Val'anyr - Hammer of the Ancient Kings - Page 2

KamPa · 05/05/09, 5:49 AM

Looks quite bad for Disc. For other classes, while there are differences, it's all more or less fine. Perhaps they'll change PW:S/Aegis to work together with the proc - as getting the buff won't be a problem - otherwise large part will be wasted. That's even assuming it properly stacks with those and I can imagine there being issues with that.

Xunwael · 05/05/09, 6:39 AM

I was hoping the proc would have no internal cooldown, with a 10% proc it'd have near 100% uptime with spamhealing, which would be legendary-worthy indeed. At a 45 sec icd it's 3% increased average healing at best, nothing revolutionary.

I can see it being useful on tanks against unexpected spikes or during movement where that burst hit would've ended up killing him if he hadn't had the shield, but when was the last time you experienced some totally unpredictable raid damage high enough to kill people if you're not healing 15% more? And what with the randomness of the proc, it's probably not going to be up when you need it anyway. I never understood why some healers consider random events to be good for their healing - I like my healing to be predictable and my panic-buttons to be available when I actually have need fpr them, not when the whims of fate happen to grant it.

Random procs work fine for dps since damage is never wasted, and they're decent enough for tanks since more threat is always good (besides, thunderfury was always up), but for a healer?

Ellyh · 05/05/09, 7:20 AM

Originally Posted by Frogmite

Honestly from what we've seen from hard modes the difficulty is generally about raid damage. Tank damage in most of them doesn't seem a big issue so this proc on for instance a priest is godly. Remember that the blessing lasts 15 seconds AND the shield lasts for 8 so that means that you can keep shields up on people for essentially 23 seconds as each time someone recieves a heal from you if they've already got the shield then its duration will be reset and its absorbtion increased.

I actually feel that they've implemented this proc as a kind of long-term easing of Ulduar for the not so hardcore guilds. Thorim/Freya/Mimiron/IC (Runemaster last) and to a lesser extent Hodir all throw around raid damage on their hard-modes. The less hardcore guilds that are just starting to finish off clearing ulduar now or in the next few weeks will probably have two maces within 3 months both of which will significantly help in alleviating raid damage.

We've assigned our maces to those healers that most deserve them almost entirely irrespective of class differences but honestly I think two of these on two raid healing priests would just be insane. With the current power of PoH and CoH and the fact that different peoples shields will combine its going to be a really lethal combination. Shamans to a slightly lesser extent will have the same type of power but it seems it will be slightly less consistant.

I do feel that people are overstating is power on paladins however, yes they could well get the most usage out of the shield but honestly how often are MT deaths a problem? The mace may let you set another healer to raid healing which would be useful but it's my feeling that this proc will smooth raid damage and give that extra little buffer that will really crank down the difficulty of say Freya hard mode when there a number of mace procs going off at once.

Actually in reality it's no-where near 23 seconds. Apart from Sapphiron where is the AoE damage to the raid constant? My limited experience is that I won't heal any one person more than about once every 10 seconds even when things are crazy. Also the individual shields will be weak. As mentioned above a 6k heal, which is big for AoE healing gives a 900 point shield. I have yet to see an encounter where that makes the difference, what makes the difference is people not coordinating healing or someone standing where they shouldn't. To get meaningful raid protection out of this proc, whenever it happens to be up you will need to spam very high cost spells.CoH/wildgrowth aren't going to cut it in the making a major difference category, either you have enough healing without the mace or your wiping anyway. An extra, maybe useless 500pt shield to random dude every 45 seconds isn't worth the price of the proc. It's very similar to the value of a discs priest Aegis, which is in raid healing terms a complete non-event.

The basic problem is that over a fight the proc is only about a 3-4% increase in overall throughput and as others have said it's a random proc, most healers I know hate random throughput procs and aren't even that fond of clicky trinkets. Most of us want reliable constant effects.

Finally I can't really see it making much of a difference to lesser guilds as we just won't get the mace in any reasonable length of time and a small healing throughput buff isn't going to make or break their success. I guess that we have all been spoiled by thunderfury and to an extent the glaives into expecting significant power increases from legendaries which is why this and the Bow from sunwell were somewhat underwhelming for those in the running for it.

sulliwan · 05/05/09, 7:54 AM

That is not quite true, Xunwael, it would be 3% increased healing if the proc only worked on effective healing, however since it works on raw healing, my napkin math puts it at around 10% increased healing with the icd. Around 60% overheal sounds about right for any spam healing situation for most healers, including druids if you count the hots that tick when target is on full hp which the mace will proc from, going by the blue post. Very much worthy of a legendary, especially considering that it means ~30% increase to your effective healing with the proc active. This is assuming all shields get used though, in practice that is probably a bit overoptimistic.

Lucinde · 05/05/09, 8:00 AM

Originally Posted by Frogmite

Honestly from what we've seen from hard modes the difficulty is generally about raid damage. Tank damage in most of them doesn't seem a big issue so this proc on for instance a priest is godly. Remember that the blessing lasts 15 seconds AND the shield lasts for 8 so that means that you can keep shields up on people for essentially 23 seconds as each time someone recieves a heal from you if they've already got the shield then its duration will be reset and its absorbtion increased.

From what I have seen, hardmodes are only about pushing near impossible DPS numbers from your raid and outlandish HPS on your tank. It's got nothing to do with raid damage. Hard-mode wise, the mace proc will be very valuable on your MT, because it should allow you to drop a healer in favor of another DPS. Not because you can shield your raid from a few thousand damage.

Aside from that, I think people underestimate the amount of HPS a druid or shaman can push on a tank since WotLK and are still living in "TBC Pally MT shaman spam raid CH" era. Druids are excellent MT healers nowadays and that mace will benefit them as much as paladins.

The only class I see having less benefit is Disc priests because, as noted, a fair chunk of their healing is prevention based and as such doesn't interact with the proc. On the other hand if you play it right, it will synergize well with the shields you already have up.

Frogmite · 05/05/09, 8:14 AM

Originally Posted by klüger

Less hardcore guilds that are only now starting to clear ulduar will not be getting 5shards pr week on average (which is what it'd take to get two hammers). Add to that the fact that less hardcore guilds usually have bigger problems with turnover/guild splits and that they will be doing significantly fewer hardmodes and less chance of dual-clears (10&25) (I do think the drop% is higher for hardmodes) you are way off course here.

Other then that I agree with your post, but this hammer will not be seeing any large quantities in any guilds that are not bleeding edge (think 4hm t3&tf-warrior transfers in classic), any time soon.

Sorry I didn't make myself very clear; I was thinking more about guilds that are clearing stuff now rather than in the first 2 or 3 days. My feeling is that guilds that brute force encounters will still brute force them without this but those that stick to their normal schedule and will take more than a month to clear all the hard modes will find these extremely useful for progression.

Originally Posted by Ellyyh

Actually in reality it's no-where near 23 seconds. Apart from Sapphiron where is the AoE damage to the raid constant? My limited experience is that I won't heal any one person more than about once every 10 seconds even when things are crazy. Also the individual shields will be weak. As mentioned above a 6k heal, which is big for AoE healing gives a 900 point shield. I have yet to see an encounter where that makes the difference, what makes the difference is people not coordinating healing or someone standing where they shouldn't. To get meaningful raid protection out of this proc, whenever it happens to be up you will need to spam very high cost spells.CoH/wildgrowth aren't going to cut it in the making a major difference category, either you have enough healing without the mace or your wiping anyway. An extra, maybe useless 500pt shield to random dude every 45 seconds isn't worth the price of the proc. It's very similar to the value of a discs priest Aegis, which is in raid healing terms a complete non-event.

Certainly my experience raiding on my priest has been somewhat different. At least being one of 5 healers on Kologarn/Hodir I was finding that I needed to and could constantly spam PoH and the fights were over fast enough that even with constant casting (Kologarn was extremely laggy for us; yay for instance servers) mana wasn't an issue.

Also with paticulary healing intensive fights normally one healer is on the same group of people anyway (ie: melee/ranged camps even group specific sometimes - mimiron phase 2) so this mace would shine there.

There is certainly nowhere in naxx you'll get that much usage out of it without running at 3 or so healers though.

Originally Posted by Lucinde

From what I have seen, hardmodes are only about pushing near impossible DPS numbers from your raid and outlandish HPS on your tank. It's got nothing to do with raid damage. Hard-mode wise, the mace proc will be very valuable on your MT, because it should allow you to drop a healer in favor of another DPS. Not because you can shield your raid from a few thousand damage.

I had Hard Mode; AoI: Runemaster, Freya, Mimiron, Hodir and Thorim in my mind as having alot of raid damage as well as the rediculous DPS requirements but this is just obsevational and theoretical from my stance maybe I over-estimated. I guess someone who has experienced more of them should clarify but I would of still thought it would be more useful than a shield on the MT? The relative % wise mitigation would be more surely as many tanks are getting to in excess of twice many DPSers HP.

Pitbuller · 05/05/09, 8:53 AM

Tanks need steady hps flow and this has to be as big as usual worst case scenario. Low uptime shield don't allow you drop tank healer. Proc only increase tank overheal or save some mana but don't allow you solo heal any better.

cyimben · 05/05/09, 9:01 AM

I can't understand the number of statements about how little the shields ,like 900 dmg absorbs, are so many. We can see many WWS parses in Ulduar which for example healing stream does %20+ healing with 500ish ticks even it is not raid wide, without an icd the bonus of the mace is very good and i m sure with so many consistent dmgdealing towards the raid , even with the little 900 dmg shield procs plus spamming aoe heals , Val'anyr proly suits its legendary name with the bonus.

And i must add that sure i think the same way about controllable heal is too much preferable than some proccing shield but after some point raid healing is just about a bit of spamming with eyeclosed occasionally (for aoe healing classes mostly) and without icd i m pretty sure there will be too many shields on many raid members just like the healing stream ticks. An item that holds a buff that good is legen...wait for it...dary to me

Vuldunobetra · 05/05/09, 11:03 AM

It would be possible to take combat logs and analyze just how often the theoretical shield would be consumed by later damage vs how often the shield would expire unused. Just look for each healer, what percentage of the time does the target of their heal take damage in the next 8 seconds. Based on Healing Stream Totem numbers, I'd reckon that the shield will fall off 50% or more when on raid heals.

For raid healing, best case is a 5% increase in raw healing output. (15% * 15s / 45s icd). Overhealing will vary from fight to fight. Best case is Sapphiron, with raidwise periodic damage. Worse case is for burst damage like XT's tantrum, when the proc might not come at the right time.

Draugdae · 05/05/09, 11:08 AM

Any raid-wide burst damage that coincides approximately with the internal cooldown on the proc will dramaticly increase its benefit. If XT's first tantrum comes about 1 minute after the start of the fight than in will likely coincide with the proc which would provide significant returns.

Vhex · 05/05/09, 11:41 AM

While not the best proc in the world, I appreciate that it's not as stupidly overpowered as TF/WG's were. That being said, it'd be nice if it were a right click effect so we can proc it when we need it as opposed to it conveniently going off during a lull in the fight. Any paladin will tell you how often their Jedi sense goes off and they can sneak in a good 10 seconds of divine plea now and then. Or ask a priest about how often you got a good 7~9 seconds of OO5sr regen.

I was honestly hoping that it'd be something like a proc that your heals grant your target 200 dodge rating, 200 sp and 300 ap for 5 seconds (can only be up on one target at a time per hammer wielder) or something. Good enough to help tanks, but 99% of our wipes haven't been because of a lack of healing, but a lack of dps.

Actually, you know what would be -really- awesome? Right click effect, removes all void zone and void zone like effects within a 100 yard radius of the caster. Oh to dream that impossible dream!

MatsT · 05/05/09, 11:46 AM

When tank healing with this mace, it's important to keep in mind that an absorb shield is often significantly better than a heal of the same size. Tank deaths these days comes almost exclusively from 2-3-shots, and the absorb shield will soften this burst. I guess this is mostly an effect of the very high overhealing percentages you will get when healing tanks on hard-hitting bosses.

EDIT: Blizzard clarified some stuff, i'm still somewhat confused how they're gonna implement it though.

tesk · 05/05/09, 12:00 PM

Originally Posted by MatsT

Since HoT's do not overheal targets on 100% hp but rather not heal at all, I don't think this will add to the shield. This doesn't make the mace useless to the druid, but it significantly reduces it's effectiveness for them.

Every tick regardless of if it heals or not will add to the shield once you have the blessing. This has already been attested to by GC. Those ticks "not healing" are just displayed like that from the game client. The server knows that the heal ticked and will add that 15% value to the shield.

Xunwael · 05/05/09, 12:08 PM

Originally Posted by sulliwan

That is not quite true, Xunwael (...)

I guess I should've listened to the voice in the back of my head telling me I was forgetting something. I still think a random proc is not much to brag about, though.

Sarjin · 05/05/09, 12:19 PM

Originally Posted by Draugdae

Any raid-wide burst damage that coincides approximately with the internal cooldown on the proc will dramaticly increase its benefit. If XT's first tantrum comes about 1 minute after the start of the fight than in will likely coincide with the proc which would provide significant returns.

Value of the proc indeed depends strongly on the nature and cooldown of raid damage, as I can see Tantrum type damage being useful with pulsed damage during which you are healing. (Obviously you don't need a Legendary for XT) Hodir's Frozen Blows is another one which comes to mind.

On the other hand I fear the proc will be near useless on say Kologarn, as the interval between damage will likely cause the shields to fall off more often than not.

I think for raid healing the proc will become a lot more valuable if they increase the shield timer to about 15 seconds, as it will increase the likelihood of additional damage immensely.