Hello and welcome back! I’m here again to give you my infallible opinions and pick tips for the other half of the healer roster. Since we covered Alextrasza through Li Li last time, today we’ll be looking closer at Lt. Morales through Whitemane. As usual, this list is made up of knowledge and opinions that I’ve gathered from playing healers for a little while. I won’t be going into specific talent picks unless a hero has a talent that is essentially required for non-bronze play. On the whole, I’m a little less familiar with this half of the roster, but I still think there’s some valuable info to be gleaned here. Maybe I just have a swelled head.
Lt. Morales: High sustain, low escape
To me, Lt. Morales has always been a bit of a bum pick. She’s easy to play in terms of healing and shielding: there’s not much you have to do besides click on allies with low health or who get CC’d. Her healing is fine; it’s her positioning that makes her hard to recommend in more situations.
Let’s start with the positives: Morales has a ridiculously high healing output as long as she can stay alive and out of trouble. If you have a strong frontline and CC that can kill divers, she can just stand in the back and heal all day long. Because of her high static output, she’s pretty good at healing tanks and bruisers: if your team is thicc or your bruiser isn’t the one who’s solo laning, she can do a lot of healing by just staying with the team. Her armor talent was buffed a few patches ago, and though it’s not quite as strong as a full cleanse or an Anduin Leap of Faith, it can still help a thrown or overextended ally make it out. Morales is great with a team of auto-attackers if she takes Stim Drone/R at level 10–it’s the equivalent of a Nano Boost for them. The cooldown reduction at level 20 makes it even better. Try pairing her with Raynor, Falstad, or Valla for great results.
To play Morales well, you have to know how to position her. Though Stim Drone is great with the heroes I mentioned above, those heroes also tend to dive into the opposing team, and with her limited healing range, it’s difficult for her to follow them while keeping herself safe. She’s not as effective in higher-level play because good teams know how to focus her: if she gets dived or separated from the rest of the team, she’s as good as dead. Her escape, Displacement Grenade/E, is fairly difficult to use and is useless when facing enemies coming from different directions. If either team has Genji, Orphea, Kerrigan, Illidan, Valeera, Qhira, Cassia, or Zeratul (that’s a lot of heroes!), Morales is probably a bad choice–she’s too easy of a target, and your team will lose a lot of healing when she dies. If you’ve got the comp to defend her and a very coordinated team around you though, Morales can outheal just about every other healer in the game.
Lucio: Mobility and area healing
“Time to change it up!” Lucio, quite possibly the game’s most optimistic character, is great for healing allies in large groups and getting himself in and out of fights. Rather than actually attacking enemies in the style of Kharazim, Lucio is at his best when he’s peeling for allies and getting everyone in and out of fights.
Lucio’s biggest strength is his high mobility. Even though he can’t mount, his Wall Ride/Z and Crossfade/W mean that he’s got lots of speed, especially on maps that have narrow corridors or hallways (think Cursed Hollow or Infernal Shrines). You can use Wall Ride and Push Off/D to save a teammate while they’re being chased in one of these corridors or sling around walls and interrupt an enemy channel with Soundwave/Q. He can also support a dive comp with his mobility: he can easily run in and out and help teammates do the same with Crossfade’s Speed Boost. Pretty much all of the heroes that are bad for Morales are good with Lucio.
He has good area healing and minor burst potential with Amp It Up/E as long as he remains with the team. He’s not good at healing tanks and bruisers, as his healing output is a flat amount until he reaches level 16. The percent heal makes a big difference and greatly increases his healing potential, but it takes a while to get there. If you want to be as effective as possible with Lucio, keep him with the team: a couple of his talents provide bonuses that only occur if he’s within range of teammates and he has no waveclear, so he has very little solo lane potential. His auto attacks don’t do much damage, so he also doesn’t have a lot of DPS potential, but if you’re trying to DPS with him, you’re playing him wrong. Stay with the team and turn the volume up–that’s how you play Lucio.
Malfurion: Combo potential and CC
Normally, Malfurion is a fairly easy to play sustain healer, but when paired with the right initiator, he can turn into a combo machine. If you build your team around him, he can set up and secure kills just as effectively as most DPSes.
The nature of Malfurion’s Regrowth/Q means that he does a lot of healing over a long period of time. The amount and speed can be increased somewhat by Moonfire/W hits on enemy heroes, but this means that in order to increase his healing beyond its baseline, he has to be near the other team. Unless you can hit a clump of enemies with Moonfire (and even if you do sometimes), your teammates will likely die to burst damage. Over time, the healing is a decent amount, so he’s good at non-team fight healing. Just don’t expect a large amount of burst during objective fights.
Really, Malfurion’s team fight role isn’t about healing–it’s about combo-ing. As long as you give everyone a Regrowth before the fight starts, you can focus on landing Entangling Roots/E. My favorite thing to do is pair him with a tank or bruiser that can initiate (Garrosh throw, Imperius stun, Mal’Ganis sleep, etc.) and use Entangling Roots underneath a trapped enemy. If you can time the root correctly and isolate a squishy unit with your team behind you, this almost guarantees a kill.
Malfurion also has setup potential of his own with Twilight Dream/R, which is a nasty 3-second silence on everyone in range. If the opposing team is using a lot of mages, like Kael’thas, Kel’Thuzad, Orphea, Jaina, etc., this will muzzle them for enough time that your team can jump in and clear the field…or at least scare them away from an objective. It’s even better against heroes that use abilities to escape, like Sylvanas and Li-Ming–Twilight Dream absolutely wrecks them. Though his lack of mobility hampers him, Malfurion works well with a dive team because of the significant area potential of Dream. The flip side is that because of his healing’s weakness to burst damage, many of the same enemies that he’s good against are also good against him. It’s a dangerous line to walk, but it’s nothing this druid can’t handle.
Rehgar: Attack buffs and camp strength
If you’d only read the header for Rehgar, you probably wouldn’t be able to tell that he was a healer, right? The way he’s most commonly played is as a utility support who happens to do some healing in team fights. Thanks to a recent buff, he’s become more common in team play than ever, but it’s not because of his healing.
Thanks to the upgrades to Bloodlust/R, Rehgar brings big auto-attack potential for the entire team–as long as you can work around his high mana costs and fairly low healing output. His other heroic, Ancestral Healing/R, is fairly easily countered by Ana’s grenade, which means that in most cases, if a team picks Rehgar, they’re going for a Bloodlust comp. Because of the attack speed and healing granted by the ability, Rehgar pairs best with AA divers and chasers. Greymane, Raynor, Genji, Sgt. Hammer, and Valla are all great options, provided the team coordinates well. Rehgar himself has some damage potential, including a little bit of chase and finish with Ghost Wolf/Z, and being able to move almost at regular mount speed without being interrupted by damage is nice.
Outside of team fights, Rehgar’s biggest strength is his ability to take camps. He can take most Siege camps by himself at level 1-2 and can start taking larger camps once he reaches level 4. Though it takes a decent amount of time, it’s still faster than having a tank do it, and choosing your healer to take a camp on their own means that your solo laner doesn’t have to leave their lane and potentially miss XP. This does mean that while Rehgar is taking the camp, there is less healing available across the board, but if the team already has some self-heal, it shouldn’t be an issue. If you want to dominate, pick Rehgar plus some auto-attackers and ride the Bloodlust wave to victory.
Stukov: 50% DPS, 50% burst healing
When I first started compiling my notes on healers, I realized how many of them had not-insignificant DPS potential. We’ve talked about Kharazim and Rehgar already, and Tyrande (whom we’ll discuss next) is also in that camp. Stukov may not be thought of as a DPS, but in my opinion, if you learn to balance his abilities, you can just about carry with him.
Stukov can easily sit in the back and be a healbot, but it’s a lot more effective (and fun) to play him aggressively. He has a lot of chain-CC, combo, and setup potential between Weighted Pustule/W, Lurking Arm/E, and Bio-Kill Switch/D. He doesn’t have a lot of wave clear, but he does have the highest auto-attack damage in the game; if he’s in the thick of a fight, he can do a fair amount of damage by just standing around and smacking people. For a melee hero, his abilities have a decent amount of range, and if you can get a combo off, a well-coordinated team can dive in and get a kill. (Are you seeing a theme here? Well-coordinated teams are essential to the success of healers, and vice versa.)
Stukov’s mobility isn’t great, but he still works well both with a dive team and playing against a dive team. His Weighted Pustule and Lurking Arm combo comes online at level 13 and sets up a kill for heroes like Kerrigan, Valeera, Zeratul, Tracer, Genji, etc.–the usual divers. Stukov can also make life easier for anyone with skillshot abilities that are difficult to land on moving targets (you’re welcome, Kel’thuzad). All of this combo potential, of course, depends on your ability to hit your Lurking Arms, which is difficult with very mobile heroes. Unless you have someone who can initiate, like Imperius or Varian, I wouldn’t play Stukov against a team that has Tracer, Genji, Orphea, Hanzo, or Valla. The path of Weighted Pustule is just too narrow and they’re too difficult to hit.
On the healing side of things, he has great burst healing potential as long as you know how to time your Bio-Kill Switches and balance between healing and slowing people with Weighted Pustule. During tough moments in a team fight, a full team burst heal can be the difference between getting or losing a boss or objective. It’s not as fun as trapping people in your Lurking Arm, but sometimes a healer has to heal, you know!
Tyrande: Auto-attacks and utility…I think?
I’m not going to lie: Tyrande is my least favorite support, and she’s also the one I understand the least. (No connection there, I’m sure.) She does a little bit of everything, from initiation and dive to healing and diminishing enemy armor. In matches where you need versatility, Tyrande could be a viable option.
Tyrande relies on auto-attacks to reduce her extremely long cooldowns. Playing her is about auto-attacking as much as possible while also staying out of harm’s way, as her escape potential is very limited (you have to hit a Lunar Flare/E). She has some minor initiation with Lunar Flare and Hunter’s Mark/D, which can help shred a tank by taking away some of their armor. This pairs decently well with divers, but she’s not suited to diving herself since her healing range is fairly small and she has the aforementioned lack of escape. Finally, she’s got some vision utility with Sentinel/W, so she really is a jack-of-all-trades.
For her healing to be effective, she must be playing against a team with heroes that are easy to auto or must stay in range of minions. Bruisers and tanks are good auto targets, since they generally have less mobility and she can land arrows for longer. Unfortunately, this means that most of her damage is either “trash” damage (you’re not going to kill a tank as Tyrande) or wave clear, since minions also provide cooldown reductions. Most ranged assassins and even some melee assassins are too mobile or too far back in the backline for her to land a significant amount of autos.
She can only heal one, maximum two targets at a time if she takes a specific level 4 talent. She’s good at focused healing, but she won’t be able to heal the entire team at the same time in a team fight. Her healing number is a flat amount rather than a percent, so she’s not great at healing tanks. Personally, I struggle to land enough autos to provide meaningful cooldown reductions, as her lack of escape makes her extremely vulnerable. If you can balance auto attacking with healing, you’ll probably do better with her than I do.
Uther: An off-healer, really
Surprise! Uther isn’t a healer. “Well, Poke,” you might be thinking, “Why is he on this list, then?” The game classifies him as a healer, and I’m going mostly by what Blizzard claims. Uther is generally more viable as a tank, but he does have some off-healing potential, which is what we’ll discuss here.
Uther’s healing is great for countering burst damage. If you’re playing against a team with Li-Ming, Alarak, Kel’Thuzad, Kael’thas, etc.–anyone who does burst damage, really–Holy Light/Q’s high healing amount and easy cast meant that large amounts of damage can quickly be erased. That being said, he’s better at single-target healing than group healing (Holy Radiance/W doesn’t restore a significant amount of HP) and Holy Light’s cooldown is relatively high. This means you have to be judicious with his healing; try to use it only when an ally takes a significant amount of damage. Uther just isn’t a “top-off” healer like Alexstrasza or Ana.
Thanks to Uther’s inherent tankiness, he’s good at staying in fights for long periods of time: he has a relatively high amount of health (for a healer) and a high amount of self-heal. He doesn’t have much mobility to speak of, but that doesn’t matter when you have an immediate stun and a ton of health. Like all tanks, he’s essentially a walking shield. Also like other tanks, he has great setup potential with Divine Storm/R. If he can wade into the backline of a grouped team and stun several of them, an opportunistic team has the chance to jump past the tanks and finish the backline. Uther is good with anyone who can quickly follow up on CC and take advantage of his stuns (even his normal one, Hammer of Justice/E).
One popular strategy with Uther actually encourages him to die if he gets caught out in a team fight. If Uther is the first to die, he can use Eternal Vanguard/D and Flash of Light/Q to heal his allies. He actually does a higher amount of healing while dead than while alive, thanks to the very short cooldown of Flash of Light. Unlike with most other supports, if you die as Uther, it’s not necessarily the end of the fight–your teammates can still win if you stick around and heal them with abandon. Even if he is technically a tank, Uther’s healing can be useful in the right hands.
Whitemane: Team Fight Healing and Minor Attacks
Was Malfurion’s healing too slow for you? Try Whitemane instead. This 200 IQ hero is difficult to position and has a bunch of abilities to balance, but nothing feels better than keeping an ally alive in a team fight through sheer force of will. The versatility of her builds only adds to her strength.
Desperate Plea/Q, Whitemane’s version of Regrowth, grants Zeal, which heals allies for 100% of Whitemane’s damage to heroes, including auto attacks. Her abilities don’t do a lot of damage, but when used in succession, they do a fairly significant amount of healing. The catch is that they only do this when used on enemy heroes, so Whitemane is best at keeping allies alive (not topped off–just alive) in a team fight. Zeal only lasts for 8 seconds on each hero, meaning that playing her in a team fight is a constant balance of picking the right heroes to Zeal, landing your abilities, and managing your mana. (Remind me why she’s considered medium difficulty again?) If there are no opposing heroes around, Whitemane has little healing outside of Clemency/1, which means her healing potential outside of team fights is very limited; it’s best to play her with heroes that have a fair amount of self-heal. She’s at her best when enabling escapes and giving allies just a little more time to finish a kill or get out.
Despite her constant healing, she has no escape and no mobility, so she’s very vulnerable to dive. If she’s surrounded, there’s not much you can do to get her out other than Desperate Plea-ing yourself and hoping you have enough time to hit a Searing Lash/E on the heroes chasing you. If you manage that, you might be able to eke it out, but that depends on the number of people currently attacking you. Though she can’t get herself out very easily, she is good at getting allies out of bad situations, especially squishies. If she can find a safe place to sit and land abilities and autos while the ally is Zealed, they can usually make it out with a sliver of health thanks to the constant healing. You can’t do this for several allies one after another, as Desperate Plea’s mana cost gets really high really fast, but as long as you keep an eye on the speed of your casts, it shouldn’t be too much of a hassle.
Whitemane’s auto-attack build has fallen out of favor recently, but doing damage with her is required for her healing, so it helps to get comfortable with dancing around enemies and landing hits. Her combo, Searing Lash followed by Inquisition/W, can root enemies after level 16, giving her some setup potential near the end of the game. Obviously, this is easier to hit on less-mobile heroes–you probably won’t land the god root on Tracer or Genji unless you get really lucky or accurately predict their movements. I play Whitemane when I’m stressed out about something and want to devote all of my (limited) brain cells to HotS–can you see why?
We finally did it: we covered all 16 healers! I wish I could write bits like this for every hero, but sadly, I’m a terrible DPS and an abysmal tank, so this is the end of my guide. I hope you found it interesting or helpful in some way! Got questions or hate mail? @ me in the NGS Discord or whisper me in-game. I swear I’ll read all of it and report you afterwards.