Good news for Restoration spec in Arenas. Community Manager Eyonix has announced that our lackluster PvP talent, Natural Perfection, will be seeing an additional effect with the next PTR update:
The Restoration talent, Natural Perfection, will now also (upon the next data push to the Public Test Realms), grant the Natural Perfection effect after being critically hit, reducing all damage taken by 1/2/3% for 6 seconds. This will stacks up to 5 times.
While this is obviously a buff, its overall value is questionable. 3% damage reduction from being crit the first time, 6% the second, 9% the third, 12% the fourth … and if it isn’t a Rogue hitting me, I’m dead already. This likely won’t be a significant survivability increase.
Edit: Wow! Within a single day’s worth of feedback, Eyonix has responded to concerns that the damage reduction would accrue too slowly to be helpful. They’re buffing the damage reduction to 1%/3%/5% per rank, stacking up to 3 times. That’s 15% benefit with a little over half the number of crits to max it out!
We’ve read through a great deal of feedback and are making another adjustment to the Natural Perfection talent which you’ll see in the next PTR data push.
“Now also grants the Natural Perfection effect after being critically hit, reducing all damage taken by 1/3/5% for 6 seconds. Stacks up to 3 times.”
While I’m very excited for this change, I still really like my idea of the following addition:
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@Graylo: Oh, my mistake!! I’ve adjusted the description to be more clear.
October 30th, 2007 at 10:58 am
Bah, I just spec’d 2 points out of this yesterday! I wants me money back.
October 30th, 2007 at 5:49 pm
Similar changes to the Priest’s new “Focused Will” talent. Hard to see what Blizzard is intending with this one.
Six seconds seems way too short, since to get the maximum effect from the ability you’re relying on being crit 5 times in a row; but getting crit that much is obviously bad, and at the resilience cap doesn’t seem terribly likely 1 on 1.
I guess its meant to be a last resort defense mechanism, maybe intended to proc during a stunlock/focus fire…there, I can see 15% damage reduction being useful, especially if you can pop Barkskin and maybe Bear Form for some uber mitigation.
Other than that, it seems a strange buff.
October 31st, 2007 at 1:08 am
Well, I think the use of this talent is gonna be quite limited whatever they do with it, except for arena-specific builds like 8/11/42, since resilience-like skills for healers are always PvP oriented (heroic mob crit = you’re dead; raid mob crit = you’re dead; regular mob crit = doesn’t even hurt anyway, why bother). I have some feral talents to help me both in PvP and doing solo quests, but I need a PvE build too so getting Tree of Life at the same time is not easy. Natural perfection will be out anyway.
Things may change with patch 2.3, as the extra +3% crit will be more than welcome for balance spells (its value for heals is laughable if you’re a raiding tree), and if I respec to move my feral talents into balance I’ll probably take this (with or without change). “Oh, it reduces damage taken too? Nice.”
Now, regarding the possible change: I like it. These talents are not supposed to save your life by themselves (well, rogues’ “cheat death” may be the exception ^^), but to ease things, and I believe this will be really annoying for dual wielders and kitties. Yeah, I know that will be mostly rogues and feral druids (PvP warriors and shammies kinda like two-handed weapons I guess; I don’t know how high a hunter’s pet’s crit rate can be), but you’ll probably notice it. Even if you don’t get to stack it much, a random 3%/6% reduction now and then added to its original benefits can be interesting.
In the particular case of stun-locks it’ll be funny, as by the time the rogue decides to land a 5-point damage dealer you’ll probably have 15% damage reduction.
Although a minor change, it seems fair to me.
Speaking of which, I know it’s totally off-topic but, am I the only one that thinks it’s unfair that HoTs get automatically down-ranked when cast on low level characters? They’re treated like regular buffs and you can’t even cast lifebloom on a level 50. Given all the changes they’re doing, it’s about time they change this too :/
October 31st, 2007 at 1:14 am
Oh, 5% per crit now? Even better
November 1st, 2007 at 3:01 pm
i know nothing of heals, but just wanted to drop a delurk and say hallo.
getting tired of blogger myself…looking for a new home!
November 1st, 2007 at 10:49 pm
@Megan: Yeah, I was considering dropping points out of this, as well. I definitely won’t until I see how nice this change ends up being! Finally, some scaling!
@Bael: 6 seconds doesn’t seem like a tremendously long time, but if this works the way that Blessed Resilience does, it should be able to refresh itself if you avoid a crit due to Resilience (that’s kinda rare, though). And now you’ll only need to be crit 3 times which is much more feasible. And wow - this plus Barkskin would be amazing. Although Barkskin never seems to be up when I want it to be. ^_^
@Ermengol: Yeah, this is pretty clearly a PvP buff. So healers that stick primarily to PvE won’t derive much benefit. While it doesn’t exactly bring the ability on par with Blessed Resilience, it’s still a very nice buff, especially since they’ve reduced the number of crits required to max out the reduction from 5 to 3.
And yeah, not being able to cast Lifebloom on low level friends you’re taking through dungeons sucks. Especially since it tends to be my immediate reaction to any damage taken by anyone!
@Doomilias: Well hello there! I didn’t know you read here. That’s great! Thank you for popping in and saying hello. I hope you enjoy your transition to WordPress as much as I have. =D