Hearthpwn

The reason why Lightbomb was so good was because it F*cked the whole board up and allowed for a come back. Holy Nova is just bad and situational. Excavated is just superior. Sure your opponent gets the card too and will use it later, but by that time you're pretty much safe since priest just needs to survive the early & mid game.

Also, excavated wrecks shamans.

Imo shuffling excavated into an aggro or mid-range opponents deck is actually a plus since its horrible card for an aggro/midrange to topdeck

Sometimes you want to heal your own board. Also a lot of priests run both.

I run both

Lightbomb was so insane. ..bring it back ! 

Holy nova draws cards too if you do it right. 

You use Nova if you run Clerics.  If you're not running Clerics you should just run EE, otherwise you're probably running a suboptimal list.  

I don't use either in my current Wild list, and both in my current Standart list. Giving your opponent cards for fatigue sucks a lot, and wiping your own board sucks, too. Especially if the alternative is to heal your board. Nethertheless, I usually prefer Excavated, but the more heal-worthy minions you run, the better Holy Nova becomes.

because Northshire Cleric

Why not both?

Well unless priest gets op lightbomb-ish board clear in next expansion, he'll still be sucking ass in constructed, since even Excavated Evil is not comparable.

Quote from Cccactus >>

Priest have so little burst that the 2 face damage from Nova is actually relevant.

Good question. And here is my thought about it:

Sometimes that 1 extra damage really, really matters to clear the board, as someone already said, kicks shaman's plans to mud, as there are few minions that have 3 hp and that shamans runs. In this case it really is good.

Also I will argue whats better depending on the deck you are playing. If you are playing a more of tempo game with priest, examples are n'zoth or old dragon priest, keeping your minions healthy is important to have board control, and I must say that in this case, Holy nova does its job great. Gives you small damage output and healing your surviving minions.

TL;DR: If you are playing combo-burst or "classic" control priest, EE is way to go. If you are playing more of tempo game with minions doing the board control, holy nova is your best friend. You can run both, but hurting your own minions (or even killing them) if you play tempo version will only hurt yourself.

Obviously you don't play EE when you already have the board, you use minions + Hero Power to trade for huge value.  

1. draw with northshires - duh
2. heal your stuff and have it survive trades - maintain board control
3. in cthun decks, there is a 3/6 4drop that buffs cthun when u heal stuff - actually not a bad card
4. extra +2heal face - which does save u the game from time to time

I have personally switched novas for EE, cause 3dmg is just more important in my meta (zoolocks and patron warriors), but running novas is definitely as viable in ctrl priest decks. More in some.

And vs control decks, with EE u are just giving them extra aoes to clear u, also not the best thing. Freezemages and ctrl/fatigue warriors love this especially.

I used to run 1 nova 1 excavated in my C'Thun Priest, but nova was way too situational, switched it to second Excavated Evil. And yes, mainly because of shaman.

At my F2P account I run both since I have just 1 Auchenai to combo with circle.

They are both good cards that are better or worse than the other depending on the situation. I wouldn't say that one is objectively better and should always be run over the other.

Everybody is running excavated.  Where u been