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Natural Imperfection vs. Blessed Resilience
Published on September 19, 2007 by Phaelia 
Analysis, PvP, Spells and Talents 
10 Comments
Note: With the changes to Natural Perfection in Patch 2.3, the analysis and comparison contained in this article is no longer relevant.
Natural Perfection is one of the Restoration talents that was made available to Druids just before the release of the Burning Crusade:
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While Natural Perfection includes a bonus to spell crit percentage, it is more obviously a PvP-oriented talent, providing protection in a similar manner to the core game stat, Resilience. But while Resilience reduces your chance to be crit while increasing the damage reduction of all critical hits (melee, ranged, and spell), Natural Perfection only reduces the damage from melee and ranged critical strikes.
A 10% reduction of damage from critical strikes (even if only from melee and ranged) sounds great. Unfortunately, the reduction of damage from critical strikes maxxes out at 25%. This means that most players cap out at 493 Resilience (39.4 * (25/2)), and any additional Resilience past this number will no longer reduce damage from critical strikes, only the chance to be crit. For a Druid with 3/3 points in Natural Perfection, however, our Resilience is “soft” capped at 296 (39.4 * ((25-10)/2)). Any additional Resilience past this number will only reduce damage from spell critical strikes and the chance to be crit. A Druid with Natural Resilience essentially has the value of the last 197 points of Resilience cut in half., a privilege for which we pay 3 Tier 7 talent points.
One benefit of this unfortunate circumstance is a decreased reliance upon Resilience relative to other classes, making it easier for a Restoration Druid to gear up for PvP and allowing a heavier emphasis on Stamina and PvP-oriented healing and survivability stats (+Healing, Intellect, MP5, and even Armor). In some ways, this flaw might be considered a perk … that is, until it’s contrasted against the Priest Talent, Blessed Resilience.
Natural Perfection vs. Blessed Resilience
Like Natural Perfection, Blessed Resilience is a 3-point, PvP-oriented Tier 7 talent:
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While the Druid experiences the “soft cap” phenomenon when it comes to Resilience, Priests experience something not entirely dissimilar. Because while the crit chance reduction is 100% whenever Blessed Resilience ability has procced, Priests essentially get no benefit from Resilience during that time. But although Resilience reduces a Priest’s chance to be crit, it doesn’t reduce the chance to proc Blessed Resilience. In other words, crits that are prevented through Resilience will still proc BR 60% of the time.
To make a fair comparison of these two abilities, we need them to speak the same language. To accomplish this, we will convert the values of Spiritual Resilience and Natural Perfection into the equivalent values of total damage reduction (while keeping in mind that SP affects all types of damage, not only melee and ranged). To perform this conversion, we have to make some basic assumptions about various opponents. I will be finding this value for a Rogue and a Warrior, each of whom have different assumed “attack rates” (number of seconds between each attack and thus chance to proc) and “critical chance”. These assumptions are obviously not completely realistic due to the nature of range/line of sight issues in PvP, but they are necessary to create a feasible model.
| Rogue | Warrior | |
| Chance to Crit | 35% | 31% |
| Attack Rate | 1 sec | 2 sec |
| +100% damage from crits | +100% damage from crits(no Impale) |
To begin the process of converting Blessed Resilience to crit damage reduction, we need to determine what percentage of the time it will be up. To do this, we can use the following formulas:
Avg. Time (sec) until BR procs = (1/crit chance) * attack rate Avg. Time (sec) BR is “up” = 6/(6 + avg time until BR procs)
We can then determine the average amount of damage taken when Blessed Resilience is up and when BR is not and weight them accordingly. For the sake of simplication, 1 is assigned to the damage value of 1 attack. As an example of how this is calculated in simplest terms and with a Resilience rating of 0, if the crit rating of the assailant were 30%, and Blessed Resilience were up 50% of the time, the total damage taken by the Priest would be calculated as:
((1 + crit rating) * percent time BR not up) + ((1 + crit rating) * % time BR up) OR ((1 + 0.3) * 0.5) + (1 * 0.5) = 1.15.
We can determine these values at varying levels of Resilience, allowing us to determine the benefit of Blessed Resilience versus our hypothetical Warrior and Rogue assailants at different levels of gear.
The calculations for the benefits of Natural Perfection are based upon the following assumptions:
- If the Druid’s Resilience is less than 295, Natural Perfection provides 10% damage reduction.
- If the Druid’s Resilience is greater than 493, Natural Perfection provides 0% damage reduction.
- Otherwise, the benefit provided can be expressed as:
0.1 – (Resilience – 295.5)/(19.70 * 100)
Because they are so complicated, I’ve included the formulas for determining the equivalent expected damage reductions for each of these talents in the spreadsheet made available for download at the bottom of this article (gracious thanks to my statistician of a husband for determining them). These formulas were used to generate a graph of the percent damage reduction provided by Blessed Resilience and Natural Perfection at 0 to 550 Resilience versus our hypothetical Rogue and Warrior:
From this graph, we can note the following:
- While both Natural Perfection and Blessed Resilience suffer diminished returns as Resilience increases, the value of Blessed Resilience always provides at least 4x the amount of damage reduction as Natural Perfection.
- Further, Blessed Resilience is more valuable post-493 Resilience than Natural Perfection ever is, despite the fact that NP has 0 value post-493 Resilience.
- While the benefits of Natural Perfection apply only to melee and ranged damage, the benefits of Spiritual Resilience extend to spell crits as well.
In conclusion … WTT Natural Perfection for Blessed Resilience!
But Natural Perfection gives me spell crit!
Unfortunately, spell crit is of negligible benefit to a healing Druid, particularly one deeply specced Restoration. Such a build significantly bolsters our heals over time, spells that cannot critically heal. While the initial heal of Regrowth does benefit from the 3% to crit, 5/5 Improved Regrowth (50% to crit) makes this 3% nominal. The direct heal portion of Lifebloom can also crit, but — at least in PvE — should rarely be allowed to bloom.
Download the Spreadsheet
used to calculate these values.Related Posts
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The pattern is interesting between both talents. However I think this talent is Blizzards nod towards giving druids more help towards grinding with the added spell crit and making it more attractive by trying to make it useful for PVP’ers.
I had no idea the priests talent is approx. 4 times as effective as our own though, that certainly puts it in perspective.
As a druid I think the 3% is rather nice, being a leather/cloth hybrid. If we get trash on us in PvE and we don’t have much resilience, it could make a difference.
I agree on the spellcrit though, even when using HT’s, I don’t think anyone should rely on it as a healer. (well pally’s perhaps)
I’m not sure about the Blessed Resilience though for priests. I can imagine it a pretty awesome talent in PvP, but usually when a priest is critted by a non-mana-using mob in PvE, the priest is pretty much dead when their shield isn’t up.
So even when it does proc (60% is pretty high of a chance), it’s a bit late, as the priest is dead…
Was about time someone wrote about this dodgy talent though, good work
So with this in mind would you say it is a worthwhile talent or would you rather spend those points elsewhere if you could?
Still a worthwhile talent, being practically “free” Resilience in reduced crit damage from melee and ranged.
@Aftereight: Unfortunately, someone invested this deeply into Restoration has sacrificed pretty much all grinding potential. The 3% crit seems so odd, as if to make it slightly attractive to PvE’ers but without taking into account the fact that a HoT Druid has no call for it. Hrm.
@Kwast: I think that both of these talents are intended as PvP abilities. Neither will provide much help in PvE where the mobs can kill you so much more quickly.
@Zal: Yes, it’s a worthwhile talent as it allows you to gem your items for +Healing and Stamina and the like. However, unless something changes in a few seasons when Arena gear puts you at the Resilience cap on its own, it will be worthless.
@Megan: I was hoping you would enjoy this article. If I can ask, what are your impressions of the talent?
*dizzy* 0_0
The talent is good, and if you’re on your way to nabbing Tree of Life anyway, you might as well take it if you PVP alot.
Nvm – old article I guess
could live with a rewrite
This article refers to the version of Natural Perfection that existed prior to patch 2.3. It is no longer a relevant comparison (which is why it’s not included among the Guides section). It certainly could do with a rewrite but the new dynamic is much more difficult to model. =)