More about Val'anyr: Hammer of Awesomesauce

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Val'anyr, part 2! (check out part 1, if you'd like).

In our last raid, a fragment dropped. =O The officers in our guild had decided that it should go to the healer who has highest lifetime DKP (post WotLK). Simply put, high lifetime DKP = high raid attendance. And that healer is me!! EEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!! /dancedancedance

/collects self

So. 1 down, 29 to go.

I figure that, depending on drop rate, by the end of May top end guilds will collect their last few fragments and actually put together the mace. I'm dying to know what the stats are on it, but the blues aren't giving us any answers. However, Ghostcrawler *was* nice enough to reassure us that it will be good for ANY healer:

"I can understand the desire to formulate a perfect loot plan before you step foot into Ulduar, but this game has so few mysteries left anymore that we'd like for this to remain one of them, at least for a little while. :)

It's our intent that it is useful to all four healing classes. The proc is probably better than you guys are assuming (even for druids). I'm not going to spoil it though. :) That's about all I'm going to say."

Woot! I would absolutely hate to see the guild give me this mace, and then it turns out it's got a ton of intellect, crit, and only works with direct heals - and then Taletha and Pallymar (our two paladin healers) are all like =O and I'll have to be all like um, but guys, I can just use Nourish more mmmk? Nourish can crit! Um. *cough*

Knowing that that scenario WON'T happen is very reassuring.

Er, edit: and after all that talk about not revealing stats - MMO-Champ datamined this:

(Note: these stats could totally not be correct. Also note that you can't find this on the armory anymore. EDIT: Now you *can* find it, on wowhead, as item number 46017: Val'anyr, Hammer of Ancient Kings).

Interesting. No spirit (/weep), no mp5, lots of spell power for a one-hander, haste and crit. WoW Insider has a little write up about it here that you might want to take a look at.

I'm not really blown away by the stats. Which leads me to believe that the proc must be super awesome.

But hey, it vendors for 35 gold. Heh. That's like, a third a night of repairs!!!! (I kid.)

Let's look more closely at the equip effect. The shield mitigates an amount of damage equal to 15% of the amount healed for 15 seconds. The big question that I want answered is, does this include overheal? Or just effective heals? If it includes overheal, then I'd see this proc on a tank and then just spam heal him. The combination of heals + shield would essentially mean no dying, ever.

Some things bouncing around in my head:

1. You can't use this as a plan-ahead type thing. I.E: "Ok, when the boss hits 30% he's gonna do that crazy damage dealy thing, so Av, make sure you use Blessing of Ancient Kings on the tank then." I'm sure Blizzard toyed around with the idea of having it be a 'use' rather than an 'equip', and for various reasons went with it being a proc.

2. As such, you can't be sure who it will proc on. It might proc on that random warlock who took 3k of spike damage and so you put a Nourish on her for good measure. Having a shield on her is good, sure, it will help if she takes more spike damage in the next 15 seconds and you heal her during that, BUT it would be more useful on a tank who takes constant, significant damage.

3. It's my own healing spells that will set off the shield, and it's also my own heals that contribue to the 15% damage mitigation. Other people's heals don't count towards it.

4. Hm, wait a second. Now I'm interpreting the equip effect a little differently - is it 15% of your total heals on that person over 15 seconds? OR is it 15% of the heal that started the proc? In other words: Let's say you have ticking hots on the tank. BoAK procs off a Nourish that crits for 10k. Over the next 15 seconds, will the tank mitigate 1500 damage (15% of 10k)? OR will he mitigate 15% of the 10k, PLUS 15% of all the hots that are ticking PLUS any other heals I put on that person during that time period? It's gotta be the latter, otherwise the proc would be pretty lame, right?

What do you guys think?

More info and thoughts to come!


EDIT: So it looks like this shield thing shields not just your first target, but ANY AND ALL targets you happen to heal during those 15 seconds. AMAZING with AoE damage. I wonder if it works with all 6 targets with a glyphs WG?

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