I’m looking to main a healer next expansion and am wondering which would be a good choice.
I’m not big on proactive healing so druid and priest are out. I have trouble utilizing the full kit of evoker out of fear(vault spreading the debuffs scarred me) so idk about that. I have a priest and monk leveling.
Ideas?
Isn’t holy priest the classic reactive healer?
Also consider whether you want to operate in melee range or not. If you do, monk or pally are good options.
If you want a ranged reactive healer then holy priest, shaman, or evoker. Sounds like you don’t like evoker already.
I don’t know enough about healers to give you a rundown on reactive vs proactive. But I will say Resto Shaman is my favorite by a long shot.
I’m benching my Shaman and leaning towards Evoker. Might tryout Monk and Priest, though.
I mean, that is true for Disc Priest, but Holy Priest is the classic reactive healer. Lots of traditional healing with some big CD heals like Divine Hymn and Holy Word: Salvation.
Monk or Shaman are my favorites.
Just waterboarding players and ignoring their pleas for help.
Shh, the water will make you better.
No more pain, only dreams.
I played resto shaman and pally for years. I could theoretically try my evoker but I really failed hard with one in vault. Was afraid to use dream flight and verdant embrace because moving a the wrong time would spread debuffs around. I love the fantasy of it though.
I do not know if I want to keep going with my paladin next expansion because I keep hearing they suck.
Seems to leave evoker, pally and priest.
Holy priest only regularly uses two spells which are proactive right? Guardian spirit and prayer of mending. Prayer of mending you can just send to the tank on cooldown if you’d like. Also sometimes power word shield but only to prevent one shots and I think most holy priests don’t even have it bound.
I’ve played em all but Evoker and Shaman. Here’s my take.
Druid
Strong healer in all facets. Little to no weaknesses, if any at all. The ramp up is a bit annoying but no where near as bad as being Holy Paladin and running out of cooldowns.
Holy Priest
Not as “spam heals” as I thought it would be. Kind of a fun healer in it’s current version. Very reactive. Requires good management of abilities to prevent running out of mana. Honestly a fun healer to play.
Disc Priest
Since the changes it’s become a low maintenance kind of spec. Not really a ramp up phase outside of two GCD’s to heal which is still less than Holy Paladin has to deal with at times. Shield is pretty awesome.
Mistweaver
Melee, laid back, simple. Lot of utility, healing just flows out from maintaining a buff or two, good reactive skills; arguably the easiest healer currently.
Holy Paladin
As much as I like it I can’t recommend anyone play Pally. Crit is your best friend, which sounds awesome, but not critting is the difference between life and death in some scenarios. Sitting at the secondary crit cap still won’t guarantee you on demand decent heals.
Seriously, don’t play holy pal unless you’re a masochist.
if you are pugging m+, then I think prevoker and disc priest are problematic. grouping is a problem for evoker and aoe bursting is a problem for disc priest (especially early in the expac as people are learning the dungeons).
I guess druid will continue to be strong but I haven’t healed on one in a while. I haven’t heard too much about pally heals. they seem to have been underwhelming for a while.
for monk, I prefer the caster version rather than the fistweaver style.
My favorite healer is shaman. I love the kit, the shortest kick in the game, 3 interrupts (i have a tauren). strong single target and group heals. lust. i just wish we could get our full totem kits from the past and let shaman be a healer support class like it used to be.
if you are already leveling a priest, go holy. the rework in late DF has made them good in pug content. damage buffs should make them pretty good for leveling in open world pve.
I used to like monk for healing but Shaman is just better for me.
I have wanted to love paladin, especially heals, but I just cant get my head wrapped around something with it…or either priest healing specs.
Tried priest many many times and I just cant find the love for it.
I gave paladin a chance for about a month, but Rshaman just feels more …connected or something
It’s a chaotic mess of “pray you have the right abilities at the right time available.” Or in other words… hope no one makes a mistake.
Holy Paladin just can’t deal with mistakes the same way the other healers can. Which is probably exactly how healers are supposed to be. Just feels right but so wrong at the same time.
I’ve played just about every healer up to a (old) +20 and up range. I would recommend hpriest/rsham for a beginner all the way. Both are more reactive healers and fairly simple to pick up and start playing. Hpriest is a little more forgiving with shorter cooldowns than shaman. I would stay away from disc priest/MW until you get a little more used to healing. I know at least for me it took a little bit getting used to doing damage to heal, and not panicking and blowing through all my mana trying to push up health bars via NOT damaging.
The only proactivity you do as a holy priest is keeping prayer of mending up. Otherwise you’re spamming smite and using instant flash heal and power word serenity charges.
Mistweaver is fun. You punch things and heal at the same time.
oh…well thank god its not just me then lol. thought I had just gone stupid or something.
Rshaman is just so easy to figure out. Well, i mean, theres little TO figure out about it, at least in the content I play. Someones health bar is low, you face blast them with heals, easy, lol.
That and the totems just feel more natural to me.
I guess I dont want to have to THINK when Im healing, I want to HEAL and keep the team alive. That might be why I dont like a few of the healer specs.
Im seriouslly gonna have to undelete my 70 priest and try it again. Disc felt like a let down when I was running it, but I dont think I gave Holy enough of a chance, maybe.
I really enjoy restoration druid when I am healing. That said, it does have a flaw that heal over time isn’t great for emergency situations. That’s why I like having Nourish as a talent.
Restoration shaman is my second favorite because it seems to have the right tools for most situations. It also (due to mastery) heals more the lower health the injured person has, and that is great for emergency healing.
I get that. I’d say the fine line between solid healer and choices that matter is currently Holy Priest. It has a strong kit with better heals than Holy Paladin overall. The difference is, playing Holy Priest right (Managing cooldowns) means good mana management. Whereas playing Paladin right means no mana (lol).
The sad part about Holy Paladin is that Lay on Hands (LoH) is a 7 minute cooldown, whereas Mistweaver’s Life Cocoon is a 2 min cooldown (Less with talents I believe). Life Cocoon will save the day constantly. LoH will save the day once in a blue moon. Crazy how that works.
I like shaman and holy priest best. I also prefer reactive healing, and these two are pretty good for it.
I also really enjoyed monk once upon a time, but I haven’t tried it since Legion. If anyone would like to try and sell me on it, I wouldn’t say no because I’m trying to decide on my TWW main right now. 
do you feel that Rshaman and Rdruid are comparable in ease of play?
I havent really healed groups much with druid but Ive been curious to try it again.
I dont heal anything ‘hard’ just leveling dungeons and occasionally something in current content, so nothing stressful or anything