Mythic+

Preservation is a healing spec that offers an array of useful tools in M+. Burst healing, mobility, and unique utility allow it to bring strengths that differ from most healing specializations. Its healing style blends proactive and reactive elements, giving Preservation the flexibility to handle a wide range of damage profiles.

This playstyle revolves around layering multiple HoTs on the party in preparation for incoming damage. This is often followed by spreading Echo across party members and using a large healing ability such as Verdant Embrace, Merithra's Blessing, or Dream Breath to quickly stabilize the group.

Where Does Your Healing Come From

A large portion of Preservation’s healing revolves around Verdant Embrace and Merithra's Blessing. There are, however, many steps involved to actually making these spells worthwhile. Echo, a setup spell that duplicates our next heal, is the foundation of our kit, Reversion is our ongoing upkeep HoT that we maintain for the multiple passive benefits that come with it, and Dream Breath is the most reliable way of acquiring Merithra's Blessing. None of these spells do much healing on their own, but when used in the right order deal high burst healing.

Our best healing comes from combining our abilities, which means preparation is important. We will spend most of our essence on applying Echo, but Essence limits how many Echoes we can apply, so when and how we spend it matters. There are two ways to apply Echo to the party: by casting Echo directly, or by using Temporal Anomaly. In general, we prioritize casting Echo directly for our strongest spells, while Temporal Anomaly echoes are better used on our weaker maintenance healing. This is because echoes applied from Temporal Anomaly replicate less healing by default due to the Resonating Sphere talent, making direct Echo casts more valuable. Due to the restrictive nature of Essence, understand that if we are ever consuming our Echoes with Living Flame it is almost always a last resort measure after using the rest of our toolkit first.

Gameplay

1. Apply Echo to the party as often as possible. It is much better to have Echoes waiting to be used rather than need them when it's too late.
2. Cast Reversion often in order to maintain uptime on the entire party. It is normal to apply Reversion to your party with Echoes from Temporal Anomaly outside of combat between packs and also when everyone is already full health.
3. Heal with Dream Breath, this will generate a Merithra's Blessing that you can use later. Casting rank 1 Dream Breath is better in most cases, but if you really need more burst healing to top people in a pinch, max ranking it is fine.
4. Consume your Echoes with Verdant Embrace as often as possible during high damage. Verdant Embrace is our strongest, most reliable heal and will be our first choice in almost every scenario. The Echoes you apply via manually casting the spell are much stronger than the ones from Temporal Anomaly so it is better to use those for the increased healing.
5. Consume your Echoes with Merithra's Blessing when Verdant Embrace is on cooldown. Merithra's Blessing is our second best burst heal and it is slightly RNG based, so we want to make good use of the procs when we get them.
6. Cast Fire Breath to heal via Life-Giver's Flame in multi-target scenarios and to generate Leaping Flames. Most of the times Leaping Flames will be spent on damage but it can also be used as an extra aoe healing tool if the situation requires it.
7. Chrono Flame is not the best healing tool we have but in dangerous situations you can still directly heal people with it if there are no other options. If we are out of buttons to push, it is fine as a last resort to consume any Echoes we have with Chrono Flame.
8. Cast Disintegrate at the boss if there is no incoming damage. Casting Disintegrate is a good way to stay healthy on mana via Energy Loop, but keep in mind it costs a significant amount of essence (or an Essence Burst). If mana isn't a concern, cast Chrono Flame as it does more damage than Disintegrate.

Important Things to Know

• Maintaining Reversion on the party is extremely important. It increases the healing people take from you with Grace Period and also makes them take less damage with Merithras Blessing Reversion. Having two Reversions on the same target by Echoing it doubles the effect of these talents as well.
• Echo lasts a long time due to Timeless Magic, so there will be ample time to consume them when applied early.
• Getting Dream Breath on cooldown is almost always the right choice, as it is better to be sitting on a Merithra's Blessing for when you need it than to have Dream Breath off cooldown.
• Time Dilation is different from other external defensives. It doesn't prevent damage, but instead delays it. This means that it can be a useful tool to prevent lethal damage in the moment but you still need to heal that damage afterwards.
• Rescue can remove harmful debuffs from party members if there is a movement impairing effect involved, completely removing the damage with it.
• The shield from Temporal Anomaly can stack up to three times if refreshed, leading to a nice health buffer for one-shots.
• The target of our Verdant Embrace receives much more healing than the rest of the party. Only the main target gets Lifebind and our tier set also drops an Emerald Blossom under their feet.

Stasis

Stasis is a unique healing cooldown that we will use as often as possible. Its ability to store three healing spells creates a lot of flexibility in how we use it. In general we want to plan around this spell throughout the entire key so the spells we want to store are off-cooldown when we build our stasis. Some Stasis combos that we will use often are:

General AoE Stasis

Dream Breath -> Temporal Anomaly -> Merithra's Blessing

This Stasis gets as much value out of Merithra's Blessing as possible. Cast Dream Breath at the start of our Stasis to store a future Merithra's Blessing. Next, we spread Echoes with a Temporal Anomaly, and consume them with the Merithra's Blessing we generated. The value comes from our Stasis release, it will cast our three spells, and still leaves us with a Merithra's Blessing left over, as Merithra's Blessing doesn't consume the proc when released from stasis. This allows us to do one extra Echo ramp with Merithra's Blessing for a little bit more burst at the end of our cooldown.

Single Target Stasis

Verdant Embrace -> Dream Breath -> Merithra's Blessing

This Stasis is more about having as much healing as possible on a single target. Due to Stasis recasting its spells on the initial target they were casted on, it is important that Verdant Embrace and Merithra's Blessing are cast on the party member who will be taking the most damage. Same as before putting Dream Breath and Merithra's Blessing in our Stasis allows for a bonus Merithra's Blessing that we can again cast on our injured party member.

Mass Dispel Stasis

This Stasis is a pseudo-mass dispel that works to dispel multiple people at a time. Naturalize and Cauterize both work as dispels in this context. It can be used as a group wide dispel or to dispel one person multiple times in quick succession.

Naturalize/Cauterize Target 1 -> Naturalize/Cauterize Target 2 -> Naturalize/Cauterize Target 3

Keep in mind that this must be done ahead of time to get the most benefit, in order to dispel three times in a row like this, you can't actually dispel anything or else it will go on cool down. When the actual debuff is out, you can release your Stasis and watch as your three previously selected targets are dispelled in order.

Single Target Triple Dispel Stasis

Naturalize/Cauterize Target 1 -> Naturalize/Cauterize Target 1 -> Any Spell

This preloads three dispels on the target of your choice, and with clever use of the cool down refund you can perform a cast sequence like this in order to dispel three back to back debuffs on the target.

1. Load your Stasis with two dispels before any dispellable effect is applied to the target.
2. Use your Naturalize/Cauterize on the target the first time they receive a debuff.
3. Release your Stasis to dispel the second time they receive a debuff.
4. Use your Naturalize/Cauterize again to finally remove the third instance of a debuff.

With clever use of dispelling ahead of time to refresh the cool down, Preservation has the unique ability to get a few bonus dispels out on debuff heavy pulls.

The two Hero trees play relatively the same, and in general you should pick the one you enjoy the most. The overall recommendation is Chronowarden due to its ability to have more reliable healing tools with stronger Verdant Embrace and stronger Echoes. Flameshaper can still be a viable choice if you prefer to have more externals through Lifecinders and more damage from Fire Breath.