03-14-2006, 12:18 AM
Gnollguy,Mar 13 2006, 02:33 PM Wrote:Because the mana efficiency is ungodly bad. You have to hit all 5 people in the party with the heal to make is efficient as a flash heal now...
It's even more situational and less useful than the old holy nova now.
This comes from the retail thought that Holy Nova is a healing spell. It's not. It's an offensive spell -- back to the way Holy Nova was in beta -- with some healing. You can dish out a great deal of damage in a short amount of time if you have many targets available. Plus, you can heal *yourself* as well as party members in the area at the same time. That's something that mages can't do. Combine the two abilities and it's understandable that the mana cost is high. If the mana cost were the same as, say, arcane explosion, Holy Nova would be the most powerful spell in the game. Why? Because you would then be able to solo aoe almost any set of mobs in the game as you tear them apart with damage while simultaneously healing yourself.
This is the same argument I've had repeatedly over the usefulness of Devouring Plague. Devouring Plague is my favorite on-on-one PvP spell and I couldn't imagine not having it. But others just look at the spell description and say, "It costs too much mana. It's worthless." To those people, I always say, "If you could cast an extra SW:Pain and Renew simultaneously, would you do it?" Looking at it this way, Devouring Plague costs only a little more than SW:Pain + Renew taken together, benefits from +damage/healing and all +shadow damage talents, and unlike Renew can even be cast in Shadowform. You have a spell that's doing two things at once -- damage and healing -- so it makes sense that its mana cost is higher than other spells. However, if you're in a situation where you're not running out of mana -- like PvP where people usually die well before their mana tanks are exhausted or say when a huge wave of low health mobs are charging at you -- then it doesn't matter how mana efficient a spell is. All that matters is how much damage and/or healing you can dish out. Devouring Plague and Holy Nova are very similar in this regard. They both cost a lot of mana, but boy they can dish out a lot of damage and healing in a short amount of (cast) time.
The new Holy Nova is of far greater utility than the retail Holy Nova has ever been. For the first time in retail, priests are a bonafide aoe class. For a short burst, they're nearly as powerful as mages and warlocks and can simultaneously keep themselves and their teammates up at the same time. As long as the mobs die before the priest runs out of mana, mana efficiency doesn't matter. You can always drink after a battle. Imagine the difference if on the clear to the Broodlord in BWL you had another 6-8 aoe'ers. That's what this change to Holy Nova brings. Far from being "situational and less useful," this change to Holy Nova will by itself alter the way priests are viewed and played in the coming months.