Early Look at Shadowlands Alpha Pet Battle Changes

Shadowlands Posted 2020/05/17 at 5:31 PM by perculia

Blizzard

What the Future Holds
In 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:

Black Claw and similar abilities that increase damage taken by a flat amount.
Hunting Party and similar abilities such as Flock.
The Shattered Defenses debuff effect from abilities such as Hunting Party or Flock.
Any large percent-damage-taken or percent-damage-dealt buffs or debuffs.
Twilight Meteorite and similar long-cooldown damage-splitting abilities.
The Jar of Smelly Liquid ability.
Hermit Crab.

Of course that last one isn’t an ability, but Hermit Crab 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.

increased

Hunting Party - Hunt in a party of raptors, causing 244 Beast damage. Opponents struck by the hunting party take 50% increased damage for 1 rounds. Hunting Party continues for 2 rounds.

Black Claw - No changes yet.

StampedeSwarmInflationDead Man's Party

Flock - Flocks the target, causing 133 Flying damage on the first round, 222 Flying on the second round, and 310 Flying on the third round. Lasts 3 rounds. Opponents struck by the flock take 50% increased damage for 2 rounds.

Money Meteor

Twilight Meteorite - Call forth a twilight meteor onto your enemies, dealing 659 Dragonkin damage, split evenly amongst them.

Jar of Smelly Liquid - 2 Round Cooldown - Deals 283 Humanoid damage and reduces the target's speed by 50% and damage done by 50% for 1 rounds.

Righteous Inspiration - The user inspires a friendly pet to charge into battle. This ability always goes first. The swapped-in pet has double speed and damage for 1 rounds. If all their friends are dead, the user can still inspire themself. This ability starts on cooldown.

Ancient Knowledge - Heals the user for 490 health and increases the maximum health of your active pet by 10 per level for 5 rounds.

Boghopper - H: 1339 / P: 248 / S: 349

Cinder Kitten - H: 1400 / P: 284 / S: 284

Crypt Fiend - H: 1197 / P: 349 / S: 276

Hermit Crab - H: 1278 / P: 272 / S: 337

Mechanical Cockroach - H: 1587 / P: 248 / S: 293

Mechanical Prairie Dog - H: 1506 / P: 297 / S: 260

Slimy Darkhunter - 3 breeds have been changed - Only speed for all 3 has been adjusted - H/P: 236 / P/S: 265 / P/B: 249

Tiny Blue Carp - H: 1465 / P: 281 / S: 281

Flipper, Whipper and Snipper - Three pets marked as untameable - these are likely NPC trainer battle pets.

Plagueborn Slime - Source: Obtained from a quest in Maldraxxus. Notable ability includes Dumpster Dive, which was previously an ability unique to Trashy.

Renny - Source: Unknown.

- Source: Engineering. Notable ability includes Supercharge and Touch of the Animus, Touch of the Animus being an ability only two other pets have.

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Comment by ArminiusLeeI would caution against suggesting adding levels to pet battles. Only because with over 1k pets, some people would be at pet leveling for multiple expansions and still not be able to max their pets. For instance, I have 1026 pets and only 356 at max level. Still, upping 356 pets another 5 levels - specially with the way that Blizz has already drained pet battle experience to almost nothing - would be excruciatingly painful. If we can see Blizz reverse course on experience, we could talk some more, but the heads at Blizz somehow see Experience and Leveling as some kind of self-flagellation ritual to prove you are somehow ready to play endgame (when endgame is really all that matters in Blizz's eye).

Blizz needs to just let us get on to the fun and stop nerf'ing THAT !Comment by cordell9I have been a huge pet collector since it came out. I think I have around 800 unique. Certainly not all, but I do enjoy it for the following.

1. Leveling - If you have an alt army like i do, you grow very tired of the same quests over and over. I have leveled entire characters are mostly battles
2. Easy world quests - it's a nice change to see the pet battle world quests pop up
3. Collecting secret or unique pets - I loved getting my Bhal and others that are challenging
4. The pet battle dungeons are fun the first time through each oneComment by BigtazdingoIf they are going to 'balance' bpets, they need to 'balance' bpet trainers and the WQs too. Too many of those trainers and WQs are far too much of a pain to deal with by not using the cheese abilities.Comment by LemistioSo basically every easy strat is being taken out, not fun.Comment by ShadowlootI would caution against suggesting adding levels to pet battles. Only because with over 1k pets, some people would be at pet leveling for multiple expansions and still not be able to max their pets.
Comment by TartynaIf they are going to 'balance' bpets, they need to 'balance' bpet trainers and the WQs too. Too many of those trainers and WQs are far too much of a pain to deal with by not using the cheese abilities.Comment by AlauraaI'm happy to see some new pets. I can't wait for the cute little pink foxy.Comment by Ivashkov92ok but the colors on the fox at the bottom. i dont care about battle pets i just need the foxComment by tommyj21xReally hope Blizzard considers changing the total number of pets you can have learned. (2000 with the upgrade stones). According to warcraft pets, there are 1279 companion pets. It is not possible to have two of each let alone three! I find myself deleting more pets than I do collecting.Comment by bsamuelJust take this system out of the game mehComment by Mines51I agree with the comments of instead of nerfing the pets, they should just readjust how they approach annoying new battle trainers and legendary pet battles. Leave no choice for creativity, you have to choose some cheesy build to beat the battle.Comment by AlecinoThey forgot to add Jenafur into the notes.Comment by omedon666One of the most prevalent observations I had when I played Pokémon sword (and after beating Pokémon Y and Pokémon Moon) was how most of a Pokémon game is “expand collection, counter the applicable element and win,” where WoW pet battles treat most pet battles worth doing the way Pokemon sword treats the clefairy raid fight: “have this specific setup or die horribly.”
WoW’s pet battles might be one of the worst offenders of WoW taking itself way too seriously.Comment by cordell9yes, ideally I would love a system for each expansion that would go something like this.

100 new pets added
50 or so you can just collect in the wild
50 harder to get, reputation, dungeons, quests, some hidden

Pet battle bosses based on the new expansion theme.

countering those bosses requires a number of pets from that expansion and optionally some skills you may have from past pets but overall you need certain pets from the current expansion.

Nothing mandatory. So you have a lot of repeated pet abilities spread across many different pets from that expansion

Kind of like hearthstone does with expansions, they make a keyword and they don't always add new cards for that keyword, it essentially exists within that expansion.

so you have Pet A that has abilities X, Y, Z and a boss that needs a wide variety of skills to beat it

Stop making it so you can load up one team and just never swap out pets, pretty boring model that wayComment by aggrobreakerI'm a casual pet collector with around 1.1k unique pets. I only do PvE pet battles tho, I don't really enjoy battling, usually I just use the proven strategies that work. Having said that, there are "meta" pets that you see all the time (some of them are targeted by these incoming changes), so it's nice to shake it around. I wouldn't really call it "balancing", people will always figure out the optimal rotation, but I think this is a welcome change ^^Comment by NikkolaiAs an individual who just got into pet battles in BFA, I have really enjoyed the additional mini-game of pet battles both as World Quests and then for collecting. If you aren't interested just go somewhere else for with your posts, preferably someplace where you can be on topic. Now ON topic, I am disappointed that black claw/flock (etc) is being nerfed. I like coming up with strategies on my own, and even researching after I can't figure it out, but these nerfs are going to wipe out so many strategies that get around RNG procs, which is the aspect of pet battles that are frustrating.Comment by Troy2SlickJust take this system out of the game mehComment by BelyxIf they let Pocket PHA7-YNX keep Hammer without giving it a version of the spell with a cooldown or something, it will be one of the most op PvP pets.Comment by BuulokiIf they let Pocket PHA7-YNX keep Hammer without giving it a version of the spell with a cooldown or something, it will be one of the most op PvP pets.Comment by VeltrexBPet balances! I like that!

Also, that foxy looks SOOOO damn cute! I need it! <3

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