Healer PvP Rankings / Tier List for Cataclysm Classic

Nov 09 update: The rankings have been updated for the new PvP Season!

You can find below a quick summary of the current PvP healer rankings:

1. Restoration Shaman (S-Tier)
2. Discipline Priest (A-Tier)
3. Holy Paladin (A-Tier)
4. Restoration Druid (B-Tier)
5. Holy Priest (B-Tier)

In order to further understand the reasoning behind these ranks, we would recommend you to read the rest of the page, as that is explained in more detail in the next few sections.

Feel free to also consult our PvP DPS rankings page if you are interested in learning more about your potential DPS partners in the arena, or our guides on compositions in each bracket (2v2, 3v3, and 5v5) to learn which kinds of teams best suit your class.

When sorting out the rankings for healers in PvP, we are primarily concerned with two things:

• Throughput — the ability of a healer to do a lot of raw healing, for a sustained period of time while under pressure.
• Utility — non-healing abilities that the healer brings that can be used to help your team ( Spirit Link Totem) or disrupt the enemy team ( Wind Shear). This includes the amount and quality of personal defensive tools, such as Restoration Druid's slow / root / polymorph-breaking shapeshifting abilities.

We will rank each healer on both of these categories and further elaborate on how they come together to create the current ranking for the class.

Keep in mind that this rating is focused on 3v3, the most competitive bracket where most tournaments are played.

• Throughput — S-tier — Earth Shield, Healing Stream Totem, Riptide, and the new Unleash Life are the main heals you will be using and are all are instant, making them quick to reach injured allies and impossible to interrupt. They will also proc Earthliving on the target, which is guaranteed when healing low health allies due to Blessing of the Eternals, and your dispel also heals its target through Cleansing Waters. Finally, the new Deep Healing Mastery stat makes your heals much stronger on low health targets after a CC chain, making it perfect for catching up on healing.
• Utility — S-tier — Stoneclaw Totem protects your other totems and yourself through Glyph of Stoneclaw Totem and you can drop up to four in a single global using Call of the Elements making it very difficult for enemy teams to stop you from buffing your abilities with the likes of Strength of Earth Totem. While Bloodlust can no longer be used inside the Arena, Wind Shear and Purge remain as powerful as ever and you can now also dispel Magic with Improved Cleanse Spirit! Finally, Tremor Totem (which can now be used while feared) and Grounding Totem are also powerful tools, especially against caster teams.

Restoration Shaman are well rounded healers, which have a lot of hard to stop healing and also very disruptive tools, especially against caster enemies, making them the best PvP healers in Cataclysm, and the one that can play in the largest amount of meta compositions as well.

• Throughput — A-tier — just like Restoration Shaman, Discipline Priest have a lot of instant casts they can rely on to do good healing while being focused, such as Power Word: Shield, Prayer of Mending, and Penance, and they also have decent Mana efficiency. Unlike Shamans, however, their throughput on low health allies is much worse and vulnerable to dispels, which also makes them have a hard time catching back when they start to fall behind on healing.
• Utility — S-tier — being able to offensive and defensive dispel brings a lot of flexibility to the Discipline Priest's group, and their damage capabilities are significant in Cataclysm due to the new Atonement, which will keep your group healed even when you are busy dealing damage! Mass Dispel, Psychic Scream, Power Infusion, Pain Suppression, and the new Power Word: Barrier are also great abilities which can turn games around in a heartbeat.

Discipline Priests are offensive healers which can do well in compositions that shore up their healing throughput weaknesses. As long as their allies can avoid most of the enemy damage or keep them under crowd control, there are no better healers in the arena.

• Throughput — A-tier — Holy Paladin can now use the Holy Power system for Mana-efficient healing with Word of Glory, which heavily benefits from supporting talents such as Last Word. They also have powerful cooldowns such as Avenging Wrath, Aura Mastery, and the new Guardian of Ancient Kings, which will ensure the team's health while available. Finally, Beacon of Light continues to be a great tool to extend your powerful single target healing towards teammates, and which is particularly powerful in small group settings where there are less targets that need healing.
• Utility — S-tier — Hand of Protection, Hand of Freedom, Hand of Sacrifice, Hammer of Justice, and all the auras are top-notch utility for both surviving and setting up kills. Divine Shield is the best defensive in the game, effectively making you completely immune to both damage and crowd control for a lengthy 12 seconds, although it can be removed by Mass Dispel.

Holy Paladin brings both great single-target healing and group utility, as well as a lot of defensives which makes them one of the top defensive PvP options. Their main weakness is the lack of offensive options, especially when compared to Restoration Shaman or Discipline Priest, but even there they can help setup kills with Hammer of Justice and have multiple damage buttons that can be pressed to help with the final percent on an enemy player.

• Throughput — A-tier — Restoration Druid heal primarily through instant casts, which means most of their heals cannot be interrupted and can be pre-stacked ahead of Smoke Bomb swaps, but also makes their healing vulnerable to dispels, even with Lifebloom's special effect. Necrotic Strike is also especially effective against heals over time, making Death Knight their nemesis.
• Utility — B-tier — besides their class buff, Mark of the Wild, Restoration Druid bring all kinds of crowd control and defensive utility (such as Cyclone, Entangling Roots, and Nature's Grasp), and are the only Druid specialization that can still shift out of root and snares, but they can no longer contribute significant damage pressure due to the new Cataclysm talent trees, making them even weaker utility-wise than they were in Wrath.

Restoration Druid face an uphill battle in Cataclysm, as they are directly countered by the two most popular healers and one of the most popular DPS, and they also lack the utility provided by most other healers.

The problem with Holy Priest is that, besides being a weak specialization in a vacuum from an Utility point of view, you could also simply respec to Discipline instead with minimal effort in order to improve your odds at PvP victory.

Thus, it would be recommended to focus on learning Discipline if you intend to PvP as a Discipline Priest.