9.1.5 Buffs to Pet XP

Gameplay Pet Battles
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TL;DR

  1. 50% Buffs to Pet XP from battles. Pet Week left unchanged.
  2. Level pets can die and still get 50% of possible XP
  3. Huge buff to Yellow and Green stones
  4. Wild pet battle XP further buffed at level

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In the latest dev notes

Pet Battles

  • Flawless and family-specific Battle-Training Stones now provide a flat 2,000 experience (was the amount required to gain one level).
  • Fel-Touched Battle-Training Stones now provide a flat 10,000 experience (was the amount required to gain five levels).
  • Battling wild pets with a team of comparable-level pets now provides double experience. Pets on your team are eligible for this bonus if no pet on your team is more than two levels higher than any pet in the wild team.
  • The experience penalty for a pet dying has been reduced to 50% (was 100%). Pets still need to be active for at least one round to be eligible to earn experience from a battle.
  • All pet experience earned in battles is increased by 50%.
    • To compensate, the Pet Battle Bonus Event buff Sign of the Critter has been reduced to 100% (was 200%). The net effect of this is that pet experience gained during the Pet Battle Bonus Event will remain unchanged from current values.
    • Developers’ note: Pet battling is a fun and exciting mini-game, but the current incentives result in esoteric strategies being the only optimal choices. This results in a barrier to entry that discourages players from engaging with this system. We believe this set of changes will widen the range of optimal behavior without nerfing any existing leveling strategies.

That’s a lot to take in.

 

1. Level pets don’t have to survive

From the devs’ note, the core motivation for the change seems to be to make it easier to level pets without the specialised strategies you can find on Xu-Fu’s https://www.wow-petguide.com/

So, you will now be able to let your level pet die, and it will still get 50% experience, so you can use sloppier strats on the tamers. I … suppose. I wonder have the devs ever actually, like, MET any gamers, though? :stuck_out_tongue: If there is a method that gives 50%, and a method that gives 100%, every single player is going to instantly forget about the 50% method. Like the quality system for pets (grey, white, green, blue) I expect it will be an honourable atttempt that gets ridden over instantly.

 

2. Buff to all pet XP from all battles outside Pet Week. Pet Week left unchanged

Actually, Pet Week isn’t nerfed, because there is a permanent overall 50% buff. So from 9.1.5

  • All weeks give 150% of current normal XP
  • Pet Week still gives 300% of current normal XP

 

3. Big, Big, Big Buff for Yellow and Green stones

At the moment, Yellow and Green stones give very little XP at low pet levels, and much more at high pet levels. A Yellow gives only 50 XP to a Level 1 pet, but 1980 to a Level 24 pet. Now, they will give 2000 XP regardless of the level of the pet, so using a Yellow on a Level 1 will get it to Level 8, and you will need only 12 Yellows to get a pet from 1 to 25.

Chart for XP needed for each level (credit: Jere from his awesome post https://www.warcraftpets.com/community/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=8829 )

 

4. Wild battle XP buffed at level

I’m not quite sure who the target audience for this is. I like it. It’s nice. It’s a kind of throwback to the original days of pet battling in Mists when we didn’t have repeatable Legion Tamers and botting scripts and Squirt Day and Pet Week.

It’s wholesome to honestly face one wild team with a comparable team instead of nuking tamers from orbit with strategies devised by other people and mashing one same key while watching Netflix, and I hope that some newcomers enjoy and get benefit from it as they level and learn.

I’m afraid it’s another honourable effort doomed to drowning in the supercharged catch-up systems, though.

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UPDATE: Ultimate Battle-Training Stones now cost 35 Charms on the PTR, down from 60.

So if you were planning to buy any Purple stones, maybe try to hang on a couple of weeks.

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One thought about the change in relative value of training stones.

At the moment, a Level 25 boost stone (Purple, Ultimate) costs 60 Charms, and a Yellow costs 3 Charms at the pet vendors.

I’ve just checked the PTR, and these numbers are not changed.

With the buff to Yellows, it will take only 12 Yellows to get a pet to 25, so, will the cost of the Purple be reduced to 36 Charms, or will the cost of the Yellow be increased to 5, or something else?

Keep your eye on news from the PTR if you have any intention of blowing a stack of Charms on Stones to take advantage of the buff to Yellows.

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I’ve got a few notions about the proposed solutions, but it seems any attempt to discuss the topic is interpreted as hostility. I want to say this is NOT my intention. I am looking forward to various ideas and new suggestions. I believe that the last thing we need is no communication.

I will piggyback on the numbered list.

#1
I’ve got a similar impression, but there’s more to it.
While leveling multiple pets, the experience is split between the party members.
If you don’t have many max level (or predeceased) pets and want to level a particular pet first, there will be hoops to jump, because you can’t control it anymore. Your carry will have 1/2 or 1/3 of the total experience no matter what.
It’s a matter of preference whether all the pets or just one at a time should get the exp. Pity to take the choice away from new players who are the ones concerned.

I have got two opposite but complementary suggestions:

  1. Make us able to stop a young pet from gaining experience and treat it as if were level 25. I feel this should’ve been done long ago and is sorely needed since the introduction of scaling encounters.
  2. On a contrary, I wouldn’t mind if the split experience was slightly (up to 20%) more profitable than singular one. It wouldn’t help singular pets much, but it would actually promote out of the box solutions, and be an additional factor to consider before stunting pets left and right.

#2
With a caveat that it’s an actual baseline increase rather than some unstackable bonus, which I checked using a Pet Treat on PTR. It does check out :slight_smile:

#3
Making sure levelling lower pets with stones makes sense is great, but I will miss the current predictability.
Not everyone can binge buy stones of any colour and I can’t see how having to look up a table to see a result (while having to do that for tamers aswell) is an improvement. This is not a support for status quo, however. I just think it would be far easier if the levels required the same experience, so there would be no need for such a significant tooltip change. To make sure the low levels gain much enough experience during the battles, the experience curve can be moved down.

I’m not quite sure who the target audience for this is. I like it. It’s nice. It’s a kind of throwback to the original days of pet battling in Mists when we didn’t have repeatable Legion Tamers and botting scripts and Squirt Day and Pet Week.

I am afraid this lovely vision was not the goal, because why buff the Stones then? :stuck_out_tongue:

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UPDATE: Ultimate Battle-Training Stones now cost 35 Charms on the PTR, down from 60.

So if you were planning to buy any Purple stones, maybe try to hang on a couple of weeks.

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The patch is soon, so I’ve calculated what experience your pet should have if you don’t want any of the stones to cap.

Levelling from level 1 with stones, you lose 115 experience which isn’t that much, but many old-timers would be used to mixing the battles and the stones up.

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/360882211807035402/901000195855220766/unknown.png

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That is a huge buff.

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