Saturday, April 4, 2009

Val'anyr: Legendary weapon from Ulduar

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There's been a lot of talk about Val'anyr, the legendary weapon that drops in Ulduar.

I say "drop", but, well, it's a little more complicated than that.

How do you get this weapon?

First of all, you have to gather up all these little shards before you can even consider equipping it. There are *40* pieces scattered around Ulduar. And by scattered around Ulduar, I mean, bosses are guarding them. With their lives. So you kill the bosses, loot the fragments, and put them together.

On the Wowhead PTR, it says 'unique (30)', although elsewhere it says you need 40 to complete the quest - I think this is a typo or bug on Blizz's part and will be officially changed to 40. Some people think it's set like this to stop people from completing this quest on the PTR (on the PTR you need 40 but it will only let you carry 30). Other people say that you'll only be able to carry 40 if you defeat some certain boss on hard mode. Personally I think the first two may be correct - I doubt the third is. Or maybe they'll just keep it at 30 rather than 40, who knows.

These fragments are BoP, will only drop off of 25 man bosses, and most likely only if you're rocking it on hard mode. There have been one or two reports of fragments dropping off normal 25 man bosses, but I think this is either a false report, or a bug. Valnoth stated in a blue post:

"Hard mode rewards will be the best in the game. With that said, I want to be sure that everyone understands: Hard mode is hard. Some hard modes are harder than others..."
So hard mode is hard, and we should be rewarded with a totally sweet weapon after slogging through all of it. Sounds about right to me.

So you have all 40 fragments! Grats! Now, to put it together.

...BY TOSSING THE PIECES INSIDE YOGG-SARON'S MOUTH.

I'm totally not joking. You have to take all these pieces that you so carefully gathered, put blood, sweat, tears, hope, love, and strength into, and you just toss 'em all inside his mouth. (Note that this has to be done in a 25man hard mode encounter.) He just om noms them up. I don't get it. Does he forge a weapon... with his tongue? Is it like tying a cherry stem with your mouth? (I could never do that.) Does he swallow it? Does he spit it back up? Are there tiny gnome weapon-forgers just chilling in his mouth who go to work once it's in there? Hm. I mean, I suppose that you throw them in there, and then you defeat him, and then it's an item that drops on his loot table. It's just... odd.

(On the left: Tooltip for each fragment. On the right: Tooltip once you have all 40 fragments, which leads to accepting the quest to throw stuff in that dude's mouth.)

Who can use this weapon?

We don't have specific stats yet, but we do know that it's a one-handed mace, usable by priests, paladins, druids, and shaman. Because of this, it's almost certain that this will be a healing mace! (woohoo!) We don't know what the stats are, or if the stats will vary depending on class (more spirit for druids, say, or more intellect for paladins). However, it does have this bonus equip effect: "Your healing spells have a chance to cause Blessing of Ancient Kings for 15 seconds, allowing your heals to shield the target, absorbing damage equal to 15% of the amount healed."

Interesting: a legendary weapon with an equip effect that won't inflate healers' e-peens. This won't increase your numbers, it will just mitigate damage. It helps your entire fleet of healers (healers, ships, same difference) and the whole raid, not just you and your own personal output. I think this is pretty neat.

The TL;DR version:

  • It's a one-handed mace.
  • Priests, paladins, druids, and shaman can use it.
  • It's almost certainly a healing mace.
  • You have to collect 40 BoP mace fragments.
  • These fragments drops from bosses in 25 man content, probably only from hard mode.
  • Once you have the fragments, you throw them in Yogg-Saron's mouth, defeat him on hard mode, and get the mace.

Ta-da!

So, uh, I want it!

Yeah. So does every other healer in your guild, buddy.

So how do guilds decide who gets this item?


First off, all 40 fragments should go to one person. If you start looting fragments one by one, as they come, to each of your healers, no one will ever get a mace before the next content patch. It has to be one person. If that person isn't present on a raid where a fragment drops, then I would assign a secondary healer to pick up that piece. That secondary healer will be the one who gets the second mace - once the first person has all 40 fragments, the second person can start collecting.

Before you even step foot into Ulduar, the best thing to do is figure out *how* you'll decide who gets it (Officer decided? Highest lifetime DKP? A vote within your guild from non-healers? Whoever your best healer is? Random /rolls before your first foray into Ulduar?). The last thing you want is to get a great kill, have a fragment drop, have people get all hushed on vent, and then have to make a split second decision that may or may not be for the best.

When you do figure out how you're going to distribute the fragments, make sure you tell your guild. Let them know who will be getting the fragments and why. Let them know what procedures are in place: Who is the secondary person who will collect them if the primary person isn't there? Will these fragments cost DKP, and/or will the mace itself be priced?

Hopefully if you have a mature guild and a rational explanation as to why particular people will be getting this mace, there won't be any problems.

Does anyone else have any other information about Val'anyr that I missed? Let me know!

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16 remarks:

sylly said...

lol awesome compilation about this post. I love your speculation about how this weapon is actually forged. tee hee!

Sylly said...

er... about this weapon in this post. that's what I meant to say. /facepalm

coil said...

There was a recent blue comment that called it a "healer mace," so at least that bit of speculation is taken care of. (:

Maraetha said...

Nice post, unfortunately not a lot is known about this mace... In my guild the officers will decide who will be getting this mace.

Anonymous said...

One BIG thing: when you throw it into Yogg'Saron's mouth, you must do the hard version of him to get the mace.

Averna said...

@coil: Thanks for spotting that!

@Triz: Thanks for pointing that out =) I updated the post to reflect that.

Author said...

Imagine getting the pieces, throwing them in his mouth and being unable to complete or having a server shutdown/restart occur... *gasp*

Anelf said...

I'm just thinking of all the QQ when guilds start selecting their primary healer to collect these fragments. Or when a primary healer with nearly all the fragments switches guilds.

:-D

Author said...

@ Anelf
Hahaha, that's just cruel, yet you know it will happen. Wait for the whine coming forth from the forums...

Anonymous said...

We have already had a lot of discussion amongst our officers about how to decide who receives this mace, and who we feel are qualified.

Our number one qualifier is performanace. But right behind it at like a 1.5 is raid attendance. We have already decided that it will be awarded to someone with greater than 95% lifetime raid attendance (since release of WotLK). That second qualifier narrowed it down to three people for us, two priests and a druid.

Now if we could just see the rest of the stats on the damn thing, to determine whose hands it would be better in. . .

But I certainly agree with your Averna, it is a decision that should be made, and announced before stepping into Ulduar on day one. We did this with Thunderfury, we did it with Ateish, and we did it with the Glaives...and we had minimal, if any, drama over awarding these items.

Another thing that we've done once we've narrowed down the candidates, is we've sat the "finalists" down all together as a group, and discussed it with them to hear their veiwpoint on awarding the item. Letting the contenders feel part of making the decision goes a long way when a choice is finally made.

Good Luck when you all decided where yours is rewarded!!!

~Beruthiel

Elaron said...

Great post getting all this info together. In theory there is a website (http://valanyr.com/) that is currently following any further updates on this mace as they become available and they also have animations of what they think it should look like fully assembled based off data-mined images.

As far as figuring out who gets the fragments, our guild wanted to leave it as open as possible and felt that people should have to bid DKP on each fragment individually. I'm sure this sounds misguided probably, but I believe the thought behind that logic was that someone would bid high on a few fragments and then wind up be unopposed on later fragments as they got further along. Additionally, we just didn't want to deal with the headache of having some kind of line/hierarchy of who gets fragments based who in the raid at any given time (i.e. the primary isn't here, who gets it?)

I do believe that open discussion is required with that so I'm happy that you are encouraging it.

Unknown said...

Nice.

We are doing a dkp system for the mace but its modified a bit. The first shard that drops will be for DKP. After that, the healer who won it will get all subsequent drops until he/she finished. If they are not in a raid and one drops we will go back to DKP with this winner picking up all the pieces that drop when healer #1 isn't there. Anyway, that way its a fair DKP shot. But at the same tmie we won't end up with every healer having 15-20 pieces and nobody having a mace. Once the first person gets theirs we'll repeat the process for the next person. This is subject to change if the mace ends up being super-perfect for one class and horrible for another. So like if it has +50,000,000 spirit I'll prolly get it! :) Otherwise my fiance (damn pally) has me in DKP right now. :)

~Kaitaa

Daez said...

What I'm wondering is, what happens if you toss the pieces into his mouth and wipe 10 seconds later.

I can just see it now. "Toss it, man! WOO!" death... death... death.. "Shit, tank's down!"

... everything goes quiet. "Aww crap, where'd all 40 freaking pieces go!?"

Elanorien (Kul Tiras) said...

I am sooooo stoked! I'm a resto druid and am quite sure I'll be the first to recieve the mace, though we haven't mad an official announcement.

I know that sounds like I'm jumping the gun, but man, the things I've done for this guild, haha. Been one of the most constant, reliable raiders for a year now, and am currently an officer, assistant raid leader, lead healer, recruiter, and official welcome wagon to new members, lol. (Amongst other various odd jobs)

I see this causing drama for some guilds, but I also think those organized and skilled enough to collect the shards and craft are generally mature enough to decide fairly and for other to accept that decsion.

The GM hasn't made a decision, but I've got 3 other officers fussing about me getting it. The GM, however, sucks up to me so I'll run his alts through lowbie instances and tells me how many shards I've earned per run :p.

Which me luck in aquiring the first every healer legendary! And best of luck to all of you! Have fun in Ulduar tonight! (I hope *cross fingers!)

Elanorien said...

GD, I just reread that long winded post...HOLY TYPOS BATMAN!

Anonymous said...

Val'anyr Item Details released on the public armory! Here are the stats from the official WoW Armory:
Val'anyr, Hammer of Ancient Kings
Binds when picked up
Main Hand Mace
93-298 Dmg
(108.8 damage per second) Speed 1.80
+52 Stamina
+54 Intellect
Durability 125
Requires Level 80
Equip: Improves critical strike rating by 47
Equip: Improves haste rating by 46
Equip: Increases spell power by 587
Equip: Your healing spells have a chance to cause Blessing of Ancient Kings for 15 seconds allowing your heals to shield the target absorbing damage equal to 15% of the amount healed.
"The power of creation courses through this weapon."