I have played this game for a good while mostly as dps toon however I’m interested in getting into healing what healing specs are easy to get into to but also are pretty good
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Healers vary wildly in their gameplay and so you may have to try them out to see what you really like. For the most part healers tend to be pretty balanced, are always wanted and honestly I find all of them more engaging and fun than most DPS classes. You should really pick one who’s aesthetics, class fantasy, and sounds you prefer. Furthermore, pick one who has a secondary role or spec that you like. You won’t be a healer all the time, and you don’t want to pick a class who’s other specs you don’t like. Paladin, Druid, and Monk will offer all roles. Shamans comes with a caster DPS and melee dps role. Right now I’m maining a restoration Druid, but it was really the Balance spec that won me over.
I don’t recommend you pick Discipline Priest as your first healer because it’s a very proactive healer and requires knowledge of fights to be effective. That’s no problem for seasoned veterans, but for beginners can be punishing. But if you choose Priest, holy is very welcoming to beginners.
Something to remember, leveling up as a healer I recommend you spam dungeons to get a grip on your class. You will start off with few spells, and as you level up and gain new spells, this will ease you into more complicated mechanics. This is the moment to learn about your spells and how they interact with each other. Once you hit Shadowlands content difficulty will start to increase, and all your leveling experience and knowledge will finally be put to the test.
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Disc and Holy paladin are the hardest healers. Assuming you don’t want to tank, I would go priest, druid, or shaman. Druid and shaman would get you the most dps specs if you also like to melee, but priest gets you two heals spes. I switched to heals a few years ago and never looked back. IMO its much more fun than dps in dungeons and raids. jump right in you’ll be fine.
I enjoy Holy priest (my main) in Shadowlands its much better than the BFA version. I play disc as well sometimes, and always shadow in open world + Maw
If your not using an addon, healers need Mouseover macros for every skill that targets a player. This allows you to heal by hovering your mouse over party/raid frames and keep the mobs hard targeted to dps. In fact, you won’t be good if you don’t use them. Healing is faster saves clicks by not clicking party frames, and eliminates mistakes while allowing you to dps.
Here is a basic mouseover macro that works hovering your mouse over the player raid/party frame or the actual player. Make one for every skill that targets players including dispel.
#showtooltip
/cast [@mouseover, help, nodead][] circle of healing
Here is a help/harm macro example to combine two skills into one key. If you have an enemy target, it will cast smite. If you hover your mouse over a player party/raid frame or dont have a target, it will cast shadowmend.
#showtooltip
/cast [@mouseover,help,nodead]Shadow Mend; [@target,harm,nodead]Smite;[@player]Shadow Mend
For Holy, I combine flash heal with holy fire in one help/harm macro. I also combine chastise with renew in another. Lastly, see the icy veins class guides. The best legendary for dungeons is flash of concentration and can easily be obtained early it’s a dungeon drop.
I also use two help/harm macros on both my shaman and druid healers. Keybinds are at a premium.
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First, I have no experience with monks, so I’m not sure where they fit in.
I’d say that the easiest would be Shaman and Holy Priests. The healer that I have the most fun on is a druid. Part of that is I’ve been playing a Discipline Priest for more than a decade, so I’m much more comfortable with a proactive style. (And basically, Druids give me the proactive style but is more forgiving than disc when the unexpected happens.)
Priest is a good place to start simply because you can get experience with both a reactive and a proactive spec and figure out which one fits you better. But, as Astryss mentioned, druids and shaman have both melee and ranges dps specs, which gives you more options when you aren’t healing a group. All of the other healers only have one dps spec. (As someone who does not like shadow so does everything as disc on my priest, trust me, leveling and world content in a healing spec can be a real slog.)
I’m not sure of your overall macro setup so this may or may not help, but Flash Heal becomes Shadow Mend if you are disc/shadow. So, you can just use Flash Heal in your macros and use them across specs, and it will cast Shadow Mend if you’ve got that instead.
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Thx good to know. I currently need two separate macros because for Holy I have Flash heal and Holy fire in a help/harm macro combined on one key. I have Smite and Shadowmend combined on one key for Disc.
Thank you all for the feedback.