Mythic+ Healer tier list The War Within Season 2 prediction
M+ healer rankings for The War Within Season 2 are here. See which specs will dominate Mythic+ dungeons and which ones might struggle this time!
Table of Contents
Key takeaways
- This M+ Healer tier list is based on PTR data and will be updated once new information arrives. Every tier list has its own criteria, so if your favorite spec ranks lower here, don’t worry, it might shine elsewhere!
- S-tier: Discipline Priest.
- A-tier: Mistweaver Monk, Restoration Druid.
- B-tier: Holy Paladin, Preservation Evoker, Holy Priest.
- C-tier: Restoration Shaman.
With Season 2 just around the corner, WoW player base is thrilled to finally experience all the new things The War Within offers. One of these things is new balance changes and adjustments to classes and their specs. This is why we checked out all the available information on PTR. And now we bring you the result of this work, our Season 2 Mythic+ Healer tier list.
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Previously, we have discussed DPS rankings and Tank tier list. So, today, our attention is on another important part of any group: Healers. As always, we’re ranking healer specs from S to C tier. S-tier healers will shine in The War Within Season 2, while C-tier specs may struggle and need some tuning.
This M+ healer tier list is based on information from PTR, so things could change before launch. Some tweaks might not make it live, and the dev team could still roll out last-minute adjustments. Also, this is just one tier list among many. It’s only our take on the possible Season 2 meta. If your favorite spec isn’t at the top, don’t worry! What matters most is playing what you enjoy.
The War Within Season 2 Healer tier list criteria
For you to better understand the reasoning behind placing a certain spec into a specific tier, first, let’s go over our criteria:
- S-tier. The WoW best healer Mythic+ to play. Heads above any other contestants in numbers and what it can do. That includes healing output, direct and passive damage, and utility. If nothing changes on release day, specs from this tier are certain to be meta.
- A-tier. A place where all the balanced classes go. They are great alternatives to each other and can even compete with S-tier in some specific scenarios. But overall S-tier picks are just stronger. If meta picks are not up to your liking, anything from this tier is a great option.
- B-tier. Classes that have some drawbacks that stop them from reaching A-tier. It can be a lack of raw healing or damage, a relation between difficulty and effectiveness, or an unfavorable encounter design in the upcoming Season.
- C-tier. For specs that currently struggle the most. These are in dire need of adjustments from developers to make them a compelling option.
The War Within Healer tier list: Patch 11.1 prediction
The one thing aside from direct adjustments that shift the power of classes around is the new Season 2 tier sets. Having an effect that suits the class’s strongest build or brings new, previously impossible interaction can greatly change where a class is in the rankings.
Healers have the same mechanic for 2-pieces called Insurance! This bonus allows every healer to apply an extra Healing-over-Time or HoT effect to the target. If the target drops below 40% in Health, then the effect is consumed for a burst of healing. The real power of these sets comes with 4-piece bonuses. These are unique for every Healer, improving various abilities and adding extra Insurance! interactions.
As the 2-piece is the same for all the healers, from now on we will only mention the effects of 4-piece passives. With set bonuses figured out, let us start specs placement in our Mythic+ healer tier list.
S-Tier Classes
Discipline Priest
Currently, Discipline Priest is the strongest option out of all healers going into Season 2 despite recent nerfs. Although some of the A-tier contestants can reach the same or sometimes even higher levels of healing output, Discipline Priest compensates that easily with strong mitigation tools. They have strong AoE healing and damage, great single target, and spot healing. Top that with decent utility and you have probably the best healer WoW for safe and fast M+ runs.
The options of Hero Talents focus on two different aspects of Discipline Priest. The Voidweaver improves your spec’s damage. The skills and talents in this tree provide extra interactions between Atonement mechanic and damaging spells, allowing you to have better passive damage, while keeping doing your primary job. Combining Entropic Rift with Penance and Void Blast and here you have high AoE damage uptime, while still healing your allies. The superior level of spec’s damage comes from this Hero tree.
The Oracle improves your healing and utility. It provides you with a set of rotating cooldowns with unique effects and talents aimed at strengthening such things as Power Word: Shield, Angelic Feathers, Pain Suppression, Desperate Prayer, Atonement uptime, etc.
Utility is also a strong point of Discipline Priest, only rivaled by a few other specs. As was mentioned above, Discipline Priest brings powerful mitigation tools, Pain Suppression, Power Word: Shield, and Power Word: Barrier. Power Word: Fortitude is another good buff that improves the survivability of your group. Power Infusion is a great damage buff for your allies. Situational things, like Angelic Feather, Psychic Scream, Mass Dispel, etc. also come in handy.
The 4-piece bonus improves your Power Word: Shield. When it is absorbed, the target is granted Insurance! Also, allies with absorption or Insurance! get 15% more healing from you.
A-Tier Classes
Mistweaver Monk
Another healer in our WoW M+ healer tier list with huge raw healing and damage output, that in some scenarios can compete with Discipline Priest. With the changes coming in Season 2, their passive healing and damage potential grew significantly thanks to new talents such as Jade Empowerment.
Still, Mistweaver Monk is one of the healers that requires you to be in a melee range to maximize its full potential, so that can be a problem in certain encounters. Such a play style is called Fistweaver. Fistweaver relies on healing through your melee attacks, triggering various procs, talents, and skill interactions. Also the best healer in WoW for physical damage party composition, thanks to Mystic Touch. This effect increases physical damage dealt by all your party members to affected targets.
Both Hero talent trees do the same thing, increasing powers of specific abilities and improving your damage and healing options. Master of Harmony introduces a new resource, Vitality. You store that by dealing damage and healing allies. Activating Thunder Focus Tea allows you to access that stored Vitality to empower your healing and, with some talents, damage. This allows you to create a strong buff for yourself. But its effectiveness depends on your performance in downtime.
The Conduit of the Celestials, on the other hand, is not affected by your performance. It upgrades existing cooldowns, like Sheilun’s Gift and both celestial Invokes, while granting a new powerful button, Celestial Conduit. Some new procs grant you bursts of extra damage and healing. And some of them reduce the cooldowns of existing abilities.
Among all Monk specs, Mistweaver offers the most utility. Mystic Touch increases physical damage dealt to targets by your whole group. This makes Mistweaver a perfect healer for parties focused on physical damage. Revival and Detox allow you to quickly deal with many debuffs, while Life Cocoon provides powerful shielding. Buttons like Tiger’s Lust, Ring of Peace, and Paralysis are niche but can find their uses.
The 4-piece bonus ensures that Renewing Mist always applies Insurance! of a shorter duration. The power of this insurance increases proportionally to the number of people covered by your Renewing Mists. This ramps up the effect of your HoT, allowing you to have an opportunity to dish out more damage.
Restoration Druid
Due to changes introduced on PTR, Restoration Druid finally has numbers that compensate for the difficulty of this spec. As its healing profile is based on many HoTs, inexperienced players can have problems dealing with incoming burst damage. You must know the fight timeline to apply HoTs beforehand and prepare defensive cooldowns. But if you are one of those skilled players, you can rival other top-tier healers. Add to that unique and valuable utility, and you have a powerful option among best healers for Mythic plus.
Hero talents for Restoration Druid have clear goals in their design. The Keeper of the Grove is all about your Grove Guardians. The ability of the same name summons treants to help you out in the fight. They cast healing spells such as Swiftmend and Nourish. And with Hero talents, their existence on the battlefield empowers your raw healing and abilities like Rejuvenation, Efflorescence, and Lifebloom. Talents from this tree emphasize improving your healing, be it through empowering your spells or the capabilities of Grove Guardians. Out of two Hero Talents trees, this one is easier to play.
The Wildstalker is all about shapeshifting to deal some extra damage. Most talents increase your damage capabilities while you’re in Cat Form. Of course, there are some bonuses to healing, so you can have windows to shapeshift. But it requires knowing your limits. Knowing when to push for extra damage in Cat Form. This spec is more mechanically involved than the Keeper of the Groove.
The highly sought utility buff Druids have is the Mark of the Wild. This makes everyone deal more damage, heal, and receive less damage. Druids also have other useful abilities like Ironbark, Innervate, Stampeding Roar, Soothe, and Remove Corruption. Out of all healers they have superb crowd-control abilities like Incapacitating Roar, Mass Entanglement, Ursol’s Vortex, Typhoon, etc.
With a 4-piece bonus, your Lifebloom has a 30% chance to also apply Insurance! When this effect expires or is consumed, it applies a missing Druid HoT to its target. Possible HoT effects are Wild Growth, Regrowth, and Rejuvenation.
B-Tier Classes
Holy Paladin
Although Holy Paladins bring a great utility package, currently their numbers are quite lacking for higher echelons of Mythic healer tier list. The War Within also allows you to play Holy Paladin as a classic caster healer. Before, you could only be in melee, as spamming Crusader Strike was necessary for Holy Power generation. With the adjustments in Season 2, they feel even better than in the previous season. They have better answers to hard heal checks due to improved Divine Toll. Still, to compare with high-tier healers they need extra raw numbers increased.
Herald of the Sun provides you with direct damage and healing increase, making it a straightforward choice for a Hero talent tree. It brings an interaction for your Holy Power spenders, granting them extra damage or healing. Even though it is quite easy to understand, it brings some decision-making. To realize this bonus damage or healing you need to decide where to spend Holy Power, you can’t have both at once.
The Lightsmith augments various aspects of your kit by adding small interactions to many abilities. You can deal some extra damage, provide bonus shielding, improve your survivability, and effects of your auras, and even reduce cooldowns of utility like Rebuke and Lay Hands. It doesn’t focus on a specific part of your kit but rather provides nice bonuses to different facets of it.
Paladins are known for their strong utility. This utility is why Holy Paladin still can be a valuable pick in the right hands. Devotion Aura provides flat damage reduction to the whole team, which can be empowered with some talents. Lay Hands is a full Health heal that can save a tank in extreme situations. Blessings of Freedom, Sacrifice, and Protection are also valuable cooldowns.
The 4-piece bonus applies Insurance! effect to every ally healed by Divine Toll. You also reduce the cooldown of Divine Toll by 1 second each time you spend Holy Power.
Preservation Evoker
Although Preservation Evoker has decent numbers, in general, better than Holy Paladin, Preservation Evoker struggles because many of its key healing abilities rely on positioning, requiring allies to stand close together, which can lead to some devastating results. This can happen too often with random players in your group.
Many don’t know how to play around with Preservation Evoker. If you play with friends or have communication with your group, the Preservation Evoker is a nice choice to run M+. Especially considering the unique utility the spec provides.
The Chronowarden is about playing with time and Bronze magic, applying time-related augmentations. Many talents bring interactions that extend the duration of effects, provide damaging echoes to allies, and apply DoT or HoT effects to target. All the talents in this tree serve as passive arguments to the buttons you press in your base rotation.
The Flameshaper brings a new Engulf ability, which provides a burst of healing or damage. This burst further increases per every periodic effect applied to the target by you. Other talents boost breath-based or HoT/DoT abilities. Out of two Hero talent trees, this one is more interactive but requires better positioning.
Utility is where some extra flavor for Evoker comes from. The Blessing of the Bronze is a valuable movement buff for the team. Things like Expunge and Cauterizing Flame allow you to deal with many DoT effects. Zephyr is a valuable group-wide mitigation. Tail Swipe and Sleep Walk are nice crowd-control tools.
With a 4-piece bonus, Verdant Embrace has a shorter cooldown and always applies Insurance! to its target.
Holy Priest
Seems like the Holy Priest is destined to be forever hidden in the shadow of its sibling spec, Discipline Priest. Holy is a classic healer that is all about big direct heals. This spec’s numbers are okay, but again, Discipline has everything better. Even Holy’s unique utility is weaker. The only advantage Holy has over all the other healers is that it is the easiest one to play. It is a perfect choice for players new to healing. It is easy, straightforward, and has the tools to heal through many scenarios. But as you get better at healing, you will realize the limits of the spec.
The first Hero talent tree option for the Holy Priest is the Oracle. Just as for Discipline, the tree empowers the healing and utility of this class. It is hard not to compare to another spec, but bonuses provided to Discipline are also better. Despite this spec focusing on your healing, it is not as easy as one may think. You need to keep track of your Premonitions to maximize their usefulness.
Archon is all about passive healing and damage through Halo. This ability becomes your cornerstone. With this tree, each time you press Halo you spawn extra rings for 10 seconds, and those rings return to you after reaching their maximum range. And that translates to a lot of free healing and damage. Out of two Hero trees, this is a straightforward one.
As for utility, Holy has some unique buttons aside from standard Priest things like Power Infusion, Psychic Scream, Mass Dispel, Power Word: Fortitude, etc. Those are Guardian Spirit which provides a cheat death effect. Symbol of Hope for mana and defensive cooldowns replenishment. And Holy Word: Chastise for extra stun.
With a 4-piece bonus, your Holy Words: Serenity and Sanctify apply Insurance! to their target (1 per Sanctify cast) during Apotheosis. Your healing also increases per every Insurance! active.
C-Tier Classes
Restoration Shaman
Restoration Shaman is the one spec that struggles the most right now in WoW healer rankings. Although its healing is in the okay range, it has glaring issues with Mana management and passive damage. Right now the mana is not much of the issue, but that is due to the previous tier set. Sadly, the Season 2 tier set has nothing to address Mana problems. So as soon as you upgrade your gear, you must spend time between packs recovering Mana. Thus slowing the run. And the passive damage is just very low.
The hero talent options provide you with two different playstyles. The Farseer is about empowering your direct healing spell, while also summoning Ancestor spirits to help you heal. It is all about free casts and procs, making it the Hero tree with fewer Mana problems.
The Totemic one, as the name suggests, is all about improving your totems. Totems become stronger, heal more, live longer, and have increased areas of effects, or reduced cooldowns. On paper, maintaining full totem uptime sounds powerful and easy. But in reality, there are a lot of considerations when it comes to their positioning.
Still, Restoration Shaman has a huge list of possible utility choices. Skyfury is a great group buff as it increases Mastery for everyone. Bloodlust and Heroism are great cooldowns for a party-wide burst. Various totems like Spirit Link, Capacitor, Wind Rush, Poison Cleansing, etc., provide keys to many situations.
With 4 pieces of the set, your Healing Rain applies Insurance! to a single target in its area. Consuming Insurance! increases the power of the next Chain Heal, Healing Surge, and Healing Wave.
Conclusion
And this is it for our WoW healer tier list. We hope you know now what the situation with healers is in the new season. Whatever your pick for running Mythic+ will be, we advise you to pick the class that suits your skill and playstyle the most. What’s important is to enjoy your spec and your journey, not chasing metas from WoW healing tier list. Happy hunting!
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