Easiest to hardest healers

General Discussion
1

I’ve seen several topics about rating the healers based on their strength, but I don’t recall seeing one about how hard to play they are. How would you rate them - from easiest to hardest?
My list would be (do keep in mind that I’ll be pointing out the bare minimum of how the heroes can be played, and not the optimal way):
1 (easy) : Brightwing - while she does have a high skill ceiling, playing her is fairly easy. You just need to stay around your team, dodge skillshots, disrupt enemies with Poly and give E to a focused ally.
2 : Li Li - you can also see the difference between a good Li Li and a bad one, but you can just spam her abilities, and you’d be playing her well enough.
3: LULcio - this one is a bit trickier, but staying around your team and not dying should be sufficient for basic efficiency. He doesn’t deal much damage, so unless you are good with him, you don’t need to risk compromising your position to attack enemies.
4 : Deckard - his kit is pretty straight forward: drop potions around, and use W and E on enemies.
5 : Anduin - his kit doesn’t requite him to take big risks, so he’s fairly safe (and thus easy) to play.
6 (medium) : Ariel - she has an instant, low cooldown, AoE, strong heal, which makes her quite convenient. She does require a good battery tho.
7 : Moralesless - she just needs to Q and W allies, and sometimes boop enemies with E, as well as stay safe from enemies.
8 : Alexa - her Q build is fairly straight forward. She just needs to spam Q and collect the flowers left behind.
9 : Rehgar - he’s a bit risky since he’s a melee hero, and thus requires a good frontline. But otherwise his Q automatically jumps to whoever needs it.
10 : Stuck off - his healing is impressive, but has a long cooldown, so he needs to be mindful when he uses it.
11 (hard) : Uther - he is really strong, but his heals have long cooldowns, which makes it difficult to always be able to heal when required. He needs to time them well. His melee range is another drawback, which makes him harder than most others.
12 : Ana - you need to hit your allies with a skillshot in order to heal them. It’s also difficult for you to get out of pickled situations.
13 : Malfurion - he needs to use 2 abilities in order to heal. He needs to constantly reapply Qs to his allies, and he needs to land a skillshot on an enemy hero in order to heal. If not mindful of when he uses his E, he can starve for mana.
14 : Tyrande - she needs to constantly attack enemies in order to be able to heal. And her heal itself ain’t the greatest (single target, medium amount, long cooldown, unless she able to attack stuff constantly).
15 : Whitemate - she’s kind a like Malfurion in the sense that she needs to apply a buff to allies and then damage enemies in order to heal. However, her buff lasts just 8 seconds, and she can starve for mana, if she doesn’t time her Q well. Her E also has a slight delay, which makes it harder to hit with, and her W is channeled, so it can be interrupted. She can be a beast when played well, but she’s really difficult.
16 (hardest) : Kharazim - he’s kind a like Tyrande in the sense that he needs to attack stuff in order to be able to heal. But him being a melee hero makes it insanely more difficult to do so. He’s more prone to blinds than other healers are.

I suspect that this list will be drastically different for other people, who have more experience with some healers, and less with others. I actually would’ve labeled Ariel as easy, since I quite enjoy playing her, but I’ve seen people being a lot less successful with her, so I gave it the benefit of doubt and called her medium. So I’m curious what do other people think.

2 Likes
2

I think anduin and lucio are the easyest to get value off

If you are good you can ofcourse do crazy stuff with them. Anduin just needs to spam abilities and you get a great defensive kit @ 7 and mobility at 13 so you can distance yourself is someone approaches you

Lucio is just a heal spambot on lower ranks and you sound barrier when things get hard

Brightwing is easy and hard at the same time, to utilize her you be good at your Q’s and pixy dust

Li li is hard because she is kindoff useless. She doesnt get much value on higher ranks and on lower ranks she doesnt have the carry potential

2 Likes
3

How easy it is to control a hero is one thing but how strong the pick actually is also influences how easy/hard it is to win a match. For example a hero like Lili seems easy to play but that doesn’t mean it’s easy to win matches with Lili. In that sense it’s actually a hard hero to win matches and you need to be really good with an easy to control hero. Does this makes sense?^^

5 Likes
4

Even aside from that there’s the difference between a hard to learn hero and a hero who is hard to get value out of. For example Whitemane. She’s often called a hard hero but personally as somebody whose most played healer I think that’s somewhat undeserved.

Learning Whitemane is hard, indeed. She seemingly has an impossibly tight mana tension, needs to watch for buff upkeep and can only be effective when she’s dealing damage to the enemy. So at the first glance Whitemane might appear to be this multi-tasking nightmare hero whom only a few can master. While this is a tiny bit close to reality in effect you are just thinking of it in the form of combinations and chains and utilize the right type at the right time. What difficulties Whitemane has is more related to positioning and when to utilize your long cooldowns to the best effect.

So for example Whitemane could be incredibly oppressive in low ranks. If you know what the hero does and the enemy doesn’t have the skills to punish you then you can effectively make your team seem invincible. She’s supposed to be a burst healer but she can also top off people and handle attrition surprisingly well if you can just do your thing undisturbed.

At higher levels of course she’s less “brainless” in style but this is also why difficulty is subjective. I still wouldn’t call Whitemane among the hardest heroes to play but you have to be much more mindful of your actions. At this point her biggest weakness which is waveclear may also hold you up in solo games so I’d definitely recommend playing with people you can coordinate with. Still, she isn’t Kharazim nor has Uther’s resource issues. Nor she has to multi-task like Brightwing does. So I’d rate her as modestly high among the healers. Certainly not the easiest but definitely far from the hardest healer to play.

1 Like
5

malfurion is almost unplayable at low ranks because of his high skill cap

and newbies dont ever use moonfire correctly to give their allies with regrowth a burst heal

whitemane is very hard to get value out of except by high mmr players

easiest? lili, she has a skill cap too but its way below those two

6

I think Uther should be in Easy as a healer. I mean, he’s half a tank and that’s what makes him difficult to play sometimes. Other than that, he’s an easy healer: point-and-click heal that heals him after you pick the right talent.
Skillshot heal (way easier than Ana’s) that also can be used to deal damage and has lowered cooldown with the quest.

Eh.
Plus he’s tanky for a healer, can apply hard CC to a diver.

Uther is quite easy, he was the second healer I played after Li Li and I wasn’t lost at all. I used to main healer when I began playing the game (and MOBAs in general) so…

7

It’s interesting reading what some players find hard and who they find easy.

For me Kharazim just came naturally. I guess that might be because i was well practiced in illidan. A lot of kharazim’s kit was transferable. In a lot of ways he’s better than illidan in that he can dash to any target baseline and his 7SS heroic provides better unstoppable frames than metamorphosis.

…

On the flip side, i found BW hard. Her healing style is very preventative. Her burst healing sucks (except Z) so you need to smooth out the burst through poly and pixie. This, i believe requires good game knowledge. Something i did not have early on.

8

Post rework, I find Lucio personally unplayable. My tiny murloc brain cannot get a handle his stupid wall dash trait. A movement skillshot D that needs to be conditionally cast takes 2000% of my concentration. I hate it.

9

I tried to make a rough list of healers in terms of just how difficult they are to learn but I soon realized how subjective it is. What is the difficulty to learn? Some players may learn certain aspects faster than others. Similarly the supposed handicaps to some healers hardly even a concern to a type of player while another would want to tear their hairs out in frustration.

For example, Brightwing. The way you are supposed to play her is through making use of her global mobility and also react properly to protect your teammates against divers. A lot of people play Brightwing akin to a hovering talisman which just exist there and provides healing, not realizing how much time they lose with that. Similarly they don’t know how to deal with situations where they have to keep somebody alive who is just mildly focused on. I think her skill floor henceforth should include you learning all of these. Some say this would make the Brightwing “highly skilled” but that’s hogwash. Even a bronze-ranked Brightwing can perform these duties well yet fail to climb. Consequently you can have diamond ranked Brightwings who can’t use the hero’s full kit. The two are separate.

As a counter example the OP says Ana is hard as a healer. If somebody has above average mechanics in their rank then it really isn’t. You just have to hit your target and do it consistently. You even get more tools to succeed via various talents. The only thing you should learn aside from aiming is positioning and you’re good. Ana is pretty straightforward overall so while it’s a common perception to think she’s a hard hero, she really isn’t.

Again, this is only about learning the full kit and playstyle of the hero, not whether you have easier or harder time to play either. Because that’s even more subjective. I know a bunch of tierlists love to go with “best in slot” shenanigans and say X is the best and for this reason you are actively throwing if you don’t pick them. But unless the hero’s style fits yours I’d say 9 times out of 10 you’re still better with choosing the healer you like more than most meta pick available. Just know what your healer can do well and where their weaknesses lie. Also have a decent range so you can have a healer for almost any comp. That’s all what matters.

10

The thing is Kharazim is a melee healer, that instantly ups his skill requirement by a lot.

It’s also much more dangerous to play Kharazim than most other healers because you have to be in the face of enemy heroes.

1 Like
11

Eeeeh, that’s hardly the case.
For starters you usually aren’t supposed to play Kharazim as a main healer unless your team is already darn tanky. Second, you should focus on killing enemies and pressuring them more than healing. You do have more supportive builds and they do work but generally you want to be as scary in a fight as possible.

12

I only pick him as 2nd heal, with full dps build (and seven-sided strike).

But if he is solo healing, that easily takes the cake for #1 hardest healer in my books.

I also hate, hate trying to time Divine Palm.

1 Like
13

This list is mostly about healers when played as solo healers. While Khara and Uther are indeed great when played as 2-ndary healers, they are not the easiest to get value out of.

14

Easiest to hardest, in my own opinion. Please excuse some missing knowledge or herodotus levels of inaccuracies.

  1. Brightwing: you can easily get value with your global. During obj soak empty lanes until youre needed. Porting through team fights is a breeze and honing on a kill is even easier.
  2. Anduin: his abilities are fairly easy to pull off. You quickly get used to aiming his root. His talents are very straight forward and flexible.
  3. Rehgar: his mobility compensates his melee range and his healing is very powerful.
  4. Morales: a bit hard to push her limits but shes going here as an average healer whos easy to play.
  5. Uther: stun go brrrr. Dead but still healing also go brrr. Idk I dont play much uther but when I do, its not a disaster at least.
  6. Stukov: getting to the harder ones but putting Stuv here cause once you get him right there is so much value to be had and strategic plays.
  7. Ana: I end up feeling like i worked really hard to live up to average standards but shes relatively simple to grasp talentwise. Its the constant skillshots that get you huffing and puffing.
  8. Malfurion: i never could get him right. I just dont GET him. Hes a walking healing fountain with a root. Thats all I got from him.
  9. Whitemane: very interesting but very difficult too. The essence is timing and itll take you a while to learn the whens and the whats.
  10. Li Li: the bottom of the barrel. I hate playing her. She does SO little. Or Im playing her wrong. I feel like half a hero when Im li li.
  11. Im tired. The rest I dont even play lol
15

From stats:

  1. Li Li
  2. Brightwing
  3. Anduin
  4. Lt. Morales
  5. Deckard
  6. Kharazim
  7. Ana
  8. Tyrande
  9. Uther
  10. Rehgar
  11. Lucio
  12. Whitemane
  13. Malfurion
  14. Auriel
  15. Stukov
  16. Alexstrasza

Objectively, I’d put Li Li a bit higher because I feel like she’s drafted for wrong reasons. Players don’t capitalise enough on her trait value, which is MS and mana regen by taking mostly non burst dmg.
Uther lower, draft reasons and more dependent on follow ups. The job gets way more easier once these boxes are checked.
I’m not sure about Ana. Yes, she’s very skillshot depending, but her Healing Dart is on a 2 sec CD.
Side note on Alex: There’s nothing easy on her except her Q build and wave clear.

16

WM is harder for me than Khara or Tyrande. Both of them “can” play passive. WM simply cannot; in no universe does she have any resources for it whatsoever.

Also put Alexa in the top five for sure. Your mainstay heal being tied to your health can force you into really passive playstyles (incidentally).

But that’s just me.

Otherwise yeah. BW asks the least of a healer player up front, I think, especially with not managing mana to accomplish healing. Baseline area cleanse doesn’t hurt neither.

17

It’s fun seeing how playing a lot of a hero makes him “easier”.

Before BW was meta, like a year ago, I used to play her already and people would insult me for picking the “fake, weak healer”
She was already good before her rework mind you.
But she was considered way too hard.

I think now everybody has played or seen a good BW (because she became meta and people had tutorials to play her well).

Remember the time when BW was considered a bad hero? ;p

I’d say to get full value you still need to know how to play the game quite game. Yes, you can just hover around heroes to heal them with passive. Knowing who to give extra speed, at which moment, requires a bit of micro knowledge. Knowing who to transform, too (though that one is pretty straightforward: click the first enemy hero you can and you’ll be fine).
Her Q tends to be used too much even without the Q build, so people encounter mana problems (which are happily “solved” by her tp because she’ll get back to base and then TP to a hero… who doesn’t need the insane heal it gives).
Many BWs don’t even soak lanes, when they could and should (it’s even hinted by the passive on their Z). Most BWs don’t even look at the mini map and won’t tp if you get ganked as a solo laner because they won’t notice you without 4 pings. Which usually makes you dead before they notice you’re in danger.

Many BWs don’t know they can use a cleanse. Most don’t realize that even though it doesn’t give unstoppable, you can still avoid CCs like the butcher charge through it (yes you can, frame it well).

Same for the ults, usually they will follow the build they were recommended, but won’t try to see if the other is better. Emerald Wind can be devastating some times. It can also be used aggressively…
Blink Heals can be used as an escape. Well, not on the BWs this time, mostly on the allies who don’t realize they’re just out of range and just get out even though they could save you.

For the lvl 20, all talents can be good, depending on the situation. Once again, usually people will follow your recommended build without thinking…

So yeah, BW can be easy, because she’s strong in the meta. Get confronted with a slightly unusual team, and people would lose all their ability to fight with BW.

Still, I think BW is only seen as easy because people have finally decided to play the healer nobody wanted in his games before.

1 Like
18

I love playing Whitemane, she feels really complex.
Once you get the hang of it, it becomes obviously way easier.
Tyrande was also hard but I just couldn’t get nowhere nearly as much value as I did with Whitemane.

1 Like
19

I actually liked the old BW more than the current one. Especially the talent that was causing E to also give phy armor, and the lvl 20 Emerald Wind upgrade. Current lvl 20 upgrade is more of a downgrade :frowning:
The lvl 4 Poly talent was also dealing more damage :stuck_out_tongue:
I remember beating the old Gazlowe 1 v 1 with the old BW :smiley:

1 Like
20

From my experience:

Easy: Lucio, Alexstrasza, Auriel, Lt. Morales
Normal: Uther, Stukov, Anduin, BW, Rehgar, Deckard, Kharazim
Hard: Li Li, Whitemane, Ana, Malfurion, Tyrande (requires double support with Khara)