Blizzard
Hello pet battlers!We've seen some discussion around pet battle changes coming in Visions of N'Zoth, and we'd like to discuss those, as well as changes we currently have planned for a future content update.
The Weather Outside is Fight-fulWeather effects have always been intended to slightly change the rules of pet battles.
Tempête de sable is great against pets that do weaker attacks,
Beau fixe is great for healing abilities, and
Pluie purifiante is great for aquatic abilities. However,
Coulée de boue and
Blizzard both fell by the wayside in terms of being impactful or rule-changing outcomes. So in Visions of N'Zoth, both of these weather effects are being updated with new added effects in addition to their existing effects:
- Blizzard
Now also increases all elemental ability damage by 25%.
Coulée de boue - Now also increases all critical damage dealt by 25%.
To be really clear about the
Coulée de boue change: Critical strikes usually hit for 150% of normal damage.
Coulée de boue will now increase that to 175% of normal damage.We've also been thinking for a while that we should add a new weather type to the game, so Visions of N'Zoth will also introduce a new weather type:
Vapeurs toxiques. This deals
Draconien damage to the current enemy pet and applies the
Vapeurs toxiques weather effect.
Max No MoreIn Visions of N'Zoth, all of the new outdoor pet battle
Expéditions in
Uldum and
Val de l’Éternel printemps will scale their level to match the highest level pet currently slotted on your team, instead of always being a level 25 enemy pet. This will also be the case for
Nazjatar and
Île de Mécagone – all of the pet battle World Quests there are being updated. You can check them all out with a team of three level 1 pets!
Stat ChangesIn Visions of N'Zoth, we're also changing how percent-damage reduction abilities stack with each other. Currently, if you're fighting a pet like
Unité 17 in
Île de Mécagone (a Boss pet that passively takes 50% less damage), and
Unité 17 uses
Accroupi,
Unité 17 becomes immune to damage because the two 50% damage reduction effects are added to each other. In Visions of N'Zoth, the plan is to cap damage reduction at -75%. Using Unit 17 as an example, while
Accroupi is active, it will take 75% reduced damage instead of 100% reduced damage. This will smooth out the challenge with some enemy bosses.Please note that abilities like Dodge or
Déviation will continue to avoid all damage. Those will not be impacted by this change.
What the Future HoldsIn a future update, we're targeting a number of balance changes we want to make, which will amount to lowering the effectiveness of some pets and strategies. Again, these changes will not be happening in Visions of N'Zoth, but we wanted to give you ample warning time that changes are coming. While we don't have specific numbers or details to share right now, here are some examples of abilities that we're going to take a close look at:
Of course that last one isn't an ability, but
Bernard-l'hermite incorrectly has a higher stat budget than it should, and it will have its stats reduced to bring it in line with other similar pets.A goal we have when making many new pet battle
Expéditions or encounters is to create puzzles that players can counter and “solve”-- ideally with the option to use a variety of pets and tools to do so. When a few pets have such strong synergies that they can deal massive damage in just a few rounds and almost trivially beat these enemies, it becomes problematic. Do we make new challenges only beatable by the highest damage combos, or do we make them generally solveable and therefore immediately smashed by massive damage?We don't want to ruin the feel of combination abilities, so we aren't going to make
Griffe noire no longer interact with
Partie de chasse or
Nuée, but we want to make sure these abilities are dealing appropriate damage. And we want to make sure that secondary effects such as
Défenses brisées are being accounted for with regards to balance.When we have further specifics, we will be sure to let you know.