Midnight, What Has Changed?
Going into Midnight we see quite a large change and shift in evoker gameplay. From the loss of Spiritbloom and Engulf, to the addition of Twin Echoes and our Apex talent Merithras Blessing, we begin to see talents integrating more of our full kit into our playstyle. We will see a lot less building up big ramps to top the group instantly via Lifebind or Engulf Consume Flame, to more moment to moment gameplay.
Let's take a look!
Class Tree
Removed
With the removal of healer kicks, it comes as no surprise that we also lost Quell. Opinions vary heavily about the loss of healer kicks, but with the overall changes to dungeons it looks like it's shaping out to be okay so far!
The only other talent removed from our tree is Fire Within. This comes with a Renewing Blaze change that we will talk about it just below.
Reworked
Starting with Renewing Blaze the overall goal of Midnight was to reduce Cooldown and personal bloat; one change Blizzard has done for evoker so far was bake our Renewing Blaze into our Obsidian Scales. This has been a very controversial change. Renewing Blaze was much more helpful with heavy rot, or a debuff on ourself, whereas Obsidian Scales was used to help survive large heavy hits. Not only that, but Obsidian Scales also reduces the value of Renewing Blaze due to its damage reduction. However, we still have 2 charges so instead Obsidian Scales makes us EXTREMELY hard to kill in all types of content and damage patterns.
To continue with the theme of changing personals and externals, Twin Guardian also has been reworked. Instead of giving ourselves and our ally that we are hitting with Rescue a shield, Twin Guardian now gives a 100% movement speed buff and allows our ally and ourselves to cast while moving for 3 seconds. This acts exactly the same as Hover and does not work with empower casts.
Finally Unravel is now just tied to our Fire Breath doing extra damage to shielding as Blizzard looks to remove button bloat.
Added
The most exciting time for beta is seeing what Blizzard adds to specs. Our class tree has had a few items added, but the biggest thing for us is getting the 4 extra talent points allowing us to pick up Source of Magic, Zephyr, Time Spiral, and Leaping Flames all at the same time!
Firstly added was Inner Radiance, replacing Quell. This is a Dev and Aug class specific talent that has been moved to the class tree. Simply just makes our Living Flame and more importantly Emerald Blossom healing on ourselves a bit stronger. With potentially seeing much more Emerald Blossom healing with our season 1 midnight tierset and talent integration this could shape out to be a pretty solid talent.
Strangely enough we also got another defensive option that comes from the Aug Spec tree in Stretch Time. This makes our Deep Breath essentially give us a 100% TD while flying. It's important to note that this only works with Deep Breath and not Dreamflight. This also has an HP cap as well, so if we take well above your HP pool in damage, instead of staggering the damage, we will instantly die.
Lastly is Strike from Above, a simple and small movement speed increase and height to glide. This talent was heavily nerfed in beta making it pretty much a nothingburger.
Final Notes
Overall the biggest positive to the new Class tree is the 4 new talent points, that has always been the biggest area of contention when it came to our tree. Often having to sacrifice group utility or throughput for the other. I personally am very happy with our class tree, though the movement of Regenerative Magic makes it nearly impossible to realistically grab. It becomes especially hard if you consider it now being gated behind a 2 point damage node in Instinctive Arcana when healer damage is by far at an all time low. Not only that its also gated by the heavily ignored Protracted Talons.
Chronowarden
Chronowarden has seen a pretty large shift since the removal of Spiritbloom. It lands in a much more focus into more Temporal Anomaly casts, Stronger Echos and many more Essence Burst's.
Removed
Threads of Fate and its support talent Instability Matrix both have been removed entirely. Not much to note here, passive talents that had very little impact at any level of content or type of content.
Reworked
With the Removal of Spiritbloom, Reverberations and Primacy both see the spell they are attached to moved to Verdant Embrace, along with this Reverberations healing is massively increased and Primacy see's its buffed duration increased to 15 seconds. With these changes it's very easy to see high uptime on 9% haste from this combo which is extremely strong and gives Chronowarden some feet to stand on.
Just below that we see Golden Opportunity get changed from an RNG buff to a multiplicative increase to our Echo's value. This works with both our hard casted Echo's and our Echo's from Resonating Sphere. Small but good.
Added
The most important talent in the tree was just added called Nozdormu Adept. This talent reduces the cooldown of Temporal Anomaly by 4 seconds flat, and reduces its mana cost by 15%. This is an absurdly strong talent that allows our ramps in raid to go wider and the amount of spells we can echo in M+ much more frequent. Not only that, but Temporal Anomaly by itself is already a very solid shield, and more casts of it is just more shielding on the raid as the shielding of Temporal Anomaly can stack up to 3 times.
Along with this we see the addition of Chronoboon, a 30 second Reduction to our Tip the Scales Cooldown. nothing too crazy to say here, more uptime on Temporal Burst is always good.
Just below that we have Energy Cycles simply giving us an Essence Burst every 6 seconds while in Temporal Burst. More Echo more Emerald Blossom casts are always good.
Lastly we get Overclock. This is a very weak increase to the cap that which Chrono Flame repeats in damage and healing.
Final Notes
Overall, I am quite happy with the Chronowarden changes, though I slightly worried as well. In a raid environment it works quite well as the increase in Temporal Anomaly casts and the increase in strength of Echo from Golden Opportunity makes your coverage much stronger. Chronowarden also allows Verdant Embrace to shine with Reverberations making it a very strong and effective heal. However, in dungeon content, with the loss of Spiritbloom your Dream Breath, Verdant Embrace, and Reversion are all very in contention with each other, and it becomes a lot easier to have that feeling of "running out" that players often struggle with on Preservation. This can sometimes lead to need to healing with Chrono Flame which is an extremely bad feeling. Not only that, but Chronowarden has always been the "damage" tree via Chrono Flame and After image. With healer damage being at an all time low it feels and seems as if Chronowarden has lost a lot of it's oomph in a Dungeon setting, but we will have to see.
Flameshaper
Flameshaper has seen a very large rework after the removal of Engulf. You will have a lot more uptime and casts of your Dream Breath and Fire Breath while also massively increasing the throughput of both spells. Along with this we see a Rework to Consume Flame and get some new bonuses added in!
Removed
Long gone are the days of you instantly topping your raids, Engulf has been culled from this world. Initially this might turn you off to the idea of Flameshaper and make you worry about the hero tree, but I am here to say this was a need and good change on the part of Blizzard. Engulf heavily influenced the play of Evoker this entire expansion. From it being just 50% of our healing in season one from its extremely strong interaction with Consume Flame, being Lifebind fodder for massive hits in season 2, and being both in season 3. This spell overtook Preservation and we relied on it so heavily in raid that it was impossible to make useful in a dungeon environment without it massively buffing raid. The removal of Engulf was needed for the health of the game and the health of Preservation.
Removed with it was also a support talent of Red Hot which just gave it a 2nd charge, nothing crazy.
Reworked
To start with, Engulf was replaced with Legacy of the Lifebinder a fitting name. This talent gives both our Fire Breath and more importantly our Dream Breath 2 charges. I cannot emphasize how insanely good this is. Having an additional charge of both these spells, along with a few class tree changes we will get into later makes this spell already so much stronger than it already was. We will now instead be focusing ourselves heavily around Dream Breath instead of Engulf making for a much more healthy, and more importantly, tune-able knob.
Just below that we have Ashes in Motion, nothing too crazy just a small amount of cooldown reduction on our Fire Breath.
Another step down we have Burning Adrenaline, another simple talent that allows us to cast our Dream Breath and Fire Breath faster. This has some negative side affects via Dream Breath, currently upranking your Dream Breath doesnt take in the increases of the hot healing from Expanded Lungs and Fulminous Roar, making you lose out on a large amount of Dream Breath healing. We hope to see this fixed soon!
One more tick down we see Deep Exhalation, an increase to our HoT and DoT portions of our Fire Breath and our Dream Breath. More healing, more damage, more uptime. All around good.
Down to our capstone we see Consume Flame get a rework on the spells it works with and the amounts they consume. Verdant Embrace consumes 4 seconds for a 200% explosion per target hit with Dream Breath, while Emerald Blossom consumes 2 seconds with a 200% explosion per target hit with Dream Breath. Most notable THIS IS NO LONGER SPLASH AOE HEALING. Having Consume Flame happen is Single Target heal on that person that got hit with either Verdant Embrace or Emerald Blossom if they have Dream Breath. This fundamentally changes how Flameshaper is required to play. Sadly however, currently Consume Flame looks to be extremely weak and not played around at all in raid, and in M+ you can do some neat things with Verdant Embrace but it requires a lot of setup. A large nerf needed to happen, but currently Consume Flame is a shell of its former self.
Last Item we see a change in is Lifecinders. With Renewing Blaze now being attached to Obsidian Scales they changes Lifecinders to now provide Obsidian Scales to our target at a 50% effectivness. Yes you read that right we can now share our personal with other people. This also gives the passive Renewing Blaze to the target as well making for an absolutely insane external and talent. 15% DR and 50% healback of all damage for 12 seconds.
Added
As is with Chronowarden and all other hero trees, Flameshaper see's 3 NEW talents.
Starting from the top we have Essence Well, this gives all casts of our Dream Breath and Fire Breath to have a 50% chance to give us an Essence Burst. Meaning often you will get 2 Essence Bursts from your Empower casts with Spark of Insight. More Essence Bursts are always welcome.
Just below that we also gain a support talent for Essence Burst with Twin Flame. This makes it so when we spend our Essence Burst it heals that target for quite a fair amount. This sadly currently does not work with Disintegrate, we hope to see this changed.
Lastly we have an upgrade talent for Twin Flame, Fire Torrent, this just makes Twin Flame bounce an additional 2 times. On beta this looks to target damaged allies and is actually extremely powerful in the new healer environment.
Final Notes
I'm very pleased with the Flameshaper changes, the Engulf Consume Flame duo was long due for a change, and I'm very happy it will no longer dominate the spec entirely in raid. This allows them to hopefully tune Flameshaper into a competitive spot in both raid and M+. That being said, I am a bit sad about the state of Consume Flame, currently on beta its less than 2% healing on most logs with me TRYING to play into it. The rest of the tree however is just a lot of solid points that gradually add to Flameshaper being a very solid tree that adds and honestly almost complete Preservation Evoker.
Preservation Tree
Buckle up, cause this is about to get spicy. Preservation Recieved a fair amount of changes with its Spec tree. We see the addition of our extremely powerful apex talent, reworks to other talents to strip frustration away from gameplay, and intergration talents to help us utilize our entire kit. Unfortunately we also lose some of most beloved spells, and our Cooldowns become a choice.
Removed
Lets rip the band aid off early. Our Beloved Spiritbloom has been removed. Spiritbloom was a staple to dungeon gameplay and evoker in the past, its moved more towards backup button recently, but it always found a way to just fall behind in raid, unfortunately becoming Lifebind Fodder. However, with the change to Lifebind the removal of Spiritbloom is a double hitter to M+ and honestly just the identity of Preservation. It also leaves a very big gap in Chronowarden's gameplay.
Another Iconic spell Emerald Communion was also removed. Often used for Lifebind but also mana, Emerald Communion's removal leaves a pretty strange feeling as a cooldown, a personal, and a way to help our worsening mana economy. Along with Emerald Communion all of its supporting talents also have been removed.
The only other talent that was removed was Cycle of Life. This change Eliminates a talent that essentially has been holding back Emerald Blossom from being a good spell on its own. Historically Preservation has been either all in Emerald Blossom or all in Echo. This allows Blizzard to buff Emerald Blossom into being a good button, but also allowing us as players to not be forced into all inning the spell. Along with this they added Twin Echoes which we will talk about in just a second!
Reworked
On the topic of Emerald Blossom we will start with Field of Dreams. This was reworked to take away the RNG aspect of the talent and make it a guarentee'd Proc every other Emerald Blossom cast. This massively increased quality of life for this talent, and with the very large Emerald Blossom buffs it's a VERY good pick.
Another very noteable rework was for Lifebind. Lifebind Healing and duration where increased quite significantly, however Lifebind can no longer be spread through Echo. This by itself and the Spiritbloom removal could be a video topic on its own. Blizzard is really bringing down the level of instant burst the spec can do. This has some major consequences on Dungeon Content however, as Lifebind has been the bread and butter of how we historically push health bars in that content. This change however was needed from a raiding perspective, as Lifebind has been extremely oppressive and bursty in recent tiers, things Blizzard does not want.
Yet another major rework comes from Empath and Spiritual Clarity. We will start with Empath as its the less of the two. All empower spells now give us the buff, instead of only the removed Spiritbloom. Moving onto Spiritual Clarity, this reduces the Cooldown of Dream Breath down to 20 seconds. That alone is very good, but now remember that Flameshaper has 2 charges. No longer are you punished for holding Dream Breath for mechanics. This is an extremely powerful synergy that pushes Flameshaper Dream Breath even further ahead of Chronowarden.
As for other Reworks, Call of Ysera is now disconnected from Verdant Embrace and a passive. Do note that it has been pretty significantly nerfed however. This was very good for the playstyle now that Verdant Embrace is trying to be a stand alone button now, not a Lifebind and Call of Ysera trigger.
We are on a roll with gameplay centric changes as Tempo Charged was ALSO reworked. No longer are you punished for casting your Fire Breath on cooldown, or punished for having to cast Dream Breath early. Tempo Charged is now just a generic passive increase to bronze spells. This does not work on Chrono Flame, Golden Hour or Rewind.
Lastly for reworks, Lifeforce Mender no longer scales off of HP, and now is a generic increase to red spells. Much easier for testing, doesn't change the functionality of the talent.
Added
Our Apex talents, Merithras Blessing. There is a ton to go into here i'd recommend reading the interactions page about this. Know that it's been massively nerfed many times, and it is likely still the most powerful apex in the game.
I've done a lot of talking about integration talents so let's talk about the major one, Twin Echoes Twin Echoes makes it so after every Emerald Blossom cast causes your next Echo cast will hit another target. This is smart healing and the Echo will choose the lowest HP target that doesn't already have an Echo. This with the fact that Emerald Blossom got massively buffed means that you can weave Emerald Blossom and Echo to build your ramps and not lose out on Echo count while also doing decent healing during your ramp as Emerald Blossom does not consume Echo.
Our Stasis and our Dreamflight are on a choice node, however they get a new support talent called Inner Flame. Inner Flame increases your HoT healing of all spells by 60% and increases the chance of your Living Flame and Reversion to create Essence Bursts by 100%. Note that this only happens on the Initial casts of these two spells. Stasis release does not reapply the Inner Flame buff. Its a fairly solid talent, that makes Dreamflight do a ton more healing, and gives some pretty niche cases for Stasis stores.
Lastly we get a new Verdant Embrace choice node consisting of Dream Simulacrum and Wings of Liberty. Wings of Liberty just gives you an additional charge of Verdant Embrace while Dream Simulacrum makes your Verdant Embrace hit even harder and makes it so you send a projection of yourself forward instead of moving your character to do the healing. Both have very niche situations and lots of good testing has been done on both. Overall its a pretty solid choice node, but it can be a bit harder to justify as a capstone talent.
Final Thoughts
Overall I'm extremely happy with how Preservation is turning out so far. The spec tree really starts to help reimagine our gameplay and adds some more depth while also helping new player in. It's not only extremely fun to play, but also extremely satisfying and I cannot wait to play it some more. We still have some Questionable choices however, such as the center of our tree. Long time no use Power Nexus still struggles to find its place along with Font of Power now struggling for power with the removal of Spiritbloom. Energy Loop currently is doing less than it normally does, and its neighbor Time of Need is strong, though very hard to justify in the last section of our tree. Few other notes Temporal Artificer is currently still allowing us to have 2 minute rewind which has shown to be by far the most powerful CD in the game. Talents like Exhilarating Burst start to see some question as a large amount of our healing in beta cannot crit.