The cooldown on our combat resurrection spell Rebirth will be reduced from 30 minutes to 20 minutes in an upcoming patch:

We want to whack the cooldown from 30 minutes down to 20 minutes.

And just to say it, we have no current plans to lower it further and make it usable in arenas. A full druid team with a bunch of Rebirths sounds a little wonky.

While I am appreciative of any attention given to the lack of viability of Druids as 5-man healers (except when “backed up” by another healer), a reduced cooldown on Rebirth doesn’t address the essential problem of not having a standard resurrection spell: you can’t ressurect more than one group member unless one of those that died is herself another Druid or a “real” rezzer. If anything, this change is discouraging because it’s likely the only improvement they’ve decided to make.

Related Posts

• Rebirth Bugged (or Nerfed)
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• Out of Combat Resurrection

It was recently announced that the mana regeneration while casting talents of both the Mage and Priest would be improved from their current 5/10/15% bonus to a 10/20/30% bonus in an upcoming patch. Apparently Intensity will be improved in the same way.

Ariendel of Steamwheedle Cartel writes:

Looking at the way Priests and Mages [will have] their mana regen changed, I predict that Intensity talent will now regen mana at 10%/20%/30% rate.

… to which Blizzard Poster Bornakk replies:

Hmmm… we will make it so.

This is amazing news for most casting Druids (13 points in Restoration to pick up these talents make it a viable option for even our Balance-specced brethren) and will go a long way toward improving the desirability of Spirit vs. MP5.

Related Posts

• Revaluing Spirit
• Guest Post: Moonkin Mana Regeneration
• Blessing of Kings vs. Blessing of Wisdom

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

Inspired by Vonya of The Egotistical Priest and her recent post on Power Word: Shield, I’d like to look at the Druid’s self-only equivalent, Barkskin:

What Barkskin Does

Well first of all, Barkskin is self-only, like Paladin Divine Shield. Its damage reduction is percentage-based which means it scales automatically with the damage taken (unlike Power Word: Shield which scales with +Healing). Best of all, it can be cast through most forms of crowd control: stuns, ice, incpacitation, fears, or sleep. The damage reduction combined with spellcasting delay prevention and ability to cast while crowd controlled makes this an excellent PvP spell that’s available 12 seconds out of every minute. Unfortunately, it can only be cast from one of our casting forms — Elf, Moonkin, and recently Tree — which leaves Cat and Bear out in the cold (fortunately, they have fur).

How It Stacks Up

In terms of similarity, it makes the most sense to compare Barkskin to the Priest Power Word: Shield and Inner Fire.

Barkskin vs. Power Word: Shield

• PWS can be cast on others, allowing it to be used in a number of helpful ways that Vonya details in her article. As such, it’s generally considered part of the Priest healing arsenal. Barkskin, on the other hand, is self-only and is considered more of a defensive mechanism than a healing tool.
• PWS scales with a Priest’s +Healing, making the shield from a Holy-specced Priest better than that from a Face Melter. Because the damage reduction for Barkskin is an unmodifiable percentage, any Druid casting Barkskin receives the same benefit, regardless of spec.
• PWS can be cast on the same target once every 15 seconds and can be cast on an unlimited number of targets. Barkskin is only usable once a minute.
• PWS costs 600 mana to cast. Barkskin costs 12% of base mana (284 at level 70).
• PWS cannot be cast while under the effects of crowd control (although a friendly target can receive it while crowd controlled).

When used in self-defense, Barkskin seems to come out the winner. A 20% damage reduction, even if only for 12 seconds out of every minute is far superior to PWS, even when augmented with 1500 +Healing. In PvP, PWS isn’t likely to give you enough time to cast much, with Warriors that can Mortal Strike for 3k. However, one of the biggest strengths of PWS is that it can be used on friendly targets and it’s definitely a nice “crutch” in times of need.

Barkskin vs. Inner Fire

However, a more fair comparison for Barkskin might be the Priest spell, Inner Fire which, fully talented, provides an additional 2054 Armor. This effect lasts for 20 hits and can be refreshed for 375 mana:

Let’s compare the two:

• The 2054 Armor from Inner Fire when fully talented equates to an additional 13.79% damage reduction at 1500 Armor in Cloth (math presented at the bottom of this post). Compare this to the 20% reduction of Barkskin and the fact that Barkskin also reduces spell damage by this amount rather than solely physical (melee and ranged).
• The damage reduction of IF divided by the mana cost is .000367. The damage reduction of Barkskin divided by the mana cost is .000704, giving it twice the “bang for your buck” during the twelve seconds out of every minute it’s available.
• IF can be refreshed whenever the Priest needs to and isn’t on a cooldown.
• IF does not prevent spellcasting delay. Nor can it be cast when crowd controlled.

I’d probably have to go with Barkskin for this comparison as well. Because, while Inner Fire is available basically any time it’s needed, assuming the Priest isn’t crowd controlled, Barkskin includes a bigger damage reduction for more types of damage and for less mana. It also allows you to cast spells without worry of interruption by damage. On the other hand, if focus-fired the entire match, IF might end up being more useful, but really a Druid’s forte is avoiding being focus-fired for too long, especially in caster form.

The Secrets No One Told You

Of course, one of the most obvious uses for Barkskin is to allow you enough time to cast a Healing Touch, Entangling Roots, Regrowth, or Cyclone that can’t be delayed by damage. Here are a few additional ways that Barkskin can be used that you may not have considered, however:

• Barkskin + Tranquility
  For a group heal that can’t be delayed or interrupted by damage. Who needs Improved Tranquility? No, seriously. Who needs it — you can have mine. Also usable with Hurricane to clear the Stockades in Stormwind at level 70 (if you’re Restoration-specced).
• Barkskin + Really, Really High Place = SPLAT!
  You may have heard rumors that Barkskin reduces your fall damage by 20%, preventing you from dying since fall damage is based upon total health. This may have at one time been true but is no longer, probably having been changed when PWS was nerfed so that it no longer prevents its recipient from dying when jumping from high places. I know this because I just tested it, leaving behind a Phae-colored puddle in Netherstorm.
• Feared and a sense of impending doom via Warlock?
  Pop Barkskin to reduce the total damage they can do to you while Feared by 20% for 12 seconds. Also helpful for taking the wind out of a 3-minute Mage’s sails (although the ones who spec for Air are already a little questionable).
• Stunlock?
  Be it Warrior or Rogue, one of the best tactics to use against a Druid is to beat on them and keep them from retreating to Bearform until you can kill them. Pop a Barkskin to buy yourself 20% more time for the stunlock to elapse.
• Instancing and Raiding
  There are a number of encounters where Barkskin gives you an advantage that other classes may not have, since it can be cast when you’re otherwise immobilized. Try it when Sacrificed by Terrestrian Illhoof in Karazhan or Thorngrin the Tender in Botanica. Or use it just before Gruul’s Shatter and you’ll take less damage than those unfortunate enough to be around you.

All in all, Barkskin is an incredible class ability that provides a lot of utility when used in various ways, both in PvE and PvP. I know that I personally need to get an itchier trigger finger when it comes to popping this ability when crowd controlled.

P.S. The “Barkbark” reference is to an oft-quoted post from a player who was disgruntled that Barkskin could not be used in Tree of Life prior to Patch 2.1:

————————————————————————–
Q u o t e:
You don’t have any skin! You’re already made of bark.

Barkskin…. silly trees.
————————————————————————–

Barkbark, new spell in 2.1.0

The damage reduction of Inner Fire was calculated using the formula from WoWWiki.com:

%Reduction vs. 70 = (Armor / (Armor + 10557.5)) * 100

So at 1500 Armor in Cloth:

100 * (1500 / (1500 + 10557.5)) = 12.44%

A 12% damage reduction means the Priest would still be taking 87.56% damage. Now add the 2054 Armor from fully talented Inner Fire:

100 * ((1500 + 2054) / (1500 + 2054 + 10557.5)) = 25.19%

That means that with Inner Fire the Priest would still be taking 74.81% damage. Comparing this with the 88% calculated without:

(0.7481 / 0.8756) = 86.20%

An 86.20% of damage taken converts to 13.79% additional damage reduction from Inner Fire.

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Ah, Fear. That lovely ability that endears Warlocks to all other players. As a 2v2 Arena player, I spend the majority of matches against X + Warlock trying desperately to stay out of LoS of the Warlock so that I’m able to retain control of my character. As annoying as fear is, something I hadn’t considered when expounding upon the inferiority of Mark of the Wild was that the 25 base resistance is actually enough to grant 5% resistance.

According to WoWWiki.com, the formula for determining spell resistance is:

Average Resistance

= (Target’s Resistance / (Caster’s Level * 5)) * 0.75

Assuming your opponent is level 70:

(25 / (70 * 5)) * 0.75 = 5.3%

With 5/5 Improved Mark of the Wild (which you probably won’t have if you PvP):

(33 / (70 * 5)) * 0.75 = 7.0%

Ha! Ha! Ha!

Keep in mind that this resistance does not apply to abilities like Intimidating Shout, only those spell-based varieties of fear from the Shadow and Nature schools of magic: Fear, Howl of Terror, Psychic Scream, and Scare Beast. Nor do the Resistances granted by Mark stack with those conferred by other classes’ Auras, like the Paladin Shadow Resistance Aura which grants a 15% resistance to Shadow-based fears. Of course, in 2v2 you’re pretty unlikely to be paired with a Paladin, and if you were, I don’t imagine you would run into many Warlocks at the Rating that would likely result.

Note: For an additional 3.2% resistance to Shadow-based fears that can’t be chomped by a dastardly Felhound, pick up the Shadow Resistance enchant for cloaks.

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