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WoW Forever Tier List

Healer Tier List

By DoubleZug

Updated on Oct 25, 2026

Oct 25, 2026

Dungeons

Priest

Druid

Shaman

Paladin

Dungeon Ranking Explanations

Priest has the most varied and flexible toolkit of the healers in Forever and shines particularly in solo healing content like dungeons where that flexibility is most tested. Priest can excel in any group composition and while Priest doesn't bring quite the same utility/group damage punch as Paladin buffs or totems (Windfury Totem for the melee especially) it provides the highest level of safety with its high healing and does have decent group buffs in Power Word: Fortitude, Divine Spirit, Shadow Protection, and great utility in Dispel Magic, Fear Ward, Mind Soothe (highly underrated for skipping humanoid mobs), Power Infusion, etc. Prehealing with Power Word: Shield and leveraging Renew allows Priest to efficiently chain pulls and extend drinks/5SR windows. Its ability to dump mana to catch up from behind or get out of a sticky situation is best in role. Priest also has access to fun 5m specific builds like Holy Nova + Searing Light and Spirit Tap + Shadow Word: Death (both of which are actually quite strong mathematically). Both Discipline and Holy are strong in dungeons however Prayer of Mending is a standout in any dungeon that does consistent AOE group damage.

Druid similar to Priest is rated this highly not because it has the best utility or group damage contribution, but rather because it has a flexible and powerful healing toolkit suited to the 5 man environment. Two extremely powerful hots in Regrowth and Rejuvenation allow you to extend healthbars and abuse 5SR to become extremely mana efficient even while chain pulling and Wild Growth + Gift of the Earthmother allow you to burst extremely high HPS when things go south. While Druid is much weaker at focused tank healing with Healing Touch being relatively weak your HoTs and Swiftmend should be enough to handle the majority of situations. While Druid lacks a magic dispel it brings great damage and threat in Thorns, solid group buffs in Mark of the Wild and can apply important debuffs like Faerie Fire and Insect Swarm if needed at relatively low cost. While Innervate is often reserved for personal use it can also be a very potent dps cooldown for mana users. Druid also brings a battle res in Rebirth and, new in Forever, a normal out of combat res as well. Similar to Priest Druid can, at very low cost to its healing, hybridize into Catweaving or multi-dotting with Insect Swarm to contribute extra damage and can leverage Omen of Clarity procs to do AOE damage with Hurricane.

Shaman is in A tier because while it has insane group utility with totems it requires a specific (usually melee heavy) comp to truly shine and can struggle to catch up when behind and sustain its mana as well as the two S tier healers. However in the right comp that fully leverages the power of your totems and with players who are willing to play and position around you a bit more than they might have to with a Druid or a Priest Shaman will look S+ tier. Chain Healand Riptide are incredible but have a much lower peak HPS output than Priest or Druid so when things go south you can fall behind and cause deaths/wipes. Other than your totems you also bring Earth Shock which interrupts at range on a 6s cooldown as well as Ancestral Fortitude for the tank.

Paladin is going in to the Forever launch quite undertuned, and while this will eventually be fixed given that the game is going to be actively balanced, for the time being it might struggle to keep up with healing checks if high level dungeons do enough damage to test the more numerically powerful healers. Holy Paladin also has some design and toolkit issues that hamper its effectiveness in solo healing environments because, similar to Shaman but to a higher degree, Paladin struggles to do burst healing as well as sustained high healing. Its best heal in Flash of Light is very mana efficient but doesn't hit very hard, Holy Light is a bit more powerful but still underwhelming compared to the core kits of the other three healers, and its new toy in Light's Vigil is a great pre-pull cast and gives us a novel AOE/burst heal but is simply numerically undertuned compared to things like Wild Growth and Prayer of Mending. Paladins saving grace is its incredibly powerful group buffs and it will still be a solid option if you can either pair it with some off-healing or if endgame dungeons don't require much healing.

Raid 20m

20m Ranking Explanations

Shaman brings super high value stackable utility in its totems and, because its healing is also serviceable, will be highly sought after in 20m raids. Riptide amplifying Chain Heal and only have a 15s duration means Shamans are heavily incentivized to keep Riptide up on the main tank and and spam Chain Heal into them cleaving healing onto the melee. This heavy tank and melee healing profile synergizes well with the two other powerful raid healers in Druid and Holy Priest who are agnostic about positioning, want to blanket players at range with HoTs and are fine with ignoring the tank aside from incidental healing. Shaman is also the best applier of the armor buff Ancestral Fortitude which is an important defensive layer for tanks. This combination of required stackable utility in totems and its desireable profile makes at least one Shaman effectively guaranteed in any meta composition unless DPS shamans end up EXTREMELY overtuned.

Druid struggles a bit in 10m raid because of its lack of unique spec specific raid utility but in 20m where raid spots are much less constrained Druids extremely high overall HPS output, very strong raid healing profile, and massive capacity to burst HPS make it an extremely powerful choice. Druids overall HPS being 10-25% ahead of the next best healers and its ability to spread its healing farther across the raid with Gift of the Earthmother hasted Rejuvenation and 27s duration Regrowths go a long way in making up for its lack of utility, especially in 20m where its much more reasonable for high healing output to enable cutting healers. If we get to the first tier of raid with the current tuning I would be surprised not to see one Druid in the meta composition.

Priest is also a quite high overall HPS healer but with a slightly more flexible toolkit than Druid . Priest can do similar throughput with Renew and Prayer of Mending (assuming it gets good bounces) but can also pivot to tank/spot/st healing when necessary much more effectively given how much stronger Greater Heal Binding Healand Flash Healare than Healing Touch . I put Priest in A because while Prayer of Mending Holy Priest is almost certainly an S tier spec when theres enough damage to proc 4-5 Prayer of Mending bounces its output is much more conditional on incoming damage favoring Prayer of Mending than Druid which can generate super high healing unconditionally and the Discipline Power Infusion and Holy Penance builds are quite numerically weak so the average of Priest had to come down.

Paladin in raid similar to in dungeons struggles with numerical tuning and will only have a place in a meta 20m composition if Ret/Shockadin/Protection are poor enough that carrying a Holy Paladins low healing output and unexceptional profile in order to get an extra Blessing/Judgement/etc. is worth it. The unique ability to "ramp" the raid by preloading Light's Vigil on all four groups is unique and potentially powerful if fights end up having a very low overall damage taken profile with high spikes however the output of Light's Vigil is low enough that even in the best case you're probably better off bringing a Druid or a Priest who, though they cant heal 20 players in 4 globals, do a reasonable estimation of a raidwide ramp with HoTs without sacrificing a massive amount of throughput or requiring 30s of set up. If you see a Paladinin the meta 20m composition its likely to indicate that the raid is tuned to have a low healing requirement.

Raid 10m

10m Ranking Explanations

Shaman is a very strong pick for 10m not necessarily because its profile is most suited to a smaller raid size but rather because in 10m raid spots are precious and getting all your totems/blessings/etc can be quite difficult. I think it is very likely that you end up wanting to bring a set of totems via one of your healer slots. The historical tuning of 10m has often been to deal not quite enough damage to the raid to require two but too much for one healer (at least during progression) and as such raw HPS output is a bit less significant and we are more likely to take healers for utiity and raid buffs. If Elemental or Enhancement end up extremely overtuned and you want 2+ Shaman DPS in a ten man Restoration could end up much lower but I doubt we will see that tuning for the first tier.

Priest suffers from a lack of unique utility paired with the fact that Shadow Priest is probably going to be quite strong both in terms of DPS and off-healing with Vampiric Embrace and its new party wide spirit buff Dark Inspiration. Bringing two Priests to a 10m is feasible but potentially not optimal. If the raid is tuned to require two full healers worth of healing to progress then Priest Shaman could be a quite strong healer comp. Priests best in role flexibility shines in 10m similarly to in dungeons as the fewer healers there are in the group the more flexibility matters.

Druid similar to priest does not bring much unique value, especially given that you're likely to have a Balance and a Feral for the 3% crit aura already, however Druid is a potentially strong candidate for being able to solo heal if the raids tuning allows it. Being able to trivially blanket the entire raid in 10s with Gift of the Earthmotheris extremely powerful and totally unique. Paired with off-healing from a Shadow Priest I could see Druid being the strongest potential solo healer, followed by Holy Priest. If solo healing is possible the value of adding one extra DPS will more than make up for Druids lack of unique utility.

Paladin moves up a tier here from its place in 20m given that its core weakness of being undertuned and lacking high throughput potential are much less punishing in 10m if we get lower incoming damage tuning. Bringing a Holy as your second or third Paladin for blessing coverage could be worth it even if it does 50% of a Druids HPS if the raid only requires 1.5 healers worth of HPS. Light's Vigil ramp healing is less unique in 10m but still potentially interesting if/when Holy Paladin gets buffed in future.