WoW: The War Within – Best Healing Classes, Ranked

The seven healing classes in World of Warcraft offer varying degrees of healing throughput, utility, and damage, making some more desirable than others in Season 1 of The War Within. While healing throughput often plays a key role in judging healer performance in PvE endgame content, other factors such as raid buffs, team composition, utility, and specific encounter mechanics are just as important.

Season 1 of The War Within places a heightened emphasis on healing throughput, not only in Nerub-ar Palace but especially in Mythic+. The season’s dungeon pool features significant rot damage, which can be challenging for certain healers to manage. Additionally, Curse and Poison dispels, which aren’t available to every healer, are vital in dungeons like Grim Batol, Ara-Kara, and Mists of Tirna Scithe.

Although these tier lists provide a quick overview of healer power levels, it’s important to remember that the best healer choice often depends on the specific team composition and needs of the raid or Mythic+ group. Every healer is viable for all endgame PvE content, capable of clearing Mythic Nerub-ar Palace and doing title-range keys.

Nerub-Ar Palace Raid Healer Rankings

S Tier Raid Healers: Preservation Evoker

Preservation Evoker stands as the sole S-Tier raid healer, thanks to its unmatched healing throughput and its strong raid cooldowns, utility, and damage. The specialization has excellent raid-wide burst-healing potential, especially with the Flameshaper Hero Talent and its Consume Flame ability.

In terms of raid cooldowns, Preservation’s Rewind ability is incredibly effective against heavy raid-wide damage, while Zephyr and Time Dilation serve to protect a select number of targets. This healer also brings essential buffs like Blessing of the Bronze, Time Spiral, and Spatial Paradox, which are invaluable in Nerub-ar Palace, where mobility impairments and forced movement are common. Furthermore, Preservation Evokers offer other healers extra mana regeneration and damage through Source of Magic and Potent Mana.

While Preservation’s primary weakness has traditionally been its shorter range compared to other healers, this is less of a concern in Nerub-ar Palace, especially in a coordinated raid setting. Additionally, its Rescue ability is extremely helpful for positional encounters like Nexus-Princess Ky’veza. Despite the strength of Devastation and Augmentation Evokers, it’s likely to see raids stacking multiple Preservation Evokers, barring any future tuning changes.

A Tier Raid Healers: Holy Paladin, Holy Priest, Discipline Priest, & Restoration Shaman

The healers in A-Tier are still incredibly strong, and players can expect to see them fill out the rest of the raid’s healer composition after Preservation Evokers. While their healing output may not reach Preservation’s level, each of these healers still brings substantial throughput alongside powerful raid-wide cooldowns, buffs, and utility.

Holy Paladins

Holy Paladins are among the best spot healers in the game, offering excellent utility with abilities like Freedom, Blessing of Protection, and Intercession. Although their raid-wide healing lags behind Preservation, they excel at keeping tanks and priority targets alive, especially with Blessing of Sacrifice and Lay on Hands. Additionally, Holy Paladins are the tankiest healers, thanks to their plate armor and the powerful immunity from Divine Shield. They are also currently the best Paladin specialization to bring for Devotion Aura, which is further enhanced by Aura Mastery.

Holy And Discipline Priests

Both Holy and Discipline Priests are strong raid healers and are highly sought after for their Power Word: Fortitude and Power Infusion. Holy Priests boast a flexible healing profile, delivering great output in various situations. While Holy may not excel at any one thing, its versatility and ease of use make it one of the best healers to include in a raid team. Its main weaknesses are a lack of raid-wide mitigation, poor mobility, and relative fragility compared to other healers. Holy Priests also offer decent damage, though this comes at the cost of healing globals, which can be problematic in tight healing situations.

Discipline Priests, on the other hand, bring a powerful damage-reduction cooldown with Power Word: Barrier, along with impressive raid-wide healing. They excel at frequent group burst healing and have the highest passive damage output among healers due to Atonement. However, Discipline can struggle with unexpected incoming damage and spot healing, though they do have Rapture as a reliable cooldown to help in those situations. Like Holy, Discipline also suffers from low mobility and survivability, but these weaknesses can be mitigated when paired with Preservation Evokers.

With Shadow Priests currently undertuned compared to other DPS specs, both healing Priests are the preferred choices for bringing Power Word: Fortitude and Power Infusion.

Restoration Shaman

Finally, Restoration Shaman is a great option for its Skyfury buff and versatility, possessing strong cooldowns and utilities for a range of scenarios. Their Spirit Link Totem is one of the best cooldowns for mitigating high raid-wide damage and is one of the few abilities that counters healing-reduction effects. They also offer excellent utility with Wind Rush Totem for movement and Ancestral Protection Totem for ‘suicide’ cheese strategies.

Additionally, Restoration Shaman is quite sturdy and mobile, with several abilities that help them survive various encounters. However, their main weakness is high mana consumption, which can become an issue during long fights if not properly managed. Furthermore, some of their healing relies on ground-based effects, which can be a drawback in movement-heavy encounters.

B Tier Raid Healers: Mistweaver Monk, Restoration Druid

Mistweaver Monk and Restoration Druid are both great healers, but they currently lack the healing throughput and utility to rank higher compared to other healers. Despite being lower on this list, both are fully capable of handling the challenges presented in Nerub-ab Palace.

Mistweaver Monk

Mistweaver Monk possesses several powerful healing cooldowns, including the raid-wide heal and dispel from Revival. Additionally, Mistweavers deal respectable damage, which also gets converted into healing, making them highly efficient at performing both simultaneously—similar to Discipline Priests. They are also quite durable and mobile, with multiple personal defensive cooldowns like Fortifying Brew and movement abilities like Tiger’s Lust, Roll, and Transcendence. While Mistweavers provide Mystic Touch, it’s considered one of the weaker raid buffs, and can also be brought by Brewmasters or Windwalkers.

Unfortunately, Mistweavers lack a raid-wide defensive cooldown, making their raid spot more dependent on their healing throughput, which is currently tuned lower. Moreover, Mistweavers can be difficult to play efficiently due to their need to remain in melee range to heal effectively.

Brewmasters are currently a popular raid tank choice, which may discourage bringing a Mistweaver to avoid class overlaps.

Restoration Druids

Restoration Druids are in a similar position to Mistweaver Monks, boasting several powerful healing cooldowns but lacking a raid-wide defensive ability. While they offer Mark of the Wild, which is widely regarded as the best raid buff, other Druid specializations are generally considered more desirable at the moment.

Despite this, Restoration Druids still provide valuable utility with abilities like Innervate and Stampeding Roar. They are also exceptionally mobile and durable thanks to Cat Form and Bear Form. Restoration Druids are also capable of producing some of the highest damage compared to other healers. With improved healing throughput, Restoration Druids could see a higher placement on this list, but for now, their relative strength compared to other healers, unfortunately, places them at the bottom.

Season 1 Mythic+ Healer Rankings

S Tier Mythic+ Healers: Restoration Shaman

Restoration Shaman ranks as the top healer for Mythic+, offering high healing throughput and a versatile healing profile. They have access to powerful cooldowns like Spirit Link Totem, which also counters health-reducing mechanics. Not only do they excel in various healing situations, but they also provide significant crowd control and utility with abilities like Capacitor Totem, Thunderstorm, Bloodlust, Tremor Totem, and Wind Rush Totem. Additionally, Restoration Shamans are among the few classes that can dispel both Curses and Poisons, making them especially valuable for the Season 1 Mythic+ Dungeon pool.

Their raid buff, Skyfury, is highly sought after, particularly when paired with Frost Death Knight, currently one of the top-performing DPS specializations. Restoration Shamans also boast the shortest cooldown interrupt in the game with Wind Shear at just 12 seconds, giving groups an edge in covering more interrupts compared to other healers.

Skyfury was a major addition for Shamans heading into
The War Within
, as they previously lacked a raid buff.

While they don’t have a defensive external cooldown like Ironbark or Pain Suppression, Earthen Harmony-enhanced Earth Shields offer tanks a valuable 3% damage reduction, which is particularly useful this season given the high amount of melee swing damage from mobs. Additionally, Ancestral Vigor provides a consistent health increase for the group, arguably more powerful than Warrior’s Rallying Cry.

Restoration Shamans themselves are durable and mobile, with multiple defensive and movement abilities at their disposal. They are relatively easy to play despite having a large toolkit, allowing players to focus more on dungeon mechanics. Their one notable weakness is high mana consumption, though this is somewhat mitigated by their Season 1 Tier Set’s 4-piece bonus.

A Tier Mythic+ Healers: Preservation Evoker, Discipline Priest

Healers in A Tier are excellent choices for Mythic+ and have the potential to match the performance of Restoration Shaman when played in certain group compositions or coordinated teams.

Preservation Evoker

Preservation Evoker excels with the highest healing throughput among all healers, while also offering solid damage output. Not only do they top off health bars faster than any other healer, but they also bring powerful damage reduction tools like Time Dilation, Zephyr, and Rescue. Preservation also possesses incredible AoE crowd control and pack-skipping potential with Sleep Walk. Additionally, they can dispel Poisons, and although on a longer cooldown, Cauterizing Flame allows them to remove Bleeds, Curses, and Diseases.

Preservation’s main weakness lies in its shorter cast range, which can make it challenging in spread-heavy fights like the final bosses of The Necrotic Wake and The Stonevault. While this can be tricky in pugs, positioning becomes less of an issue in organized teams. Preservation also has a relatively long cooldown interrupt, at 40 seconds, which is not ideal in a Mythic+ setting. The other main concern for Preservation is Augmentation, which is looking to be the more desired Evoker specialization in +12 keys and above due to the survivability they provide for the tank and the group.

Discipline Priest

Discipline Priest has incredible healing output in 5-man groups and possesses high uncapped AoE damage. They are particularly strong at healing group-wide rot damage and preventing potential one-shots with shields, Pain Suppression, Power Word: Barrier, and Rapture. Power Word: Fortitude and Power Infusion are also highly desirable buffs to bring to Mythic+.

Discipline’s main weakness is its lack of useful utility in this pool of dungeons. Without an interrupt skill and the ability to dispel Poisons and Curses, their utility feels somewhat limited in this season. Their only AoE crowd control ability, Psychic Scream, is also quite weak. While Discipline Priest has Mass Dispel and Mind Soothe, they aren’t as essential this season compared to Dragonflight. Additionally, Discipline Priests are one of the least mobile classes and are more fragile than other healers. Despite these shortcomings, in well-coordinated groups, Discipline remains an exceptional healer choice.

B Tier Mythic+ Healers: Holy Paladin, Mistweaver Monk, Restoration Druid

The healers in B Tier are solid options that can perform well in certain group compositions but generally fall behind the higher-ranked healers in terms of healing throughput, utility, or damage.

Holy Paladin

Holy Paladin is a reliable healer with great utility, including a melee interrupt, battle resurrection, and a Poison dispel. They excel in spot healing and provide numerous defensive cooldowns such as Blessing of Sacrifice, Blessing of Protection, and Devotion Aura. As one of the tankiest healers, Holy Paladins have excellent survivability, but they lack mobility outside of Divine Steed. What holds Holy Paladin back from ranking higher is its overall healing throughput in dungeons, which can struggle to keep up with periods of intense group-wide damage, especially when key cooldowns are unavailable.

Mistweaver Monk

Mistweaver Monks offer excellent healing output, excelling in both single-target and AoE healing. Their kit enables them to handle passive damage through “fist-weaving” and effectively manage periods of high group damage with powerful cooldowns like Revival, Celestial Conduit, Sheilun’s Gift, and Faeline Stomp. They boast strong personal survivability and mobility, along with decent utility such as a melee interrupt, AoE stun, Ring of Peace, and Tiger’s Lust.

However, Mistweaver lacks strong external cooldowns for the group, with Life Cocoon being relatively weak, especially for tanks. Their raid buff, Mystic Touch, is also less impactful, and they lack a Curse dispel. Additionally, Mistweavers can be challenging to play, as they need to remain in melee range to heal efficiently, and their damage output is lower compared to other healers. Overall, Mistweaver are strong healers, but their utility isn’t desirable enough in most situations to bring over S and A Tier healers, unless their healing gets significantly overturned.

Since Life Cocoon is primarily an absorb rather than a damage reduction, it can be depleted quickly on tanks like Blood Death Knights, often buying them only a global or two of time.

Restoration Druid

Restoration Druid provides a variety of useful utility and crowd control, such as Stampeding Roar, Rebirth, Soothe, Ursol’s Vortex, Entangling Roots, and the highly desired Mark of the Wild. They are also one of the few healers that can dispel both Curses and Poisons with Remove Corruption. While their damage is among the highest for healers, it requires significant effort to produce outside their healing globals.

The main issue with Restoration is their healing output, which can struggle to keep up with high group damage in higher keys. Additionally, their healing requires a fair amount of ramp-up time, making unexpected damage challenging to handle. However, in a coordinated group that manages mechanics well, Restoration can still be a solid healer.

C Tier Mythic+ Healers: Holy Priest

Holy Priest, unfortunately, underperforms in Mythic+ compared to its Discipline counterpart, sharing the same lack of utility and mobility. While Holy has a respectable healing output, its lack of group-wide defensive cooldowns makes it difficult to manage higher key levels. The spec can also struggle with balancing damage and healing, as its high damage output comes at the cost of healing globals, which can be risky in higher keys.

Despite these drawbacks, Holy Priest remains a solid choice for lower to mid-level keys and is especially friendly for players new to healing due to its straightforward playstyle.