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Preservation Evoker: Early Hands-on Review of the New Healer in Dragonflight
Dragonflight
Geposted
16.07.2022 um 02:59
von
Jaydaa
With the
Dragonflight
Alpha released, Dracthyr Evokers are now testable for those invited to the alpha test server. We break down our complete testing from the base toolkit to the extensive talent tree to demonstrate how this class combos everything together to create a unique, compelling, and surprisingly complex new healer.
Introduction: Initial Expectations & Class Fantasy
While I was hyped for a new healer following the Dragonflight reveal stream, I have to admit I was a bit nervous for what we might receive for Preservation Evoker, especially in these early Alpha builds. The information in that initial stream felt a bit sparse with only a few abilities on display. When the class would debut on the Alpha, would we receive a mere barebones version? Additionally, we were assured that Preservation would primarily utilize the Green dragonflight's natural healing powers and the Bronze dragonflight's mastery of time, yet it felt like only Green was represented during the stream. It was suggested that Preservation would have an ability similar to
Zeitkrümmung
or
Seele der Macht
to represent the Bronze dragonflight's influence over the spec, but more detailed information never presented itself.
Fortunately, a lot of my fears and anxiety regarding Preservation Evoker have been alleviated with this initial incarnation currently on the Alpha test servers. Not only did we get a full base toolkit of abilities, we also received complete class and spec talent trees, racial traits for Dracthyr, interesting utility, and a unique mastery. Additionally, players could get lost for hours in the gorgeous visuals of the Dracthyr customization. Combine all that with the stunning animations and impactful sound effects that are attached to nearly every single ability, and Preservation Evoker feels fairly fleshed out and a relatively natural part of World of Warcraft.
Evoker Customization Preview
The Bronze dragonflight's influence stands at the forefront in the current incarnation of Preservation Evoker complementing Green. Abilities like
Stasis
and
Echo
are some of the most nuanced in recent years and are definitely some of my favorite. These abilities got me thinking about how I would chain spells together and bypass ability cooldowns to produce powerful and mana efficient burst combos. Preservation also manages to sprinkle a bit of Red, Blue, and even Black dragonflight influence into their toolkit as well. Does the toolkit completely harmonize? I'd argue that there's a few rough edges that need to be addressed, and there's probably a lot of 'right' answers to how you combo abilities together; however, there's a lot of tools to work with and I'm sure there will be tons of iteration still to happen.
Before 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 & Essence
Before we jump into all the abilities you'll be using, Preservation Evokers have 2 resources that you'll be primarily using: Mana and Essence.
Mana
Like all healers in WoW, nearly all Preservation Evokers abilities cost mana, such as
Lebende Flamme
. Mana naturally regenerates just as you're used to on any other healer and once it runs out you'll have to wait for it regen before you can resume casting. There's not a lot of surprises here: spells cost mana, more powerful spells typically cost more mana.
Essenz
Essence is the class specific resource for Evokers that naturally regenerates over time, typically 1 essence every 5s. This is not a builder/spender resource system like chi or combo points. Rather you should think of it as a naturally regenerating resource that binds certain abilities together in a pseudo-shared cooldown. For Preservation Evoker, your primary essence spending abilities are
Smaragdblüte
and
Echo
(if talented).
Because
Echo
has a 2 essence cost, you can think of it as having a 10s cooldown because that's how long it would take to regenerate 2 essence if your essence is completely depleted. Similarly,
Smaragdblüte
can be thought of as having a 15s cooldown due to its 3 essence cost on Alpha. Because both cost a shared resource, they have a pseudo shared cooldown. Now because you have a pool of up to 5 Essence, you can think of the pool as ability charges in this shared cooldown analogy. It sounds more complicated than it actually is in practice.
Outside of a few specific talents like
Empath
and
Angeborene Magie
, there doesn't appear to be any ways of increasing the natural Essence regen. Haste didn't appear to have any noted effect, but with limited resources on Alpha we were unable to conclusively determine that for sure. However, certain abilities can trigger
Essenzexplosion
s that allow you to cast essence abilities for free. It should also be noted that most essence abilities do still have an associated mana cost.
Baseline Toolkit for Preservation Evoker
Now that we've explored the resource system, we can start to look at what the base toolkit entails. For me, this is where the class feels a bit sparse and more reliant on the Talent Tree to fill out the toolkit, especially for Preservation. This seems to be a prevailing theme for other pre-existing classes that have had their talent trees revealed where a lot of the previously baseline abilities have been stripped away and added to the Talent Trees. This all occurs at varied extents depending on the class, but maybe this feels a bit more jarring on a brand new class where we just don't know what to expect.
Baseline Healing Abilities for Preservation Evoker
Lebende Flamme
- Essentially your single target healing filler that splits the difference between
Blitzheilung
and
Heilung
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.
Smaragdblüte
- Your primary AoE heal that thanks to the rank 2
Verbesserte Smaragdblüte
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
Ergiebige Blüte
,
Schwirrende Setzlinge
, and
Feld der Träume
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.
While the 2 abilities cover a lot of ground, the healing toolkit just feels a bit sparse baseline. Ideally, I'd prefer if
Traumatem
went baseline as it'd offer another AoE heal and a baseline healing Empower skill. Fortunately, there's a lot of active abilities early on in the talent tree to fill out the toolkit, but I'm a bit concerned and don't want this end up being a situation like Demon Hunters in Legion that when the expansion was over and the Artifacts got retired the class felt very barebones. Hopefully the talent trees are here to stay and that won't happen, but that remains to be seen.
Baseline Damage Abilities for Preservation Evoker
Where the base healing toolkit felt scant, the damaging toolkit has a bit more depth overall and a bit more variety in types of spells.
Azurstoß
- Cleave damaging filler that really doesn't gain a lot of traction competing against
Lebende Flamme
for damage unless you're looking for mana efficiency or pick up
Ausgefahrene Krallen
in the class talent tree.
Tiefer Atem
- 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.
Desintegration
- Single target channeling damaging mana-free essence spender. Beats out
Lebende Flamme
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.
Feueratem
- 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
Flamme des Lebensspenders
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
For utility, Preservation Evokers do come with the standard mass resurrection and dispels similar to other healers but do bring a very interesting raid-wide utility buff baseline that I'm sure will be a fan favorite for some. Positioning is everything for Preservation Evokers, so it's beyond helpful they come with a pretty exceptional mobility cooldown.
Segen der Bronzenen
- 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.
Blessing of the Bronze Buff Preview
Schweben
- Incredibly similar to
Gunst des Geistwandlers
with the
Agiler Geist
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
Verlängerter Flug
or add an extra charge with
Meisterschaft über die Lüfte
, both talents in the class talent tree. Big thumbs up for repositioning on a class that requires a lot of specific positioning.
Naturalisieren
- 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!
Massenwiederkehr
- The standard mass resurrection ability that comes with most healing specializations flavored with a Bronze animation.
Meisterschaft: Lebensbinder
for Preservation Evokers
If you've ever been on an airplane and listened to the flight attendant's emergency briefing, then you'll know that you should secure your oxygen mask before you help anyone secure theirs to ensure that you're able to continue to help others. This Mastery epitomizes that exact idea and rewards you for it. Heal yourself before healing the kids.
For the most part utilizing this mastery feels like a fairly simple concept and relatively easy to get near-full value out of with just good early planning of GCDs following incoming damage, good use of your damage reduction CD,
Obsidianschuppen
. or even just a quick health pot or
Gesundheitsstein
. Avoidance and Leech could be your new best friends for maximizing Mastery but definitely not required.
Everything is percent health based, so you won't have to worry about exact health amounts or healing while undergeared. As for healing yourself and others at the same percentage, it appears that a tie in percentage goes to the Evoker which is a big plus.
Notable Class Talents for Preservation Evoker
If we received just the baseline toolkit above, then I'd be incredibly concerned for Preservation Evoker. However, it's honestly here in the Talent Trees that the class really starts to fill out into a completely realized healer, especially early on with the sheer amount of active abilities available. For brevity, we won't cover every single talent, but we'll try to cover most active abilities and any talents that I felt were particularly playstyle defining. Let's start in the class talent tree.
View on Dragonflight Talent Tree Calculator
Class Healing Talents
There's not a ton of additional healing abilities to be found in the class talent tree, but there is one critical one that fills in a major gap in the Preservation Evoker toolkit.
Tiefgrüne Umarmung
- 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
Segenswort: Epiphanie
levels of chonk but definitely still up there. The closest analog would likely be
Rasche Heilung
. They both have a relatively similar cooldown, do relatively similar healing, and fill a similar role in their respective toolkits.
Notably,
Tiefgrüne Umarmung
repositions you next to your target which could potentially be either a boon or a curse. Consider that this ally you're healing with
Tiefgrüne Umarmung
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
Traumatem
.
Kauterisierende Flamme
- Remember when I mentioned that
Naturalisieren
felt a bit limited? Well
Kauterisierende Flamme
is probably the reason why.
Kauterisierende Flamme
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
Segen des Schutzes
, 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
Seuchensturz
. 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.
Zeitdruck
- While not strictly a healing ability, you'll typically pair this off-GCD ability with either
Traumatem
or
Geisterblüte
. Consider it like a
Schnelligkeit der Natur
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
Aurenmeisterschaft
+
Aura der Hingabe
(40yd range & 15% DR) and
Machtwort: Barriere
(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
Zurückspulen
. We'll get to that soon I promise.
Zeitspirale
- A raid-wide cooldown that allows all players to activate their major movement ability even if it is on cooldown. Consider this like a
Anstachelndes Gebrüll
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.
Zeitspirale
uses the same list of abilities as
Segen der Bronzenen
.
Quell der Magie
- Similar to the now defunct
Segen der Weisheit
ability Retribution Paladins used to have,
Quell der Magie
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.
Retten
- 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
Zwillingswächter
talent.
Tyrannisierendes Brüllen
&
Übermannen
- While the CC duration increase is nice, the real all-star here is the AoE Enrage dispel. DPS evenly AoE'ing enemies during
Wütend
Mythic+ weeks might actually be a viable strategy with an Evoker in the party.
Notable Preservation Talents for Preservation Evoker
While all Evokers have access to everything above, we're now in the talents and abilities specifically unique to Preservation Evokers. Hold on tight as we dive in.
View on Dragonflight Talent Tree Calculator
Raid Cooldown:
Zurückspulen
Fully embracing the time manipulation of the Bronze dragonflight, the Preservation Evoker's cooldown
Zurückspulen
offers a really unique take on a what a raid-wide cooldown looks like.
Zurückspulen
heals allies for 50% of damage taken in the last 5 seconds or a minimum value that's roughly a little more than half of a
Belebung
at current tuning. Ideally, you'll want to use this for some of the most hard-hitting AoE spells on an encounter to maximize the healing. In the limited testing environment, I'm still uncertain if the 50% damage taken is before or after damage mitigation. My assumption is after damage mitigation, but results have been inconclusive. Additionally, the healing is done as a HoT over 4s, so don't try to snipe a Mistweaver's Revival; Mistweavers will win every time.
Similarly to
Gelassenheit
and
Gotteshymne
,
Zurückspulen
does 100% increased healing outside of raid. While this tag was initially added in Legion as compensation for the difficulty to channel a full raid cooldown in Mythic+, adding it to this instant cast raid cooldown feels like maybe that justification no longer holds water. Perhaps the healing raid cooldowns of other healers deserve another look and a level of standardization. Regardless, I'll definitely take the extra healing for
Zurückspulen
At a 4 minute base cooldown,
Zurückspulen
breaks the standard 3-minute mold for most healer cooldowns; however, the
Temporalkonstrukteur
talent can reduce that to a 3-minute cooldown or optionally you can gain an extra charge of
Zurückspulen
with
Zunichtemachen
making it significantly more flexible though the healing is reduced by 50%. I'd prefer the penalty for
Zunichtemachen
to not be quite as harsh, but I understand both talents are in direct competition of each other by being on the same decision node so tuning will need to be scrupulous.
While I think
Zurückspulen
offers a unique take on a throughput healing raid cooldown, I think my current concern is how will the ability perform in a variety of difficulties of content. Because its healing is based on damage intake will the cooldown overperform in Mythic Raid and high key level Mythic+ or will it underperform in lower difficulty content. It's possible they can adjust the floor and ceiling of the healing to find a happier medium, and I'm interested to see where the final tuning lands on this ability.
Tank Cooldown:
Zeitverschiebung
Zeitverschiebung
leans further into the time manipulation of the Bronze dragonflight to provide the targeted ally with a
Staffeln
-like effect causing 50% of damage taken during the effect's duration to instead be taken as a DoT over 8s. While you're not necessarily reducing the overall damage intake, spreading the damage over a period makes it significantly easier to heal and allows tanks to survive massive spikes of damage that might otherwise kill them. At a one-minute cooldown, expect this to be one of the most powerful abilities in your toolkit.
Gefahr verzögern
can further enhance the ability upping the stagger amount to 70% or you can increase the duration of the effect by 2s with
Zeitlose Magie
.
Filling Out the Healing Toolkit
Umkehrung
- The maintenance HoT for Preservation Evokers similar to
Springflut
for Restoration Shaman or
Erneuernder Nebel
for Mistweaver Monks. With enough critical strike you can significantly increase the overall duration and healing throughput. Consider doubling down on
Umkehrung
by further enhancing it with
Schonfrist
and
Zeitlose Magie
. Of note, you can have multiple
Umkehrung
s on the same ally, but only you if you used
Echo
to place the second
Umkehrung
.
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
Lebende Flamme
,
Umkehrung
,
Tiefgrüne Umarmung
, and
Geisterblüte
. 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
Zeitlose Magie
.
I'm excited to use this ability in a more practical setting to setup larger
Umkehrung
blankets or create some mini burst windows with a spam of
Geisterblüte
.
Traumatem
- Our first Empower heal for Preservation Evoker. Works pretty similarly to the baseline
Feueratem
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.
Geisterblüte
- Our second Empower heal for Preservation Evokers. Empowering
Geisterblüte
adds additional targets unlike
Traumatem
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
Klarheit im Geist
to cut
Geisterblüte
in half or
Empath
for some additional Essence generation for some powerful follow up healing.
Zeitanomalie
- 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
Heilender Regen
and
Chistoß
; 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
Gefrorene Kugel
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,
Zeitanomalie
does have a
Gefrorene Kugel
-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
Traumflug
- Essentially
Tiefer Atem
but for healing with a HoT component and mobility tacked on. You can partially negate the movement if you want by simply taking
Rückruf
. 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;
Zeitverschiebung
and
Zurückspulen
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
Konvokation der Geister
; 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
Geisterblüte
or
Traumatem
or the Essence cost of
Smaragdblüte
or
Echo
and you can do some serious burst. We'll explore this a bit later on when talking about combos.
Kreislauf des Lebens
- Adds a
Totem des Wolkenbruchs
effect to every cast of
Smaragdblüte
. At 5% this felt a bit lackluster, but you can have multiple of these sprouts up at the same time either from multiple
Smaragdblüte
casts or
Feld der Träume
procs. Even stacking these it still didn't feel like an exceptional amount of healing, but perhaps it'll receive a major boost if
Smaragdblüte
moves to a 2 essence cost or maybe when we have enough talent points to test it with
Stasis
.
Talent Tree Layout
Overall, I'm fairly pleased with the top two sections of the Preservation Evoker talent tree, and the themes of each side of the tree are evident there. You can embrace the Green dragonflight on the left with more direct healing talents or adopt the time manipulation and reversal of damage aspects of Bronze on the right. Down the center, you'll see the hints of the remaining dragonflights and how Preservation might convert some of their more damaging abilities to assist in healing allies. There are a few outliers here such as with
Temporalkomprimierung
being on the left side, but overall that's how this appears to be setup
It's in the bottom third of the talent tree that things start to feel a bit more muddled. The capstone,
Kreislauf des Lebens
, is on the far right despite most of the other
Smaragdblüte
-enhancing talents being on the left. Talents that naturally complement each other (ie.
Pünktlichkeit
and
Schonfrist
) are not inline forcing players into certain capstones if you're looking for that extra synergy. Instead of being able to fully embrace a certain ability or playstyle, you have to pick and choose. I think shuffling the position of a few talents could go a long way in having a more coherent talent tree structure in this final section.
Sample Talent Tree & Skill Combos for Preservation Evoker
Echo
Build
View on Dragonflight Talent Tree
The above build leans heavily into
Echo
as your primary Essence spender in combination with
Geisterblüte
and
Stasis
to provide some potent burst AoE healing windows. Unfortunately, you'll be foregoing most
Smaragdblüte
talents so you'll be mostly reliant on level 4 Empowered
Traumatem
s and your 1 minute cooldown
Traumflug
to fill the void between your
Geisterblüte
cooldowns. You can burn excess Essence on
Echo
and replicate a few
Umkehrung
, but don't do this at the expense of your burst windows.
How powerful is this setup? Well that remains to be seen in a practical environment, but consider this line up: store 3
Echo
in
Stasis
, cast 3 more
Echo
on different targets just before unleashing. Unleash your
Stasis
for a total of 6
Echo
then cast a fully Empowered
Geisterblüte
. That's 7
Geisterblüte
going out in fairly rapid succession and can still be followed up with
Traumflug
and
Traumatem
. Will you need that level of burst all the time? Probably not and that likely won't be available except every 1.5 minutes, but it's a cool idea to speculate about. Obviously you can mix and match abilities to replicate with
Echo
and
Stasis
to match your needs, but there's a lot of possibilities here.
Smaragdblüte
Build
View on Dragonflight Talent Tree
This build eschews
Echo
in favor of using all your Essence on
Smaragdblüte
and picking up all the talents that really beef up the skill (
Ergiebige Blüte
,
Schwirrende Setzlinge
,
Feld der Träume
, and
Kreislauf des Lebens
). While this build does lend itself to a more sustained AoE healing environment, you'll be able to pickup
Temporalkonstrukteur
for a 3-minute
Zurückspulen
and can utilize
Stasis
to replicate two
Echo
and either a
Geisterblüte
or
Traumatem
to help bolster your burst healing options.
Smaragdblüte
does feel a bit weaker at the 3 Essence cost found on the current Alpha testing environment. There is some spell data that suggests it might have been or might be turning into a 2 Essence cost (
Verbesserte Smaragdblüte
) which would go a long way in making this spell feel more practical and less unwieldy. Right now, to get a lot of value out of it, you're praying to the RNG gods that you hopefully pull an extra proc from
Feld der Träume
that cascades into multiple other procs leading to some powerful AoE healing. But as a healer you really don't want to rely on RNG especially when your allies lives are on the line. Combine this with a smaller 10yd range on the base AoE of the ability and this doesn't really feel like something you want to cast to heal a spread ranged grouping. I do think there's a lot of potential here, especially with how cool it is to watch
Smaragdblüte
jump around on different allies (see video below).
Positioning, Range, and Mobility: The Keys to Succeeding as a Preservation Evoker
While I'm overall pretty happy with Preservation Evoker's development so far, one point of contention that I think will be a growing aggravation will be ability range. If you've played the spec or maybe just watched a few streams, you'll quickly notice that
nearly every single ability for Evoker has a 25yd range
. While this hasn't been a major issue thus far as most testing has been done on stationary training dummies or while leveling with most mobs running to the player; however, once there's actual group content I think the issue will become more apparent and a source of frustration for new Preservation Evokers. I say specifically Preservation Evokers because Devastation really only cares about their positioning relative to the boss and with a shorter range they'll likely be within range of the typically centralized healers. Devastation likely won't really care about their relative position to their allies except when mechanics dictate otherwise; the same cannot be said for Preservation.
The intent is of course that the Evoker plays as a mid-range caster/healer somewhere between the melee stack and the range spread. Melee are obviously on the boss and ranged are a maximum of 40yds away, so you may be asking 'what's the problem?' 20yds would be the midpoint so 5 extra yds should be a fair amount of leeway to bridge the gap. If you're looking at the distance between 2 points then you'd be correct, but that's rarely how ranged spreads work out. Ranged are positioned relative to the boss, so if two ranged are on opposite sides of the boss you could be looking at a spread between the two of 80yds, a difficult distance for a normal 40yd range healer to manage but may feel impossible for the 25yd Preservation Evoker.
Now I'll freely admit that a range spread like that doesn't occur too often and typically will land somewhere in the middle of these extremes, but combine this with the fact that a lot of Preservation Evoker's heals have fairly strict positioning requirements (ie.
Traumatem
,
Zeitanomalie
, etc.) and you'll quickly realize that mastery of this spec will rely on more than just pushing the right buttons in the correct order but also being in the right spot at the right time. Yes, the spec has a lot of abilities to help them to traverse encounter environments, but when those are on cooldown Preservation Evokers may find themselves stranded. Thinking about current Sepulcher encounters, Preservation Evokers would likely struggle on Halondrus and multiple phases of Anduin and the Jailer simply due to range issues.
To be clear, I do welcome the extra challenge regarding the tighter positioning and ranged requirements of Preservation Evoker, but I do have a few recommendations to alleviate some of these issues. Giving a few extra yards of range to spells either baseline or on the talent tree doesn't feel too overpowered. If given a talent, then it could even at the cost of
Schweben
's cooldown or some other mobility to offset this quality-of-life. I'm not saying giving the whole 40yds but an extra 5yds to a total of 30 doesn't feel too extreme. Another option I'd suggest would be based on a relic of a spell we found in the data,
. As a full raid-wide cooldown,
probably feels a bit overpowered, but a personal version similar to
Herrschaft des Gesetzes
could go a long way in helping new Preservation Evokers adjust to these stricter requirements.
The Verdict So Far...
So where does that leave Preservation Evoker right now? I think Blizzard has managed to carve out a strong first showing for a 7th healer specialization with a creative toolkit that has some of the most unique abilities in World of Warcraft. They've delivered on the class fantasy of what it means to play a dragon that heals their allies with the Green dragonflight's mastery of nature and the Bronze dragonflight's time manipulation. Preservation doesn't feel like it was ripped from the pages of Restoration Druid or the other healers, but rather feels like a fairly natural evolution. Yes, there are certainly some rough edges and additional polishing that needs to be done, but that requires time, additional content, and a ton of constructive feedback from the playerbase.
With regards to abilities, there's a lot of nuance and creativity being applied to the Preservation toolkit. I can't rave enough about
Echo
and and how it's gotten me to think more about my target choice and ability order than ever before. I'm asking myself not only what do I need now but also what will I need in the near future. There are certainly a few abilities that need a bit more iteration, yes I'm looking at you here
Zeitanomalie
; and there could be a bit more finesse for players that may find the added position and range restrictions jarring. Overall though I'm fairly happy with the new lineup of abilities.
Empower Skills
Since we're talking about skills, I should probably touch on Empower skills since they were highlighted as the brand new skill type unique to Evokers. Honestly, for me they are kind of just glorified cast abilities. There's nothing inherently wrong with them, but I think they could be so much more than their current incarnation. I never feel the need to cast Empower abilities at a lower Empower level besides max, and doing so felt like a major waste since you still incur the same mana cost for less throughput. If you need to move, then you could just move and the ability would cancel just like any other cast time spell refunding the full cooldown of the ability though you do not get refunded the mana back. Even with losing the mana, the risk/reward aspect just isn't there for Empower abilities.
How would I fix things? For starters, you shouldn't be able to cancel the ability to get a full refund on the cooldown. Once the ability is pressed, you should know that the resources and cooldown are spent and the only question that remains is how much throughput you're going to get out of the ability. If you move, then the ability fires; no ifs, ands, or buts. Do you continue to bathe in the fire for another half second of casting or do you move and lose some throughput. Next, make the ability pseudo-instant. What I mean by this is simply make the first Empower level or stage obtainable simply by pressing the button rather than requiring any sort of casting time whatsoever. This will ensure that you don't completely waste the ability for absolutely 0 throughput. Finally, you can frontload the throughput into the first Empower level, maybe 50% of the total throughput then 25% each for the final 2 levels. Quickly tapping the button gives you an instant throughput ability that you can cast on the move offering an incentive for instant casting the ability while still incentivizing a full channeled cast time for maximum throughput.
Overall I'm incredibly excited to see how Preservation Evoker performs in new group content as well as how it stacks up against other healers and potentially shakes up what has felt like a fairly stagnant healer meta over the last decade of WoW. There's a lot of iteration between here and launch, so stay tuned as we continue to contextualize all the changes as they hit the test servers.
Dragonflight Alpha News
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Lessons Learned from Sepulcher
Talent Calculator Available
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Evoker Zenith Tier Token
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Blessing of the Bronze Raid Buff
Devestation Review
Preservation Review
Preservation Evoker Gameplay
Devastation Evoker Gameplay
Unholy DK Bluepost
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DH & Warlock Talent Speculation
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Monk Talent Speculation
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