Hello, I read up on the icyveins rotation pages and it sounded like smite is an important part of the rotation, even taking precedence above aoe damage spells like holy nova. Most other specs prioritize aoe abilities over single target when there are 2 or more enemies right? So this has me confused.
How can a single target ability be better when we want to do more damage for more atonement healing? And I know smite reduces our pet CD and is more useful with our tier set. But even so, it’s hard to wrap my head around using a single target spell over aoe with multiple enemies grouped up.
Content I’ll be doing is m+
Casting Smite resets your Mindbender faster and with your 4-piece you cast an extra smite each time you cast smite with your Mindbender out (so 2x the cdr reset). If you prioritize smite you can reset Mindbender in 10-15s to keep a 50% uptime on Shadow Covenant.
Holy Nova is a great spell (but was better before it was nerfed). I’d track the stacks. If you do, you will quickly see that it is really only very good once it stacks up (and of course in big packs). Hence, you only want to use it in a limited way. And, while it can do a little bit of healing via atonement (I believe) it is kind of a frill. Meaning, you can’t use it that often (it is kind of mana intensive too) and what it does really does not amount to very much overall healing and/or damage.
As for smite? It is good with the tier set. It is good if you know how to use it (say weaving it in with shadow spells via Twilight Equlibrium) and as a filler. But you really want to rely mostly on blasting with your pet for healing and damage vs other ways.
My two cents, for what it’s worth.
How big? Because even at 1 stack, the spell does close to 8k damage. At 20 stacks it does 21k+. Whereas smite always does around 11k, single target. I’m struggling to see how casting smite is still better. Is the pet really that strong to justify using single target instead of aoe?
Pretty strong, Mindbender is typically my 2nd or 3rd damage behind either Smite or Penance/Dark Reprimand. Mindbender itself does an AoE slash attack when you use Mind Blast, Penance, and SWD, couple in the reduced cd thanks to the 4set and you can have almost 100% uptime on Mindbender. I even managed to have two Mindbenders out for like 8 secs with Lust and PI going
Ah ok, so mindbender provides AOE, that makes sense then. But if Holy Nova is so bad since Legion, which everyone seems to be saying (I looked at older posts about it too), then why do we even bother speccing into it in Dragonflight and speccing into Rhapsody when there are other talent options available? Are the other talent options really just that bad?
I dont know the math, tbh. But this is what I do know. If you spam Holy Nova it kills your mana. Second, you want to be slamming your pet + Mind Blast + dark reprimand + shadow word: death (via the talent Inescapeable Torment) as much as possible during your dark covenant window to really heal and pump damage. You get more of these windows if you use smite a lot instead of Holy Nova–via the talent “Void Summoner.” I do use Holy Nova but some top healers like Moad dont always do that and their damage is high mostly from their pet.
There is a guy who talks about this in pretty good detail in videos. His name is Disc and his youtube videos are from “JustDiscipline” if you want to check out more about it. Specifically there is a video called " Discipline Priest | 10.2 Mindbender Rotation" that spells it all out.
1 Like
That’s some good info, thanks. I’ll definitely check out that video. But I’m still wondering why anyone bothers to spec into holy nova and rhapsody. Perhaps it’s good if we use it once around every 20 stacks at the beginning of a pull to hit as many mobs as possible, then immediately switch over to the default mindbender rotation. I’m just trying to find a use for taking those 2 talents over others.
I’m picturing something like this (pack of 3+)
- Purge Wicked
- penance while running in close to spread DoT
- When reach mobs, Holy Nova (at 20 stacks)
- standard mindbender rotation
That’s what I do with trash. It does seem worth it doing that, and my overall damage is definitely higher if I do that. You might even hit it at lower stacks as needed too. I find that in a lot of cases I dont get the most out of my pet because all of the mobs die too fast, and that is where Holy Nova is especially good.
As for the number of mobs and when to use it, the more the merrier. Remember that you are sacrificing getting more out of your pet if you use Holy Nova too much.
I think of it this way. Am I at 20 stacks? Are there many mobs here now? Time to work one in here.
You might also use it when you are on the move if you have nothing else that would add value there.
I don’t think rhapsody is a very valuable point. Its in all the cookie cutter builds so I’m probably wrong and there is some slight value to using holy nova at 20 stack, but for my money I prefer to default that point to dispel disease or some of the utility points that are useful depending on the affixes (e.g. fade breaking snares). I wouldn’t even necessarily take holy nova if we didn’t need it to efficiently path down to the lower left part of the tree and pick up spell warding along the way.
You dont have to. You can take Prayer of Mending instead and make a macro so it goes to the tank, and you simply hit in when you are on the move and/or whenever you think it adds value. Holy Nova without stacks is a dead talent in my opinion, and to get any value out of it you really need to track the stacks, first, and second you need to optimize it with say, Twilight Equilibrium and/or when you are on the move, your pet is on CD, etc.
In my case I do get some value out of it in large packs when at 10 or more stacks, when my pet is on CD, I am on the move, cannot smite and with TE on the light side (or whatever it’s called) and it does serve to jack up your dps that way, and via atonement can do good healing. Combine it with a damage potion and you can really juice your damage.
I have to say that when doing open world stuff, I find holy nova really useful and fun since it’s my only AOE damage ability besides Mindbender, DoTs, and Halo. At 20 stacks it’s basically an instant AOE smite and stacks do accumulate pretty fast. But in dungeons, prayer of mending might be easier to manage. I might try it out.
Plus iirc it also does some amount of AOE healing on it’s own.
Oh yeah, Holy Nova is great questing. You can pull as much as you can handle and it pumps a lot. It was actually nerfed though and was much stronger in season 2. But it is still pretty good. That said, in Season 2 you could just hit it every few seconds and you were gucci. Now, following the nerf, you need to let the stacks rise or it is near useless.