I’ll be the first to say it: picking a healer isn’t easy. Choice paralysis can make the game’s 16 options feel like a million. Never fear, though! I’m here to give you my absolutely correct and not-biased-at-all thoughts on what each healer is good for and when you should play them. Fight me in the comments all you want, but these are my opinions and I’m sticking with them.
Disclaimer: I’ve listed the heroes in alphabetical order just to make things easier; this article will cover Alexstrasza through Li Li, while part 2 will discuss Lt. Morales through Whitemane. (Who knew there were so many healers whose names started with the letter A?) I won’t be going into specific talent picks here, as that’s beyond the scope of this article and I’ve been known to choose some nontraditional talents. I will, however, mention builds more generally.
Alexstrasza: Area healing and objective defense
Remember when Alexstrasza was the only dragon on the game? (Yeah, I’m tired of Deathwing.) Even though she’s been around for a while now, her powerful trait still makes her great in team fights and on area objectives, and her raw healing output is extremely high. This high output, as well as talents that allow her to nullify divers or give percent healing to tanks, make her a great well-rounded healer.
Alex is generally good in the backline. As long as your positioning and placement are correct, Abundance/W is great for a high-health burst heal. She lacks genuine self-heal outside of Abundance and doesn’t have a strong escape mechanic, so if the opposing team is picking divers and you don’t have a strong front line, she may not be a good choice. Abundance is also easily exploited by heroes who do area damage: making all your allies group into a tiny circle is a good way to get roasted by a Jaina Blizzard or a Gul’dan Horrify. I wouldn’t pick Alex into any team that’s running Kael’thas, Kel’Thuzad, Chromie, Deathwing, or Ana, as Ana’s Biotic Grenade greatly counters Abundance.
When in Dragonqueen form, Alex is good at area control and objective support. Many know that she shines on Infernal Shrines, where activating Dragonqueen after killing about 20 of the shrine minions is a great way to get enemies to back up and finish the shrine. As powerful as Dragonqueen is, though, a mistake that many players make is using it too offensively. Dragon-ized Alex has such a huge hitbox that she catches a lot of damage from area attacks and enemy minions, not to mention the heroes listed above that do a lot of area damage anyway, and it can be difficult to maneuver her through tight corridors. Do not activate Dragonqueen and run into the other team thinking you can solo-kill or chase someone–trust me, you can’t. Use it as a defensive move more than anything.
Ana: All-around skillshot healing and anti-heals
Can you actually aim? If so, Ana is the hero for you. At first, her healing output doesn’t seem high, especially when healing tanks, but if you hit the majority of your shots and use your Biotic Grenade/W wisely, she can keep pace with most other healers. Actually, she counters most other healers thanks to the anti-heal on Biotic Grenade.
Ana is best paired with heroes that are easy to hit with skillshots and that can benefit the most from Nano Boost/R. She’s great with mages and anyone for whom a spell power boost and ability cooldown reductions are a boon; I usually play her with Gul’dan, Kael’thas, and Malthael. Tanks like Johanna are also surprisingly good Nano Boost targets. She can still work with auto-attackers, but you won’t get nearly as much value out of her ultimate. I would not play Ana on a team with a lot of very mobile heroes, like Genji, Tracer, or Zeratul. Their movement abilities make healing them a nightmare, and if you miss a shot during a team fight, someone might die for it.
As I mentioned earlier, Biotic Grenade can heal your teammates, but sometimes it’s more effectively used as an anti-heal tool on the opposing team. It’s especially great against burst healing: burst healing abilities often have long cooldowns, and cancelling a big heal can give your team a chance to dive in or finish a fight before the other healer has a chance to do anything else. Use your grenade before an Alexstrasza Abundance, a Stukov Bio-Kill Switch/D, a Brightwing Phase Shift/Z, or even an Uther Holy Light/Q for great results.
So what’s Ana weak against? One word: dive. Her comfortable position way in the backline means she’s very vulnerable to highly mobile heroes and flankers that can cut around the rest of her team and jump her. Her exit ability, Sleep Dart/E, can get you out of some situations, but if you miss or your teammate/minions accidentally wake the enemy up, it won’t work. If the opposing team is coming from several directions, you’re toast. She can still be effective against dive, but you have to build your team around protecting her and watch your positioning very carefully. Ana takes a lot of up-front learning, but she’s very rewarding once you get the skillshots down (and teach your teammates how to line up).
Anduin: Quick escapes
The King of Stormwind’s healing output and abilities are a little unimpressive, but that’s not what he’s known for. As with many other healers on this list, if your timing and positioning are correct, his utility can save teammates from many a certain-death situation. Who needs mobility when you can grab people?
Anduin’s most useful ability is Leap of Faith/D, or what I call “the grabby hands”. This full-Unstoppable cleanse is excellent for pulling back teammates that dove in and got themselves into trouble or anyone who’s been forcibly moved by a Garrosh throw or an Artanis swap. It may seem simple at first, but it requires very good positioning and timing. Andiun has to be a fair distance behind the front line but still in range for the ability, and the ally can still die while being pulled, so there’s a lot of ways that it can go wrong.
Though Leap of Faith is good for rescuing divers, the rest of Anduin’s kit doesn’t really mesh well with a dive comp. He’s a slow mover and his heal range isn’t tremendously large, so in order to get close to teammates that have gone in, you sometimes have to put yourself in danger of counter-dive or flanks. Chastise/E will sometimes save you, but like Ana’s Sleep Dart, it’s worthless if you get CC’d or if there are multiple enemies on your trail. You also can’t Leap of Faith yourself, obviously, so while it’s fairly easy to get teammates out of bad situations, it’s more difficult to save yourself.
Anduin’s ultimates are useful in wildly different situations. If you do find yourself playing with a dive team (Tracer, Genji, Greymane, etc.), just put a Lightbomb/R on your main diver before they go in and then capitalize on the quick stun. If you’re facing heroes with a lot of burst damage but without a lot of stuns or interrupts, take Holy Word: Salvation/R instead and ride out the damage. These are very different setups, but using the right one at the right time can help Andiun keep everyone alive.
Auriel: Area healing and stuns
Auriel’s main boon is similar to Alexstrasza’s: this winged deity has an excellent area heal in Ray of Heaven/W, and it even has a slight edge on Alex’s because it’s instantaneous and not as exploitable by the opposing team. It’s great for healing tanks and slow-moving heroes and it also heals Auriel, giving her a good amount of self-heal.
Her strength is also her weakness. Auriel’s energy is determined by the hero that has Bestow Hope/D, which is best placed on auto-attackers. If you have mostly tanks and bruisers, or even mostly burst damage, your supply of energy won’t be constant enough for frequent healing. This was remedied a bit with her most recent buff: if you take her auto-attack talent, it offsets the lack of ally energy somewhat, but I wouldn’t rely on that alone. Auriel is best played with heroes like Raynor, Butcher, Sgt. Hammer, and Falstad, as they all give her plenty of energy.
Outside of healing, Auriel has a moderate amount of utility. Sacred Sweep/Q is good for clearing lanes, and you can feasibly cover for an offlaner or bruiser while they take a camp elsewhere. If you’re together with your team, hitting a Detainment Strike/E can set up a kill or chain-CC an enemy while your teammates jump in. It’s best for hitting non-mobile heroes, but if you hit a god-shot on a Tracer or a Genji, they’ll almost certainly die. Auriel can also save enemies from high burst abilities with Crystal Aegis/R. If your timing is right, an Aegis will save an enemy from a Kael’thas Pyroblast, a Kel’Thuzad combo, a Malthael Last Rites, etc. Sometimes Aegis-ing someone will just get them killed immediately after the ability’s expiration, but a coordinated team can clear out enemies so that the saved person will have a chance to get out. Auriel is a bit more of a niche healer, but she has a lot of potential with the right teammates.
Brightwing: Utility and big teleports
Brightwing is a strange one. Since her healing is mostly automated, the majority of her usefulness is in utility rather than a high healing output. Using her effectively means choosing her on the right maps and setting up kills for teammates–she is truly a team player.
Brightwing has always been good on large maps. Phase Shift/Z means that she can teleport wherever she’s needed, whether that means sticking around to clear a lane and then teleporting in during an area objective or teleporting to your tank or diver and splitting the opposing team with Emerald Wind/R. This is especially effective on maps like Sky Temple, Towers of Doom, and Warhead Junction, where clearing lanes is imperative but the large scale makes it difficult to get from one place to another quickly. Brightwing’s lack of a mount means that when she’s not teleporting, she moves across these maps even slower than most other heroes, so use Phase Shift wisely.
Her direct healing output is low and slow; her only burst potential comes from a combo that requires you to take a specific talent at level 13 and have Phase Shift off cooldown. Because of this, Brightwing is best used for utility. She’s great when paired with allies that would be destroyed by stuns, roots, or silences, as Soothing Mist/D can remove all of those. (It’s not a full Unstoppable like some other healers have, but it affects everyone around her, so I think that makes up for it.) With Emerald Wind, Brightwing is also very effective against dive comps, which can push enemies off a camp or objective or prevent your squishy backline from being jumped; Polymorph/W can also help if you or a teammate are being chased. If you need a high-output or burst healer, Brightwing is not the one to pick, but the range of things that she can do outside of healing increases her effectiveness in a variety of other situations.
Deckard: Fight initiation and objective prep
It turns out that old dogs can learn new tricks! Our lovingly-nicknamed Deckard Pain is good for capturing enemies to start a fight or prepping an area objective for allies, but true to his age, his healing just isn’t very fast.
Deckard shines when he’s enabling other heroes. He has excellent CC and combo start potential with Horadric Cube/W and Scroll of Sealing/E. Landing a root gives heroes like Greymane, Kael’thas, Chromie, Butcher, and Li-Ming a chance to set up their abilities and mow the opposing team down with dive or burst. Deckard’s slows and roots set up fights for Kerrigan, Alarak, and Valeera, giving them an easier time focusing a single hero. His start potential is even higher with Stay Awhile and Listen/R, which does the same thing on a larger scale and can double as an escape mechanism for your entire team (as long as you remind your teammates not to wake anyone up too fast).
Though Deckard is great with CC chains, his healing leaves a little to be desired. Your best bet is to prepare the space on and around an area objective before the fight actually starts: drop a few potions early so that your teammates don’t have to wait on your cooldowns and depend on your aim once things get heated. The healing amount on his potions is low, even after this level 13 healing increase, and unless a teammate gets several potions in a row, it probably won’t be enough to really save them. Because of this, Deckard isn’t a great tank healer–he just doesn’t output enough healing to offset the high amount of damage most tanks take. He also doesn’t have any wave clear beyond Horadric Cube and Scroll of Sealing, whose moderately high cooldowns aren’t worth using on minions. If you have a team that’s light on tanks and has a lot of setup potential, Deckard is a good choice, but otherwise, opt for someone with faster and more direct healing.
Kharazim: Dive potential and agility
Most healers don’t have great escape tactics, but that’s not the case with Kharazim: most of his kit is built around mobility and dive. If you want to be right in the action when your team dives in, Kharazim is the one to pick! He can be built as a healer or as a DPS, giving him options based on the kind of team comp you’re going for.
Kharazim pairs well with a dive team that allows him to jump in and deal damage. He’s great alongside Greymane, Li-Ming, Tracer, Genji, and Zeratul. His higher damage output (as compared to other healers) means that he’s great at chasing or jumping a backline. With assistance from a teammate or another healer, he can definitely take down most squishier heroes. As with most divers, Kharazim is weak to tanks that can stun or silence (Johanna, Anub’arak, Muradin, etc.), but Seven-Sided Strike/R does percentage damage, giving you the chance to turn a fight around if you can hit it before the CC hits you. If fights go sour and your R is on cooldown, you can still make it out: Kharazim is fast and agile, allowing you to get in and out of fights quickly as long as you take advantage of his Radiant Dash/Q.
Kharazim’s healing output isn’t super high, even if you build for it, so it’s difficult for him to be a solo healer. He has a little bit of utility in that he can grant allies movement speed and distract enemies by jumping in, but it’s not the same as raw healing output. Dive teams don’t necessarily need a ton of over-time healing, so this isn’t a big deal if you build your team around it; you could also just pick another healer and build Kharazim as a DPS, which can work in certain situations. Don’t expect him to be a solo laner, though: his waveclear is a little lacking, even though his fast auto-attack speed helps. Kharazim is an unusual hybrid, but in my opinion, that just makes him effective in a wide variety of situations.
Li Li: Auto-attack prevention and sustain healing
Last but not least, we come to Li Li. Also known as the fastest way to wear out your keyboard’s Q key, Li Li is an easy-to-play healer who still has a lot of potential. If you’re facing a team of mostly auto-attackers, this tiny panda could be your savior.
Like I said, Li Li is the bane of auto-attackers’ existence. Her Blinding Wind/E isn’t even a skillshot–you just have to get close to the opposing team to wipe out some of their damage. If you’re playing against Illidan, Genji, Zul’jin, Varian, Butcher, or Raynor, among others, Li Li is a great choice. She can nullify most of their damage for 2 seconds, allowing your team to finish a fight or back out without being chased. She’s also extremely difficult to kill: Fast Feed/D means that she’s almost always at 110% movement speed in a fight, and Blinding Wind can prevent auto-attack projectiles from reaching her as she retreats.
Li Li is also a good choice if you’re just learning to play healers or the game in general. She has no skillshots, so you don’t really need to aim, and she does a high amount of healing, so you can feel comfortable about playing a “beginner” hero that still significantly helps your team. I don’t find her particularly engaging to play–she consists mostly of spamming Healing Brew/Q over and over again–but that doesn’t mean she’s not effective. She pairs well with most heroes, so it’s better to pick her based on the opposing team’s comp rather than your team’s comp.
Li Li does actually have a DPS build, which includes Water Dragon/R at 10. This talent is taken when you have an additional healer with a higher healing output, which is difficult to do if you’re not in a coordinated group. If you’re playing Storm League or Quick Match, just stick to healing build Li Li. I personally don’t have much experience with her damage build, so I can’t speak to its effectiveness, but it’s worth a shot if you’re looking to experiment with comps.
Whew! That’s a lot of information. Try not to feel intimidated by it all–none of these are hard and fast rules. Over the long time that I’ve been playing supports, I’ve found that there’s no such thing as a “useless” healer: even if you pick Anduin with a dive comp or Ana with highly mobile heroes, you can still get value out of them. The most important thing is that you’re comfortable with the hero you’re playing and that you’re willing to learn.
Want to argue with my hot takes? Think people should play damage build Li Li and nothing else? Feel free to fight me in the comments!