WoW Retail - Best Healer in TWW Season 2
In Season 2 of The War Within, your choice of healer class becomes crucial. Each specialization offers a range of unique abilities, from powerful direct healing spells to versatile utility and damage tools. In high-level competitive PvE content, the ability to keep your group's health in check is just the beginning. Beyond pure healing, factors such as the buffs each class brings to the raid, synergy with team composition, utility in critical situations, and adaptation to specific encounter mechanics are decisive.
This analysis will guide you through the strengths and weaknesses of each healer class, revealing which ones stand out as the most coveted options in this new chapter of World of Warcraft: The War Within.
Discipline Priest
The recent 11.1 update in World of Warcraft has brought significant changes for the Discipline Priest, particularly regarding the synergy between Shadow Covenant and Mindbender talents within the Voidweaver Hero Talents. Although the Oracle option has proven to be competitive, it appears that Voidweaver will remain the predominant choice, thanks to the consistency offered by Shadow Covenant and the Rift generated by Mind Blast.
This specialization excels in situations of explosive and sustained area damage, allowing it to effectively handle encounters with constant decay damage, such as Swampface or Candle King. The versatility of the Discipline Priest extends to its arsenal of damage reduction tools. The revision has allowed them to combine Lenience and Evangelism in dungeons, while maintaining Power Word: Barrier and Pain Suppression to mitigate the most intense damage spikes.
The update has directly affected the synergy between Shadow Covenant and Mindbender. Previously, Shadow Covenant increased Mindbender's damage, but with the change, that synergy has been reduced, making the benefit of Shadow Covenant smaller.
However, Voidweaver remains strong. The Rift generated by Mind Blast provides constant and additional damage, and the nature of Shadow Covenant, although nerfed, remains a powerful tool for explosive healing. The consistency of Voidweaver's healing and damage is what keeps it a preferred option.
Additionally, the presence of numerous magic dispels in dungeons and boss encounters gives exceptional value to Mass Dispel. The ability to quickly remove multiple harmful magic effects is crucial in many scenarios. Likewise, Mind Soothe remains an invaluable tool for facilitating strategic skips and avoiding unnecessary encounters.
The combination of explosive damage, consistent healing, damage reduction, and versatile utility makes the Discipline Priest a solid option for season 11.1. Although the synergy between Shadow Covenant and Mindbender has been attenuated, Voidweaver remains a viable and powerful specialization, capable of excelling in a wide variety of encounters.
Strengths and Weaknesses
The Discipline Priest stands out for its explosive healing capacity with short cooldowns, ideal for critical moments. Its powerful cooldowns, based on absorption and damage reduction, significantly increase the group's effective health. Additionally, it contributes considerable damage with a low opportunity cost, balancing healing and offense.
In Mythic+ environments, its versatility shines, offering robust tools for both group and individual healing. However, its reactive nature limits its ability for emergency raid healing, compared to other specializations.
Discipline Priest mistakes are more costly, penalizing a lack of foresight. Its learning curve in raid is steep, demanding a deep mastery of its mechanics. Personal mobility is reduced, and it shares with the Holy Paladin the peculiarity of lacking an interrupt.
Mistweaver Monk
The Mistweaver Monk has received subtle adjustments for Season 2 of The War Within, focusing on optimizing their healing efficiency in single-target combat. A key change is the improvement of Invoke Chi-Ji, the Red Crane, which now enhances mastery healing on single targets, not just in massive cleave, providing a more consistent experience when using your Celestial. Similarly, Jade Empowerment has been adjusted to make its lightning more effective on individual targets, without losing its potency in dense groups of enemies.
In dungeons, the Mistweaver solidifies itself as a healing powerhouse, with Invoke Chi-Ji, the Red Crane, Jade Empowerment, and Sheilun's Gift available with short cooldowns, allowing them to deliver explosive healing in an instant. Additionally, they bring a quick interrupt, a good external, and excellent crowd control with an area stun and Ring of Peace.
During Dragonflight, caster/magic compositions dominated the Mythic+ scene, limiting the shine of Mystic Touch. The War Within emphasizes direct interrupts, where enemy casts do not go on cooldown unless they are directly interrupted. Although low-cooldown interrupts are crucial, magic-centric compositions are still common, making it difficult for the Monk's passive to stand out.
Despite this, the Mistweaver excels in any composition, thanks to its ability to generate a large amount of healing in both single-target and area situations, dispel debuffs with Revival, and deal solid damage while healing. Its main limitation is observed at the 0.1% level of play, where its cooldowns do not seem to be as potent as those of the Druid or Discipline for healing the most intense incoming damage. This is similar to the end of Season 1, where the Mistweaver offered excellent output, but Discipline still surpassed it.
Strengths and Weaknesses
The Mistweaver Monk stands out for its exceptionally potent single-target healing, capable of keeping even the most demanding tanks' health in check. Its ability to deal damage while healing makes it a proactive and versatile healer.
Mobility is its hallmark, thanks to Chi Torpedo/Roll, Tiger's Lust, and Transcendence, allowing it to position itself with ease. Its resilience is notable, with multiple personal damage reduction cooldowns. Additionally, it offers robust crowd control with Paralysis, Leg Sweep, and Ring of Peace.
However, mana management can be a challenge for novices, requiring careful resource management. Historically, its scaling has been poor as expansions progress.
One of its main shortcomings is the lack of a raid-wide damage reduction cooldown, limiting its ability to mitigate massive group damage spikes.
Restoration Druid
The Restoration Druid positions itself as a powerful option in Season 2 of The War Within. Its dispel profile, capable of removing poisons and curses, along with a low-cooldown interrupt, solid damage, crowd control, and a raid buff, makes it a complete healer.
Although its healing is GCD (global cooldown) intensive, the Mastery: Harmony change in the 11.1 update facilitates the process, improving healing with fewer HoTs (heal over times). While Regrowth remains the primary source of focused healing, the reliance on multiple HoTs or Lifebloom on the target is reduced, although these are still crucial in high HPS (healing per second) encounters, which feature more priority target healing than in the previous season. Although explosive AoE damage is still present, the Druid handles it effectively with proper preparation.
The determining factor for the best healer in Season 2 is maximum HPS in high-level dungeon groups. While other healers excel in pug groups, the Druid appears to offer the highest HPS in dungeons currently. Its exceptional crowd control, priority healing, and Mark of the Wild, a valuable buff for high-level groups, solidify it as a preferred choice. In summary, the Restoration Druid combines healing power, utility, and versatility, making it a strong contender in the new season.
Strengths and Weaknesses
The Restoration Druid shines with its potent burst healing in raids, backed by short cooldowns. Its survivability is remarkable in both raids and Mythic+, allowing it to stand firm in the face of adversity. The ability to heal on the move gives it an invaluable tactical advantage.
Its active damage, both in raids and Mythic+, is a significant contribution, and its healing in Mythic+ is robust and reliable. However, it lacks group or raid-wide damage reduction, limiting its ability to mitigate massive damage spikes.
In raids, it must deal damage to avoid running out of mana, requiring a careful balance between healing and offense. Its healing outside of cooldowns is moderate in raids, and its passive damage is mediocre, which can affect its overall contribution in certain scenarios. In summary, the Restoration Druid is a versatile and powerful healer, but with certain limitations that require consideration.
Preservation Evoker
The Preservation Evoker emerges as a dominant healing force in Season 2 of The War Within. Its arsenal includes powerful combined heals through its empowered spells, a poison dispel, an "omni" dispel with Cauterizing Flame, a crowd control amplifier (Oppressing Roar), an air launch (Tail Swipe), and a knockback (Wing Buffet), offering impressive versatility.
The recent significant nerf to Augmentation could pave the way for Preservation in Season 2, as it displays elite healing levels, comparable to A and S tier specializations. However, its complexity lies in the intense setup required for effective healing and the punishing nature of its empowerment and combo gameplay. A mistake can quickly deplete the resources needed to keep allies alive.
Its external, Time Dilation, will be crucial to support the group in a wide range of encounters. The Chronowarden Hero Talent tree enhances empowered abilities, adding heal-over-time effects (Reverberations) and cooldown reduction (Temporal Burst), significantly increasing its overall healing and its effectiveness with ranged allies.
The need for meticulous preparation and precise resource management are the biggest challenges of the Preservation Evoker. It requires a deep understanding of its combos and precise anticipation of damage spikes. This makes it a high-risk, high-reward specialization, ideal for players seeking an active and challenging role.
Despite the complexity, the potential of Preservation is undeniable. Its ability to provide explosive heals, control the battlefield, and adapt to various situations makes it a valuable member of any group.
Strengths and Weaknesses
The Preservation Evoker stands out for its exceptionally strong stacked healing through Dream Breath and Emerald Blossom. Its powerful group and raid cooldowns, such as Dream Flight, Rewind, and Zephyr, offer significant mitigation.
High mobility is key, with Hover allowing spellcasting while moving, Verdant Embrace jumping to allies, and Rescue transporting them. Its damage is notable, with Fire Breath and talents like Scarlet Adaptation and Lifeforce Mender.
Obsidian Scales and Obsidian Bulwark provide robust defenses. However, its 30-yard range limits healing of spread allies, and its single-target healing is weak.
It lacks powerful emergency buttons outside of Rewind. Empowered spells, with long cast times, make their safe use difficult. In summary, Preservation is a mobile and powerful healer in groups, but with limitations in specific situations.
Holy Paladin
The Holy Paladin has received minor adjustments in Season 2, focusing on empowering their casted abilities. Holy Light has become a solid healing ability, albeit with a significant mana cost, limiting its use to occasional top-off heals for allies. Divine Toll benefits from the tier-set bonus, allowing our spenders to further reduce the cooldown of Toll, and for Toll casts to apply the tier-set buff, Insurance!, to all allies.
The Paladin's main issue lies in their overall healing output, feeling like one of the lowest HPS healers. While they are perfectly capable of completing level 12 dungeons, they struggle to heal through the heavy healing checks in this dungeon pool, compared to their peers.
However, it's not all negative. The Paladin has a short interrupt cooldown, excellent damage reduction with Aura Mastery/Devotion Aura, solid crowd control, and group utility with their blessings. The specialization is very well equipped to deal with the poisons and bleeds present in this dungeon pool.
If they were better tuned for 5-player group healing, the specialization would see significantly more representation. But at present, they need additional buffs to be more competitive. The lack of HPS compared to other healers, in high-damage situations, is the main limitation. Even so, their versatility and utility make them a viable option for groups seeking control and mitigation, though not massive healing.
Strengths and Weaknesses
The Holy Paladin stands out for its single-target healing, potent with Holy Shock and Word of Glory. Its damage is notable in both raids and Mythic+, with Crusader Strike and Judgment generating holy power to heal and damage.
Its utility is valuable, with Aura Mastery, Blessing of Protection, and Blessing of Freedom. However, it struggles to heal multiple spread targets, relying on Light of Dawn for AoE.
It lacks a powerful throughput cooldown, relying on strong casts during Avenging Wrath. The need to be near enemies to maintain its performance can be a problem.
Its mobility is limited, with Divine Steed as the only speed enhancement. In summary, the Holy Paladin is a strong healer in single-target and utility, but with limitations in spread group healing and mobility.