Greetings, adventurers! I am Librarian Husky, your guide through the intricate world of healing in our beloved realm. Whether you are a seasoned healer or just starting your journey, this guide is designed to illuminate the path ahead, providing valuable insights and strategies for each healing specialization. Together, we will delve into the complexities and nuances of your chosen class, ensuring you are well-equipped to tackle any challenge that comes your way. Let’s embark on this exciting adventure together!

Keeper of the Grove: The Easier Option

Keeper of the Grove is definitely the easier option between the two. That said, it does have a bit of depth, with tons of potential for min-maxing, which you can learn about in our healing course.

Understanding Druid Cooldowns

Moving on to Druid cooldowns, Incarnation is a very strong and reliable ability in Solo Shuffle. It can simply be pressed on cooldown at both the start and end of each round, pretty much guaranteeing that nobody dies while it’s active.

Passive Playstyle of Resto Druid

Resto Druid is one of the most passive healers, at least in Solo Shuffle. Some people may claim that you have to clone all game, but that’s not really true. Resto Druid continues to excel in single-target healing if you manage your HoTs well, allowing you to win most lobbies by being more efficient than the enemy healer.

Strategies for Beginner Druids

Of course, offensive play is possible and sometimes effective, but as a beginner, you don’t need to do anything fancy. Focus on maximizing healing per second (HPS) and using Tree Form on cooldown while trading other cooldowns at sensible times.

Preservation of Ochre: Resto Druid’s Rival

With a mix of scores across the board, Resto Druid will be the first healer entering the medium difficulty tier. Next up is every Resto Druid’s sworn enemy, Preservation of Ochre. During its debut in Dragonflight, Evoker was conceptually considered a difficult healer due to limited range on spells and even skill shots during the Dragonflight Alpha.

The Challenge of Playing Evoker

You might have received a warning that Evoker was an advanced class. Two years later, Evoker is still one of the more challenging healers, despite being incredibly strong, just like Resto Druid. Some of the difficulty with Evoker stems from the maintenance involved and the numerous decisions to be made.

Managing Resources and Spell Sequences

Managing Essence, keeping up Reversion, and planning how and when to budget your empowered spells make Evoker healing less straightforward than many people think. It’s definitely easy to mess up. Pre-healing is very min-maxy, trying to squeeze as much value out of abilities like Golden Hour and Stasis.

The Importance of Specific Spell Sequences

In fact, a lot of Evoker burst healing is tied into very specific spell sequences, which, if executed correctly, can contribute a significant amount of healing. However, healing alone isn’t what makes Preservation of Ochre challenging for beginners.

Adapting to Evoker’s Play Style

The true difficulty curve lies in adapting to the playstyle Evoker is best suited for. To start playing to its true potential, you need to strike a balance between offensive and defensive play. Due to their limited healing range, Evokers must stay engaged in most fights while also applying offensive pressure on the enemy team.

The Best Defense is a Good Offense

The saying “the best defense is a good offense” perfectly summarizes Preservation of Ochre. You always have the ability to deal meaningful damage, which, if done consistently, almost turns Evoker into a support spec, making it fundamentally different from any other healer.

The Complexity of Evoker Healing

It’s no accident that Scouring Flame is considered a soft lock PvP talent, with the ability to AOE purge multiple buffs every Fire Breath while also dealing the highest damage out of any healer. Focusing only on healing is like playing half of your spec, and knowing how to balance all of your commitments can feel overwhelming.

Understanding Evoker Cooldowns

Even though Evoker has a lot of cooldowns, they can be a bit strange. Stasis, for instance, completely relies on preemptive play, storing three spells for later use. It’s a convenient button to press in the early game when everything is ready, but a bit awkward to use later when things become disjointed.

The Challenge of Time Dilation

Time Dilation is another peculiar cooldown. On the surface, it appears to be a damage reduction ability, but it doesn’t actually reduce damage at all; instead, it staggers it over time. Even though Evoker might be one of the most dominant healers in the meta, it’s not obvious to new players how to handle all the commitments that make it an S-tier healer.

Transitioning to Mistweaver Monk

Next up is Mistweaver Monk, which has historically been one of the more challenging healers to play, especially in Solo Shuffle. Unfortunately, what has made Mistweaver difficult in the past continues to be a challenge in the current meta.

The Healing Mechanism of Mistweaver

The core problem is not how much healing a Monk can do, but rather how they actually heal. On one hand, Enveloping Mist is a vital source of healing, offering a strong heal-over-time effect and even buffing other heals by 30%. However, it has one huge drawback: its duration. Unlike Resto Druids, who can easily apply and extend every HoT for well over its base duration, Enveloping Mist lasts only a short time.

The Strengths of Holy Paladin

Holy Paladin is conveniently built around instant cast spells. Holy Shock, which now benefits from the Herald of the Sun tree, can randomly get buffed to heal for three times as much and even duplicate to heal a second time. Additionally, Word of Glory, thanks to Herald of the Sun, is now even stronger, featuring a healing-over-time effect passively baked in and healing more on the Paladin themselves.

New Mechanics and Simplified Playstyle

Paladins have also picked up some new tech from the Herald tree, with the signature mechanic being Dawnlight, which procs from Barrier of Faith and ramps up the healing of the next two Word of Glory casts. So far, everything in the Paladin’s rotation has been instant cast. Rotationally, Paladins are pretty straightforward; the decision trees that other healers need to navigate aren’t really a concern for them. You either build or spend, which is not too complicated.

Cooldowns and Skill Expression

Paladin cooldowns are also pretty straightforward. Of course, there is some skill expression involved with an ability like Blessing of Sacrifice, but it’s important to remember that these rankings are only about skill floors. Sacrifice is a straightforward damage reduction cooldown, and in many cases, it doesn’t need to be fancy. Neither do Blessing of Protection, Divine Shield, or Mastery.

Changes in Playstyle

On the playstyle side, Paladins might actually be a bit more challenging than before. Towards the end of Dragonflight, it was fairly common for Paladins to stand back and play passively around their tier’s Deliverance windows. However, in the War Within, there may be more incentive to press forward and play aggressively, which could complicate the spec slightly. Nonetheless, foundationally, the Holy Paladin continues to be very vanilla, and there is a reason for that.

The Strengths of Discipline Priest

Discipline Priest is commonly suggested as a good healer for new players. Moving on to our first priest spec, Discipline is looking quite strong going into the War Within. Some of its strength comes from the fact that Disc is now even easier to play, especially if you’re using the new Oracle hero spec.

Passive Playstyle and New Cooldowns

Oracle not only makes Disc more passive to play but also grants an entirely new cooldown— or should we say four entirely new cooldowns—through Premonition. Historically, the main difficulty when playing Disc in Solo Shuffle stems from the fact that it is a tempo-based healer. This means you need to constantly stay ahead; it’s like a snowball effect. If you can keep momentum, that’s great, but the moment you fall behind, you’re kind of screwed.

Healing Mechanics and Ramp-Up Time

Discipline doesn’t really have many punchy instant-cast healing recovery options and instead relies on slowly ramping with Power Word: Shield modifiers while maintaining DoTs on enemy targets. Fortunately, Discipline Priest healing has gotten slightly easier, as Blizzard gave massive buffs to Power Word: Shield going into the War Within, which even includes shiny new passives on the Oracle tree itself, increasing its absorption and causing every cast to automatically apply Prayer of Mending.

Mastering Modifiers and Healing Efficiency

Part of the learning curve when playing Discipline now in the War Within is making use of all the other modifiers that buff Power Word: Shield, which involves a bit of ramping to maximize efficiency. Talents like Wheel and Wo and Harsh Discipline represent the skill floor of healing as a Discipline Priest in 2024. If you’re not using Radiance, Penance, and Shield in the right order, you are missing out on a ton of healing. Oracle also provides an entirely new dimension to this playstyle.

New Healing Mechanics for Discipline Priests

Discipline Priests now have a new set of cooldowns through Premonition, along with buffs to Pain Suppression, which continues to have two charges in the War Within. Thanks to the fact that Oracle makes Discipline Priests better optimized for maximizing healing output, they can adopt a more passive playstyle, making it easier than before to adapt to the chaos of Solo Shuffle.

The Learning Curve of Discipline Priests

Before you get too excited and rush to make a Discipline Priest for the first time, it’s essential to reiterate the main learning curve of this spec. Unlike Holy Paladins, Discipline is more of a preemptive, tempo-based healer, which is a challenging concept for newer players to grasp. The spec isn’t optimized for reacting to big damage after it has occurred but instead focuses on finding ways to mitigate damage before it happens, specifically by ramping up Penance and Power Word: Shield with various modifiers.

Understanding the Role of a Discipline Priest

This approach turns Discipline into something conceptually different from what most people think of as a traditional healer. Despite having a more streamlined rotation, better cooldowns, and a more passive playstyle, Discipline will remain a fairly difficult healer in the War Within. Holy Priest is up next, and here things get a bit tricky.

The Strength of Holy Priests

When a Holy Priest is tuned properly and falls into the A or S tier, it becomes a strong contender for being very easy to play. The reason for this is that, rotationally, Holy Priest is super straightforward. On the maintenance side, all you need to do is press Prayer of Mending on cooldown.

Streamlined Healing Mechanics

If you’re playing Benediction, the Paladin will sometimes press Renew for you, and if you’re using Oracle, the Paladin will automatically shield the target as long as you consistently press Prayer of Mending. As long as you’re doing this, you’re effectively handling most of your healing maintenance automatically. Additionally, you need to place your Lightwell down, which technically counts as maintenance as well.

Spot Healing and Instant Casts

When it comes to spot healing, Holy Priest is also relatively easy, at least on paper. The combination of Serenity, Surge of Light procs, and Power Word: Life—now usable on targets below 50%—provides Holy Priests with a ton of strong instant cast heals. This significantly reduces one of the key difficulties faced by many healers, as all of these heals are entirely reactive.

Evaluating Holy Priests as Easy Healers

When we look at our original criteria, Holy Priest definitely checks the box for having a simple rotation with strong reactive heals, which is the most important part of being an easy healer. Some Holy Priest cooldowns are straightforward too.

Cooldown Management in Solo Shuffle

In Solo Shuffle, Angel Form is essentially a throwaway cooldown used in most openers; it’s a button you press without thinking to avoid falling behind. Guardian is also quite straightforward, especially when treated as a tempo cooldown instead of an emergency button.

The Misunderstood Resto Shaman

Our final healer is commonly misunderstood. From the outside, most people will look at details and see Riptide, Earth Shield, and Healing Stream Totem near the top, thinking Resto Shaman is easy. However, after playing Resto Shaman for just a few seconds, you’ll quickly realize that virtually all of their heals are instant.

New Abilities for Shamans

Now, thanks to the Far Seer hero tree, Shamans have Nature’s Swiftness on a 30-second cooldown. You heard that right—Nature’s Swiftness every 30 seconds.

Understanding Resto Shaman Healing

This can be a bit deceiving, though, because what truly allows Resto Shaman to keep their teammates alive is not related to healing at all. The Shaman class has by far the most options to be disruptive.

Disruption Techniques

Whether it’s wind shearing a cast, grounding crowd control, knocking someone off a bridge, rooting melee, or trapping an entire team with Static Field Totem, there are many tools to prevent damage from happening in the first place. Those instant heals are only half of the equation.

Multitasking Requirements

To keep health bars stable, Resto Shamans need to be proficient multitaskers, refreshing Riptide while shearing a cast all in the same global cooldown. Unfortunately, Resto Shamans are also one of those specs that can be significantly impacted by weak auras or even a lack thereof.

Challenges in Gameplay

Players these days are adept at sniping Healing Stream Totems instantly or, even better, hunting down a Riptide like they’re the Terminator. To make matters worse, one of the main Resto Shaman cooldowns continues to suffer from a massive problem: people seem to have no idea how Earth and Wall Totem works and why they should be standing in it.

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