MongoJerry,May 12 2005, 01:04 PM Wrote:Unless they put the cooldown back to 5 seconds the way it was in the beta, I don't see Holy Nova ever being useful. It was nice for a couple of weeks in the beta when I had Holy Nova and a bunch of +damange items. I could help out the mages doing damage in the Lyceum. Of course, I was doing about half to one-third the damage that mages could do, but it was nice to be able to contribute. Then, they made it so that +damage items didn't help Holy Nova at all and then made the cooldown 60 seconds just so that they could make sure that no one ever used the skill, I suppose. Now, +damage items help a little but still not much, and the cooldown has been reduced. It's still not worth the investment to go all the way up in the Holy tree to get. Get the cooldown back to 5 seconds, and I'll consider it, though.
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Mongo,
You seem to still be thinking of Holy Nova as an AOE spell which it isn't at all.
Holy Nova is an alternative group heal to Prayer of Healing.
Compared to Prayer of Healing, it heals about half the damage (around 400 at rank 3) for about half the mana cost. According to Fangtooth (I think) its supposed to be more mana effcient than Prayer of Healing. Where as Prayer of Healing needed 3 targets to justify the mana cost, Holy Nova only needs 2.
Plus its instant cast versus the 3 second cast time of Prayer of Healing.
The damage is simply a little extra bonus rather then the reason for the spell. Plus both the healing and damage generate ZERO threat.
You've played a priest more than I have, but I imagine there were situations where you would have liked an instant cast zero threat group heal. (Group healing on the run to name just one example). And you still have Prayer of Healing when 1 Holy Nova every 30 seconds isn't enough.
Chris