Healer Rankings / Tier List for Phase 1 of Wrath of the Lich King Classic
While DPS in Wrath have different power levels, which determine to which extent you want to stack them, all healers and tanks are welcome in Raids and Dungeons, as they all have unique benefits that are worth learning about.
We will be ranking each healer class available in Wrath below, alongside a short explanation on the reasoning behind its position. This list will be kept updated as Wrath progresses, in order to always reflect the current meta healer rankings.
Healer Rankings Summary
Below you can find a quick summary of the current PvE healer rankings:
- Holy Paladin (S-Tier)
- Discipline Priest (A-Tier)
- Restoration Druid (A-Tier)
- Restoration Shaman (B-Tier)
- Holy Priest (B-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.
DPS and Tank Class Rankings
If you are interested in other PvE role rankings for Wrath, check the following links:
Healer Ranking Details
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 for a sustained period of time.
- Utility — non-healing abilities that the healer brings that
are useful to the raid, such as
Bloodlust/
Heroism.
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.
S-Tier Classes and Specializations
While all healers can do a lot of healing, Holy Paladins are by far the best at Mana
management, having the Divine Plea +
Seal of Wisdom
combo to fully replenish their Mana every minute, if need be. This allows them to
do very high healing consistently throughout a fight, no matter its duration or
damage intake intensity, and is the main reason why Paladins are both the best
healer and the main option to bring more than one of.
Holy Paladins are also the only healer that is mostly focused on single-target
healing, with all other healers having a raid healing profile, especially
Discipline Priests and Restoration Druids who specialize
in blanketing the whole raid with efficient healing from Power Word: Shield
and
Rejuvenation. Thus the ideal raid composition will typically have
one of each healer or drop a Restoration Shaman / Holy Priest
for a second Holy Paladin.
You will also want at least one Shaman in every raid group for
Bloodlust /
Heroism, and Restoration is a great choice,
as it can fit into almost any healing composition due to its versatile spell kit.
Paladin
- Throughput — S-tier — Holy Paladin single-target healing is
second to none in WotLK as long as they can cast freely, which most fights will
allow. What makes them the best is the way
Holy Light healing can be massively amplified by
Beacon of Light and
Glyph of Holy Light, while its high Mana cost can be covered by 1-minute
Divine Plea +
Seal of Wisdom combos.
- Utility — S-tier — blessings such as
Hand of Protection are great in multiple scenarios, from keeping people who pull aggro alive to facilitating tank swaps and removing bleed debuffs. You also want multiple Paladins for full
Judgement debuff coverage and their blessings are the smoothest way to keep some raid buffs such as
Blessing of Wisdom up on all players.
Holy Paladins bring some of the best group
utility in Wrath with their blessings, have great single-target healing, and are
extremely tough with their Plate armor and Divine Shield last resort.
Even their traditional lack of area-of-effect healing is improved in Wrath through
Beacon of Light and
Glyph of Holy Light and they enjoy infinite
Mana from
Divine Plea +
Seal of Wisdom, making them
hands down the best PvE healer and the only one worth having more than one of.
A-Tier Classes and Specializations
A-Tier healers, Discipline Priest and Restoration Druid share a common playstyle where
they blanket the raid with an efficient spell (Power Word: Shield and
Rejuvenation) which covers raid healing requirements while increasing
raid DPS through the unique
Rapture and
Revitalize effects.
While the benefit of bringing a second one of these specs is much lower than the first, it is extremely helpful to have one of each in a raid group!
Discipline Priest
- Throughput — A-tier —
Power Word: Shield spam before raid damage happens is a great way to smooth out damage intake and what Discipline will be mostly doing. While they do have some single-target healing and decent burst with
Penance, the Mana efficiency and HPS of Discipline single-target is questionable, making them better as a pure shield spammer.
- Utility — S-tier — the utility of
Rapture,
Power Infusion,
Pain Suppression,
Mass Dispel, and
Power Word: Fortitude are all great, as is being able to shield people ahead of burst damage events.
Discipline Priests are one of the
most unique healers in Wrath, with their raid throughput being almost exclusively
tied to Power Word: Shield. This allows them to smooth out raid damage
intake while also restoring class resources through
Rapture, which
is of great value to any raid group.
The main weakness of Discipline is that multiple Priests cannot create
Power Word: Shield on the same target due to the
Weakened Soul debuff. Thus, you always want one and only one
Discipline Priest in a raid group.
Druid
- Throughput — A-tier — similar to Discipline Priests, Druids
have great raid healing with
Rejuvenation blanketing, while suffering from ramp-up times on their single-target healing and poor Mana efficiency when forced to heal with rolling
Lifebloom stacks.
- Utility — S-tier — while
Mark of the Wild and
Faerie Fire are likely to already be brought by other Druids in the raid,
Revitalize is a unique Restoration Druid buff which increases raid DPS passively from your healing. Druid's mobile healing capabilities and heals-over-time, which can be prepared ahead of damage, are also invaluable in some Raid scenarios.
Restoration Druids, just like
Priests, do most of their healing with instant casts, and also sport incredible
mobility and the unique Revitalize buff, as well as a healing-over-time
playstyle which is great to efficiently top people off or prepare for
incoming bursts of damage ahead of time.
B-Tier Classes and Specializations
The B-Tier classes, Restoration Shaman and Holy Priest, are jacks of all trades but masters of none. This means they can both single-target and area-of-effect heal but are not the best for either, making them sub-optimal to bring on speed running compositions.
Still, they will be perfectly fine for most content in Wrath and their flexible healing profile is advantageous for dual-spec healing, 10-man content, and when filling in empty spots in a healing roster.
Shaman
- Throughput — A-tier —
Chain Heal is still very strong in Wrath, but other healers can now area heal very effectively as well, making this traditional Shaman niche less of a trump card. Their single-target healing benefits greatly from the new talent
Tidal Waves but, again, loses out to Paladins with their infinite Mana and
Beacon of Light.
- Utility — B-tier —
Bloodlust /
Heroism applies to the whole raid group but also leaves the Sated / Exhausted debuff in Wrath, which means you only need one Shaman per raid for maximum benefit. Most totems' benefits can also be brought by other classes, other than
Wrath of Air Totem which you only need one Shaman for, making their utility mostly redundant for large raids.
Restoration Shamans can bring it all in WotLK, but do so with less efficiency than other healers, making them mostly useful for filling in a last spot or as a respec when needed.
Holy Priest
- Throughput — A-tier, just like Shamans, Holy Priests can
do it all, with strong single-target and area-of-effect healing, as well as the
new
Guardian Spirit tank cooldown. Unfortunately, with
Circle of Healing now having a 6-second cooldown and the incredible buffs made to other classes, they are no longer the best at anything.
- Utility — B-tier, with Discipline being one of the most important healers to bring to a raid, it is likely that Priest utility will already be covered, and Holy does not have much of it to speak of.
Holy Priests can do fine healing in every situation and have the most flexible healing kit alongside Shaman, but unfortunately bring lower throughput than specialized classes and very weak utility, making them mostly useful if you need to have another Priest healer and already have a Discipline Priest around.
Changelog
- 21 Sep. 2022: Page added.
This guide has been written by Seksi, original vanilla player and multi-class player, currently playing on Gehennas Horde. You can find him on the Classic Shaman and Druid, as well as the Icy Veins Discord.
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