WoW Retail: Game-Breaking Weapon?, The Truth About Anu-Azshara, Staff Of The Eternal (Patreon)

I noticed that across the various wow discussion forums there has been much hype and excitement about the weapon Anu-Azshara, Staff Of The Eternal. A number of players have reported that the staff one-shotted them for 400-500,000 damage. Further, players have speculated that this weapon could be used to one-shot raid bosses, and constitutes an exploit that needs to be fixed. 

This weapon is interesting, but not, in my opinion, game-breaking.

The staff drops from the current tier endgame raid, The Eternal Palace, from all bosses, for most casters. Drop % is not known. Unusually for this type of weapon, a version of the staff drops from LFR, so it is accessible even to those who do not raid seriously. 

The staff's proc works like this:  Your spells have a chance to grant you a charge of Potency. If you fall below 10% health or mana, unleash Potency damaging enemies and healing allies within 40 yards for [1344 * (1 + Versatility)] per charge. 

So, charges can be built up indefinitely by repeated attacks. There is no apparent cap on these charges-which is why many people have become interested in the weapon. The proc has a 10 min cooldown after usage. There is no splitting of healing or damage based on the number of npc's or player's hit as with most similar effects.

The staff can be used in battlegrounds and most forms of pve, though stacks reset when  when mythic dungeons are activated. 

The first restriction on the staff is the obvious one - you have to build up a large amount of stacks to do meaningful damage. It takes between 8-15 minutes to build up to maximum charges, depending on class, ilvl etc.

The second restriction on the staff is less obvious: yes it has a restriction on charges despite there being no apparent cap. The reason is that no buff in wow can exceed 255 (each buff is stored in 8 bits of information which cannot exceed 255). When you crunch the numbers you come to the conclusion that the staff's proc can't do much more than around  half a million in damage, give or take a few hundred thousand. 

Now, it is debatable whether this is game-breaking. Certainly from the point of view of people getting one-shot in world pvp it is just that-however this type of hopelessly imbalanced situation was not that uncommon in Legion, so it may well be intended. Blizzard simply do not care that much about world pvp. In pve this weapon is clearly not going to enable you to one-shot mythic raid bosses or anything like it.

Staffs can be built up to 255 by using a target dummy and then porting into a dungeon/raid via summons. The practical use of this is more likely to revolve a massive burst of healing rather than damage. 

The staff's proc can be effectively triggered by the use of some ability with heavy mana usage such as spellsteal or dispel magic. 

The staff can be switched as can every weapon, once the proc has been used.