zephyr does appear to be limited only to your specific party based on Alpha testing, so you'll need a few Evokers in order to cover everyone. The fine print does bring down this spectacular utility down a notch, but that makes sense considering Preservation also has access to powerful raid cooldown with Rewind. We'll get to that soon I promise.

Time Spiral - A raid-wide cooldown that allows all players to activate their major movement ability even if it is on cooldown. Consider this like a Stampeding Roar that requires a bit more action on the individual players. Mobility and positioning are key for Evokers so makes sense their utility would continually reinforce that principle. Time Spiral uses the same list of abilities as Blessing of the Bronze.

Source of Magic - Similar to the now defunct Blessing of Wisdom ability Retribution Paladins used to have, Source of Magic will offer a minor mana restoration to a friendly healer for every Empower ability you cast. It's not quite clear how much mana this will add up to because Empower cooldowns vary by spec and sometimes even Empower level, especially with Preservation Evokers having access to level 4 Empowers. Expect this to undergo heavy iteration to find a happy middle ground. Also if you were thinking that you could apply this to yourself, think again. It has to be another healer besides yourself.

Rescue - Singlehandedly one of my favorite abilities of the Evoker class. Fly to a targeted ally, pick them up, then land at a reticle targeted location. The final destination could end up being up to 60 yds away from your targeted ally which is a considerable distance. Doesn't seem to have a lot of the 'path not available issues' that other movement abilities have whether that's intended or not. See the clip below for all the hilariousness and then let the brainstorming commence. Provide a sizable shield to both you and the ally with the Twin Guardian talent.

Oppressing Roar & Overawe - While the CC duration increase is nice, the real all-star here is the AoE Enrage dispel. DPS evenly AoE'ing enemies during Raging Mythic+ weeks might actually be a viable strategy with an Evoker in the party.

Notable Preservation Talents for Preservation Evoker

View on Dragonflight Talent Tree CalculatorRaid Cooldown: RewindRewindRewindRevivalTranquilityDivine HymnRewindRewindRewindTemporal ArtificerRewindErasureErasureRewindTank Cooldown: Time DilationTime DilationStaggerDelay HarmTimeless MagicFilling Out the Healing Toolkit

Reversion - The maintenance HoT for Preservation Evokers similar to Riptide for Restoration Shaman or Renewing Mist for Mistweaver Monks. With enough critical strike you can significantly increase the overall duration and healing throughput. Consider doubling down on Reversion by further enhancing it with Grace Period and Timeless Magic. Of note, you can have multiple Reversions on the same ally, but only you if you used Echo to place the second Reversion.

Echo - One of my favorite new abilities in Dragonflight. This 2 Essence cost heal replicates your next single target non-Echo heal on the ally you cast it on. You'll overwrite the Echo buff if you cast it on the same target twice, but you can definitely cast it on multiple different allies and then use the same spell to trigger all the echoed spells.

There are a few limitations here. First, the list of spells is fairly narrow consisting of Living Flame, Reversion, Verdant Embrace, and Spiritbloom. Generally, I'd recommend using Echo to replicate spells with cooldowns to get the most bang for your buck since the echoed spell will still trigger even if on cooldown. Second, you'll still be limited on triggering the Echo by a baseline 15s duration on the buff. Combine that with the Essence cost and you'll likely only get 2-3 of these off before some expire unless you invest into Timeless Magic.
I'm excited to use this ability in a more practical setting to setup larger Reversion blankets or create some mini burst windows with a spam of Spiritbloom.

Dream Breath - Our first Empower heal for Preservation Evoker. Works pretty similarly to the baseline Fire Breath except direct healing, no over time component, and has a variable cooldown based on Empower level when cast. Gorgeous animation, decent range, and sizeable healing. You'll always incur the same mana cost regardless of Empower level and combined with the variable cooldown, you're heavily incentivized to cast at max Empower level.

Spiritbloom - Our second Empower heal for Preservation Evokers. Empowering Spiritbloom adds additional targets unlike Dream Breath where the healing increased and the cooldown gets reduced. For the sake of Echo, this does count as a single target heal and therefore can be replicated allowing you to bypass the cooldown and mana cost setting up some very powerful burst healing windows. Definitely consider picking up either Spiritual Clarity to cut Spiritbloom in half or Empath for some additional Essence generation for some powerful follow up healing.

Temporal Anomaly - Probably my least favorite ability of the Preservation Evoker toolkit simply because I'm not sure about it's intended purpose. It's feels like the love child of Healing Rain and Chi Burst; essentially a small area of healing that moves along a set path. Unless you have a complete line of 3 injured players along a 40-60yd distance, it'll be very unlikely you'll get the full value out of this ability. And with it being so expensive and on such a short 6s cooldown it really has to do more than it's currently does. Is it supposed to be spammed on cooldown cause everything points to the contrary?

We did learn that the ability does have object collision so we can get it hooked on objects to stop it from moving allowing it to be more useful, but whether that interaction is intended or not feels pretty questionable. Perhaps it's supposed to act more like Frozen Orb where it stops once it meets an ally, but considering Frost Mages have been complaining about that interaction for years that might feel like a questionable choice. Perhaps it's supposed to draw a healing area creating a new pattern for a ground-based healing effect or maybe just a delivery vehicle for a HoT. I think there's a cool idea somewhere in this ability, but for now I'd generally avoid till we see some work done on it.

Author's Note: After some additional testing and perusing of streams, Temporal Anomaly does have a Frozen Orb-like interaction where it significantly slows down once it encounters an ally but only if that ally is injured. The orb does not appear to speed back up after the first encounter with an injured ally. That does improve the viability of this talent, but the mana cost, cooldown, and duration still don't quite add to a coherent ability

Capstone Talents of the Preservation Evoker Tree

Dream Flight - Essentially Deep Breath but for healing with a HoT component and mobility tacked on. You can partially negate the movement if you want by simply taking Recall. Due to the low population of the testing environment, we couldn't test whether this target caps at the standard 6 allies like other AoE heals or whether it will hit an entire raid like raid cooldowns. I want to lean on some sorta target cap based on the low 1-minute cooldown and decent spell power coefficient, but the jury is still out. Has a lot of potential but definitely has some stiff competition from our next capstone.

Stasis - Hands down my favorite new ability. While relatively straightforward, you essentially use Stasis and cast 3 abilities to store them exactly as they were cast, in the same order, at the same Empower Level, and on the same targets if the ability requires an ally target. Use Stasis again within 30s of storing them to release the spells casting them instantly. Duplicated spells do not cost mana or essence and bypass cooldowns. Now before you go crazy certain spells cannot be duplicated; Time Dilation and Rewind are off-limits for replication, but most other spells are fair game. The cooldown begins upon using your 3rd ability, so you'll want to rush to store your abilities but you'll have the full 30s leeway to unleash your potent burst cooldown.

I'd probably describe this ability as building your own Convoke the Spirits; fewer spells but way more deterministic. Don't let the number of replicated spells fool you in how potentially strong this cooldown can be. You can bypass the cooldowns of Spiritbloom or Dream Breath or the Essence cost of Emerald Blossom or Echo and you can do some serious burst. We'll explore this a bit later on when talking about combos.

Cycle of Life - Adds a Cloudburst Totem effect to every cast of Emerald Blossom. At 5% this felt a bit lackluster, but you can have multiple of these sprouts up at the same time either from multiple Emerald Blossom casts or Field of Dreams procs. Even stacking these it still didn't feel like an exceptional amount of healing, but perhaps it'll receive a major boost if Emerald Blossom moves to a 2 essence cost or maybe when we have enough talent points to test it with Stasis.

Talent Tree LayoutTemporal CompressionCycle of LifeEmerald BlossomPunctualityGrace PeriodSample Talent Tree & Skill Combos for Preservation EvokerEcho

View on Dragonflight Talent TreeEchoSpiritbloomStasisEmerald BlossomDream BreathDream FlightSpiritbloomEchoReversionEchoStasisEchoStasisEchoSpiritbloomSpiritbloomDream FlightDream BreathEchoStasisEmerald Blossom

View on Dragonflight Talent TreeEchoEmerald BlossomBountiful BloomFluttering SeedlingsField of DreamsCycle of LifeTemporal ArtificerRewindStasisEchoSpiritbloomDream BreathEmerald BlossomImproved Emerald BlossomField of DreamsEmerald BlossomPositioning, Range, and Mobility: The Keys to Succeeding as a Preservation Evokernearly every single ability for Evoker has a 25yd rangeDream BreathTemporal AnomalyHoverRule of LawThe Verdict So Far...EchoTemporal AnomalyEmpower Skills

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Comment by endolex"Hopefully the talent trees are here to stay and that won't happen, but that remains to be seen."
It has been confirmed multiple times by the Devs that talent trees are here to stay for the next few XPsComment by VarysofLysReally great analysis, I cannot wait to try Preservation out, myself!Comment by FabelineThank you for a really nice dive into the spec!Comment by MarmawowheadReally fantastic article.Comment by NoctuliunGreat article! It's one thing to see it on people's streams, but reading about it in-depth is something else =)Comment by dankmaymay88very cool post with a little more in-depth insight into some of the mechanics, thanks!Comment by janinI'm not sure that was a dive so much as a drown :p
But thanks for the...information dump(?)..of a spec still in progress and where anything could still change :DComment by mythicowThey look so fun and unique. Gameplay is a lot different than other classes compared to how DH was when released. As a healer main I'll be switching to them.... along with everyone else lol. Gonna be a whole lotta dragonlads running around.Comment by schiavetto7th healer spec.Comment by thebdcThanks for the in-depth article!

I wonder empowering will work out in an M+ environment. Channeling something for 3+ seconds is an eternity.Comment by Natakutdh100% im flying my friends into fire.

Or maybe the tank into more mobs if they arnt pulling fast enough?Comment by MrKamexThe points about having few abilities without talents or fearing next expansion they might feel barebones without talents are kinda nonsensical and stupid and seem to only make the text longer for whatever reason.

The whole point of the talent tree is that it's not "basically full spec with a bit bonus in talents" but "bare minimum and rest is choice"..

And it they were to remove this talent system again they'd completely overhaul all classes again anyways so the barebones stuff makes ZERO sense.Comment by VailexGood write up. It looks to be a fun and challenging healing class. I am hoping that the Paladin talent tree gets a good shakeup so I don't feel like I have to switch to Evoker to have more fun healing. The mobility in the evoker class is nuts. Right now I am feeling the class envy.Comment by Edlarel100% im flying my friends into fire.

Or maybe the tank into more mobs if they arnt pulling fast enough?Comment by EtamalgrenOf course they removed Spellweaver's Talons.

Think about it: 40 yard sap range. Or, even better: 40 yard thrash range. It'd have been untamed stars all over again, just with every single ability in the game for the people that got hit by the cooldown for those 12 seconds.Comment by szilenseems like evoker will be meta healer class for raidsComment by SoeroahAny idea how it feels to play in outdoor content?

I know healing is primarily for group content, but as someone who both is terrified of the idea of trying to heal with such a complicated class in group content and also feels like this is as close to a time mage, my most-desired class, as I'm ever likely to get, I'm hoping it will at least be fun to level/do outdoor endgame content with, even if it's not as powerful DPS wise as the actual DPS spec.Comment by AlsarStill not seeing why the tank CD for staggering damage isn't a Mistweaver monk ability instead of giving it to this classComment by TwistedMetal"Hopefully the talent trees are here to stay and that won't happen, but that remains to be seen."
It has been confirmed multiple times by the Devs that talent trees are here to stay for the next few XPsComment by ijsselzichtaI might disagree with myself when I actually get to play this, but I think the 25 yards - even if it'll hamper the viability of preservation on some fights (and arena, where I imagine I'll spend most of my time) - are just very cool as an idea, just due to the skill cap required and how different it will make preservation feel from other healers. Excited to get my hands on it! Though I'm still secretly hoping for some kind of MW rework.