Healer Rankings / Tier List for Mists of Pandaria Classic

MOP Launch Update: The rankings have been updated for the first raid tier of Mists of Pandaria!

Below you can find a quick summary of the current PvE healer rankings:

1. Restoration Shaman (S-Tier)
2. Discipline Priest (S-Tier)
3. Mistweaver Monk (A-Tier)
4. Holy Paladin (A-Tier)
5. Holy Priest (A-Tier)
6. Restoration Druid (A-Tier)

In order to further understand the reasoning behind these rankings, we would recommend you read the rest of the page, as that is explained in more detail in the next few sections.

If you are interested in other PvE role rankings for Mists of Pandaria, check the following links:

When sorting out the rankings for healers PvE, we are primarily concerned with two things:

• Throughput — the ability of a healer to do a lot of raw healing, whether sustained or in bursts, and including healing cooldowns such as Ancestral Guidance, Tranquility, Divine Hymn, Revival, and Avenging Wrath.
• Utility — non-healing abilities that the healer brings that are useful to the raid, such as Devotion Aura, Power Word: Barrier, Power Infusion, Ring of Peace, Spirit Link Totem, and Rebirth.

We will rank each healer on both of these categories and further elaborate on how they come together to create the current ranking for the class.

While all healers can do a lot of healing, Restoration Shamans have great area healing with Healing Rain and Chain Heal, and also multiple strong raid cooldowns as well as decent single target, making them the strongest overall.

Discipline Priests are also a must in raids due to their unique healing style which includes significant shielding with Divine Aegis, Power Word: Shield, and the new Spirit Shell. While their throughput in not entirely made out of absorbs, these will allow the raid to survive through some high damage mechanics, especially in combination with Power Word: Barrier.

These are the two specializations you will usually want healing your 10-man groups.

• Throughput — S-tier — Healing Rain and Chain Heal are both very strong area healing spells, which do require a lot of targets to be damaged and stacked within close proximity. Riptide buffs Chain Heal with no downside and also provides Tidal Waves, which when combined with the Deep Healing Mastery makes Restoration Shaman a strong spot healer. Finally, Ancestral Guidance and Healing Tide Totem are two new strong healing cooldowns.
• Utility — S-tier — Bloodlust / Heroism is a critical raid buff, and only Restoration Shamans can bring Spirit Link Totem and extra raid health with Purification while also having a huge array of other Totem utility for niche fights.

• Throughput — S-tier — Spirit Shell can be used very frequently to negate entire mechanics most of your spells will activate Divine Aegis, Power Word: Shield still exists, even though it will not be spammed anymore due to high Mana costs. Combined with the new Mastery, Shield Discipline, Discipline can prevent much of the incoming damage before it even happens, which is a fantastic healing style to have for keeping other players alive, and more than justifies S-rank even when raw throughput potential is not high.
• Utility — S-tier — the utility of Power Word: Barrier, Power Infusion, Pain Suppression, Mass Dispel, and Power Word: Fortitude are all great reasons to bring at least one Discipline Priest, even beyond throughput reasons.

All other healing specializations are currently in the A-Tier reflecting the expected good balance for healing in Mists of Pandaria post balance changes.

Mistweaver Monk are expected to deal the most damage out of all healers and have very good burst mobility and survivability, on top of not being targeted by ranged mechanics and having good Mana post tuning.

Holy Paladin are also expected to perform well with their two distinct Eternal Flame or Selfless Healer focused playstyles, Mana return from Seal of Insight and ability to become untargetable by ranged mechanics by using Crusader Strike.

Holy Priest have exceptionally large raw throughput potential after their balance changes but those also made them harder to optimize due to the need to Chakra swap often for maximum results. Overall they are expected to bring massive throughput but also low utility.

Restoration Druids are spread healing specialists with a lot of raw throughput but no shielding or special utility, and they also received the fewest amount of changes, making them solid but not amazing.

• Throughput — A-tier — Mistweaver Monk is the new healer specialization in Mists and brings strong sustained single target healing with Soothing Mist and Enveloping Mist combos and strong spread healing with Uplift, which is especially relevant when most other healers rely on stacked group healing;
• Utility — A-tier — Mistweaver has the best healer damage in the game, but also some of the weakest utility tools overall and no damage reduction cooldowns. Still, damage contribution is worth a lot, and unique cooldowns such as Ring of Peace can be great in specific fights.

• Throughput — A-tier — Holy Paladin healing has heavily fallen in Mists of Pandaria, as Holy Radiance does considerably less healing than in Cataclysm, has a weaker interaction with Illuminated Healing, and Paladins received little positive changes when compared to most other healers;
• Utility — A-tier — Devotion Aura is still a powerful raid cooldown and Avenging Wrath is a reliable throughput cooldown. Hand of Sacrifice and Hand of Protection are also still great in multiple scenarios, and Paladin is the only healer with a full immunity in Divine Shield.

• Throughput — S-tier — just like the previous healers, Holy Priests can do it all, with strong single-target and area-of-effect healing, further empowered by Chakra which can be swapped around very often off the global cooldown. Their Divine Hymn is a powerful raid cooldown, but does require a long time standing still channeling. Lightwell is also an interesting cooldown which gains value on harder fights where it will activate more reliably. Finally, their mastery Echo of Light provides a ton of unconditional extra healing.
• Utility — B-tier — while Discipline is one of the most important healer specializations to bring to a raid for its unique utility, Holy mostly has Guardian Spirit and Spirit of Redemption which are nowhere near as good as Pain Suppression and, especially, Power Word: Barrier.

• Throughput — S-tier — Druids have great spread raid healing with Rejuvenation blanketing and also excellent burst healing with the new Genesis and Wild Mushroom blooms. Tranquility and Incarnation: Tree of Life are also good throughput cooldowns. Finally, most of their healing can be done on the move, making Druid the most mobile healer.
• Utility — B-tier — Mark of the Wild and Faerie Fire are powerful, but their effects are also likely to already be brought by other classes in a raid setting. Innervate is once again a good Mana tool that can be used on any player with similar benefits. Also, while Rebirth is critical, it can also be brought by multiple other classes and all players in the raid share a common battle resurrection limit, making it less useful than it appears at first glance.

Due to the pre-launch balance changes, we do not currently think any specialization is B-tier or below!