New Legendary Paladin Weapon Reveal: Val'anyr
A new Legendary Paladin Weapon card has been revealed by IGN!
What is Val'anyr?
Val'anyr, Hammer of the Ancient Kings was a Mace created by the Titans and given to the first Earthen King, Urel Stoneheart. The weapon was used to create and give life to the Earthen, a race of proto-beings created by the Keepers to help shape the subterranean regions of Azeroth. During a war between the Earthen and Iron Dwarves, Val'anyr was shattered into fragments.
World of Warcraft
In World of Warcraft, Val'anyr was added to the game in Patch 3.1.0, Secrets of Ulduar. Players were able to collect Fragments of Val'anyr from the bosses of Ulduar (the Prison of Yogg!) with drop rates being as low as 3%. A player who was able to collect 30 Fragments was able to bundle them up and throw them into the maw of Yogg-Saron, Hope's End. After a successful defeat of the Old God, the player who collected the fragments would recover the Legendary mace from his corpse.
A wild Fluxadin outside Ulduar equipped with Val'anyr and Tier 2 Judgment Armor.
The mace is a healing item available to Druids, Paladins, Priests, and Shamans (with Monks being added later). The effect provided a chance to place a blessing on the target being healed, Blessing of the Ancient Kings, which lasted for 15 seconds and caused all healing done by wielders of Val'anyr to provide a damage absorption shield worth 15% of the amount healed to the target.
It took months of hard work to get a single mace for your guild, but it was worth it in the end. Guilds continued to run Ulduar to equip their heal team with the item well past the raid tier's viability not only due to the overpowered nature of the proc, but also because the item level was upgraded (from 239 to 245) in the next raid tier. It was so good that Blizzard was forced to nerf the proc rate for players above level 80 leading in to the next expansion, Cataclysm (featuring Deathwing!), because it would have continued to scale. The item was also plenty of fun to those who took it out in Arenas and Battlegrounds, it was like the Warglaives of Azzinoth Rogues all over again.
World of Warcraft: Trading Card Game
Hearthstone isn't the first card game rodeo for this Legendary weapon! Val'anyr was an epic, 1-Handed Mace introduced in the Icecrown expansion set. It has a cost of 4, attack of 1, and strike cost (resources to spend to attack with the weapon) of 4.
The effect in WoW:TCG was much closer to what players saw out of the World of Warcraft item. "At the end of your turn, your hero heals all damage from allies you control. Then, it heals that much damage from itself.". Hearthstone is the odd one out!
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My first thought is that this card has great synergy with furnfire collosus! At least if everything else fails we have that! :D
This cards just highlights how much Tentacles for Arms sucks.
Can't wait to put this in my midrange pally with 2x Saronite Chain Gang
Dopplegangster says hello
My greatest concern about this weapon is that, once you have equipped, you can't use any other weapon, since it will automatically equip itself (the deathrattle effect).
Because of that, decks that run DK or tyrion won't benefit from these weapons.
So, considering this limitation, I don't think control decks will play this card.
Now, thinking about all the paladin cards revealed, I am really sad, cause the biggest problem of paladin, IMO, is lack of tempo, and I don't think this problem has been addressed.
As I understand, Val'anyr , can be played one time generating strong profits. Tentacles for Arms you need to use mana for playing it. But Val'anyr reequip after you minions with this buff dies, until you have minions in hand.Saronite Chain Gang will equip it twice! Maybe I misunderstand description, but it seemed extremely strong.
This card is really interesting!
It is a handbuff-card with infinite value for 6 mana, that's great! But to make it work, you regularly need to hit things, which will cost you a lot of life. So you need to heal up properly, what could be done with Lifesteal-minions. But because Lifesteal makes the minions under-stated and the lack of board impact, this will be hard to pull off.
Or you heal directly, which is easier to accomplish but has the same disadvantages regarding boardcontrol.
So your best bet is a midrange type of deck, because you regularly have minions to buff like Doppelgangster
Personally I would try a pirate tempo paladin, with Blackwater Pirate, Phantom Freebooter, a buffed Southsea Deckhand and Divine Favor for carddraw.
Interesting
Ez you add the new Benevolent Djinn and Corpsetaker and the other 4/3/2 charger w/ lifelink
maybe you could also add Pearl Spellstone
ResidentSleeper
Shame the effect isn't a battlecry; but like a few of the cards this release, i think there's enough of a good thing going on here to consider taking this card on board.
Especially in slower and midrange decks or buffing lifesteal.
You must consider that the card does not go to your hand, you directly equip it. Battlecry wouldnt work.
I rather prefer this version over the battlecry, buffin 2 minions, waiting for his deathrattle to trigger to spend 6 mana again, is more tempo (you wont use the weapon again ofc) than control.
Edit: I said that before knowing that the card was for paladin instead of warrior. Damn, it would be very good for control warrior. Good thing I was specting a very good weapon card for warrior and was kinda disapointed for the 6 mana of this one, fingers crossed :)
NO MURLOCS THIS ADVENTURE FOR PALADIN. THE TIME HAS COME.
UNPOPULAR OPINION
:This card is much too slow and will see little to no play.
WAIT! Before you downvote, just hear me out. Compare this to Hammer of Twilight. Val'anyr costs one more mana, and the Deathrattle is the same stats but much slower. The only upside this card has to Hammer of Twilight is that you can get the weapon back from the minion it buffed. But seeing many of the other cards in this set so far I can see that cards that silence (or transform) minions will be played much more frequently than they are now. With Hammer of Twilight you could not silence the 4/2 because it was just stats. Aside from this, I believe that Val'anyr is just too slow to see play in any meta where aggro is present. I know that Blizzard seems to be trying to create a control-centered meta, but as long as Prince Keleseth is in standard aggro isn't going anywhere.
Do you disagree? Reply with your thoughts about this card.
Excuse me but comparing an epic to a legendary is like comparing Apple and Microsoft, you can't. Legendaries can only take up one slot, and so they will contain much more value than a epic which can take two. Have two hammer of twilights in a deck gives you a much higher chance in drawing it than 1/30, thats why a legendary can be that good. I do agree that this card is a too slow, as I stated in another comment, but Paladin is doing pretty shitty in general right now. (I downvoted btw)
Hammer of Twilight was played in Face-Shaman during Totem Golem Meta. It was never meant to be used in a control shaman deck because shaman has not the cards to win a value game, therfor the 4/2 minion was better than the slow buff-theme from Val'anyr. Paladins who play Val'anyr are not aggro, most likely control paladin who are using value cards and have enough healing options.
Aggro is always present when there are greedy control decks. The question will be if the paladin deck who plays Val'anyr is good enough to win 50%+ against them and outvalues other control decks.
Prince Keleseth is not the problem... as soon as Patches rotates out Keleseth will see less play.
Most likely you want to clear the board against aggro/tempo decks on turn6 and I don't see why a 4 attack weapon is bad to help with that.. Argent commander has the same attack value and was never a bad card on turn6 to get some board control back. Every control deck will need some good answers vs turn7 Bonemare and a weapon helps to keep the board clear.
Perhaps you don't understand what I was saying. I never said Val'anyr was more powerful that the hammer, in fact I was saying the opposite. I was saying that this card is worse than an epic that barely saw play, which is why this card won't.
There's only one issue I want to point out concerning silence & transform cards. I agree this card probably won't make too many waves in anything but grinder lists. You have to understand a basic thing about Hearthstone's silence/transform cards before saying they will be more frequent. The vast majority of silence cards are either unplayably bad, really mediocre, or are in Priest (usually both honestly). Then you have to recognize the fact that there are very few overall silence effects in the game. Kabal Songstealer and Spellbreaker (and earth shock to a lesser extent) aren't just the only competitive silence cards. They also happen to be in a group of roughly 13 silence cards that exist. Transform effects aren't in a much better position to counter these new cards considering most of the competitive transform effects are in Shaman (and the ones that actually transform enemy minions don't even reach 10 if I recall). EVERY expansion people say "silence will make X, Y, & Z cards irrelevant" but it never happens. Not because there aren't good cards to silence, but because everyone forgets to actually look through the collection to see there aren't many good silent/transform cards printed at all.