With patch 1.10 and the Priest changes right around the corner, what are now the "best" (or good) Priest talent builds for

1.) Solo play (a.k.a. Shadow oder Holy Priest)
2.) Instance play (a.k.a. Healing Priest) ?

Examples:

V1.10 Shadow Priest

V1.10 Healing Priest

Cleoboltra's initial build.

This is a talent spec designed for raid healing. If I were more into PvP, it would of course be completely different.

OMG, why no Improved Renew or Spiritual Healing? Well, any Priest who's been raiding for a while as a pure healer can tell you why: the points are better spent elsewhere. The reason for this is because these talents don't stack with +healing. While +damage talents will stack up with +damage gear, +healing talents don't stack with +healing gear.

So if I have +500 healing (not hard to get for a raiding healer), and my Renew heals for 1000, it will heal for 1500 without talent points. It will heal for 1650 with talent points - NOT 1725. As you get more and more +heal gear, the total percentage improvement of the +heal talents becomes less and less. This isn't to say that I wouldn't want the +heal talents, I would, but not at the cost of some of the more useful stuff out there: talents that change the core functionality and power of the Priest, not just supply a little more +heal. Game-changing talents.

Crits are huge. It's not just the coolness that is Inspiration. People think about crits the wrong way, really. Sometimes it's overhealing, but if you're especially raining down heals on tanks (think BWL), it's often not. Crits are really "free" 50% extra healing. If there were a talent that said "chance of healing your target for 50% more for free," I think more healers would consider it seriously. That's what a crit is - it's free healing. Tack Inspiration on top of it and you've got a big bonus.

A newly minted 60 Priest would get a lot more bang out of Improved Renew and Spiritual Guidance than a decked-out raiding Priest with +600 healing gear. I'd rather have the extra mana from Mental Strength, though - which, btw, stacks with gear and buffs; multiplicative effects for the win.

I'm also just not impressed by Lightwell at all (on paper); nor does Power Infusion excite me (sorry Mages). If I were PvP spec'ed, maybe...

Anyhow, it's been a longstanding complaint of Priests that talents for +healing don't factor in +healing gear. Many Priests with lots of +heal gear spec OUT of Improved Renew, and then have to suffer seeing "A more powerful spell is already active" because Blizzard's game code considers a 200-hp-per-tick Renew of a newly minted 60 Priest with Improved Renew more powerful than a 300-hp-per-tick Renew of a powerful decked-out raiding Priest without Improved Renew but a crapstorm of +heal gear. That's just stupid.

-Bolty

I'm just wondering why you chose to add Holy Nova over other options.

Well,

1) It's only one talent point to gain a whole new ability.
2) It's a very situational use, yes, but it's also the ultimate "oh crap" button. Prayer of Healing is a 3-second cast, but Holy Nova's instant.

However, I've never had Holy Nova. I know its mana efficiency is complete garbage, so it should only be used if things are really going to hell. If it's powerful enough of a heal to save wipes, I want it. Saving wipes is my job. I'll have to play with it some to see if it's worth it. This is why I called it my "initial build." I should get on the test realms and try it out if I have a chance...

-Bolty

*nods*

This is the build a Priest in my guild and I worked out for Strat, UBRS and the like and just beginning into AQ20 and ZG. We went for as much "free" plus healing as possible to help out with the lack of purplez. As gear scales up, he will probably switch to something very similar to Bolty's build.

Ok here are my current plans (always subject to change). Keep in mind that this is what I'll be doing:

Lots of 5 mans (working on new Dungeon 2 set)
UBRS
Occasional Zul'Gurub every couple of weeks or so

I am adding a lot more damage talents to my spec than what I currently have (which is 29 disc/22 holy). In a 5 man my healing capacity is very rarely taxed, so more damage is better. Cheap damage (wand + DoT) are buffed here with Mental Agility and Wand Spec. I also have +9% crit on offensive spells for "expensive" damage. As my only 60 on the server, my current build is a terrible farming character and I'd like some solo power.

It's a waste in a good five man to not be contributing damage most of the time. I haven't really taken some of the better PvP talents as I've not enjoyed PvP with the priest, but I might try it a bit more with this build than before. Might consider picking up martyrdom and improved inner fire.

Here is my tentative spec:Power Infusion/Holy Damage Build

Big things I'll miss out on:

Improved PoH is one of my favorite talents. If I decide not to go for Power Infusion the main reason will be this talent. Spirit of Redemption also looks very nice in ZG or a five man.

Reasons for some of my less obvious choices:

PW:S over Silent Resolve: I have never been impressed with threat reduction talent as a priest -- I have good warriors and disciplined groups, and Fade goes a long way. Also, in ZG keeping mages alive during AoE is a big part of my job, and one that I do better than a druid. Extra shield strength then > threat reduction.

Holy Nova: Oh how I want to have an AoE!

No Inspiration: I currently have Inspiration. When it's on the tank, he gets an extra 5% damage mitigation, which is pretty good. Problem is that it never seems to happen enough in even a 20 person raid.

But I keep changing my mind -- I wish I could get on the test realm to try it out.

Genkar's Most Likely PvE/PvP build

Spirit tap will make grinding a lot more easily done, and I get a lot of killing blows in PvP, so having a larger mana pool would be nice. .

Improved VE will also just give us a nice little boost in healing Avoiding improved shield because it just doesn't give that much of a boost

With Mogo still being restoration with her version of inspiration (and, for whatever reason, having heals crit more for her than for Necrali) I don't think it's going to hurt us really. Of course this might mean some snipe healing on my part to keep it up on him, but honestly, even without me snipe-healing him, I don't think it's going to cause any problems if Necrali doesn't get Inspiration.

I need to get both Mogo and Aleri on the test realms soon and see how holy nova has changed for Aleri and well, to see what life would be like for Mogo as an elemental shaman without spending anything.

Edit: reworded something.

21 Disc/30 Holy is a nice looking split. But skipping Inner Focus, Imp. Prayer of Healing, and Spirit of Redemption even though you have space for them?

I would really consider all three of those if you are that deep into each tree. You can at least get Inner Focus by dropping a single point out of Silent Resolve. Inner Focus is too good to pass up at that price in my opinion.

The gains from Imp. PW:S is pretty minimal, and, in my estimation, threat reduction is not really about beating the tank, but wipe prevention in the case the tank goes down. If you're just after the tank, and he lives, then everything's fine.. but if you're just after the tank, and he goes down, and you go down.. well.. you just took out two pieces of a very important 5-man, where a rogue with healing might've been able to keep up for that last bit of whatever took you out. That's just been my thinking on it. Plus, silent resolve has made it so that it combines damage -and- healing aggro under one banner, very handy.

This is what I was planning

21 disc / 30 holy

It's much more heal-centric than vor_lord's build, but kinda similar. Not sure, though, maybe I should get some extra damage in there since I can.

I'll second that, ima_nerd. vor_lord's spot on.

It's key to emphasize that which makes your class special. Priests, Druids, and Paladins can all single-target heal pretty well; in fact, Druids are superior single-target healers than Priests thanks to two stacking DoTs and Nature's Swiftness. What makes Priests shine are two things:

1) Group healing
2) "Oh crap" healing

Inner Focus, Improved Prayer of Healing, and Spirit of Redemption all emphasize those powers.

Inner Focus is, without a doubt, a game-changing ability. Blizzard's making it even better than before in 1.10, with a smaller cooldown. Inner Focus is more than just a free spellcast - it's a huge extra crit chance, and, even better, more time out of the 5-second rule. Shadow Priests are salivating at being able to get it without investing so much in Discipline anymore.

Even though you're not in Molten Core or BWL, there can be some *long* fights in ZG, fights where you'll get to use Inner Focus more than once per shot. Smart use of Inner Focus can play a huge part in success during these encounters. It obviously should be saved for Greater Heals or Prayers of Healing - Holy Nova, too! Where it's really sweet is when you can pop Inner Focus and queue Greater Heals on tanks. You'll spend a lot of time out of the 5-second rule regenerating mana, then, and if it turns out the tank doesn't need a Greater Heal right away, you get even more bonus time while you queue it up again. Since Inner Focus gives you such a high crit chance (with Cleoboltra's gear, around 50%), that's gonna be one BIG heal. Plus, inspiration!

Improved Prayer of Healing, again, is a talent that let's you emphasize what you're good at - group healing. You use PoH more in 5-mans and 20-mans than 40-mans, true, but a 20% mana reduction for using this spell is enormous.

Spirit of Redemption is no longer the Improved Dying talent. It's now the "oh yeah? f**k you!" talent. It's uses in PvP are obvious as a deterrent to getting assist trained. In 5-man groups it might not be all that useful, since if you're dead it usually means a wipe is coming anyhow, 10 seconds of extra healing not being enough to save them. In a raid environment, well, if I had it last night we might have beaten Chromaggus. Nuff said. I coulda used 10 seconds of free healing before popping my soulstone, since I was really out of mana toward the end...

Priests will be flat-out dominant healers of the game in 1.10, and these new powerful abilities are going to be what defines us. They're too good to pass up. The only catch is that we can't get them all. Can't have Inner Focus, Spirit of Redemption, Holy Nova, Lightwell, AND Power Infusion. Argh, choices!

-Bolty

You can, however, get Inner Focus, SoR, Holy Nova, Divine Spirit...

4/6 special thingees ain't bad!

HOLY DPS j0!

Good point and something for me to think about. Do we know if the 15% on shield is applied after the 10% of your +heal?

Let's say I have +200 to healing... is it:

(942 + .1 * 200) * 1.15 = 1106
or
(942 * 1.15)+ .1 * 200 = 1103

Hehe it appears the answer is "who cares" with only 200 healing gear.

That was actually a mistake by me putting in the points on the Inner Focus It was meant to be 4/5 Silent Resolve. As to PoH ... it really isn't going to be useful for us. As it stands now, we have 2 Priests (one at 60 and one only at 40), 1 Druid and plenty of Shaman. I would rather have the Shaman spot healing while the Priests concentrate on the tank (namely me ). PoH can be useful in 5-man but I don't see 5-man as challenging enough to warrant 2-4 points just to make it even easier. Spirit of Redemption could very well be worth it, I suppose I should re-evaluate its value. 4/5 Spiritual Guidance 1/1 Spirit of Redemption would probably be a good idea. Thanks for the ideas, I'll pass 'em along to my Priest

Edit:


Haha, it would appear so. On a related note, why is it that Blizzard will apply 10% more mana last but 10% more healing first? It seems to be rather illogical to me.

I'm also looking in to builds and having a tough time.

What I'm looking for:
1) PVE primarily.
2) UBRS and below (no raids).
3) Healing and damage.
4) PVP-ability (battle-healer/holy damage etc for BG's).

I can't seem to get a good holy damage/healing build going - too many choices! I think I'd rather go for Spiritual Guidance than Power Infusion since SG works all the time. However, if I go far enough in Holy to get SG, where should my priorities be in Disc? It seems logical to go for Divine Spirit if you get SG; should I also try for Mental Agility, or Mental Strength? Should I ignore SG altogether and go for something else in Disc? Is Improved Mana Burn worth it in PVP, and if so does it ever help in PVE? I think I should grab Spirit of Redemption too for both instance runs and battlegrounds; how do I fit that in?

Blah, still working on it. Suggestions welcome!

Edit: two quick builds.
1) Holy to Searing Light/Spirit of Redemption, Disc to Force of Will including MA/MS
2) Spiritual Guidance/Divine Spirit build.

Critiques? Suggestions?

Improved mana burn is something my priest has now. I is useful in PvP, but it's usage is somewhat limited. It's not one of those skills you will use all the time. It is the most powerful mana reduction skill in the game, but the cast time is still horrendously long for PvP and it eats your own mana too.

Because it eats your mana, and you are a healer, it's not terribly useful in PvE. A warlock makes a better mana drainer simply because he can USE the mana he drains to perform his function. Rare are the encounters that you can both spare a healer to mana-burn and mana is worth burning.

I think imp. mana burn is something that can be passed up in most builds.

This is my new planned PvP/PvE build. With a little gear, and some good Int, it won't be hard to hit 15% spell crit for Smite and Holy Fire, with nearing 10% on MB.

Add in Power Infusion, Inner Focus, and Spell Warding for good PvP output. Trinket priest ftw.

Then I added Holy Nova, and Divine Spirit, plus full threat reduction for a rounded out build that I can DPS on solidly, while still having some useful stuff for raiding.

I can't wait!

For 1.10 I was thinking about going for a Holy DPS/Healing build for my priest, Silverflail. I'm not entirely sure of the exact layout (specifically the 3 points in the increased mana talent in the Discipline tree), but I'll figure it out eventually. At least respecs for Silverflail are still pretty cheap versus the 45g respec I'd have to burn on Skybreak if she ever changes specs.

I personally don't play a priest, but if I would. (And then focusing on raids)
I'd rather choose
Spirutal Guidance + Spirutal Healing
instead of
Mental Strength + Mental Agility + Divine Spirit.

To me, Mental Agility looks rather pointless.
And if I understand our priests correctly only 1/3 of the total mana they use on a boss encounter comes from int. The rest is regenerated. So I'd guess Mental Strength increases total healing by 3%. Which ain't impressive.

Spirutal Guidance doesn't look that good. (But I'm not sure what numbers I used.)
Spirutal Healing, even with the current behauviour of applying before +healing is adding a significant amount to flash heal.

And Holy nova, well take a look:
Holy Nova

Holy Nova
Rank 6

750 Mana
181-210 damage with 10 yard radius
302-351 healing with 10 yard radius

To me that seems to be a rather pointless talent.

10% reduction on Renew, Power Word: Shield, Dispel, Abolish Disease (and others of course--shadow protection, Shadow Word: Pain). For a pure raiding priest I would imagine it depends a lot on the encounter.



Utility over a small incremental efficiency boost. It's only one point. I'm thrilled to be able to get it so cheaply.

Some feedback:



We have tons of instant-cast abilities. Buffs, shields, renew, dispel. For shadow priests, there's also SW:Pain and VE. I use Renew for 30% of my healing so Mental Agility is huge. For dispel-heavy fights this is also extremely useful.



Spiritual Guidance is indeed worse than Spiritual Healing, but it does affect damage too for PvP.



This is where is shows you are not a priest. We are kind of stereotyped into having a limited role, so it's fun to break out of that a little. Having access to an AOE spell, with a bit of instant-cast healing to boot, is very nice.

So, a restoration shaman, a restoration druid, a disc/holy priest, a shadow priest, and a beast mastery hunter walk into Undead Strat...

and the latest 1.10 talent plan for the disc/holy priest is born.

We were unable to kill the Baron last night. Holy water, bombs, volley, chain lightning, totems, help from that pathetic paladin... combined they weren't enough. In retrospect we might have tried tanking him with the pet so that we had hurricane for two spawns, saving our other 1 minute cooldowns for the spawns when it is in cooldown.

If I had Holy Nova, we win. So I'm happy to be picking that up soon.

Regardless, I realized that in optimal groups my healing capacity is rarely taxed, but some less traditional groups might require more. I also realized that for the sake of pure damage, Spiritual Guidance > Force of Will, and it has healer related benefits that Force of Will doesn't.

So I am still getting some very nice holy damage boosters, but giving up Power Infusion and picking up Spirit of Redemption. Still waffling on improved prayer of healing, and thrashing around in the first two tiers of discipline (I resisted a bunch of silences last night and comments in this thread have made me waver on improving shield).

I'm just going to list them here for my own archive purposes with edits:
Mental Strength + Spiritual Guidance
Spiritual Healing + Imp PoH + Holy Reach
SG over Holy Reach

edit: It wasn't so much the inability to kill the skeletons, as it was a lack of DPS on the Baron while doing so, leading to more skeleton groups, exhausting our resources. We really only had the hunter for DPS, as a shadow priest who can't flay isn't contributing that much.

Don't forget a 10% reduction on holy nova, which is a pretty significant mana savings, since it's expensive.

Not to derail too much, but I think we could have do it had I not been so tired and thinking a little better.

I was worried that Yurtle wouldn't be able to position him well or hold aggro well and that incoming damage might have been too much. However thinking about it again, Yurtle, with MotW and the shadow resistance buff had 120 shadow resist and 7100 armor. Since I was primary damage source and I know Yurtle can hold against me we could have had the druid go bear to position him then stop doing aggro until the turtle got it. Druid could have then gone cat for more damage or used hurricane to help with the skelly packs more.

Since we knew it woudl be a long fight going in but that we had a large amount of healing I should have hit him with a mana drain earlier. Could have sucked him dry and prevented him from healing like he did a few times. I should have placed an explosive trap at the start by the priest so that the first wave of skells would have been dealt with that way. With the druid tanking I should have pulled the pet back FD'd and place more to help with that too. That would not have helped with the DPS issue on the Baron himself though, which is why I think my lack of confidence in the pet doing it was more detrimental to our success than anything. He had the defense and live (4600 HP buffed or something like that) to handle it I was worried about him holding aggro as a missed bite or resisted growl would really hurt and intimidation doesn't work on most bosses. Had I just had the confidence in him and let the druid do more DPS, + additional healing, + additional AoE I think that group could have done it. We knew it wasn't going to be easy going in, but heck the turtle tanked most of, including some of the bosses for most of it, Baron isn't that much tougher.

Ah well, it was really late (2am my time) when we got to him so I wasn't on top of my game.

But yeah I think Holy Nova could have tipped the scales in there as well. We've done it without a mage, or lock before, just a couple of hunters for the AoE, but we had a rogue to help with DPS and two hunters means more DPS (I had no DPS on the Baron when I was dealing with the skeletons via volley or multishot or what not two hunters means you still have some of that DPS there). So non ideal groups can do it in blues and greens we just missed it. The little mistakes that anyone made were too much to overcome and I made some little mistakes.

Hiya , is this a decent build for grinding on ? I have myself a little lvl 12 priest atm and find I do a lot of soloing , is this build viable , thanks . I have pretty much no idea where priests are concerned but would like to give it a go

I prefer Shadow for leveling. I was Shadow/Disc from level 10 to level 60. It's the best for soloing (in my opinion) with Spirit Tap reducing your downtime and Mind Flay giving you an extra, efficient damage spell. Throw in Darkness, Shadow Weaving and Shadow Form and you will be outputting a lot of very mana-efficient damage while grinding. Don't let anyone tell you you can't heal if you're Shadow because they are plain wrong. Until high end content, a Shadow Priest can heal just fine. I can't give you a build for 1.10 because I really haven't looked at the Shadow tree in conjunction with the Discipline enough.

Ahh great , thanks . I'll keep my eye out on the boards for anything that comes along

This pic shows one persions build with some damage / healing numbers with different trinket usages:

http://www.untamedguild.net/images/patchdmg.jpg

Why *wouldn't* you get Holy Nova now? Forget the "oh crap" healing. It'll make make aoe clears so much more fun. Toss two priests in with three mages and watch them aoe the mother out of everything with priests providing both damage and healing at the same time. I'm going to make sure to bring my +damage/healing gear along with my ZHC to raids just for these opportunities.

Incidentally, I tried a power infusion holy nova build the other night on the test server and got mixed results. In my +326 damage/healing gear with a ZHC+Power Infusion+Inner Focus powerup, I was only able to get a group of six furbolgs in northern felwood down to 20% health before I ran out of mana. So, if one wants to solo aoe grind this way, one has to fight lower level mobs, use mana potions a lot, wear a flask, or make sure to have arcane intellect and other +mana buffs on them. On the other hand, a priest+mage combo would really clear through mobs quickly -- much more quickly than the previous method of having the priest stand back and shield and heal while the mage does all the fighting. And, heck, a priest duo would work now, too.

You'd better start looking at it, because 1.10 changes the class a lot. I'd still go with shadow for leveling, though. However, a person could get away with powering up their Holy Smite now if he or she wanted to stick with holy throughout their character's life.

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.

You have to hit 4 critters I think with the damage to make it as efficient as a smite. I think once all the priests get past the "ooo fun new toy" side of it and really start seeing how rare the situation where it actually makes things faster, safer, or better is that they'll start dropping it for a point somewhere else.

It's even more situational and less useful than the old holy nova now.

Now THAT is some good info right there. Love seeing those numbers!

Even though it's an extreme case(Flask + Oil + ZHC + DI), I thought this one was too funny:

Your Smite crits Heavy War Golem for 2175 Holy Damage.

"lol, smite."

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.

This is the exact situation I was just thinking of. I can think of a ton more just off the top of my head where having a priest or two would make the killing speed much faster, and infinitely safer.

I've never had more fun with my priest than running around Stratholme on the PTR, AOE'ing with the mages. It's certainly convinced this shadow priest to respec.

I really think this is a case of just different playstyles. I hated the "new" holy nova on the test realms. Yes, it can deal some damage, but unless you've got quite a few mobs around it's just not worth the mana expenditure. With Aleri's current gear and a holy spec, she's got just under 6k. I can only cast seven holy novas before I'm drained of mana. That's it. If it cost slightly less mana (I'm not saying drop it to what it is right now), it might be worth it. 750 mana for that little healing and damage (unless you've got lots of critters around) just isn't worth it in my opinion except for certain situations. Of course, you and I have never seemed to agree on how to play a priest Mongo and Lum so I'm not surprised that we don't agree about this change.

So, it was of situational use before, and it's of (perhaps a different) situational use now. Except it can be spammed.

Spammable spells are always more fun :-)

Oh I'm not denying it's fun. I thought it was really fun to use pre-1.10. It's still fun, but it just simply costs too much mana for how little it does (except for specific cases). I just find it funny that I used to defend holy nova pre-1.10 and now, I'm telling folks it's just not worth it for most things.

It's 680 mana with talents and don't forget that Inner Fire is easy to get now, too, which gives you an extra cast right there, along with a +25% chance to crit!

Here's a well produced video along the same lines. The intro is funny, then it proceeds to show some of the power of the holy damage build.

http://files.filefront.com/PVPriest3avi/;4...;/fileinfo.html

You mean inner focus. But I personally still feel it's just not worth it for my character to have, regardless of if it's easier to get now. She played around with power infused+inner focused+force of will holy novas. Yeah, it was neat for once every three minutes, but I still do not like the changes they've made to it. For you high mana pool, completely geared up priests, fine. Have a ball. Aleri doesn't have that gear and won't be getting that gear anytime soon. You want to run in for PvP, cast one of the PI+IF novas, cast a couple of regular novas and then fear bomb, go right ahead. See how much holy damage you can dish out there in a matter of seconds. I'm sure it will be lots of fun. I don't PvP so there's more usefulness of the spell cut out for me. Again, it's a matter of personal playstyle. You have always have had more of an offensive playstyle than I have. The new holy nova just simply does not fit in with my playstyle.

That priest is also being almost completely left alone to cast those nice long holy fires. He's also got infusion and innervate up on him for most of those edits, along with some flask/potion it looks like. When he finally holy novas, not one single person dies (that I saw) except for him. So yeah, it's a fun little toy, but it was a fun little toy before 1.10 as well when everyone was so convinced it was a completely sucky talent. Yeah, the big crits are nice to see, but even with holy discipline and force of will, you need +damage gear on to get them.

I rarely PvP and am still going for Holy Nova. The way I see it, it's:
1) Another healing spell/panic button
2) Useful and fun for AOE pulls in 5-man instances
3) Great for grinding low level guys for cloth drops or whatever
4) A great toy
5) Only one talent point!

And yet, when I mentioned points 1 and 2 whenever I was defending holy nova, they got glossed over because of point 5 - it was still only one talent point, but much farther into the tree.

Edit: And point 4 I mentioned in defense of holy nova too.

It was a sucky talent primarily because of the suckiness of the rest of the holy tree. What you gave up in the other trees to get it just made it almost variant material :-)

Yep. And here, of all places, I should never have been poo-pooed for wanting it, having it and using it to good effect. Just like I shouldn't be made to feel inferior because I don't want it in 1.10.

Well, yes, as is the nature of all PvP videos I've seen, he does pick and choose battles where he looks good. However, I imagine having fiery hands makes you a little less of a target than glowing yellow hands healing that warrior in front of you.

It won't once people start to realize what holy damage can do and that there isn't much anyone can do to mitigate it besides the tiny holy protection potions.

Of course, no one should be belittled for any talent choice, and I certainly didn't mean anything like that by my post. My point of view is "Hey cool- new toy!" but I'm completely fine with other people not getting Holy Nova.

From a practical perspective I can see 1.10 Holy Nova as being like pre-1.10 Focused Casting or pre-1.10 Spirit of Redemption. If you have a free point and the reqs, go for it, why not, might be useful. But if you want to use the point elsewhere, more power to you! After all, we have lots of great talents to spend points on now.