Wow....

This is what I just read on my the forums regarding holy nova in Cataclysm. It is from a thread comparing paladin's Healing Hands to priest's Holy Nova. I don't care about the pally, but it's interesting to see a beta test tell about the changes made to holy nova:

-The party bound restriction oh Holy Nova has been removed (wow, that's new!)
-No cast time (same as always, still instant)
-No cooldown (same as always)
-Improved Holy Nova increases its crit rating by 50% (we already knew this)
-Improved Holy Nova decreases its GCD to 0.5 seconds (we already knew this)
-Surge of Light ensures every other cast is 100% mana free (wow!!! that means the tooltip was correct... so the best of both worlds, you can choose for either your smite to be free or your holy nova... no more free flash heal, which is fine by me)

This is very good news for the team, and makes up for smites no longer healing. I don't think it makes up for divine aegis no longer possible as well as reflective shield, but trying to look on the brite side.

The bad part is I can see all holy priests just spamming holy nova in the expansion, which likely means they're going to pump the mana cost through the roof (it's already high) or reduce the damage component.

I'm trying to get my team to 80 with some good gear before patch 4.0 so I can show off some of the pre-Cata changes. Overall I'm happy with this buffage to holy nova, though worried it will get quickly nerfed as I can see it being an ability that every holy priests spams non-stop in BGs.