Preservation's whole kit is built around one buff: Echo, which duplicates your next heal onto whoever's carrying it. Everything else - Reversion, Dream Breath, Verdant Embrace - is either applying Echo or spending it. Here's what Healper actually checks in a Preservation log, and why.
What top Preservation Evokers actually did
Measured from 400 logs of top-performing Preservation Evokers at keystone level 11 in Midnight Season 2 (Curse of Ula'tek), across 8 dungeons. These are measurements of what that cohort did, not targets anyone set - and the middle-half column matters more than the median, because it shows how much honest variation there is between good runs.
| What | Median | Middle half | Logs |
|---|---|---|---|
| Reversion uptime | 85.2% | 76.0-91.2% | 400 |
| Echo uptime | 24.5% | 17.5-33.4% | 400 |
| Average mana through the run | 75.9% | 65.3-85.5% | 400 |
| Overhealing | 50.8% | 47.0-54.9% | 400 |
47 of those 400 runs had the healer bottom out on mana at some point (11.8%). Running dry is not rare at this level, and the spread in the mana column is why: the middle half of this cohort is a wide band, not a target.
The same corpus broken down per dungeon, with the cooldowns this spec actually pressed, is on the Preservation Evoker benchmarks page. Mythic+ only: the raid brackets carry no per-log data in any season, so nothing here describes raid.
Echo uptime: the core mechanic
Echo is tracked as buff uptime the same way a HoT would be - the percentage of active combat time it's active on at least one party member. Top performers keep it around 65%+ by casting Temporal Anomaly on cooldown, since it applies Echo to up to five targets at once along with absorption shields. Low Echo uptime doesn't just mean one missed buff - it means every Reversion and Verdant Embrace you cast afterward is worth less than it should be.
Reversion uptime
Reversion is your primary HoT and your primary Echo consumer, so it's tracked with the same applybuff/refreshbuff/removebuff logic used for every other spec's maintenance HoT, including pandemic refresh handling. Letting it lapse costs you both the direct HoT healing and a wasted Echo application if one was up.
Dream Breath: keep it on cooldown
Dream Breath is your highest-value AoE heal and is tracked as a cast-per-minute rate. With a 20-second cooldown and 2 charges, top performers land around 3.5 per minute - Flameshaper pushes closer to 4, since its kit specifically rewards frequent Dream Breath casts. There's rarely a reason to hold both charges in reserve outside of saving for a known extreme spike.
Temporal Anomaly cadence
With an 11-second cooldown, Temporal Anomaly should be one of your most-cast spells - top performers land around 4 per minute. It's instant, applies Echo, and shields, so there's almost never a reason to delay it in favor of another cast; a low rate here is usually the root cause of low Echo uptime as well.
Tip the Scales and Rewind
Tip the Scales makes your next empowered spell instant and maximally empowered - Healper checks it against how many times its 90-second cooldown should have come up, expecting it paired with Dream Breath into a predictable damage window rather than saved indefinitely. Rewind, on its 180-second cooldown, heals every party member for a share of the damage they recently took; going a full pull without it is flagged the same way any unused major cooldown is. Chronowarden additionally wants Verdant Embrace cast inside its Primacy haste window rather than whenever it's simply off cooldown.
Mana
Mana is checked the standard three ways - average % across the fight, whether you went fully OOM, and healing produced per point of mana spent. Spending Essence Burst procs immediately on Living Flame or Emerald Blossom rather than letting them sit is the cheapest way to keep your economy stable through a long key.
Want the exact scoring breakdown and percentile math behind all of this? See how we calculate your score.