Mythic+ Healer Rankings - Tier List for Midnight Pre-Patch

By AutomaticJak Updated: 2026/01/16

Disclaimers About This Tier ListisHealer Tier List for Mythic+ in Midnight Pre-PatchHow We Ranked the Specs

S: These specs are an exceptional choice that we expect to see heavily represented in the highest keys.

A: These specs are a great choice and will likely be excellent specs for elite-level keys.

B: These specs are solid and can provide enough healing and useful cooldowns to be a credit to the team, but they lack some element of output, crowd control, or extraordinary throughput that the above tiers have.

C: These specs have weaknesses that make them noticeably harder to use effectively. There are no Healers in this tier for Pre-Patch.

D: These specs have serious issues that require an exceptionally high degree of pilot skill and/or tactical sacrifices to kill bosses. There are no Healers in this tier for Pre-Patch.

F: These specs have horrifying weaknesses and are in immediate need of developer attention. We’d be surprised to see them played in any dungeon compositions at all. There are no Healers in this tier for Pre-Patch.

Healer Rankings and Explanations for Midnight Pre-Patch

Restoration Druid (S Tier)

Discipline Priest (S Tier)

Restoration Shaman (S Tier)

Mistweaver Monk (A Tier)

Holy Paladin (A Tier)

Preservation Evoker (B Tier)

Holy Priest (B Tier)

S-Tier Healer Specs for Midnight Pre-Patch

Restoration Druids are in a very strong position in Midnight Pre-Patch. They have poison dispels for Ara-Kara, excellent crowd control, and a great raid buff. There is a lot of power tied into the Apex talents that Resto will not be able to access in the Pre-Patch but the changes to Mastery scaling alongside fewer overall HoT counts will still mean that Regrowth's tried and true focused gameplay will perform very well in high-end Mythic+ healing. While there is still a good amount of burst AoE in some dungeons, Druids seems to handle it very well when able to set up in advance, and are less cooldown reliant than their peers, always being able to produce large healing when needed.

Druid has some of the highest HPS for dungeons at the moment, excellent crowd control contributions and priority healing, and Mark of the Wild is always an excellent buff for high-key groups.

A-Tier Healer Specs for Midnight Pre-Patch

Discipline Priests remain strong Healers in the Mythic+ environment in Midnight Pre-Patch. While Oracle shielding is not as insane as it used to be, their preemptive shielding is still immensely helpful in dungeons that have heavy spot-healing requirements or one-shot potential like Priory of the Sacred Flame.

Priests in general having access to Power Infusion is still incredible utility, Power Word: Fortitude still makes for excellent additional survivability for your team, and Oracle providing two charges of Penance makes the spec easier to play and makes it easy to pool up healing whether for damage for AoE healing or single-target triage support.

Restoration Shaman are one of the best pick-up-group Healers in Midnight Pre-Patch, bringing poison dispels (Poison Cleansing Totem), a raid buff (Skyfury), bonus Stamina for allies (Ancestral Vigor), excellent crowd control, the only healer kick in the game (Wind Shear), and an AoE stun (Capacitor Totem).

Pre-Patch Shaman focuses predominantly on Farseer/Whispering Waves with a heavy emphasis on single-target healing with Healing Wave. Ascendance has also been revamped and holds a huge amount of power for the spec, making it more cooldown-centric with the sustained healing outside of cooldowns feeling fairly mid. Raid buffs and crowd control are still a huge boon for a spec that seems to be the most simplified from the Midnight pruning, and we still expect it to perform well in higher level content.

Some of the changes for Holy Paladins in Midnight Pre-Patch include a choice between Divine Toll or Holy Prism, no Wings procs from Awakening, and Light of Dawn no longer being a cone but now being a 40 yard radius around your character. Holy Paladins' short-cooldown interrupt has also been pruned along with every other healer interrupt except for Shaman. Holy Light remains a powerful healing ability albeit with a very high mana cost. This allows Holy Paladins to produce a large amount of healing but the high cost prevents consistent spamming.

Holy Paladins feature excellent damage reduction with Aura Mastery/Devotion Aura, solid crowd control, and party utility with blessings. The spec is extremely well-suited to dealing with the poisons and bleeds that are featured in this dungeon pool. The main issue with the spec is keeping up with the above Healers in terms of healing output in higher-tier content since balancing your mana against the healing requirements in higher level content can be particularly challenging.

B-Tier Healer Specs for Midnight Pre-Patch

Mistweavers have received a ton of talent updates but a keep a very similar playstyle in dungeons. Some talents like Jade Empowerment now provide a constant damage buff but at a substantially weaker value, making it less likely to be utilized in Mythic+. Sheilun's Gift can be talented to replace Vivify, and features a few different options to increase single-target or AoE healing value.

In The War Within, Mistweaver excelled in physical comps where Mystic Touch could shine. This was usually the niche that Mistweaver performed well in, but was also more dependent on physical DPS specs being strong. With healer interrupts being removed for all healers but Shaman, this puts Mistweaver in a lower spot on our tier list for Pre-Patch since, while the spec can effectively heal the challenging content, it also brings fewer damage/crowd control benefits than some of its peers.

Preservation Evokers produce powerful burst healing in Midnight Pre-Patch, with strong combo healing from their empower spells, a poison dispel, an "omni" dispel (Cauterizing Flame), a crowd control amplifier (Oppressing Roar), a knock-up (Tail Swipe), and a knock-back (Wing Buffet). Pre-Patch also brings new tools to improve Verdant Embrace with a choice node between Wings of Liberty which grants an additional charge or Dream Simulacrum which allows you to cast Verdant Embrace without jumping to your ally. These talents will be particularly important since Spiritbloom has been pruned. While the Apex talents "replace" it, those are not present in the Midnight Pre-Patch, potentially making triage healing a greater challenge for the spec. Couple this with common issues where Preservation requires heavier amounts of setup relative to other healers in order to do effective healing, this is an area where mistakes can quickly leave you without a resource needed to heal your allies effectively.

A positive is Time Dilation, which has two charges that are very helpful for supporting the party through a variety of encounters that feature heavy spot healing. That said, the setup and work to consistently set up their healing, coupled with their poor raid buff, will make it difficult for Preservation healers to see higher representation in keys.

Holy Priest features consistent single-target healing and a new talent in Pre-Patch, Ultimate Serenity. This causes your Holy Word: Serenity to also cleave onto allies at the cost of giving up your Holy Word: Sanctify. If this talent sees wider use, then Prayer of Healing can synergize with it by also producing cooldown reduction for Holy Word: Serenity, allowing Holy Priests to mix single-target and AoE healing effectively. Mind Soothe's utility is particularly strong in the humanoid/dragonkin-centric dungeons in Pre-Patch for skips, and Power Word: Fortitude, as always, is a good survivability increase to the team. Mass Dispel is especially helpful in dungeons like Halls of Atonement, with the heavy focus on Magic dispels. Finally, Holy brings Power Infusion for a substantial damage contribution to your team.

In Pre-Patch, Oracle Holy Priest also receives Unfolding Vision which greatly improves the efficiency of Prayer of Mending and in preventing charges from expiring entirely. Some downsides are the lack of kick, with only Psychic Scream and Holy Word: Chastise/Censure available to stop (delay) enemy casts, weaker burst output for dealing with high-pulsing damage patterns, and extremely poor survivability compared to their peers.

Due to the lack of crowd control, Holy Priest cedes a great amount of mob control to their teammates, which will mean there is significantly more healing that this Healer will have to contend with in pick-up groups compared to Healers with kicks and better crowd control.

Lower Tier Healer Specs for Midnight Pre-Patch

Comments

Comment by MagikMurlok

My poor poor druid :'(

Comment by cjleonard

I really, really want to love resto druid again - but it seems like it's such an effort. Fortunately, I do have my presevoker on hand... which I'm absolutely loving.

Comment by IronicUserName

Foolish formatting, Jak. Bump everyone down 1 tier, its the same list but not putting anyone in S is a much better strategy because if it doesnt have "S" next to it, it doesnt trigger that automatic "this or nothing" reaction some players have. Absolutely no difference in the content, it just doesnt send off the conditioned signal to Pavlov's keyboard warriors that only one answer is objectively correct no matter what.

Also you put Disc in S which yes they may be for power in a vacuum, but then depended on people to read the blurb. Their paragraph basically says "S tier only for organized groups, very hard for pugs." So now every pug leader is gonna see this list and say "we need a disc priest right now" and then fall on their face. And I for one am here for it.

Comment by holyheals2

Holy Priest is C-tier? Because you don't understand how to use it? It's "Aoe healing" is fine. Very strong and comfortable actually. And I pug a lot.
I know tier lists can be clout-driven, dumpster fires. But with how many players might unfortunately take this page too seriously, I will add some insight here if anyone wants to play Holy Priest. S1 and S2, it is good. it is very different and takes learning. But that is every spec. I enjoy it because it is consistent and I feel like I always have a utility ready. I play it over Resto Sham (I miss my crowd control definitely, 100% agree on that).

I dont play Sanctify nor Prayer of Healing. They were buffed and I like the direction, but not there for me yet. Plus button bloat. No.

Light weaving is very good. Flash Heal and Heal are big heals. And low cast times. +15% crit chance. Trail of Light is 25% to last guy and Binding Heals is 20% to you. Off of real values. Add in 11%+ from mastery, also based on real values. Toss in Prayer of Mending which was recently buffed. This still isnt quite enough. But it aint bad. Toss a few Serenity heals here and there and this alone does a lot. It is also pretty simple and Blizz buffed weaving to 4 stacks from 2 stacks for nice QoL.

Divine Hymm is now viable. I prefer Gales of Song too. I really enjoy this change! But it is only a cd. /shrug.

Play Oracle. It looks complex. It is worth it. Insight: use it for dispells or toss out Prayer of mendign everywhere. Piety: target yourself; turn yourself into a battery and pulse aoe healing out to the group. if you continue lightweaving, it is still good! There is a cutover between AOE healing and spot healing when you use this. Solace: most likely tank buff staggered with Guardian Spirit for big pulls. Its nice. Then you get all three on the 4th charge. Amazing. I would say the only downside is when you know a group healing check is coming up and your sitting on Piety. Burn it quick and move on.

Divine Word is very good. Every one minute you can empower a Serenity. Then for 15 seconds your Lightweaving is even stronger. This util overlaps with Oracle Prominition spells and Apothesis and other bonuses in the spec. Only negative thing is it does not produce a charge of Serenity. Be a bit cautious or spam a few heals to reset Serenity. With how fast lightweaving is, this spot healing can be stronger and more efficient than aoe healing.

Add Priest general utils to that and its pretty comfy. Sadly, dps for healers doesnt feel nearly as rewarding as it did in DragonFlight. So you could argue that with any class. And MDI format now requires a healer. So /shrug. Sorry for long read. Hope it helps!

UPDATE: I have been testing Light of the Naaru & Divinity instead of going for Divine Word. I like it! Adds some much needed mobility and power to Apoth.

Comment by tottie1227

remove Resto shaman from B, this is a full on BS. Shamans are well above if not S. stop letting Jak be the "voice" of whos good or not cause it makes people in the game shoo away healers in pugs and in turn cooks the numbers. shaman is an always will be A or above for just AoE healing and all the utilities we bring to the table.

Comment by rusby

This is way out of date now. See https://www.archon.gg/wow/tier-list/healer-rankings/mythic-plus/10/all-dungeons/this-week

Comment by omaox

Tier is only as good as the player is.

Resto shaman is most popular and yet half of those players can't play. People think if something is S-tier then they faceroll and game will play itself.

I really wish people played what they feel like enjoying more and doing better than following "meta". Same goes for party invites. A good holy priest or evoker could be in a q, yet people will take shaman even though the player will only spam chain heal, not knowing other abilities at all (man, happened so many times it's shocking actually).

Mythic+ Healer Rankings - Tier List for Midnight Pre-Patch

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