Not really. The game already measures direct overheal, thus it's much more likely to be used. Unless Blizz has secret HoT overheal being counted behind the scenes but denying that info to the combat log, it would require recoding for HoT overheal to be calculated and implemented and thus has a lower chance of being used.

We already know that, via Replenish, HoTs can 'tick' and not report that tick to the combat log. We also know that the combat log does report partial overheal on HoT ticks so it seems to me like all the reporting functions are in place to allow the 15% shield to proc from ticks that are not directly reported to the combat log.

However, I'm arguing from the standpoint of someone who has not seen their code so obviously I could be wrong.

I am using Healbot, so it seems that its not an addon bug!

That's a terrible resto druid weapon. Not only does it have less spellpower than a 1 hander + off-hand combination, but it also has crit, which is by far the worst 'auxiliary stat' for druids since so much of our healing comes from spells which do not crit.

Ok, let me put it another way. Every legendary so far has been BiS for the intended classes/specs. This is almost certainly going to continue -- to suggest otherwise you would need strong evidence. You are disappointed in an item you don't even know the full effect of. Your whining is a bit premature, in other words.

If you put 2 spellpower gems in there + the enchant, it will give you a total of 706 spellpower. If you use Ironmender as your Ulduar off-hand (74 spellpower), you would need a 1h mace with 569 spellpower to break even. Afaik those are not in the game yet except for that PvP 1-hander which not everyone will be a fan of getting. Also you would gain more intellect and spirit than you would via a mh/oh combo. So I wouldn't say it's terrible.

About the legendary, GC says it like there's more to it than what you would think of first glance. Maybe when it procs you get a buff (Blessing of the Ancient Kings) and every heal you do creates a shield of 15% of the amount of healing. If it works on hots, it could be pretty good for a resto druid as well on some occassions, where the shield gets "eaten" in between ticks, on things like Mimiron p2, trampling, frozen blows, etc. Too bad we have to wait at least another 2 months before someone is able to create it.

Yes I get the same poblem. Razorscale is constantly getting targeted for some reason and then I can't Wildgrowth or Swiftmend useing Grid + Clique. If I remove Razor as a target then I am fine. It also seems to happen with the flame things he drops. They get targeted somehow, and then my heals don't work.

Especially considering speculative nature of this whole discussion, I think everyone takes into account that this can be (and probably will be as long as we raid Ulduar) BiS for resto druids. However, I'm disappointed in the margin by which this is going to be BiS for certain classes because of the stats.

The wording on the proc makes it fairly clear how that's going to work for pallies - they cast Holy Light and they get a 15% shield (either from effective or total healing) one way or another.

For everyone else that's much more mystifying. For shammies casting chain heal - does it proc off the first person? Or all of them? Or randomly? And what exact total is used for the shield effect? What about earth shield or healing stream totem (I know pretty much nobody uses that but it's something they have) - I guess out of luck here but who knows.

A lot holy priest healing comes from Renew so you run into same problem as Rejuvenation. Although generally speaking priests are casting way more direct heals than druids. If you talk about Empowered Renew, you can compare this to Regrowth. But other than that PoM, CoH and a few select other frequently or less frequently used priest spells are direct heals and will benefit from the proc directly without any HoT-proc magic.

For discipline priests this could be either fantastically good or horribly bad.

And for druids over 60% of my healing in last run came from HoTs and that's only because I decided to experiment with HT spec and HT came out at 16% whereas SM came out at 8% and this pushed my regrowth down to 4% and Nourish down to 0. So overall, counting blooms direct heals were around 32%. Otherwise normally now it's more like 80% from hots and 20% from direct heals. I like the list that Melador gave - the chances that the proc itself is going to be very effective for druids is rather slim.

So the point is that if this is BiS for druids by say a margin of 5%, then it's going to be BiS for pallies by a margin of 20% based on the proc alone, not counting other stats, and it doesn't require figuring out how exactly it works to come to that conclusion. And the auxiliary stats push that even further.

The problem with this statement is that you, without knowledge whatsoever of how the proc actually works, use your conclusion (pallies benefit more) as a premise to prove that pallies benefit more. This is circular reasoning, which is bad. Hence, the reason why your argument doesn't rely on knowing the actual proc mechanics is that you've decided ahead of time that the proc decidedly favors the paladins. Until we know how the proc works out, no conclusion can be reached, pure and simple. This isn't to say that you cannot make guesses, but the vast majority of people are stating it like it's known and "obvious" that the pallies get the most out of it. I just want to remind people that you're just guessing.

It's amazing how many people are willing to make dubious conclusions in some kind of hurry to categorize and theorycraft this thing. I'd rather wait and see to theorycraft correctly rather than theorycrafting for the sake of theorycrafting it. I feel sorry for the healers that get denied the mace because someone decided that it sucks for their class based on flimsy logic.

While I agree with this, the problem on hand is that guilds have to figure out what to do with the shards. And we aren't given any data besides a few vague statements, auxiliary weapon stats, and a cryptic proc description. So, second-guessing and pseudo-theorycrafting is the only benefit "analysis" anyone can do right now. And my personal problem is simple - do I want this or should I rather try to get something else instead? And everything I've seen so far makes me lean towards getting something else and getting maybe some brownie points in the guild for not actually wanting it. In any case, looking at the description and the stats, I don't think any druids should be angry about any guild giving it to any other healer first - it's not like they are gonna bestow it on a hunter anyway.

The main difference between this and say a legendary bow is that usually there is only a couple hunters, but there are seven to ten healers that may be competing for this mace. So guilds have to policy this competition somehow otherwise things can get pretty bloody.

I would too, but since we all have to decide who it's going to before we know how it works (thanks for that, Blizzard!), we pretty much have to try to reason out the most likely way for it to work.

Reading over the buff again, it appears that heals you cast will have a chance to proc a buff on you that will cause your heals, for 15 seconds, to put at 15% shield on everyone you heal.

So let's assume that HoTs will cause this shield along with direct heals, since it doesn't say "direct healing" explicitly.

It's also reasonable to assume that these shields don't self-stack, since we've never seen a buff that stacks when the value of each stack is different -- that is, we've never seen a buff with a stack of, say, 3 where the first stack was a shield of 40 from a LB tick, the second stack is a shield of 200 from a rejuv tick, and the third is a shield of 400 from a Nourish. I'm pretty sure WoW's buff system doesn't support that kind of thing.

Lets also assume that the shield buff can be overwritten, but only when the shield is more powerful than the existing shield buff, since we have precedent of buffs working that way -- "a more powerful spell is already active", etc. So for any interval between damage events, the recipient will end up with the highest shield value of any heal cast on them.

Given all that, I can see how this mace might be decent for druids. Throwing rejuvs around the raid would result in lots of little auto-refreshing 300-damage shields on people, WG would put up 100-damage shields on a bunch of people, etc. Of course all those shields are wasted if the people aren't taking any damage, but I could see that being a pretty nice bit of extra effective healing.

I don't think you're being very practical. I would guess that the vast majority of these shards are going to the guild's best healers, which is a good thing. In the other cases, where it comes down to 2-3 healers who can't decide, then they will probably just roll for it-- which is fine. However, those who don't wish to have a roll off must make a very tough choice. Those who choose to theorycraft it out, based on the limited knowledge available, can't be faulted. They're only able to use the tools that are available to them now. You can't bank the shards and decide on it later once more is known.