In Arenas — especially 2v2 — there is a lot of Paper, Rock, Scissors (with Warlocks being the atom bomb). There are certain combinations that seem custom-built to exploit your team’s weaknesses. In these situations, often your best hope is that the other team makes a mistake that you’re lucky enough to capitalize upon. For Ebene and I (Warrior/Druid), two such team combinations are Warrior/Shaman and Scorpid Hunter/Healer. I don’t think we’ve ever succesfully beaten the former, and the latter is a real pain in the butt.

The strength of a Scorpid Hunter is that his pet stacks a poison on you that prevents you from removing his master’s Viper Sting (mana draining poison). Prior to Patch 2.2, the Scorpid Poison also did a tremendous amount of damage. Against a Scorpid Hunter it’s very important to keep an Abolish Poison up as often as possible to try to keep yourself from getting poisons stacked up (and it seems a bit of a problem that a Hunter should be so necessarily described in terms of her pet). If you get into trouble, you can shift into Bear Form and use Frenzied Regeneration so that you can’t be affected by the mana drain component of the poison.

This morning we faced a Scorpid Hunter/Holy Priest combination named Viper Burn from the Firetree server. As you might have inferred from their team name, they rely upon a combination of Viper Sting and Mana Burn to effectively take the wind out of the sails of any team with a mana user. They are built to overcome the popular combination of Healer + DPS. Definitely tough competition, especially considering the ratings of some of their other teams (the Priest is 2100+ on his 3v3). And. They. Cheat.

I can understand the desire to win in competitive PvP. As Megan of Out of Mana writes:

You already know that so many people QQ about PVP. PVP is serious business. People get very emotional (me included) about PVP because of the human component—someone else just gave you a serving of pwncake and it didn’t taste very good. It’s fine if Prince screws you over, you can blame it on Infernals, AI, coding, and the alignment of the moon. But when someone kills half the raid during a Gruul Shatter? That pisses you off because it was the result of a human. PVP is like the latter 100%, all the time—you just gave someone honor or rating points, possibly bragging rights, and if they are Undead, they are eating your body. And that sucks.

And when they cheat? It’s 100 times worse. We fought Viper Burn twice, and they used two exploits (that we could see). The Priest, McNugget, found some area in the Nagrand arena where he could stand and, while remaining completely visible, was unchargable. In our second game, he exploited the “/sit” macro to continue drinking despite repeated attacks to put him into combat. After the second Moonfire, I had to switch to Cyclone to prevent him from continuing to drink. We won both games (thankfully), and I hope the pound of pwncake we served them had weevils in it.

Related Posts

• PTR Report: Resilience to Affect Mana Drain
• Hafu and Kasumi in 2v3 Arenas
• Kalgan: Druids 176% Overrepresented in 2v2

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:

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:

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.

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

• Natural Perfection Revamped
• Patch 2.4.2: Natural Perfection "Fixed"
• Natural Perfection No Longer Triggers from Crits while Sitting

Okay, well not always. Alliance wins the majority of Alterac Valley matches. It is generally accepted, however, that Horde there play at a disadvantage. On the other hand, Horde has a considerable advantage in Arathi Basin since it’s easier for them to take and hold the nearly unbeatable combination of Blacksmith, Lumber Mill, and Farm. But disregarding the two more or less “unbalanced” Battlegrounds, Horde probably wins somewhere in the neighborhood of 75-85% of Eye of the Storm and Warsong Gulch matches. These are Battlegrounds that have been designed to present as little advantage to either side as possible. And Horde tromps Alliance all the way to their graveyards, sometimes backing us into our starting areas.

It wasn’t always this way. I remember world PvP at Tarren Mill and Southshore. On most servers, Alliance had superior numbers and skirmished with much success. We would spend hours on the western banks near Tarren Mill, falling back into the river when the near infinite guards threatened to overwhelm us. Many players describe these times as the most fun they’ve had while PvPing.

And then the Battlegrounds were introduced. Along with them came DKs, which made PvP like that which had previously taken place at Tarren Mill essentially PvP career suicide. Instead, players dutifully queued up for their “objective-based” player versus player combat, running flags up and down the field between the two bases of Warsong Gulch. But something was wrong. The advantage that Alliance once had in superior numbers suddenly became the source of teeth-gnashing, 2-hour long Battleground queues. And while Alliance languished trying to fill their time so they wouldn’t go AFK before finally getting the call to a 15-minute match, Horde lined up and cycled in, over and over and for as many games as they wanted. They racked up more experience, more reputation, more HKs (to be fair, the Honor system at the time made this fact irrelevant) and far less frustration.

Many of the Alliance players for whom PvP was a priority did the only sensible thing they could: they rerolled Horde. I was one of those who rerolled, though it was only by virtue of being married to someone for whom PvP was a priority. My husband wanted to play the class that was widely regarded as one of the most powerful in PvP and so leveled a Shaman. And for two months, he played Battlegrounds nonstop and any time he wanted — Horde queues were instantaneous. And many of his new teammates were also former Alliance players who had rerolled.

Battlegrounds killed PvP for Alliance.

Many of the best PvP players on Alliance rerolled to play with Horde, bolstering their faction’s collective expertise on the field of battle. Horde grew more seasoned more quickly because they could play more often. And once the ball was rolling in that direction, there was no stopping it. As most would attest, PvP is most fun when you’re winning. No one enjoys losing all the time. And so as veteran and newly-minted Horde won more and more games, more and more players were encouraged to reroll so that they too could experience the thrill of victory. Even today, players who are just beginning to play the game are told that, if they enjoy PvP, they should roll Horde characters, both for their superior PvP-based racial abilities and their winning records in Battlegrounds.

And now Blizzard is talking about “balancing” Alterac Valley, purportedly to discourage players from going AFK. What will this mean for Alliance players? It will almost certainly mean that Alliance players will no longer have any source of earnable honor comparable to that of Horde players. Our Arena teams will have harder times getting Battlegrounds gear for those slots that cannot be outfitted through Arena-play. And — at least for Alliance players — all token-purchased Battlegrounds gear will be expressed in the number of losses necessary for their purchase, in addition to Honor that takes much longer to farm.

For those wondering why we didn’t stay on Horde side after rerolling, I didn’t enjoy my class (Priest) nearly as much as I had my Druid, and I really missed having elbows. I think one may have had something to do with the other.

Related Posts

• How to: Be a Jerkface on Warsong Holiday Weekend
• Honor in the Valley
• Hafu and Kasumi Video 2

Hafu of Bleeding Hollow has released a second PvP video (you can view her first here) which includes impressive footage of her play in Battlegrounds and Arenas, including more 2v3 goodness (see below to download the high quality source for better detail):

Related Posts

• Hafu and Kasumi in 2v3 Arenas
• Vaneras: Druid PvP Viability Under Review
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Great news for Druids who selectively compete in smaller Arenas (where admittedly, we do our best):

Arena calculations have been modified. In addition, the penalty for smaller arena teams (2v2, 3v3) has been slightly reduced.

Let’s hope that “modified” doesn’t mean an across the board reduction with a compensatory increase for 2v2 and 3v3 Arenas (i.e., simply a nerf to 5v5 points).

And something else about the upcoming patch that I hadn’t considered:

• Druids: Hibernate and Entangling Roots duration against PvP targets has been reduced to 10 seconds.
• Hunters: Freezing Trap and Scare Beast duration against PvP targets has been reduced to 10 seconds.
• Mages: Polymorph duration against PvP targets has been reduced to 10 seconds.
• Priests: Mind Control duration against PvP targets has been reduced to 10 seconds.
• Rogues: Sap duration against PvP targets has been reduced to 10 seconds.
• Warlocks: Banish, Seduction, Enslave Demon and Fear duration against PvP targets has been reduced to 10 seconds.

These changes are an indirect buff to Druids, or at least to our 6-second crowd control ability, Cyclone. Because while the potency of Warlock Fear, Mage Polymorph, Hunter Freezing Trap, and Rogue Sap was reduced by 17%, our 6-second Cyclone remains untouched. In a manner of speaking, Cyclone is getting buffed 20% relative to the adjusted forms of crowd control.* Of course, our Entanging Roots ability is one of the forms of crowd control whose duration is being reduced, but Roots seldomly lasts its full duration anyway.

* The calculated 20% increase is based upon the fact that Cyclone currently lasts 50% of the duration of maximum length CC but will soon last for 60% of the duration. Increasing from 50 to 60% represents a 20% improvement over the original value (50 * 1.2 = 60).

Related Posts

• Druid Changes May Indicate Possibility of Indoor Arenas
• PTR Patch 2.1.2
• PTR: Cyclone Range Reduced to 20 Yards