Healer Tier List for The War Within (Patch 11.0.5)

This tier list will go over which healers are the best and which are the worst for The War Within PvP, depending on the "meta". The meta is often determined by which classes are the strongest, or which classes counter other popular/strong specializations. It is important to note that the meta can quickly change after nerfs/buffs, so this page will be updated frequently.

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

Holy Paladins are currently in a strong spot at the start of The War Within. They have received several large changes to their toolkit that makes them better than most other healers in the game. Their biggest strength is how many cooldowns they have. Being able to rotate cooldowns, such as Blessing of Sacrifice, Avenging Wrath and Blessing of Protection allow them to keep their team alive long enough to get a kill on an enemy. They also have incredible instant healing with Holy Shock and Eternal Flame. This makes them difficult to interrupt and lockdown when standing far away from incoming crowd control.

Holy has the most consistent stun to use on an enemy, Hammer of Justice. When running the Fist of Justice talent, Hammer of Justice has a short cooldown and can be used to set up crowd control on the enemy healer or kill target. They have more cooldowns, damage, and crowd control than any other healers. Their one downfall is that they can fall behind when stuck in crowd control, but it is easy to recover with the instant healing they have.

Discipline Priests offer great consistent damage and healing for their team. With an ability like Ultimate Penitence, Discipline Priests help contribute to every kill setup in arena.

You will often see Priests healing team compositions like RMP (Rogue/Mage/Priest) and Jungle (Feral Druid/Hunter/Priest). These teams rely heavily on setups and doing damage in a short amount of time to land a kill.

On top of giving your team damage, Priests can do a large amount of damage themselves. Abilities like Purge the Wicked and Penance can aggressively be used on enemies to deal damage to them. In addition to damage, Priests have multiple cooldowns they can rotate. Rapture, Pain Suppression, and Power Word: Barrier are strong cooldowns that can easily keep your team alive under pressure. The combination of both damage and healing makes Discipline Priests a force to be reckoned with when paired with top DPS specializations.

Preservation Evokers can do it all. They can help contribute to kills with their damage and use their instant healing to keep teammates alive. Here are a few reasons why they are so good:

• They have strong damage that allows their team to stay aggressive when going in for a kill. Spells like Disintegrate and Living Flame can crit for large amounts of damage.
• Great mobility that will make it difficult for enemies to connect to you. Hover increases your movement speed and allows you to cast non-empowered spells while moving. This makes it much easier to get Sleep Walks on enemy healers.
• They have many difficult cooldowns that you can use to help you recover when falling behind. Cooldowns like Emerald Communion make it easy to keep your team alive.
• Mana is normally a healer's biggest weakness. Still, because Preservation uses both Mana and Essences, they can keep their team alive without using much Mana.

The biggest issue that Preservation Evokers have is the range on their healing spells. The max distance they can heal from is 25 yards. This is great when healing a team with two melee, but this distance is not ideal when healing ranged DPS. It also means the enemy team can use crowd control spells on them much easier than any other healer. In a meta where specializations with spammable crowd control are strong (Warlocks, Mages, Druids), Preservation Evokers will struggle.

Mistweaver Monks have seen many changes going into The War Within. With Ancient Teachings becoming a passive, they are able to heal by doing damage. With the addition of Jadefire Teachings and Jade Empowerment, Mistweaver Monks can increase the amount of healing that gets transferred from doing damage. Because all of this healing can be done while being 40 yards away from enemies, the healing from Crackling Jade Lightning is difficult to stop. This results in Mistweaver healing output being in a really good spot.

If you do not want to heal from ranged, 'Fistweaver' has its own playstyle and can deal much more damage than the standard Mistweaver playstyle. This build utilizes specific damage talents, such as Crane Style and Rushing Wind Kick. These spells promote a more aggressive playstyle and can quickly overwhelm teams if they are not expecting large incoming damage. Both playstyles have a place in the meta and should be used in different situations. Against teams with ranged DPS and spammable crowd control, heal from ranged to make it difficult for teams to lock you down. A gainst teams with only one caster or two melee on it, you can Fistweave to keep your team on the offensive.

Restoration Druids have a unique playstyle, being the only healer that has multiple Healing over Time (HoT) effects. They offer great single-target healing and have a wide variety of spells for different situations. Abilities such as Soul of the Forest can make Restoration Druids heal for even more when their team is under pressure. They also have the best crowd control in the game, Cyclone.

Barkskin makes them a hard target to swap to, and Ironbark makes it hard for their teammates to die when it is active. They also have access to Heart of the Wild to deal additional damage to enemies if they choose this talent. Although their single target healing is quite good, Restoration Druids will struggle against teams with spread damage and will run out of Mana quickly when trying to keep HoTs on multiple teammates.

Restoration Shamans are an extremely versatile healer, bringing damage, healing, and utility for their teammates. Most of their healing is instant and comes from Riptide, Healing Stream Totem, and Earth Shield. Both of these spells allow the Shaman to heal without casting and being concerned with being interrupted. Restoration Shaman also bring utility in the forms of Grounding Totem and Tremor Totem to soak incoming crowd control.

In addition to strong utility, they also have multiple strong cooldowns for when their team is in trouble. Ascendance and Spirit Link Totem are two of the strongest cooldowns in arena. This allows Restoration Shaman to quickly recover when enemies are using their cooldowns. Their main weakness is that teams will focus their healing totems to reduce their healing output. Healing Stream Totem and Healing Tide Totem do not have much health and can easily be killed if they are not behind a pillar. Because Restoration Shaman sometimes have to cast to recover, they are also prone to being targetting by teams with two melee on them. They can struggle to get away when chased and can die in stuns if trinket is not available.

Holy Priests offer some great single-target healing and multiple ways to crowd-control enemies. They use Holy Word: Chastise and Psychic Scream to setup crowd control on enemy healers and give their team a window to land a kill. A large majority of their healing comes from instant healing, Holy Word: Serenity. This, in combination with Prayer of Mending, both help against teams that have strong burst damage. Because they lack damage reduction spells, Holy Priest healing is much weaker the longer an arena match goes on. They fall short in power compared to their second healing specialization, Discipline.