I’m looking to play a healer in retail. I’ve tried them all until about level 20 and surprisingly like all except Holy Paladin. My question is what would you rank from easiest to hardest to pickup and learn/play from a newer player perspective.
Just off of personal experience, I’ve always like how straight forward Shaman healing is. Haven’t gotten to do any since SL released due to an injury, so I can’t really say much for current content.
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I actually liked Shaman healing the most, it just seems like a lot of totems and such to maintain.
Shamans good now from what i hear
Holy pally is supposed to be s tier but idk with the incoming mana cost increase to them.
MW is a mana drain
I currently main a resto druid which has been all right im plugging along and in 12-13 key range and almost through heroic CN
Easy is defenility holy priest
but that’s only in the sense of playing at the lowest level, once you start pushing yourself to really master a spec they are are roughly equal. Resto druid and disc priest are probably the hardest as they are the least reactive healers.
Strongly suggest picking a spec based on healing style/toolkit not what is easy.
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I feel that early healing doesn’t quite equate to lvl 60 healing. Paladin healing feels pretty bad until you get better optimized at 60, where you have to focus on using holy light/flash of light more to keep up HPS
However, when more optimized I feel Hpally is a fairly easy/competent healer.
Shaman are very straightforward with lots of responses to all kinds of issues that may come up.
Druids; I find is a lot of just reapplying dots, which can be easy but tedious at least.
And priest im real bad at so can’t say whether they are easy or not.
Here is my ranking of easiness of general game play. Obviously if you are pushing high end keys it is a different story as actually it gets easier as mobs die faster, so it would be a totally different ranking. But I guess the OP is asking for general game play so:
Holy Priest > Monk > Druid > Shaman > Disc Priest > Paladin
Holy Priest, Resto druid and Resto Shaman all seem about the same difficulty-wise with Holy priest being maybe a bit easier.
Especially if you get an addon like VuhDo, then you just click on the players name and it heals them. Get a mouse like a Razer or a Logitech with a few extra buttons and you can bind those to specific spells with the addon then just click the player and cast the spell. Easy peasy.
Mistweaver Monk also seems mostly straightforward UNLESS you want to try Fistweaving, then it becomes a challenge. Disc Priest is also a bit more challenging as it requires pro-active healing instead of re-active healing (it requires you know the fights and know when big damage is coming before it happens more than the other healers).
In my opinion, difficulty levels:
Holy Priest > Shaman > Druid > Holy Paladin > Disc Priest
Never played mistweaver.
I would say it really depends on what content you plan on doing and how hard you plan to push said content. I would break down the healer status as follows for each style of gameplay, with the best going from left to right.
Raiding: Shaman = Disc Priest // Paladin // Holy Priest = Druid // Monk
Mythic +: Paladin = Shaman // Disc Priest// Druid // Holy Priest // Monk
PvP: Paladin // Disc Priest // Shaman // Druid // Holy Priest // Monk
If you are just looking to heal for fun without pushing hard into Mythic Raiding/ M+ or PvP then you can pick whichever you find more fun. With the exception of maybe monks, all other healers are performing well. In terms of ease of play, I would agree with some of the above posts and say Holy Priest is probably the easiest to play and offers the most in terms of a healing toolkit.
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From easiest to hardest for dungeons (personal opinion obviously):
- Resto Shaman
- Holy Priest
- Mistweaver Monk
All 3 have very straight forward kits and shouldn’t be too hard to learn. The other healers have a little bit more to them (excluding Paladin, I figured that would be an easy one but you didn’t like it).
I really like MW for healing, but, it is at bottom of the healers. However, if you are not going to do mythic raiding or high mythic + dungeons, go with what you like.
What might be meta now, is certainly going to change in the future. We need healers, it is a tough job that many do not like to do. Speaking of which, need tanks too, kudos to all the tank/healers out there.
The only problem is that what is “easy” is not really “good” right now for healers.
Mistweaver (smart heals) and Holy Priest (reactive throughput) are easy to play but not desirable for content.
Even Resto Shaman which is good right now will have a bad time if your group doesn’t stack which then forces most players into Necrolords/Primordial Wave so you can better handle spread healing.
Resto Druid and Holy Paladin are niche healers and excel in certain types of content and group comps. They are awesome at the content that they are good at and not so much in the other stuff.
Disc Priest has a steep learning curve is very unforgiving of mistakes, but is considered the best in most “top healer” lists. You not only need to know the class, but also the encounters to predict damage.
That being said, pick what you like the best and also has other specs you would be interested in playing as nothing ever stays the same in WoW and top dog might be benched in the next patch or two.
in terms of how easy a spec is to heal on i’d say its Hpriest > shammy > Pally > Druid > Monk > Disc Priest
Hpriest just has a tool for just about everything, it has strong ST and AoE heals, it has a reactive heal that bounces between everyone, it has a raid wide heal similar to a druid’s Tranquility, has a low but fast cast heal, has a HoT it can place, and all initial healing you do with all heals puts on a stacking hot thanks to its mastery.
though i believe Hpriest falls off the higher ilvl and skill level you get.
I just didn’t really understand how Holy Paladin worked.
Since TBC my shaman has been my favorite alt. One of the two dps specs is typically fun/interesting, and chain heal alone is a blast for the kind of content I run.
Resto Druid is pretty easy and fun! I vote Resto Druid.
Holy priest is a very good, flexible, entry level healer. It has enough of a toolkit to respond to nearly everything. It doesn’t really excel at one thing, but the output is good and the only people that don’t like holy priest are disc suckers. 
Yeah, thinking about it there is a bit more to them in terms of resource management.
I guess it’s simple if you get the concept, but can be daunting otherwise. Maybe not great for a new player.
Don’t do pally, if you bubble and then fart you’ll want to die
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