Midnight, What Has Changed?
Going into Midnight, Preservation Evoker sees a significant shift in gameplay. With the loss of Spiritbloom and Engulf and the addition of Twin Echoes and our Apex talent Merithras Blessing, we’re seeing talents integrate more of our full kit into our playstyle. Expect fewer huge ramp windows to instantly top the group via Lifebind or Engulf’s Consume Flame, and a greater focus on 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 up 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 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 to 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 ourselves, 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 in practice 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 has also been reworked. Instead of giving a shield to ourselves and an ally that we are hitting with Rescue, Twin Guardian now gives a 100% movement speed buff and allows both us and our ally to cast while moving for 3 seconds. It acts exactly the same as Hover and does not work with empower casts.
Finally, Unravel is no longer a separate button. It’s now a talent that makes Fire Breath do extra damage to shields, continuing Blizzard’s push to reduce button bloat.
Added
The most exciting time for beta is seeing what Blizzard adds to specs. Our class tree has had a few talents added, but the biggest thing for us is getting 4 extra talent points, allowing us to pick up Source of Magic, Zephyr, Time Spiral, and Leaping Flames all at the same time!
First added was Inner Radiance, replacing Quell. This is a Dev and Aug spec tree talent that has been moved to the class tree. It simply makes our Living Flame and, more importantly, Emerald Blossom healing on ourselves a bit stronger. With the potential of seeing much more Emerald Blossom healing with our Season 1 Midnight tier set and talent integration, this could shape up 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% Time Dilation while flying. It's important to note that this only works with Deep Breath and not Dreamflight. This also has an HP cap, so if we take damage well above our HP pool, instead of staggering the damage, we will instantly die.
Lastly is Strike from Above, which gives us a small movement speed increase and added height to glide. This talent was heavily nerfed in beta, making it pretty much a nothingburger.
Final Notes
Overall, the biggest positive to the updated class tree is the 4 new talent points. We often had to choose between group utility and throughput, which has always been the biggest area of contention in our tree.
I personally am very happy with our class tree, though Regenerative Magic being moved to a more inconvenient spot makes it nearly impossible to grab. It's now gated behind a 2-point damage node in Instinctive Arcana, which is hard to justify when healer damage is at an all-time low, and it is also gated by the heavily ignored Protracted Talons.
Chronowarden
Chronowarden has seen a pretty large shift with the removal of Spiritbloom. It has a much greater focus on more Temporal Anomaly casts, stronger Echos, and many more Essence Bursts.
Removed
Threads of Fate and its support talent Instability Matrix have both been removed entirely. Not much to note here, as these were passive talents that had very little impact at any level or type of content.
Reworked
With the removal of Spiritbloom, both Reverberations and Primacy see the spell they are attached to moved to Verdant Embrace. Along with this, Reverberations healing is massively increased, and Primacy sees its buffed duration increased to 15 seconds. With these changes, it's very easy to see a high uptime on the 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 Echo's value. This works with both our hard-cast Echos and our Echos from Resonating Sphere. Small but good.
Added
The new talent Nozdormu Adept is now the most important talent in the tree. 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+ to be much more frequent. Not only that, but Temporal Anomaly by itself is already a very solid shield, and more casts of it means 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, which simply gives us an Essence Burst every 6 seconds while in Temporal Burst. More Echo and more Emerald Blossom casts are always welcome.
Lastly, we get Overclock, which is a very weak increase to the maximum damage and healing Chrono Flame can repeat.
Final Notes
Overall, I am quite happy with the Chronowarden changes, though I am 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 end up competing with each other, and it becomes a lot easier to run out of gas, which is something Preservation players often struggle with. This can sometimes lead to needing to heal 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 as if Chronowarden has lost a lot of its 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'm here to say this was a good change on Blizzard's part. Engulf heavily influenced the play of Evoker this entire expansion: from it being 50% of our healing in Season 1 due to its extremely strong interaction with Consume Flame, to being Lifebind fodder for massive hits in Season 2, and being both in Season 3. This spell ended up defining Preservation, and we relied on it so heavily in raid that it was impossible to make it viable in a dungeon environment without making it overtuned in raid. The removal of Engulf was needed for the health of the game and the health of Preservation.
Along with Engulf, Blizzard also removed its support talent 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 enough how insanely good this is. Having an additional charge of both spells, along with a few class tree changes that create new synergies (we'll get into those later), already makes this much stronger than it was. We will now be focusing more on Dream Breath instead of Engulf, which is a healthier and more tunable 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, which is a simple talent that allows us to cast our Dream Breath and Fire Breath faster. However, this has some negative side effects for Dream Breath. Currently, up-ranking your Dream Breath doesn't take into account the increased HoT healing from Expanded Lungs and Fulminous Roar, so you lose out on a large amount of Dream Breath healing. We hope to see this fixed soon!
One more row down we see Deep Exhalation, an increase to the HoT and DoT portions of our Fire Breath and our Dream Breath. More healing, more damage, more uptime. All around, good.
At the capstone level we see Consume Flame get a rework to the spells it works with and the amounts they consume. Both Verdant Embrace and Emerald Blossom now create a 200% explosion per target hit by Dream Breath, with Verdant Embrace consuming 4 seconds and Emerald Blossom consuming 2 seconds. Most notably, THIS IS NO LONGER SPLASH AOE HEALING. When Consume Flame triggers, it is single-target healing on the person hit by either Verdant Embrace or Emerald Blossom, as long as they have Dream Breath. This fundamentally changes how Flameshaper is required to play. Sadly, however, Consume Flame looks extremely weak and is not likely to be played around in raid. In M+, you can do some neat things with Verdant Embrace, but it requires a lot of setup. A large nerf was needed, but this reworked Consume Flame is a shell of its former self.
Last talent we see a change to is Lifecinders. It now provides Obsidian Scales to our target at 50% effectiveness. Yes, you read that right: we can now share our personal defensive with other players. Additionally, since Renewing Blaze is now attached to Obsidian Scales, the other player gets the Renewing Blaze effect too! This makes for an absolutely insane external cooldown: 15% damage reduction and a 50% heal-back of all damage for 12 seconds.
Added
As with Chronowarden and all other hero trees, Flameshaper sees 3 new talents.
Starting from the top we have Essence Well. This gives all casts of our Dream Breath and Fire Breath a 50% chance to grant an Essence Burst. This means you will often 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 a decent amount. Sadly, this currently does not work with Disintegrate, which we hope to see changed.
Lastly, we have Fire Torrent, an upgrade for Twin Flame. This just makes Twin Flame bounce an additional 2 times. On beta, this appears to target injured 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 overdue for a change, and I'm very happy it will no longer dominate the spec entirely in raid. This should allow Blizzard to 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. On beta, it was less than 2% healing on most logs, even when I'm TRYING to play into it. The rest of the tree, however, has a lot of solid points that gradually add up to Flameshaper being very solid. And honestly, it almost completes Preservation Evoker.
Preservation Tree
Buckle up, because this is about to get spicy. Preservation received a fair number of changes to its spec tree. We see the addition of our extremely powerful Apex talent, reworks to other talents to strip frustration away from gameplay, and integration talents to help us utilize our entire kit. Unfortunately, we also lose some of our most beloved spells, and we have to choose between cooldowns.
Removed
Let's rip the band-aid off early. Our beloved Spiritbloom has been removed. Spiritbloom was a staple of dungeon gameplay and Preservation Evoker in the past. It's always found a way to fall behind in raid, most recently becoming a Lifebind fodder button. However, with the change to Lifebind, the removal of Spiritbloom hurts M+, and honestly, the identity of Preservation itself. It also leaves a very big gap in Chronowarden's gameplay.
Another iconic spell, Emerald Communion, was also removed. Often paired with Lifebind, but also used for mana, Emerald Communion's removal leaves a pretty strange feeling, as it was a cooldown, a personal, and a way to help our worsening mana economy. Along with Emerald Communion, all of its supporting talents have also been removed.
The only other talent that was removed was Cycle of Life. This change eliminates a talent that has essentially been holding back Emerald Blossom from being a good spell on its own. Historically, Preservation has been either all-in on Emerald Blossom or all-in on Echo. This allows Blizzard to buff Emerald Blossom into being a good button, while also allowing us as players to not be forced into going all-in on the ability. 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 guaranteed proc on every other Emerald Blossom cast. This is a massive quality-of-life improvement for the talent, and with the very large Emerald Blossom buffs, it's a VERY good pick.
Another very notable rework was for Lifebind. Lifebind healing and duration were increased quite significantly, but Lifebind can no longer be spread through Echo. This change, alongside the removal of Spiritbloom, has enough ripple effects to be a video topic on its own. Blizzard is really bringing down the level of instant burst the spec can do. In dungeon content, Lifebind has historically been the bread and butter of how we push health bars, so this change hits hard. From a raiding perspective though, the change was needed, as Lifebind has been extremely oppressive and bursty in recent tiers, something Blizzard does not want.
Yet another major rework is for Empath and Spiritual Clarity. Formerly, Empath was only triggered by Spiritbloom, but with Spiritbloom's removal, it's now triggered by any empower spell. As for Spiritual Clarity, it reduces the cooldown of Dream Breath to 20 seconds. That alone is very good, but remember that Flameshaper now has 2 charges. No longer are you punished for holding Dream Breath to line up with mechanics. This is an extremely powerful synergy that pushes Flameshaper Dream Breath even further ahead of Chronowarden.
As for other reworks, Call of Ysera has been detached from Verdant Embrace and is now a passive that directly modifies Dream Breath and Living Flame. Note that it has been pretty significantly nerfed, however. This is very good for the playstyle now that Verdant Embrace is a standalone button instead of 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 Fire Breath on cooldown or casting Dream Breath early. Tempo Charged is now just a generic passive increase to bronze spells. Note that it does not work on Chrono Flame, Golden Hour, or Rewind.
And for the final rework, Lifeforce Mender no longer scales off of your maximum health. It is now a generic increase to red spells, which makes testing much easier without changing the functionality of the talent.
Added
Our Apex talent is Merithras Blessing. There is a ton to go into here, so I'd recommend reading more about it on the Spell Interactions page. Know that it's been massively nerfed many times, but it is likely still the most powerful Apex talent in the game.
I've done a lot of talking about integration talents, but let's talk about the major one: Twin Echoes. After every Emerald Blossom cast, your next Echo cast will hit an additional target. This is smart healing, and the Echo will choose the lowest HP target that doesn't already have an Echo. This, combined with the fact that Emerald Blossom got massively buffed, means that you can weave Emerald Blossom and Echo to build your ramps without losing out on Echo count, while also doing decent healing during your ramp, as Emerald Blossom does not consume Echo.
Stasis and Dreamflight have been moved to a shared choice node, but they get a new support talent called Inner Flame, which is triggered by casting your chosen major cooldown. Inner Flame increases the healing of all your HoT effects by 60% and increases the chance for your Living Flame and Reversion to create Essence Bursts by 100%. Note that this only happens on the initial cast of those two abilities; a Stasis release does not reapply the Inner Flame buff. It's a fairly solid talent that makes Dreamflight do a ton more healing, and gives some new and interesting possibilities for Stasis stores.
Lastly, we get a new Verdant Embrace choice node consisting of Dream Simulacrum and Wings of Liberty. Wings of Liberty gives you an additional charge of Verdant Embrace, while Dream Simulacrum increases Verdant Embrace's healing and makes it so that you send a projection of yourself at the target instead of actually moving your character. Lots of good testing has been done on both options, and each one has its own niche use cases. However, while it's a pretty solid choice node, it's a bit difficult 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 helps reimagine the gameplay, adds depth, and makes the spec more approachable for new players. It’s not only extremely fun to play, but also genuinely satisfying, and I can’t wait to spend more time with it.
That said, a few choices still feel hard to justify, especially in the middle of the tree. Power Nexus continues to struggle to find a real niche, and Font of Power loses a lot of value with the removal of Spiritbloom. Energy Loop restores less than it used to, while Time of Need is strong but difficult to afford in the bottom section of the tree given the talent point pressure there. Finally, Exhilarating Burst feels questionable when so much of our healing in beta can’t crit. On the bright side, Temporal Artificer still enables a 2-minute Rewind, which has consistently been the most powerful cooldown in the game by a significant margin.