Will the Devs Please Adress Weather Abilities?

Gameplay Pet Battles
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The image below is just one example of a Weather ability doing more damage than originaly intended when pet battles were introduced back in MoP.
Most pets with Sandstorm, Call Darkness and Call Lightning are hitting upwards of 700 damage.
There is basically no downside to these abilities, the 10% miss chance can benefit you even, and cause your oponent to miss, on top of doing such high damage. It’s honestly toxic how overpowered these moves are (even worse than AoE)
Please adress and fix this!

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The 10% miss chance makes far too many games RNG which only compounds how bad this meta is at the moment.

It’s meta’s like this that last a whole expansion that stops participation in PVP. Has been a massive issue for expansions now that clearly OP abilities, racials or pets are left to exist for such a long time.

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They should remove pvp pet battle and do more better content in pve pet battle.

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Why would they remove PvP? It’s not like they even remember it exists. OK, I exaggerate; I’m sure they know it exists - but they don’t do anything about it. Not encourage, not discourage, not good, not bad, not ugly, not anything. They just leave it there.

Granted, there was Family Brawler back in Legion, and the Undead AoE nerfs at the start of Legion. So that’s two expansions ago was the last time they made any change or content at all that was specifically about PvP. No changes in quests. No changes in rewards. No changes in currencies. No changes in species. No changes in abilities. No changes in activity. No changes in Achievements. No changes in queues. No changes in nuthin’.

The Teroclaw nerf? Much more likely PvE-related; it had become recognised as too handy in too many places, though it was ofc OP in PvP at the time as well. The BS nerf? May-ybe prompted by PvP … possible, but not conclusive. I was using BS at the time to plug holes in things in PvE because of its crazy burst + sustain. The Shattered Defenses nerf(capital questionmark)? Entirely PvE. The recent unannounced Weather superpowers? I’m thinking alien involvement as a cause, but it was definitely not for the benefit of PvP.

A key element here is that pet PvP does not harm pet PvE. If it did, I’d be all “Hoi! Tail wagging dog! Stoppit!” In the main game, desired changes in PvP may affect PvE, and vice versa, and raiders and gladiators shout at one another about it, or at least grumble at the devs about having to do arena to get gear for raiding, or having to raid to get gear for arena, but there’s nothing like that happening in pets.

PvP is certainly not taking any dev time. :stuck_out_tongue:

Now, you want to talk about how to make some more interesting PvE, or how to make some more interesting PvP, and you can have lots of opinions going cheap, but there really is no tension between them, and no reason to trade off one for the other.

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PVP is the harder mode of pet battles because it requires active play unlike PVE.

PVE won’t ever be hard when the meta that exists is follow someone else’s script and on top of that most strategies follow the same pattern depending on single pet team/trainer team with the variable being does it grant XP and is it repeatable.

There was changes to rewards from the Critter Event though? They reduced participation by limiting the 25 stone to accounts. It used to be possible on multiple characters if they met a level requirement.
They also changed how the queue works for newer players? Newer players are more likely to match one another now.
No abilities changed purely for PVP? Haunt? Cyclone? Saying that BS wasn’t a PVP change is just dishonest. Hermit Crab was 90% PVP which resulted in like a dozen pet stats getting fixed. Raise dead + lift off combo discovered in the PVP community and fixed before PVE even knew it existed. Shell Rush exploit. Clone + Split.

It’s clear that the weather changes were intended to bring the Cooldowns of abilities in line with others damage-wise. Twilight Meteorite base 45, Sandstorm base 45, Thunderbolt base 36, Mudslide base 36, Void Slap base 27 and Scorched Earth base 27. The numbers that they have used were simply too high and to me feels like they were working backwards from the 45 base top end damage.

It’s hardly like PVE is receiving any decent investment though is it? I did all the WQs in Shadowlands with the same team. The meta strategies are as dominated by the same few pets that plague PVP. Most of the top strategies rely on Anomalus or the weather combos and I should know having created like a dozen strategies sub 10 rounds for levelling encounters/WQs.

Your perception that changes for PVP will have catastrophic changes for PVE lacks a true understanding of the changes that PVP players are asking for. Most of the time the PVP changes are fine tuning at worst, at the moment the two biggest changes PVPers want is nerfs to weather and nerfs to AOE because they’re too strong, interestingly they are too strong in both PVP and PVE :stuck_out_tongue_closed_eyes:. Other changes that PVPers have been asking for over the years would on a balance have a massive quality of life change for PVE because no one wants 10% miss chance weather, if a certain multi-hit will break decoy or end of turn/start of turn ability nonsense to name a few.

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The defensive aspect of Sandstorm should more that make up for it doing less damage.

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Yeah totally, the damage levels are absurd considering the abilities also provide a weather effect.

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Hey, remember when in BfA they moved the base stats to speed in old Nocturnal Strike birds so they deal less damage with the combo? Such a non-issue compared to now.

But it’s all gone downhill since 7.3. The very expansion the AoE abilities have been reduced only for Twilight Meteorite (base 50 back then) to be stronger than anything before the nerfs.
The tumultous history of Thunderbolt which experienced both nerfs and buffs is but a convenient shorthand but Carpnado didn’t have as many changes.

Personally I think the power levels should be somewhere around 5 round CD being 36 damage, whether ST (not counting the ones with a drawback like Surge of Power) or AoE. For a record, it was 40 before Legion and 33 in 7.0.

What would be the good values for you for other cooldown lengths?

The possible issue I can speculate on is that a small range of base values doesn’t fare well for internal calculations, rounding and all. That said, scaling up requires way more work than just a few abilities.

Unfortunately many SL changes seem like a shot in the dark and no wonder considering issues in the other parts of the gameplay. An attempt to improve Aquatic racial resulted in removing its hidden advantage just to be safe (and essence of a few abilities which was not addressed, but it was shoddy work to begin with). Now what damage do two Aquatic pets deal to each other?
The change panned out nicely for some PvE scenarios but it’s barely enough in PvP when the meta is full of a Magic target and flying damage.

I get it. Writing pets for flavour is fun, and not all pets have to be just about right. Some people may not even know what the abilities entail, and I believe they usually operate in a safe range. No one can also predict what happens to the abilities in the future. But some advantages seem very intentional.

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Now the crows got buffed due to darkness doing 80% more damage :crazy_face:
Still, don’t see many Crows due to there being better Darkness pets and magic damage being so comon in the meta.

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Learn to play!

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You’re playing TCS, bs & Direhorn, have barely any level 25 pets and 450 different pets but saying others have to learn to play? People in glass houses…

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Please lets keep this thread civil :stuck_out_tongue:
I have the guy on ignore already, he always says the same “learn to play” phrase on every topic I’ve seen them in. No point losing time arguing with a broken record.

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Weather affects have always been a part of the game.

I am “that bast**d” that runs the “Roger Ran Away” darkness team. I only tend to pull it out when someone is really taking the P tho. If you get caught up in crossfire while Im looking for him Im sorry.

Pet battles are the best thing in WoW. But Iv only been back in Retail after 2 years in classic for 10 days. Already made every achievment. Even finished up my 5k PvP battles (in fairness I only needed another 150 wins or so - so not that impressive).

We resub for next month as theres still a few things I want to sort out - then Im done until Wrath classic comes out.

After the insane grind to be in a top world ranked raiding guild in Classic - I aint doing it again in TBC which I dont even like that much.

And looking at pet battes here as of now - it’s not enough to keep me here. And thats before we even start to talk about the more recent “events” revealed at Bilzz.

See you on the battle field over the next 5 weeks or so. After that it’s in 10.1 … and ONLY if Blizz sort their house out and make Wrath worth logging into - and consequently 10.1 in my downtime.

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The weather effects themselves for the most part are ok it’s the damage levels of the abilities that are way too high. This makes them the strongest options for your team so everyone uses them and every game is Sandstorm, toxic fumes or Darkness merry-go-round.

For example it’s common for Sandstorm to be in every game so multiple strategies become unplayable reducing the viable archetypes in the meta. The Sandstorm damage levels also compound the impact on a game of its 10% hit reduction effect, increased damage means shorter games so misses are more important than before causing a lot of close games being decided by RNG.

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L2P L2P L2P

or get a grip

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Your sub not expired yet? :stuck_out_tongue:

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In 4 days from now.

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I hope you got your Blizzard Balance settles. Well, enjoy your returement!

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PvP pet battle balance horrible. Weather effects insane damage.

Anubisath idol and qiraji guardling overpowered anyway, yet blizz give them even more damage.

Also, stupid magical crawdad still exist many ears later. Delete crawdad.

Alsoooo, can blizz finally fix stupid matchmaking? Berny meets same opponents over and over. Never anyone from pet battle discord. Boring.

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