Based upon what you’ve said, and with SL looking round the corner, i’d say at the very least discard the Holy Priest. I’m assuming you explicitly mean Holy Priest and not Priest (disc or holy) here.
Resto Druid looks to be getting a lot of nice QoL changes in SL, which will only cement their position as a strong mythic healer. Cyclone is coming back proper for a banish CC (which prevents the application of Bolstering, making it hella strong), Swiftmend has a lower CD albeit now consumes a HOT (but still offers the same if not stronger healing), Innervate is getting a buff when you cast it on other players, Barkskin appears to be getting a buff when working with your HoTs, Regrowth is being buffed when cast on targets with Regrowth already (+40% crit chance), as well as more baseline form abilities to assist in catweaving or off-bear tanking, for exmaple in SL resto kitty druids will have a damage buff (equivalent to the current pvp talent) and get double CP on crits, allowing them to DPS much more easily when the need arises. In short, resto druids look in a very good position in SL, and are in a good position already.
Holy Paladins we don’t know all of the ins and outs of in-depth analysis of their upcoming SL tenure, but at current they’re a very strong healer and a good dps healer as well. Paladins always perform kind of well in content, rarely being the bottom, and are a very strong pvp healer. Paladins offer less utility than druids in mythic+ but can pump out as much DPS under the right conditions. It depends on your group but i’d argue a druid is still stronger.
Holy priest is the ginger stepchild of healers atm despite being “the” healer. It has pretty poor single target throughput, their flash heal is the weakest in the game outside of extremely heavy azerite trait support; their single target output relies heavily on Holy Words which means they chew through mana to sustain this throughput. Their aoe healing is better, but it isn’t better than other classes outside of raids because of it’s mana efficiency, in dungeons though it’s nothing special. Currently they lack good dps as they need to sacrifice their healing to do it, which means ypu’re not padding your holy word cooldowns. Holy priests offers very little utility for dungeons. There’s a reason disc are preferred: absorption shields and damage reduction as well as dps-with-healing makes disc superior in pretty much every dungeon situation.
Come SL Holy priests are getting changes to a few spells; prayer of mending will be instant cast again, circle of healing is baseline, they can access mind blast and mind sear for DPS. Holy fiore is changing to no longer cooldown rest but instead deals a lot more damage over time, so it’s a dedicated DPS GCD use rather than continually having to refresh it to do dps. These may solve some of Holy’s DPS problems; but there’s still the issue of they have to sacrifice their healing to do it which means yet again, looks like disc will be better off (it also looks like disc is getting mind sear and mind blast as well so these aren’t holy only benefits).
The “general” dungeon healer tier list looks something like this
- Top -
Resto Druid
Mistweaver Monk
- Decent -
Holy Paladin
Disc priest
- Average, nothing special -
Resto shaman
Holy priest
This said every healer can do keys at 15+ and it’s only in the upper rungs these differences start to “matter” so what you prefer to play is more important if you’re not aiming for the top end of mythics; as every class can do it (i won’t lie though, Holy Priest will have a less comfortable time than resto druid or holy paladin).
Their playstyles differ slightly. Holy Priest is the most “commonsense” healer, they have ST spells, and AOE spells, cast whichever you need. If that appeals and you’re not going for top end, pick Holy.
Paladins are pretty straightforward although to perform aoe healing they usually need to do some kind of “setup” or “switch it on” ie Glimmer stacking or activating Beacon of Virtue, and then triaging individual targets. Their “true” aoe healing spell arsenal is weak, rather it’s augmenting their single target spells to do aoe for them with a tirage mindset.
Druid is probably the least commonsense healer to play (alongside disc) because it’s a proactive healer, you need to set up healing before you need it, which can make it tricky to learn (but once you’ve got it you realise how much of a godmode benefit this is). Like Pala they lack dedicated aoe healing that “deals with it upfront” so they need to set up hots on likely targets, put hots on the group then go into triage mode if necessary. It can be a stressful healer style that doesn’t work for all. When mastered it can be very dynamic and fun as you can have your heals “working” whilst you’re spreading DOTs in cat and human forms for DPS, then focus on touching up your heals, so a good druid is always busy and potentially offers the most “involved” dungeon experience.
