I’m not convinced on this point.
Through my numerous experience in MoP a bit and especially in WoD PvP, Cascade just felt a lot better and here is why…
Cascade is much faster and follows the target where when it fires, it goes after and follows them, they literally cannot escape by running away out of range unlike with Halo you can move away and avoid it completely.
It can also hit the same targets multiple times and even faster when they are closer together as the bounces have less travel time. Where as Halo it will always be a slow moving ring that cannot be adjusted based on target distance like how Cascade can be.
Also, if you want to proc something like Twist of Fate, Cascade can hit a target that is low HP and trigger it which will instantly make all your other Cascade bolts get amplified without you needing to find a low target to snipe yourself. But with Halo, if that Twist of Fate trigger happed because of Halo, it will most likely not benefit as much or to a lesser degree because unless that triggered early on from the Halo origin point, it will only effect targets beyond the point of trigger which most likely is the tail end of the Halo effect as it cannot reverse like Cascade does with its bouncing around everywhere.
This is sort of handled by the multiple Halo rings in its expansion and contraction effect from Archon, but it doesn’t look to be on the same level of fluid and flexibility that Cascade does even in the Archon version.
From the beginning Halo was the longest cooldown at 45 seconds with Cascade being 30 seconds and Divine Star at 15 seconds. The cooldown basically decided the damage each does. But the reason Cascade became the best choice is because of how it works mechanically with it being able to hit multiple targets both far and close and do it multiple times. Something both Halo and Divine Star lack.
Also, they were all instant cast… yet now we have Halo being by all accounts a lesser quality spell compared to Cascade on both mechanical and visual basis and it has a cast time.
So to conclude…
I think Cascade is a far superior spell compared to Halo… but if we have to select the better spell in fitting in theme for Archon then yes… Halo unfortunately fits in theme and visual as the Archon and angels etc. have “Halos” above their head and as such you have that connection. It’s just sad that it is so boring and doesn’t really impact gameplay one bit. It just fires and forgets and sure I guess we get more procs from Surge of Insanity or Surge of light… but that just means we do what we do more often… nothing is actually changing.
I am still limited to the targets I’m in combat with that don’t have dots on them beyond 8+ unless i manually cast my dots on each target even if they are at like let’s say 30% hp. Too high HP to Death them for full damage and too low HP to justify casting dots on each one all the while they are beating me while I wait for my Halo to either come back on CD or for it to return and expand again and again… or I don’t wait for it and manually cast something to hopefully kill the targets which means the Halo was worthless as it didn’t do what it was designed to with it’s supposed high damage capability.
This is a bigger problem for Shadow compared to Holy because of how Shadow mastery works. If you deal damage to a target without your dots on them, your damage is severally reduced unless you’re in Voidform. So you HAVE to have your dots on the target to deal any amount of worthwhile damage.
I just don’t see Halo helping this situation out. But I can see it with Cascade because each bounce can happen to the same target multiple times in quick succession and actually be able to kill the target even without your dots on it. Something that will either not happen with Halo or take far far far too long to accomplish.
Maybe?
I dunno, I saw other priests using Cascade just fine in WoD a decade ago with my potato of a PC back then lol.
