One of the two roles in a group that is vital to the success of a dungeon or raid, the healers, are the players that keep everyone alive. They have the responsibility of taking the life of the tank into their hands but must also continue to look to keep their wits about them when it comes to the mechanics of bosses and the welfare of their damage dealers.
There is also a growing requirement for them to deal damage whenever they are not healing, especially when it comes to Mythic+ dungeon runs. With some tank classes, such as Death Knight and Demon Hunter having ways to self-sustain, it means that downtime can’t be filled by simply waiting for someone to need a heal.
If you want to be a healer, picking the right class for you is important, and with changes constantly being made to balance, it will come and out of the meta often, but there will always be an option considered the best when it comes to which healer to take in your group.
Here are the best healers in Shadowlands Patch 9.0.2.
Discipline Priest
When it comes to a class representing the modern healer in World of Warcraft, Discipline (or Disc.) Priests’ aggressive approach epitomizes what instance groups seek. Raw healing output is not what this class is about.
Through their abilities, they provide big damage that helps heal and mitigate damage dealt to the rest of your team while also providing useful utility and some excellent long-cooldown abilities, such as Pain Suppression. Powerful in both raiding and mythic+, Disc. Priest is an excellent choice of healer.
Restoration Druid
Unlike the other healers, Restoration Druids rely almost entirely on spells that heal over time, rather than a burst of healing. This is to its benefit as this makes the class one of the best healers as it stands.
Especially in Mythic+, Resto Druids have many great abilities and cooldowns that will help provide a depth of healing throughout a fight and utility when required. Damage is on the lower end of the scale, but this is improving too from the last expansion, and the different shapeshift forms mean mobility is rarely an issue.
Restoration Shaman
The strength of the Shaman healing spec is in its burst potential. It’s probably the best healer to drag their team back when damage is at critical levels. You should also see a boost to damage output with Shadowlands content after Shamans received a fairly major overhaul.
There are still a few issues, such as a lack of big cooldown abilities and mobility issues, but Shaman is the only healer class that has an interrupt ability shows how valuable it can be.
Mistweaver Monk
While the original “Fistweaving” style of Monks is not a properly viable option, Mistweaver abilities represent possibly the highest healing per second of any healer in the game and still perform well in certain scenarios, especially in raiding where the sheer output can easily keep big tanks alive.
Damage is still not ideal, and monks also lack big cooldown abilities more than anyone, but they are also blessed with some excellent utility, such as Tiger Lust, and are also the most mobile healing class besides Druid.