Hi!
I’m WoW Guide in-game and been healer main ever since I began playing World of Warcraft: maining Holy Priest with MW Monk, Holy Paladin and Resto Shaman alts. Glad to hear you’re interested about healing! It’s a challenging role, not going to lie at you, and requires you to multitask; push damage when there’s nothing to heal, while being ready for something unexpected, like someone in the party/raid taking damage they should not have taken (or group missing interrupt etc.) & then ofc heal when you gotta do that.
Honestly, I would start by thinking what your personal goals are: which content are you focusing the most & what goals do you set up for yourself. If meta is what you’re aiming for, playing something which most likely (at the moment) guarantees you a spot in M+ pugs, then it would be Disc Priest for sure. You can basically check list of current M+ healers here: [https://www.archon.gg/wow/tier-list/healer-rankings/mythic-plus/high-keys/all-dungeons/this-week](https://www.archon.gg/wow/tier-list/healer-rankings/mythic-plus/high-keys/all-dungeons/this-week)
If raiding is your thing, but you’re still into playing what is considered top raid healer, you could just take a look at this link: [The War Within Healer Rankings and Raid Tier List | Archon (WoW - TWW)](https://www.archon.gg/wow/tier-list/healer-rankings/raid/mythic/all-bosses)
But then we get into the main thing; what you do like to play? If you’re more versatile, and not chasing meta, this opens you much more doors. From my personal point of view, any healer spec is viable - all it asks is how familiar you are with your spec (how long you have played it, how much research you have been doing etc.) You can honestly do any type of content with any spec basically, even higher M+ keys. It is prob somewhere around 16-17 keys where you might start seeing the largest differences between specs - and majority of the playerbase never runs 16-17 keys (previous 26-27 keys) or higher.
In M+, MW Monks indeed usually play so-called fistweaving build with Invoke Chi-Ji and keeping up Ancient Teachings when it is increased by Jadefire Teachings to heal passively - this means doing damage on melee. Personally I have always found MW Monk really fun and relatively “easy” to play, even tho learning all the advanced ways of its playstyle takes time and effort. They also have skill called Mana tea, which lets you generate mana back during the fight (yep, tea is good and healthy).
Some say that Holy Priest is easiest to start when you think of healing, but as someone who’s been playing Holy Priest as main for years, I disagree. Things have changed a lot ever since talent rework and bringing of Hero Talents, and nowadays we have multiple different builds and playstyles we use; e.g., you usually play Oracle, which also Discipline Priests play, in M+, but you go with Archon in Raids. Oracle is more about placing shields to people and to decrease CD of your major DPS spell, Holy Fire, letting you push it instantly several times in a row. Archon however is pure healing, in which biggest healing happens with Halo with Archon boosts a lot. In M+ environment we usually play more aggressively, being able to deliver pretty much same DPS as Discipline - and more than many other healers, while in Raids, with Archon, we focus fully on HPS. This also impacts our stats; Mastery+Crit for raids to push our Echo of Light passive heal, but Haste + Crit/Versa for M+, since Mastery brings only healing, not DPS at all.
And then there’s PVP of course, which is completely different world with different talents.
But still, Priest in particular is pretty solid choice; you get two viable healing specs, and usually at least one of these two specs is considered viable by the highest M+ keys playerbase. Priest also brings massive amount of utility, which especially this season has been really good;
- Power Infusion to boost DPS player when they have biggest CD’s on (and with your own talents, you will also apply it to yourself)
- Mass Dispel (extremely handy for several dungeons, e.g., the Rookery)
- Mind Soothe (lets you skip many trash packs in many dungeons, e.g., Cinderbrew, Theater of Pain, Darkflame Cleft etc.)
- Levitate (lets you do so-called bridge skip before last boss)
And every Priest has these, so honestly it gives you large amount of viable utility. You could easily give Priest a try, maybe both Holy and Discipline to see which one you like. Tho a “warning” word about Discipline; it is pretty much building atonements and then doing damage to heal people - if you miss this building before bigger AOE is incoming, it may be really rough to get people up. That is biggest disadvantage with Discipline, as you gotta really know every single mechanic with timers. Also, what comes for both Holy and Discipline, we lack of interrupt, even tho we do have stuns, fears and mind control - but you cant use those for everything.
You also mentioned Resto Druid; pretty sweet choice, I would say, if you’d enjoy ranged healing. They put massive amount of HOT’s to people, which heal there in the background, and then you can do viable amount of DPS as well. I am PVE main player, but also playing 2v2 Rated, and gosh Resto Druids are the worst; I gotta use mana to purge their HOT’s and they have so much CC’s, like Typhoon and stuns.
But yeah, on retail you don’t have to worry about mana; every healer is really good at managing their mana pool, even in M+, tho you might have to drink from time to time - but that is no big deal. In raid environment it is extremely rare that you would ever run out of mana.
If you got questions, just write here - I’ll do my best to help!
