My Favorite Healers in Dragonflight - Tier List 10.0 Season 1!

Hey what's going on guys it's Jack back again to talk about my favorite healers in another tier list video I wanted to break down not only the mechanics of how something plays and which of the healers that I enjoy the most and what I'll play the most but I also wanted to explain why those things are appealing to me because there's overall a very good diversity in terms of how the healers in this game play which is why I've stuck around for such a long time and have been maining a Healer non-stop since Siege of Orgrimmar and I wanted to talk about those reasons as well as to kind of dispel some concerns that people have about how certain specs play or how they perform because for me I got into high-end rating just playing an off meta spec back in Warlords of Draenor playing holy priest when nobody wanted them right and it absolutely can be done and it’s all about you being passionate and caring about what you're playing to help fuel you to improve your own gameplay right and of course if you'd like to support channels support the content best way to do that is on Twitch but for those of you who are not there's also the subscription button or like the join button that YouTube has which is also a great way to be able to support the channel really appreciate you checking those out as well as of course hitting that sub button.

Diving into it I did want to go over the basis for this it's been a tier list that we have and again it's not Performance Based at all this is not a prediction of what I think is going to perform the highest this is all about my subjective personal enjoyment first and foremost the ones that I love in M plus and I love in rating what things that I could be maining in doing for all of Prague rating all of pushing High Keys everything all the time I wouldn't mind that’s gonna be our first uh basis or our first uh on the list followed by fun and both things that are both enjoyable but not something I think I could donor-stop and only kind of play another is love and one but not the other there's a couple of healers in particular that I really enjoy playing in M plus or I really enjoy playing in raids but I don't enjoy playing in Mplus and then finally the math tier and things I just am not that overly interested in and I'll go into all the reasons and all the whys as a result.

first and foremost we've got disc priest, I know this is going to be quite shocking for a lot of you but I’ve pretty much fallen in love with the spec ever since they revamped it in the middle of Legion in the 7.2.5 patch I think it's a nice mix a very challenging gameplay which can also result in a lot of like pass fail to points where if you are reliant on a discipline priest to hit that ramp timer on progress and they fail then you're likely to lose a person or two I will say it's extremely enjoyable when you do hit that pass marker as the uh the absolute raw power raw strength of discipline particularly on bleeding edge progression but even on Cutting Edge aggression and hell even in heroic progress when you really hit those timers it's incredibly satisfying to be able to play with and in some respects it has a bit of that main character energy that you'll see like Mages or warlocks have on the DPS side constantly being fed innervates sometimes because we're just very Reliant upon it but being an optimal Target for that can feel pretty good.

As well as you know not having to do a lot of the duties in a Prague environment because you have such a heavy responsibility to put together a lot of healing and there's a lot of setup and challenge that goes into it, for example that back in like fatescribe or ocalo in sanctum of domination I was not doing any of the connect Alliance mechanics or connect those runes mechanics because I was busy putting together a lot of healing and it was a really fun part of that fight being able to stretch the bounds of atonement because you could extend your atonement duration even if targets are out of your 40 yard range you could have like a 60 yard range for evangelism and then you can also heal targets that are over you know hundreds of yards away.

It’s like an almost unlimited range out of atonement you can be worlds away and still damage to heal and that was a really fun part of the fight for me that could be healing people across the room through the ticking damage that they were sustaining because I set up my atonements in advance that felt immensely satisfying and was one of the favorite elements I think I had from shadowlands one of the favorite challenges that I had for that uh raid and when it comes to an M plus environment I love it.

Here as well as there’s been so many times over the years I can't begin to express how rough it has been to be a discipline priest player in an M plus environment for years and I don't think that the spec is going to be some dominant tour to force in dragonflight but it does feel possible and that's one of the biggest things for me as a player is even if Idol have to work a little bit harder it might be something that for my high key pushing group I may not be able to do the tippy top of the keys or something along those lines and but I can actually have the ability to get very close and I don’t think there's been too many times over the years maybe a season here maybe season there where I felt that and Infelt a lot more confidence going into dragonflight based off of some of the beta changes and if they keep up I am going to be extraordinarily pleased with this one in M plus because you can actually heal through atonement.

The damage that you're doing feels satisfying and actually feels like you’re able to push up health bars the way that you have not really been able to Prior or unless you had you know your two three minute cool down on hand or something like that and it wasn't until very late in the expansion where that you got any sort of help or cooldown reduction so disc very excited for in an mplus environment as I've mentioned in many videos but it feels very satisfying to know when your damage can properly convert into that healing and you’re rewarded for the setup and you’re rewarded for that hard work it is just immensely pleasing to be able to have access to.

Holy priest also historically struggled in an mplus and most notably in Legion in BFA and now they're also getting quite a bit of support and quite bit of what I would call Buffs for a variety of content they can do and nicely enough they actually are going to get some damn Variety in terms of the gameplay for a raiding environment being able to push yourself into a Prayer of Healing oriented build or stay with a single Target build is really nice because for me there is a lot of work and effort it goes into playing disc in a raid and it's nice to be able to kind of take a step back particularly when you're on Farm content or re-clears.

Holy is also a very comfortable healer to do progression raiding on because it allows you to more heavily focused on mechanics and fight timers and not have to worry about all the gameplay in terms of producing your healing but it's also nice particularly in dragonflight to have some variety in gameplay and I think holy really emphasizes that going into the expansion even having the capability of putting together bad builds in a farm environment just to see what's possible and just to see what might be fun uh is something I'm really looking forward to.

But in terms of the actual gameplay yeah I mean flash concentration got old when you played it four seasons in a row but the overall gameplay of maintaining a heal buff going throughout the encounter wasn’t the end of the world it just got old after a while and I think I'm gonna enjoy the lightweaver kind of play style as well once we start really digging into a lot of the raid Encounters in a Mythic plus environment I'm actually extremely excited about a holy priest particularly because of where it struggles uh holy does a very good job of being able to pump output very consistently and in a very very Mana efficient way so to me that says okay.

The downside is that you're not going to be able to have as much burst as much pump output as you might need you may not be able to have your cloudburst totem or your rapture Shield or the type of burst that you could have with a Paladin's Wings up and you have to be able to find a way around that for the spec and I think that's really interesting for the gameplay that can come around because we're so used to just slamming serenities and slamming holy words on cooldown as rapidly as we can.

But for an M plus environment think one of the big points I’m looking forward to is the areas where I might have to hold a holy word or two or might have to be a little bit more conservative with my cooldowns and map out how I'd like to be able to put them together because I think it would make a very significant difference in my own team’s performance and in terms of my ability to keep other people alive without some of the damage reduction or absorb effects that some other healers might bring to the table so with that Holy priest still has that Mana efficiency that I like but there's also the burst damage out of M plus that we have to be able to find good ways to counter and I think holy priest has an interesting kit to be able to deal with it and you still deal pretty good damage.

Symbol of Hope is wonderful for sustaining your mana and it's wonderful for resetting people's cooldowns and you can really stretch yourself on Long attrition encounters kind of like ner'zul out of like shadow man burialgrounds where it's just a slog of an encounter and you need to pump output for a at a high level for a long time and holy does that that's so incredibly well if we had like a most improved list or I had other lists coming around previously that I rated in like shadowlands I wish I did but man oh man I would.

Holy Paladin be like most improved going into dragonflight in terms of gameplay and what they're bringing to the table as well I'm so Overjoyed that Ashen Hollow is removed I'm really really happy about it Paladin historically they were my first healer that I ever played back in like cataclysm Paladin historically has always felt very feaster famine you have wings you’re great tell you don't have wings you’re not great but in shadowlands oh my God it was so feaster famine around Ashen Hollow having such little strength in the spec struggling to top people off when you didn't have Ashen or didn’t have like a Wings proc or something on hand was just insanely extreme I hated it so much and I'm so glad that Ashen is gone and overall the spec feels miles miles better and I'm honestly kind of surprised at some of the bitching and moaning that I've heard from Holy Paladin players because every time I played the spec in dragonfly beta I eavesreading loved it and I think it's one of the healers I'm probably just gonna be playing a lot more because of the improvements that they've made.

Wings feels powerful relevant uh it also doesn’t feel like I'm just gasping for air in between Wings up time and honestly I don't mind weaving in casting from time to time I believe it’s the talent Divine favor where every 45 seconds you get a substantial buff to your next Holy Light cast that actually feels really satisfying because it heals her so much because it's so efficient uh that feels very satisfying some of the necro Lord vank Hammer kind of talents getting brought into uh the dragonflight talents feels very good as well to be able to mix in the uh word of Glory, light of dawn kind of gameplay that feels very satisfying and overall I love the usual vibe that dungeon healing as a holy paladin and has of building resources.

Deciding how you want to be able to spend them weighing how you want to use your wings for damage or for healing being able to lean on your sack or your Bop or your own immunity or something like that to determine how much damage that you actually need to heal through and what you can mitigate, what you can immune all of that stuff has made for very fun gameplay and usually at the beginning of expansions Paladin feels slow and clunky and ridiculous but throughout dragonflight beta and having a half decent set of gear where I just grabbed a bunch of tier gear and maybe a handful of enchants the spec feels very fluid and it's very satisfying to be able to play with.

I was even kind of playing around with melee wings and I was having a ton of fun with that but I don't know if you’re really going to be having that as an optimal builds but either way Paladin does actually have good diversity in terms of how it plays.

I think having a little bit of Caster talents mixed in especially when you don't have like wings on hand feels really good and of course being able to have chunky cooldowns immunities is always going to be very satisfying and makes it feel a lot different than the Squishy immobile priest that I usually end up playing.

Next up for our fun in both raids and then mplus tier we've got Mistweaver I think it's vastly improved in a five-man environment throughout the talent setups you have at your disposal particularly the statue gameplay I think is kind of neat but I'm very annoyed that Jade serpent statue isn't a stronger or really updated I don't know it’s like Jade serpent statue and lightwell they really hate healer statues but besides that I love that they fleshed out the damage to Healing gameplay particularly face stomp ancient teachings, they feel easy to be able to get to a little annoyed that Rising mist seems like a slog to get to but with recent Buffs coming in the spec continues to be able to deal great damage even immense damage when there's lots and lots of cleave and lots of AOE to be done which is something historically, didn't happen all that much but one of the most fun times that I had playing mistweaver was during way of the crane gameplay in late BFA.

And while we're not at that level just yet that was also a very extreme level of doing insane healing and insane damage but at the massive cost to your Mana, now you feel like you're brought a little bit more down to earth and can weave in some Hots from time to time and that’s always very satisfying although I will say with the new Talent builds that MistWeaver has access to in dragonflight I wish there was like a one or two more talents that were really focused on five man in particular because when you're in a raid environment it almost it reminds me of like a Resto Druid of being able to go what I would call wide on your Hots to be able to spread a lot of healing overtime effects to a very large variety of people but you're not really having everybody with all of your Hots all stacked on top.

So in this environment it's like you’re able to spread around a lot of renewing mist and feel very satisfying cleaving you know a third of the raid all the time with your vivifies but when you go into a dungeon environment I feel like it’s a lot more difficult to be able to pump a lot of emergency single Target or emergency burst AOE healing if you don’t have a cooldown up the way that like druid’s able to benefit from its Mastery of being able to have all their Hots onto all of their allies all at once to be able to heal.

I feel like MistWeaver is kind of missing something from like a dungeon environment to be able to like I don’t know double stack renewing Mists on targets like a germination the way a druid would to be able to more heavily Focus heal when fights become a lot more heavy and damage where you're not quite able to damage the heal anymore and you’re not really able to afford spamming vivify like mad that's where there’s like a bit of a niche that I wish MistWeaver would have fixed or addressed.

But otherwise from a raid standpoint you feel like you actually interact with your raid frames and again which is lovely I love the instant cast vivify that you have on hand so you can actually provide instant spot healing support you can also set yourself up really well for overall AOE uh overall I’m very happy with the improvements it feels like they haven't done quite as much as I would like with MistWeaver but still maintaining that sort of damage to heal play style is always satisfying, the movement feels a lot better when you have some instant cast vivifies and when you can actually cleave multiple enemies in that like three to five Target damage scenario feels so much better and probably better than I've ever experienced with MissWeaver in a dungeon environment.

On our next tier we're going to start talking about some specs in the game that I really love in one type of content but not in the other and starting off with that is really got to be evoker the new healer for dragonflight, I only really like playing when I'm in a Mythic plus environment in a raiding environment it feels very samey where all your heals you are charging up and trying to get max value of and trying to burst heal targets up to full uh there's when you’re competing with a lot of other healers just using the breath to be able to have a substantial hot effect doesn’t feel nearly as satisfying and you’re always just trying to instantly pump people up from the bursts that they’re sustaining it's not really any sort of ramping play style although there kind of is some combinations people have done with things like temporal anomaly and Echo and putting together crazy lifebind bursts of output or something like that but I could also just go play this priest if I wanted to have that sort of satisfaction there.

It feels like you’re very tied to everybody being stacked altogether and while from what we’ve seen from seven of the eight boss fights in Vault of the incarnate it does not feel like there's going to be any encounter where your range or the struggle of like hitting enough targets is going to particularly effective evoker in this raid but I am worried about the future because there's always some kind of ilgenath in niolotha or halondrus in Sepulcher type encounter where I think evoker would really really struggle.

When it comes to a five-man environment oh my God I love the spec you have so much cool stuff your rescue movement feels good it's relevant you can actually move around range without interrupting their spell casting to make your healing output stronger, Zephyr actually feels like a real cool down for the group in a five-man environment whereas in a raid it’s just four other people that are standing close to you and so you can’t really control giving out that benefit as much as you'd like you don't really use time spiral in like a five man which resets the cooldown of Target’s movement speed.

But for some specs a lot of specs I would say in a raiding environment doesn't feel good at all it doesn’t really give you a very nice bonus type effect so that's also a bit of a frustration right I would say your ability to jump between burst healing and then more healing overtime effects is really satisfying in a dungeon when you're the only healer because you can pick and choose uh how you’re healing and how quickly you’re topping everybody and playing around a lot of small cooldowns is also incredibly satisfying.

Being able to kind of look into your Spell book and decide which of those major cooldowns on 20 30 minute 20 30 or one minute cooldowns that you have to be able to use is always very satisfying or I guess it should be two minute cooldowns but it’s always very satisfying though and it’s nice to be able to have that diversity in terms of how you're playing, it’s a little bit weird having it compared to like the Demon Hunter where you have a uh as a spec preservation doesn’t have a lot of rotational abilities that they're altering between you have a couple that you use a lot and then you're altering uh your gameplay around your different cooldowns and tome I love that uh in particular the ability to put out a lot of passive damage out of like your fire breath and living flame jumps from the leaping Flames Talent also feels very satisfying and I don't really feel worried about using things like for an Embrace to jump to allies in a five-man environment the way I do in a raid where I just don’t even know where I'm going to be ending up at so there's a bit of a difference there when it comes to five man’s versus raiding.

But at the same time this list does not mean that I'm going to play evoker more or less than Mistweaver monk because this character might just be an M plus only character and I would have a tremendous time with that and I’m glad that shadowlands or dragonflight lands is going to offer a lot more gear and a lot more ways to Gear Up rather than relying so heavily on raids like it has in the past so definitely expect me to play a lot of evoker but if you see me playing evoker I will probably just be in a dungeon.

Next up on our list we've got Resto Shaman for the spec I kind of have some struggles with it or some annoyances in terms of how the gameplay is put together separate then I think it's tuning or its uh performance is going to be in dragon flight when it comes to a lot of their gameplay from like a raiding perspective well I've really enjoyed like things like primordial wave gameplay where I feel like I can heal a lot of spread targets and even have a little bit of like a mini ramp I sort of wish that that was more of a presence for the spec because it reminds me a lot of like that renewing mist and vivify type element but it feels very satisfying to spread around those riptides and it feels very satisfying to have a lot of those supporting talents on hand as well.

But you're kind of putting it together with cloudburst in conjunction with cloudbursts to be able to have a sort of like ramp output almost and to me it's pretty good but I do wish there was a bit more of a sustained uh effect coming from it similar to how you can always be signify to cleave off of your renewing Mists that stuff I particularly enjoy but when it's a length of your cooldown it becomes a little bit more of like a burst element on hand.

Overall I've never really been too happy with playing like a lot of chain heal stuff because yeah you're just always cleaving off on a more allies it doesn’t really feel that impactful kind of similar to how holy priest will yay I have like a Prayer of Healing builds I’m kind of healing everybody a lot here and there it's fun every once in a while Andi probably will Flex into that quite a bit when it comes to playing holy priests but overall I don't think that gameplay is super satisfying when it comes to Shaman and I always wish there was some kind of alternative to Healing Rain particularly when we start getting ourselves into the dragonflight talents which are supposed to sort of ooze versatility for how you're going to be able to play you still have this Talent or you still have this ability on hand which is very vital to the spec so it seems like you're able to flex in some areas and not in others.

When it comes toa dungeon environment I love healing as Resto Shaman and dungeon but whenever I have to actually try to put together any damage or try to be able to cast a lava burst with the absolute like five year long cast time I have to be able to deal some single Target damage I feel like uh flame shocks duration is just way too little, it feels like it takes forever to get a lot of burst cast off even when I played Shaman in like Season Two Season three a lot of Vesper the moments where I wanted to actually do single Target damage it felt like it was taking an absolute eternity to be able to put together having cooldowns carry the spec in a five-man environment like Vesper in shadowlands clearly hurts it now going into dragonflight because it takes forever to get the chain lightning castoff and they're capped acid rain capped and does low damage and so there might be some specs that feel really good to play in that dungeon environment but then when you see the performance that’ll also have an impact on your enjoyment of the spec and I think that’s where I'm at with Shaman particularly in a dungeon environment is I very much enjoy playing it but then when I look down at the meters it's kind of like Mistweaver effect through shadowlands where I'm like damn I'm doing like zero damage even though I'm doing a great job healing everybody you're keeping everybody alive or you know like a passable job healing everybody right and and that's sort of my struggle with the spec.

I wish that the damage options were a bit more fleshed out for a rate for an M plus environment and for a raid I think it's something that there’s different ways to be able to play the spec and I feel satisfying but I almost wish that it was a bit more of like steadier output the way a monk or holy priest could I always feel like when there's a lot of burst classes in the game I usually just opt to the ones that I'm enjoying the most which feels like disc and Holy Paladin at present and with shock.

I don't really enjoy Resto Druid that much who to think right but I wanted to explain why despite it being a very high performer going into dragonflight and again this is a subjective list you could enjoy something, and I could not enjoy something it's all good right but I wanted to actually explain why because I have played Druid a couple different times in the past and it never really stuck with me in terms of its gameplay.

From a raiding perspective being able to toss out a bunch of Hots actually funny enough flourish existed before evangelism did uh interestingly enough but I really fell in love with disc’s ability to extend their atonements and deal damage to heal and I just don't feel as satisfied doing something like that as a Resto Druid, it is nice to be able to have that gameplay of going really wide with your healing over time effects and then being able to like concentrate them in a five-man environment to benefit from your Mastery and so suddenly regrowth hits like a freaking truck when you need it to when uh targets are taking a lot of pressure but if anything I think evoker sort of highlights the smoothness of having like less abilities on hand and not having to juggle a million Hots to be able to actually pump output when you need to and being able to lean more on short cooldowns and being able to lean on just the variety that the spec brings.

In terms of copycatting abilities so you're not adding another additional hot to the mix so much as it’s a copycat of what already does exist you don't need to have like eight or nine different healing over time effects that you're tracking on all at the same time Echo is doing enough for you right there.

One of the huge complaints that I have about Druid and that's just how it works is I hate when my action bars are changing what they're doing having to go into cat form to be able to Kitty weave or go into boomkin form or something along those lines uh particularly with abilities that do different things depending on the form that you're in like wild charge just being in the wrong form of wild charge and leaping to a Target instead of jumping away from it is just very frustrating and I know it’s something that I just don't actively really enjoy doing and I know there’s ways that you can also make it so your action bar does not flip but it's kind of just the most optimal way so that way you’re not having these bars on bars and bars of useless abilities when you're in a different form.

So that's been the sort of long-term thing that I didn't enjoy about Druid and why I usually don’t really play it overall I mean I think it’s going to perform great when it comes to dragonflight but it's probably Onna be the healer that I opt not to level right away or opt not to level for quite a while just because of some of those reasons uh in terms of the game play and this is not something that is super appealing when it comes to me but might level like a blood DK or something like that.

But that might be for another tier list sometime otherwise let me know which of the healers you love which the healers you hate what healers you're kind of debating between down in the comments below and be sure to join us for all of our Dragon polite live streams you can also watch my stream the access to that awesome feldrake which they are going to be giving away for watching four hours accumulated over about a week's time you don't have to watch all at once and will also be one of the eligible streamers for the Ichabod the little Harvest Golem pet if you like the gift subscriptions to the channel you'll also get access to that starting November 28th, all right thank you so much for watching guys hope you all enjoyed and found it useful and I’ll catch y'all next time!