WoW Forever Best Healer Tier List

WoW Forever Healer Tier List Quick Summary:

• Holy Priest and Restoration Shaman are S-Tier going into level 60.
• Discipline Priest, Restoration Druid, and Holy Paladin land in A-Tier.
• Holy Priest is my pick for the best overall healer because it can handle pretty much any type of incoming damage.
• Restoration Shaman should be extremely valuable in raids thanks to Chain Heal, Riptide, Mana tools, and Totems.
• There are no bad healers in Forever. Even the lowest-ranked spec here looks perfectly viable.

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WoW Forever Healer Tier List

Despite beta only going up to level 30, making a tier list based on this wouldn’t be wise. Even though WoW Forever comes out in a couple of days from the time of writing this article, I can safely assume which specs and classes are gonna be the strongest healers. There’s enough info about new talents and theorycrafting to figure it out. After all, Forever is still built on Classic’s core, so the newly added skills for Paladin, Shaman, and Priest are only improving their situation instead of making it worse. In time, after rebalancing, these placements might change, but I’ll update the article for each phase when that happens. What matters now is how the Forever changes improve old Classic class kits. For example, Restoration Shaman gets Riptide and much better Mana management, Druid gets Wild Growth, Holy Paladin finally gets a proper way to deal with group damage, and Priest just gets even more ways to heal, while already having two of the strongest healer specs in the game. Here’s my projected WoW Forever Healer tier list:

Tier	Healer Specs
S	Holy Priest, Restoration Shaman
A	Discipline Priest, Restoration Druid, Holy Paladin

As you can see, none of them are in a truly bad position. S-Tier healers are definitely a step above the rest, but if we take a look at A-Tier, the difference is minuscule between them. But since this is a tier list, you can take their placement in the table above as a direct order, so Holy Priest comes first, Restoration Shaman second, Discipline Priest third, Restoration Druid fourth, and Holy Paladin fifth. Don’t be shy to take Holy Paladin as your main support coming into WoW Forever. As I already said, these specs are quite close to each other in their effectiveness in healing.

S-Tier Healers in WoW Forever

S-Tier is reserved for healers that will be useful no matter what raid boss party’s fighting. Currently, there are two healers that hold top spots. First is Holy Priest, who has the most stacked healer toolkit there is. If you want to have a solution to every problem concerning health, Holy Priest is your go-to. Restoration Shaman gets second place for its strong healing and so much raid utility that leaving one behind is gonna be a mistake.

Holy Priest

Why Holy Priest is S-Tier: Best all-around healing spells, strong single-target and group healing, good utility spell to maintain Mana. Doesn’t have any major downsides in its toolkit.

The best healer in WoW Forever is Holy Priest, no doubt. It was already Classic’s all-purpose healer, and Forever takes the few things that Priest didn’t do perfectly and gives it more ways to deal with them. All classic spells like Heal, Greater Heal, Flash Heal, Renew, and Prayer of Healing are present, and now you also get Binding Heal, Prayer of Mending, and Litany of Light. Prayer of Healing can target another player’s party instead of being exclusive to your own, and Prayer of Mending jumps between players as they take damage. Litany of Light is a good maintenance spell. It works like cashback, refunding you a part of the healing spell’s mana cost when you switch between them. Since Holy is always in a state of picking and choosing the right skill for the damage done, it’s a wonderful quality-of-life spell.

Holy Priest Talent/Skill	When to Use
Heal/Greater Heal	Regular healing and big tank recovery
Flash Heal	Panic button to save someone who’s about to die
Renew	Against constant damage
Prayer of Healing	Healing an entire party after AoE damage
Prayer of Mending	Continuous group damage
Binding Heal	Healing yourself and another player at the same time
Litany of Light	Lowering Mana costs by rotating different healing spells

Holy’s main strength is that it’s such a core healer with tons of solutions to various raid problems that I just can’t imagine a situation where this spec wouldn’t come in clutch. Tank ate a big hit? Greater Heal. Someone’s at death’s door? Flash Heal. Whole party gets smacked? Prayer of Healing. You get the idea. Of course, this spec doesn’t have the best absorb, the strongest HoTs, or as insane utility as Shaman Totems, but it’s good at pretty much everything, and that’s why I’m putting it first.

Restoration Shaman

Why Restoration Shaman is S-Tier: Chain Heal + Riptide is great for raids, outstanding mana management, and, of course, insanely useful Totem utility for the whole group on top of already strong heals.

Resto Shaman comes in second and very well might be first cause Restoration Shaman has the best utility in WoW Forever. I’m ranking healing abilities first, though. In Classic, we already saw Chain Heal and how potent it can be when a raid takes group damage. To make it even stronger, Forever gives Shaman Riptide, which heals instantly, leaves a healing-over-time effect, and increases the next Chain Heal cast on that target by 25%. But of course, this isn’t the only reason I rank this spec so high. What really sells me on Restoration Shaman is that it has multiple strengths stacked on top of each other:

1. Chain Heal, one of the best raid-healing spells: It’s made for situations where several players are taking damage at once. With the Riptide combo, it becomes the strongest group heal in the game.
2. Better Mana management: Mindfulness lets up to 50% of normal Spirit regeneration continue while casting, with Water Shield and Mana Tide adding even more sustain.
3. Totems are the best utility: Tremor, Mana Spring, resistances, and other buffs give Shaman a reason to be in the raid even if they’re not going to heal once.
4. Call spells make Totem management less annoying: You can drop preset groups of Totems instead of painfully placing them one by one, which makes Restoration Shaman way easier to play than it was in Classic.

The only reason I have Holy Priest above Shaman is its flexibility and ease of use compared to Restoration Shaman. Totems aren’t the easiest to use, but considering WoW Forever lets you create Totem presets, this is less of a factor. Still, completely new players can struggle with Restoration. Another reason is that for raids where damage is dealt to a group of players constantly, Restoration Shaman is second to none in their ability to heal it.

 

 

A-Tier Healers in WoW Forever

These healers are just slightly less potent than Holy Priest and Restoration Shaman, but you have to understand that this doesn’t mean that they’re bad. They’re just less versatile. Despite that, they’re all doing their job really well. They all deserve a spot in a raid group, and none of them feel like dragging other players down. Yes, even Holy Pal was significantly improved in WoW Forever. So, why aren’t they S-Tier then?

Discipline Priest

Discipline is all about preventing damage, and even though this spec has heals, it loses in variety to the Holy spec. Its single-target heal is on par with Holy, but it loses a lot when you need group heals. I mean, you have group heals. They’re just somewhat underwhelming. You won’t be healing a whole 30-player raid on your own. To be fair, Holy won’t have enough mana to do that as well, but at least they can return a group to full HP after a big hit. Your focus is not on healing. It’s in creating an extra defense layer for your tanks and unfortunate DPS players who accidentally drew aggro. You also can deal decent damage and are pretty self-sufficient, whereas Holy Priest just won’t be able to play the game on their own, without a party.

Restoration Druid

Resto Druid gets one addition that changes a lot: Wild Growth. Classic Druid already had strong HoT, but group healing could feel underwhelming. Wild Growth gives you a party-wide HoT, and Gift of the Earthmother lowers the GCD of Rejuvenation, Swiftmend, and Wild Growth to one second. That sounds powerful, and it really is, especially during constant raid damage. My only concern is that HoTs naturally lose value when damage comes in short bursts and other healers instantly top everyone off, which is why I struggle to put Druid any higher, but that can change, depending on the encounter design in the final release.

Holy Paladin

In beta, Holy Paladin wasn’t among the favorite healers. No wonder, since at level 30 their heals are underwhelming. In the full version, though, Paladin is gonna be pretty strong. This spec has always been amazing at keeping one player alive, and Forever grants it Light’s Vigil to help with group healing. You prepare it beforehand and trigger party healing through Holy Shock, so it requires more setup than something like a Chain Heal, but at least Holy Paladin now has a proper spell to help more than one person. Illumination is weaker than in Classic, so Mana won’t be as forgiving, but the spec still has great heals and a generous amount of utility.

 

 

Best WoW Forever Healer Sorted by Roles

For raids, Holy Priest is the best healer in WoW Forever, but the best healer usually depends on what exactly you want to get. I don’t think that Forever is gonna be as competitive and unfriendly as original Classic, so every healer will have their own place in the raid and won’t feel like a third leg. Healers all target various goals in the raid, so mixing healers should make way more sense.

Category	Best Healer for the Role
Best Overall	Holy Priest
Best Group Healing	Restoration Shaman
Best Damage Prevention	Discipline Priest
Best HoT Healing	Restoration Druid
Best Tank Healing	Holy Paladin
Best Raid Utility	Restoration Shaman

This table should help you find a role for yourself or help your friend who’s struggling when choosing what healer to main, especially considering the rumors that you’ll need more than 100 hours to get to level 60. If I had to choose a main without knowing anything about upcoming raid mechanics, I’d play Holy Priest. If I already knew my guild had plenty of Priests, Restoration Shaman would be my second pick without thinking twice.

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