Holy Spell for lvl 10

[Zoros]

The 10 lvl spell for Holy Priests has to be...

[Kelesti]

Other:

Whatever Blizzard wants it to be.

Edit: Though I'd really be happy if Blizzard was smart and made it Holy Nova.

[Bigslick]

Though I'd really be happy if Blizzard was smart and made it Holy Nova.

The challenge is that they've indicated they want it to be something that 'identifies' the spec, and it needs to provide some real utility to the low level priest. Penance is an obvious choice for disc (which means Holy priests will be able to get it for just 1 talent point invested into the disc tree when Cata arrives), as is Mind Flay for shadow.

Holy Nova would be nice for leveling, but it's traditionally been a baseline spell used as much by disc as by holy. Of the ones listed for vote, SoL seems nice - but not in its current incarnation as holy crit rate when leveling is generally pathetically low.

[Kelesti]

Penance is an obvious choice for disc (which means Holy priests will be able to get it for just 1 talent point invested into the disc tree when Cata arrives)

Nope. Subspec'ing into a tree will not train its abilities or passives. Holy Priests will not ever have Penance.

Holy Nova would be nice for leveling, but it's traditionally been a baseline spell used as much by disc as by holy. Of the ones listed for vote, SoL seems nice - but not in its current incarnation as holy crit rate when leveling is generally pathetically low.

Traditionally, Holy Nova was a deep Holy Talent that was replaced by Lightwell, with Nova moving up the tree. Traditionally Desperate Prayer was a human Priest-Racial, which now takes up Nova's spot as it became baseline, a recent thing really.

Its not particularily used by one or the other more, because of its poor design. In order to beef it up, some changes have to be made to it. Limiting it to one spec also prevents the other from monopolizing on how bad ass it may just become.

Edit: And traditionally, Surge of Light only worked on Smite. Didn't feel like a real awesome Holy talent then, either.

[Abandon]

Personally, I can see why Holy Nova could be a good choice for Holy as their low level spell, but I doubt it would happen. It would leave Holy with three different AoE heals, while Discipline has one. Considering Holy already gets another instant AoE heal with Circle of Healing, I am not convinced they would remove Holy Nova from Discipline.

[Lysdexic]

The main limitation of Holy Nova, no matter how good they make it, is the fact that many fights require us to spread out. P1 LK for infest would be nice, sindragosa, maybe booooone stooorm... Can't really think of other fights where we're clumped up..

[Dangerjoe]

The main limitation of Holy Nova, no matter how good they make it, is the fact that many fights require us to spread out. P1 LK for infest would be nice, sindragosa, maybe booooone stooorm... Can't really think of other fights where we're clumped up..

Sindragosa at lvl 10 :P hehe (i think ur like 70 lvls ahead of the topic here m8 )

But imo the lvl 10 spell should be holy nova because it has good utility for lots of the level dungeons and solo aswell. seems like the right starter spell and its also makes u feel "holy" like mindflay makes u feel "evil/shadow"

[Lysdexic]

Believe it or not, the spell you get at level 10 is kept all the way to level 85! It's also meant to be iconic and useful. Currently the only time I'd use Holy Nova is LK10 hc inside frostmourne due to the party-based-limitation.

If that gets removed, it is STILL only useful on very few fights. (By useful I mean superior in terms of spell choice.)

[Soisoisoi]

:'( if they remove Holy Nova what else will I spam in dungeons leveling a priest!

[Dangerjoe]

ye but there are 3 perspecitives to the game

PvE raids
PvE solo
PvP BG/arena

id say its very useful, also we can only speculate as we dont know how encounters(PvE raids) will be in Cata yet :S for both PvE solo and PvP its very useful imo

but from a PvE raids only player i can see ur point Lysdexic, it seems lackluster then..
im more of a pvp guy so for me its very nice

[Lysdexic]

Does that mean you're going to pvp as holy? :P

If it becomes a little more viable, I'd be the first to switch I have to say..

[Dangerjoe]

its to early to say, but im quite sure i saw a blue post somwhere saying that they will try to bring holy up to the same level as Disc for pvp..

If they can im deffo gonna try holy for pvp thats for sure

[Daws001]

Holy Nova unless they want it to factor into Disc's healing arsenal.

[Zeuq]

Making Holy Nova a Holy only spell is just silly. It's useful to all specs to some extent now and it hasn't really "defined" Holy since it was replaced with Lightwell. The problem is, all of the defining abilities of Holy are either things that aren't useful at level 10 (like Circle of Healing or Spirit of Redemption, or Lightwell) or shouldn't be limited to Holy (like PoH and Renew). I just don't like any of the current options as a level 10 spell.

Instead, I would perhaps expect a new ability or an update to a current one. Maybe add a new HoT that is akin to the functionality of Penance, where it can be used offensively if needed, but is also a powerful HoT, but is perhaps limited to a single target and is what would be refreshed for tank healing via the Chakra.
In fact, they could just make some modifications to Holy Fire to make it more iconic, possibly reworking it much like my new HoT suggestion as both offensive and healing, thought with some initial burst healing/damage and and a left over HoT/DoT. And, if they did make Holy Fire a Holy only ability, it wouldn't matter because whatever usefulness it gets for Disc or Shadow is replaced by their level 10 spells Penance and Mind Flay.

[Zoros]

Zeuq. Your reason against Holy Nova is the same reason that other people could use against Holy Fire. I don't understand why Holy Nova is more important for shadowpriests than Holy Fire. If shadowpriests are currently using Holy Nova more than Holy Fire, that is a fail design.

Shadowpriests should use Mind Sear over Holy Nova, as they use Mind Fly over Holy Fire. If they are spaming Holy Nova to survive in PvP, that is against the new PvP philosophy. The amount of instant heals has to be reduced to make PvP more friendly. Flash Heal has been removed from Surge of Light with this intention. And fmv, if Blizzard take that direction it has no sense that shadowpriests spam a non cooldown instant heal spell to survive. If casted spells has to come back to PvP, shadowpriests must use their basic healing spells: Renew, Flash Heal and Mending allowing Purge and Interrupt mechanics.

Holy Nova denied to discipline priests is more controversial. FMV Discipline Priest only use Holy Nova for unimportant things. They have other spells to do Holy Nova's job. And In my opinion, the reason why Holy Nova party restriction can't be removed is because Discipline Priests would get a spell too close to Circle of Healing. Power Word: Barrier and both Prayer spells should be enough to counter area damage with a discipline priest. I know that the beta version of Power Word: Barrier is underwhelming, but that doesn't make Holy Nova undispensable. Blizzard could balance discipline talents with the fact that Holy Nova is no longer in their spellbook. Barrier cooldown could be reduced, or Attonement healing could be changed to affect targets within small radius.

And even if Holy Nova is now baseline, it sill has more holy feeling than any other spell, except Spirit of Redemption.

[Azyoulike]

Zeuq. Your reason against Holy Nova is the same reason that other people could use against Holy Fire. I don't understand why Holy Nova is more important for shadowpriests than Holy Fire. If shadowpriests are currently using Holy Nova more than Holy Fire, that is a fail design.

Because the spells are different? Holy fire is a pure DPS spell, spriests will only use it on the rare occassions a mob has shadow immunity or they have been locked out of shadow. Even in that instance they have smite.

HNova however is a totally different beast from Mind Sear

• it is a heal & damage combined

• it causes no threat

• it is instant and hence not interruptable

• it is useful to break stealth.

• it is useful against very weak creatures where MSear's targetting mechanic can be annoying

• it is better against small numbers of enemies

These are also pretty much the reasons I use Holy Nova instead of MSear as disc.

Shadowpriests should use Mind Sear over Holy Nova, as they use Mind Fly over Holy Fire. If they are spaming Holy Nova to survive in PvP, that is against the new PvP philosophy.

I would agree they shouldn't be spamming it, but there's no reason that either they or disc priests shouldn't be able to cast it at all. It's a situationally useful spell, and it's exactly the same situations whatever your spec.

Holy Nova denied to discipline priests is more controversial. FMV Discipline Priest only use Holy Nova for unimportant things. They have other spells to do Holy Nova's job.

This is just silly, we could say exactly the same thing of Holy. Holy only uses HN for unimportant things and it has other spells to do HNova's job. In fact Holy has more other tools to do that job than disc does. Looking back on wrath the encounters where I found HN useful was Mimi & also to a lesser extent Thorim. I found it useful whichever spec I healed those encounters in.

Power Word: Barrier and both Prayer spells should be enough to counter area damage with a discipline priest.

CoH and both prayers spells should be enough to counter area damage with a holy priest.

And even if Holy Nova is now baseline, it still has more holy feeling than any other spell, except Spirit of Redemption.

No -there is another - CHAKRA! Chakra is the obvious signature ability, it's transformative, it's useful at endgame and useful for levelling, it's something that disc can under no circumstances be allowed to reach - ever.

[Kelesti]

They won't give Chakra as a signature ability, just like they won't give Body and Soul as a signature ability. These are fine examples of their "new" talent point direction, and they wouldn't want to waste these fine talent point sinks that are actually "game-changing", "interesting" and "fun".

Chakra's going to stay talented.

[kingmob]

It certainly won't be lolwell.

[Shawaam]

If lightwell was changed to a totem like ability, which attacked enemies and healed friendly within a certain range, it could be a pretty awesome holy-baseline.

[Zeuq]

Because the spells are different? Holy fire is a pure DPS spell, spriests will only use it on the rare occassions a mob has shadow immunity or they have been locked out of shadow. Even in that instance they have smite.

HNova however is a totally different beast from Mind Sear

• it is a heal & damage combined

• it causes no threat

• it is instant and hence not interruptable

• it is useful to break stealth.

• it is useful against very weak creatures where MSear's targetting mechanic can be annoying

• it is better against small numbers of enemies

These are also pretty much the reasons I use Holy Nova instead of MSear as disc.

All of these are reasons why it's potentially useful to Shadow, and really any Priest spec in general. Not to mention that Mind Sear isn't obtained until level 75, so if it goes to Holy only, Shadow can't AOE at all until then.


And to continue the point, really, how is it more Holy than any other ability? I very rarely use it as a Holy Priest except when I'm doing a random heroic or perhaps some of the silly AOE trash in ICC. And I'd use it exactly the same as way as Discipline too. In fact, from a healing perspective, it's just a poor-mans CoH that is self-targetted and limited to the party.

And you would definitely see a lot of QQ Disc Priests if they lost it. As mentioned by Az here, it's useful for breaking stealth in PVP in additional to being very useful in BGs for preventing flag caps in BGs like AB, AV, and IoC. And, of course, in PVE it's at least as useful to them as it is to Holy, since it's pretty comparable to a poor-mans self-targetted CoH.

No -there is another - CHAKRA! Chakra is the obvious signature ability, it's transformative, it's useful at endgame and useful for levelling, it's something that disc can under no circumstances be allowed to reach - ever.

Kelesti beat me to it, but I agree with her reasoning. With some changes they might be able to make it work, but it's not an ability in the way Mind Flay, Penance, or the other examples given. And imagine being new to the game and seeing that tooltip when you hit level 10 and you're still trying to learn the class, you can't tell me you wouldn't be confused.



Regardless, I think they're pretty much forced to either heavily rework an existing ability, or just give us something new.