I’m thinking of rolling evoker as an alt and had some questions.
How hard is preservation compared to other healers? I play disc, so will this be similar in difficulty/less/more?
How hard is it to overcome the limited range? The low range and transmog are my main hang ups on this class.
Otherwise, I never tank except in the open world and I love support specs so this seems like a good fit.
Any other benefits or detriments I’m missing about evoker?
Thanks in advance.
I’d say pres is easier than disc by a bit. The main thing that’s going to get you is the range. Once you can overcome the limited range you can really start to see where it shines. It took me and my friends a little while to get used to it. Nothing too crazy.
You need to be okay with the idea of doing some combos for bigger heals. Such as doing Verdant Embrace → Temporal Anomaly → Dream Breath. With the 4-set from the raid that little combo is crazy strong.
As someone who mained disc for many years and swapped this expac for pres evoker, I can say it feels infinitely better than disc ever did. Once they made atonement a temporary buff on people it killed a lot of enjoyment that it used to give me.
But yeah, just try it out for a bit and see if its potentially something you might enjoy. I was iffy on it at first until I really saw what I could do with Temporal Anomaly.
the key to presto is Temporal anomaly , stasis and Lifebind.
Lifebind
Lifebind links the evoker and the targets incoming heals together so if one gets heals, the other 1 gets a % heals. The joy about this skill how ever is that you may use it through echos, it is extremely nerfed as to what it was in season 1 but will still pump out an immense healing number when combo’d.
Combo with lifebind can work as such… TA to get your echoes out… use all your echoes on more targets, verdant embrace to a target to pop lifebind for 8seconds… In this window you have a plethoria of tools to heal those targets. This toolkit includes the following. Dream breath increased because of Verdant embrace use. Spirit bloom enhanced becasue of tier set. Living flame, only fires one off but with leaping flames can fire 4 extra off which can all heal all targets if they hit targets of lifebind, Lock cookies, Healing pots. Emerald communion. Technically Emerald blossom, which does work, especially with the seed stuff going on but thats just practice to learn about that.
Empowerments
Ontop of that Presto is unique from Devastation but rather close to Augmentation when it comes to empowerments. You need to understand how fire breath and dream breath works. its not complicated but a rank 1 from a rank 4 can make or break you on the healing meters. Presto is essentially a heal over time healer. Rank 1 Dream breath heals the exact same as rank 4 Dream breath. The only reason you empower it is to have a more direct heal upfront. Lower ranks have longer hot durations, higher ranks have less hot duration. (this is exactly the same for fire breath aswell).
Most of the time it is perfectly fine to use rank 1 Dream breath. Tip the scales will automatically cast it at max rank however. Spirit bloom should be the priority for this as its a higher number and a hot with tier. Spirit bloom this season is a core part of your rotation. 20second spirit blooms will also make a massive dent in charts. Knowing when a chunk of damage is coming out and firing of a spirit bloom at the exact time fantastic vs firing it off early feeling bad or late and the heals are sniped.
Dreamflight
Dream flight is really your major cooldown, Rewind is great but its very limited as to requiring damage to have happened and chip damage like dots or small boss chunks not working. (think rashok intermission, it chips at health not chunks). Rewind will also only rewind the past 5seconds of damage, anything outside of that window is forgotten. So if there is a burst, Rewind is king, but if there is just chip, Dream flight is king. Dream flight does not require the full flight, just people under its initial take off and flight duration. So if everyone stacks like they should in a raid, throwing a dream breath during a rashok intermission is going to overheal the raid but leaves a massive hot ontop of them that helaing wont matter for 8seconds. In those 8seconds throw in some dream breaths and spirit blooms and a few emerald blossoms and you will be #1 by far.
Stasis
Stasis, stasis is a core management skill. Its something you wont get the most value out of in combat, but as a safety net you can set it up with 2 charges before combat and an extra charge 5seconds before combat and you will usually cover the first major aoe damage of the raid with it. Before pull it is extremely important to use Temporal anomaly 2 times in the charges and depending on raid size a third or if below 16 players a verdant embrace. This might sound weird but TA pops a 20k shield on targets. It also increases the shield size with each TA ontop of it (usually doesnt happen in combat but Stasis allows this to happen). This also spreads echoes to targets allowing for better life binds at the start of the fight.
Lastly stats, Mastery is great but ive seen people do Crit mastery and haste mastery. I did crit mastery season 1 and dipped towards aug in season 2 so went haste mastery. Both of these stat combos are good for aug as an off spec dps, crit mastery how ever leans more towards Devastation as haste is apparnetly useless for them atm? Idk the workings of dev. Haste does not effect your essence regen but does interact with your living flame fishing for essence burst procs.
Presto has 30yard range on all its skills except for dream flight and rewind. I do think Dream breath is 35yards aswell but some one will need to fact check that, it just feels like it.
TA applying echoes to the first targets it comes into contact with. I think it also has a 40 yard range (correct me if im wrong) but applying those echoes to the melee while standing at ranged can be complicated. Stasis basically promises it at the start but positioning yourself out of the ranged group to teh side or behind them is extremely important.
Out side of that you wont really notice the range issue happening often and when it does you have hover to reposition yourself better.
Otherwise GOODLUCK!
This has been my issue with disc as well. Atonement is more annoying to me than fun, but I like playing proactive healers so I sought out preservation. Preservation is intimating to me in the various combos you need to understand.
Thank you for your reply. Have you played augmentation and, if so, how does the difficulty compare to disc?
And thanks to Chadurbate for such a detailed reply. It was very helpful.
It’s pretty easy once you understand the interactions your abilities have.
Depends more on the people you are with than anything. Some dps and tanks understand how pres works and will try to stick closer to you. Sometimes they won’t. You can communicate your needs to the group though.
If you actually like your visage the transmog becomes less of an issue. Can only not see it in combat. But the dragon form itself is highly customizable and the pre-baked in armors are pretty good. I’ve just accepted the challenge of having my visage transmog not have belts/shoulders/tabards, and also matching it to my dragon form armor colors as best i can.
Not at all. Haste is still good, crit is just better now because there isn’t a reasonable amount of haste you can get that will net you 3rd dragonrage extensions without PI. Meanwhile we do more crit damage than other specs, which synergizes well with the tier set.
Trust me when I say this. Disc is much more intimidating than pres ever could be. You might have to move a little more than most other healers, but you have tools to help you with that.
Augmentation is super easy to pick up and play and is awesome for any group. I would say its pretty newcomer friendly. Its not hard to master either. Once it gets some gear it can really shine.
Comparing Disc to Augmentation is like comparing rocket science to multiplication. Both have equations, but one is complicated and the other is easy.
well there you go… i dont actually play devastation, im just going by what i have been told.
Thank you, and others, for this. I’m going to start gearing up my Aug to an easy 424 or so to see if I like it in low level M+.
You’re welcome. I really like the class and like to help people with it if I can. There are plenty of others that can put things into better words than I could and I speak mostly only from experience.