I think what he's referring to is putting up the shield with some big heals, then popping the Plea for regen while the shield makes up the shortfall.

A question: The Q description says that you throw the Shattered Fragments into Yogg's maw when it casts Deafening Roar, then reclaim the mended Hammer afterwards. This implies that you use up the Q item in the process, which would mean you'd have to assemble a new Shattered Fragments if you then went on to wipe. Has anyone yet tried to make the Hammer and failed?

I assume it's gonna work the same way as Quel'Serrar where you simply drop the quest and go pick it up again for a new one, presumably behind the Iron Council (according to the datamined quests).

Nothing so fancy. If we just count the shield as straight-up healing, then with proc up and divine plea you will be putting out 15% more healing than with just divine plea (57.5% of your normal maximum throughput). If the fight mechanics don't allow for a particularly safe time to use divine plea then your second most safe option is probably to use divine plea when you have the Val'anyr proc up. It's not all that much different from lining up your Avenging Wrath to coincide with Divine Plea (except you would be casting divine plea reactively, of course).

As a disc priest with 6 fragments, I was wondering if some other people are in the same position (We awarded fragments before the proc was known).

In this thread and in other places, people seem to think disc got the short straw on this proc. Yes, throughput as a disc is not as high as other classes, but the burst healing of disc is up there. Shield, Pennance, BT hasted GH, that should put about a 11k+ of shields on the tank after the initial burst. And you should have 10s to toss around some PoH and a last Pennance on the tank.

Still, most likely I will go holy, but still hoping for a slight change.

Turrin, the issue with disc priests is not so much their inability to use the shield. Any class/spec can proactively change their healing strategy once the hammer procs to take advantage of the bubble. The issue is that a disc priest will see a longer time between procs than other classes. If you are really min/maxing a holy priest will probably make better use of the hammer, but you don't need to respec to take advantage of it.

What?

This is flawed, there's no reason to suspect a Disc Priest won't see the proc after the ICD is finished. The bigger issue is actually the former: large portion of Disc's ability to heal is through absorption and mitigation, which do not benefit the proc. Remember, Power Word: Shield and Divine Aegis will not benefit the shield, whereas a full Holy Light crit would.

I'm main spec Disc with off spec Holy and I currently hold 16 fragments (as my brother' shaman got 3 when I was not in the raid) so I hope being able to answer your questions in 3 weeks if we are lucky

But I'm afraid that on some fights the proc will be almost useless as a Disc (Freya Hard Mode for example) but also for any healer for some weird fights as Vezax Hard Mode.

There's still a good chance it's the best healing weapon for you even if you will get ~less~ (and that's really the key here, as you will be getting some use of the proc) use of the proc than someone else. On top of that, respec and you have a better use of it.

I have to go with the mace as a status symbol, more than an op healing weapon with a sick proc. Val'anyr is not the new glaives or.

I've read a lot of people complaining about Val'anyr, and comparing it to the warglaives (which wasn't just one legendary, but 2), and I have to wonder if maybe some of you are improperly framing the comparison.

First, are you thinking of pre-nerf glaives (used to clear content long on farm, and post epeen teron parses), or post-nerf glaives (with the 45 second ICD, actually used in progression)? Pre-nerf glaives were completely OP, but Blizzard's design philosophy has changed since then - comparing Val'anyr to pre-nerf glaives is pretty much in the same boat as comparing it to Thunderfury.

Second, you have to remember that alternatives did not exist. You can compare Val'anyr to whatever same ilvl caster weapon is perfectly itemized for your class, but the only mainhands you could compare against the ilvl 156 MH warglaives in T6 were various ilvl 141 weapons. Try comparing Val'anyr only to weapons at least 15 ilvls below it, and you will be in a more analogous situation to what rogues and warriors were when Warglaives were discovered.

Some of you have complained that the proc is "only" a ~3% increase in healing. What did you expect? Maybe I'm completely out of touch with healing, but isn't 3% pretty fantastic for an upgrade in a single slot? Especially when that is 3% on top of the itemization that gives it stats comparable to it's peers?

Blizzard has stated that they want gear to continue to progress after people get legendaries. Their gearing philosophy has changed pretty drastically since vanilla - legendary doesn't mean the same thing that it used to. Yeah, it's unfortunate that the "legendary" part of the item is a proc instead of a constant effect, but if you honestly think it's not BiS for Ulduar gear, you probably need to get over yourself.

There is basically a number of things which have people underwhelmed in comparison with the glaives:

-As you note yourself, the glaives were of higher budget and item level than other weapons in Black Temple/Mount Hyjal, meaning even without the proc they were the best items available for the weapon slots. Val'anyr in contras is of similar item level as hard mode weapons and has the same budget as any other weapon. This means whether or not it is best in slot comes down to the quality of itemization, which is something which varries per class. For a Paladin, Shaman and maybe Disc priest it seems nicely itemized, for the spirit classes (Druid/Holy Priest) this is arguable. The biggest shortfall of Val'anyr I'd say is the absence of sockets however. Over the past few years looking at the item budget costs and the returns, sockets tend to boost an items value, both in customizability and the option to gain raw stats beyond the values usually attainable without them. Whereas some hard mode weapons ([Staff of Endless Winter] and [Constellus] do have sockets, Val'anyr does not. This means that [Constellus] will achieve higher Spellpower values with sockets whereas for Holy Priests and Druids, [Staff of Endless Winter] is a very valid point of discussion for BiS weapon when not considering the proc.

-Quality of the proc. The Warglaives proc was considerable, amounting to about 40% melee haste, which is a significant damage increase - especially factoring in Combat Potency. Val'anyr gives 15% of the healing done as absorption shields; while absorption could be rated as more valuable as healing due to no overheal being possible, there is a very real chance of shields falling off unused with the short duration - especially for raid healers. Overall the 3-4% might be a nice increase, but keep in mind this is purely theoretic. The timing of the proc (see below) is actually likely to lower this ideal value because of the chances of procs at times where little healing is needed. Basically the perception is that the performance increase with the proc active was a lot stronger for Warglaives than it is going to be for Val'anyr.

As added bonus, the specific attack power bonus to demons was obviously quite nice with the prominence of demons in the content which followed right after BT : SWP.

-Reliability of the proc. This is an area where DPS and healers are very different. In general, even if some fights may have burn phases, the goal of a damage dealer is to pump out as much damage as possible during an encounter (while being a low burden on the healers and staying alive), with the distribution of said damage over time not being of particularly high concern. (said burn phases excluded) On the other hand healing requirements are dictated by the encounter, and will vary strongly at differing points in the encounter. (As a random example, take Frozen Blows or pre-nerf Tympanic Tantrum, which require a window of heavy throughput with low demands in between). While for Warglaives, the timing of the proc could be inconvenient, it would rarely 'go to waste', and provide a nice gain. On the other hand wrong timing of the proc for Val'anyr can cause it to be near worthless. Take as an example scenario Frozen Blows; say the proc occurs while healing away the final bits of damage from the previous Frozen Blows. At this point healing requirements are minor as raid healer (unless someone screws up), so few if any shields are likely to be put on people, and these shields are likely to fall off before the next Frozen Blows hits. This means the proc has been wasted and the internal cooldown of 45 seconds will prevent the buff from being potentially available when it would be useful - during Frozen Blows.

These three points are the main concerns typically voiced by people, and as a result many view Val'anyr to be clearly inferior to the Warglaives of Azzinoth, post-nerf. If Val'anyr would be of equal usefulness as the glaives were even after the ICD had been added, I doubt there would be many complaints, but most healers argue this is not the case at all in its current incarnation.

The worst possible still-useful ability a healer item could have is a random proc +healing effect. This is why people are unhappy with it. That without the proc other weapons currently available have the same, and for some classes better, stats is another reason.

The proc is like giving a mana regen proc on a DPS caster legendary. Yeah, it's useful... but do you really think that's what they want?

If they had just given it some useful and reliable proc (like the crystal spire of karabor), or if the stats were clearly superior to other available items people probably wouldn't care so much, but as it looks now the stats are just barely better than other items available and the proc is... just dreadful.

^^

Either way, glaives were much superior in performance gain vs. Val'Anyr.

In a way, Val'Anyr nerfs the healer's versatility, as he or she should not be healing the dps in the raid due to the proc. You want it on the tanks rite.

Careful what you wish for. Blizzard might take the Val'Anyr proc as an excuse to implement ridiculously high levels of raid AoE damage.

Sarjin has voiced my concerns almost exactly. Unfortunately, that is the hand "we" have been dealt and it's the hand we have to play. Blizzard isn't likely to completely change the item.

If anything else it makes the choice on assigning Val'anyr much simpler - if we say the proc is negligible and the stats are nothing extra-ordinary, simply give it to your best/most deserving player. Use whatever mechanism you like for selecting that player. Hell, give it to a hybrid that is primarily dps caster if you think the proc is that bad - it's clearly best in slot for Shadow Priests, Moonkins, and elemental shamans. That way there's no argument over whether or not it's technically the best weapon you can get.

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I'm hoping we'll get a lot more done these next two weeks and some real and actual testing can begin.

It's pretty clear that they would never design around the assumption that anyone in the raid has a legendary. This has probably even been directly stated at some point.

The proc really is horridly designed. RNG throughput healing procs are terrible. Ghostcrawler (and probably some other devs) like to rail against the anti-RNG crowd, claiming that some players just don't like randomness and they have to agree to disagree. That's not really the issue though; the problem is that RNG healing throughput needs a lower price put on it item-budget wise. If it were a mana proc, fine, but it's a throughput proc and that just makes it godawful. The proc needs to be better, or do something else, for the item to be anywhere near on par with past legendaries, even the post-nerf versions. I'm pretty annoyed that the only healer legendary for the foreseeable future is very likely to be the worst legendary they ever implement.

I used a scarab brooch (which I love, and is a great item) extensively throughout most of pre-ulduar raids, so I'm very familiar with the value of the proc. It's just not as good as it should be.

While a novel theory, it has a few flaws in it. First, there will be a lot of these maces around, since the non-hardmode encounters in Ulduar drop them and Ulduar those encounters are, just as Naxx, really easy. On my low-progress server (5 guilds with Yogg down, 3 with any sort of hardmode done) the first few bosses in Ulduar 25 are getting Pug'd already and even the guilds that failed at Malygos in 3.0 have been killing everything except Mimiron, General and Yogg. That's a lot of possible fragment drops. Add a guaranteed drop from Yogg and it's not unrealistic to see any guild with Yogg dead with a mace in a month or two.

Second, the first few maces will be in average guilds as well as top guilds. My guild is average (downed Yogg in the 5th reset) and we have RNG'd 28 fragments so far. At the moment I'm more concerned about getting yogg+3 down than about us completing the last 2 shards. It's likely that our mace will be among the first 10 world-wide - I'm pretty sure Blizz is not looking at our type of guild when it comes to mechanic or game design.

PUGs may be able to get some fragments and they may even be able to collect 30 fragments, but the final requirement is that the player has to defeat Yogg down a watcher. It will be a while before we see any large section of the healing population with this mace.

Healing isn't dps. You can't just decide to "react to a proc" and start spamming your heals when there's no damage. Doing that just for 15% shield procs is incredibly mana inefficient and makes about as much sense as a disc priest spamming greater heal on full health targets for divine aegis procs. The only way around it is to unequip the item until the predictable damage is about to occur, then equip it and hope you don't get screwed on procs. The fact that this strategy is viable is poor design.

How does it stand on it's own without the proc again? Ignoring the proc, I had access to a BETTER WEAPON before anyone even had half the fragments required to make the item ([Furious Gladiator's Salvation]). Maybe your expectations for the quality of a legendary item are lower than mine, and you think all previous legendaries were overpowered. Do you not find it ridiculous that in current content, before even obtaining the item, I'm looking into picking up a weapon to use over the legendary 66% of the time because it's already better? Do you really think that a gimmicky item that requires you to weapon swap constantly and obtain a replacement item to make it effective is a good design? Or that it will be a good design in the next tier of content when the stat benefit for using this weapon swap strategy is much more pronounced? It's already significant since you want to make the mace NOT proc so that the proc is available when predictable damage occurs.

Ultimately, the yogg "easy hard mode" requirement will not have a large impact on the number of maces. People will purchase slots in other raids to complete the item. Also, even if it takes a guild until they have 70 fragments to down yogg with 1 less keeper, they still get 2 maces as soon as they are able to complete it and the net difference in completed weapons is zero.

What? You'd rather have 18 Stamina, 16 MP5, and a 5 spell power blue gem socket than 8 int, 47 Crit and 46 Haste? That's a significantly smaller budget of stats, and in lower quality ones, unless you're talking about which item is better for pvp healing.

On a fight in which you're mainly spaming pw:s, the gavel would be better. I don't think he's saying that he wouldn't rather have Val'anyr, but for a legendary it feels kind of meh.

I never said it was a great weapon or proc. I said it was a good weapon with an experimental proc attached to it. If the proc was a talent in the Disc tree I'd likely agree with you about it being poor design but it's not a talent at all and you don't have to use it if you aren't willing.

Like I said, I believe it's a proc designed to see if healers can/will utilize procs that they can't control vs cooldowns that they can. If you feel "cheated" because Blizzard is trying to push healing out of the rut it's been in since WoW's inception then that's your opinion. Even if you don't like the proc you can't fault Blizzard for their effort in trying something new and making this new thing available to all healing classes.