Collecting rare quality pets if pointless

[Faquue]

5.1 upgrade companions to a higher quality I for one am glad everyone should have what everyone else has that way nobody will have to trade or sell pets. I LOVE THOSE BLIZZ DEVs FINDING A WAY TO MAKE EVERYTHING IN THE GAME POINTLESS

[Draugarögnir]

1. From what I've read, the upgrades will not be easily obtainable, but we will have a very small % chance to get one after winning a battle

2. We cannot trade wild pets anyway. Although I hope this will change (with some restrictions to prevent people from farming them spoiling the fun for those who like to hunt)

[Draugarögnir]

Btw I'd rather spend a 'rarity upgrade' stone on a pre-Pandaria (= not wild) pet like the Tirisfal Batling, than on one that I could, at least theoretically, catch myself.

[Valtier]

As to collecting rare pets being pointless, I think the real question is what's the point in capturing wild pets that are not rare? The change in 5.1 to enable flawless and polished battle-stones to be used to upgrade battle pets to rare or uncommon respectively, addresses that issue.

1. From what I've read, the upgrades will not be easily obtainable, but we will have a very small % chance to get one after winning a battle

2. We cannot trade wild pets anyway. Although I hope this will change (with some restrictions to prevent people from farming them spoiling the fun for those who like to hunt)

1. The battle-stones are not soulbound and can be purchased on the AH. 2. You can trade/sell your battle-stones, which is a round about way of psuedo-selling rare wild battle-pets. Personally, I'm conflicted over whether or not the flawless battle-stones should be soulbound.

Btw I'd rather spend a 'rarity upgrade' stone on a pre-Pandaria (= not wild) pet like the Tirisfal Batling, than on one that I could, at least theoretically, catch myself.

I feel similarly. I'm looking forward to upgrading my Panther Cub and Gilnean Raven. Since one is a quest reward and the other vendor purchased, there wasn't a rare option available. Now these two pets will be more competitive.

[Draugarögnir]

1. The battle-stones are not soulbound and can be purchased on the AH. 2. You can trade/sell your battle-stones, which is a round about way of psuedo-selling rare wild battle-pets. Personally, I'm conflicted over whether or not the flawless battle-stones should be soulbound.

I forgot all about that (now that mention it, I remember). Not a very good idea, making these stones not soulbound, imho. It could open the door to farming i.e. people who don't give a cr*p but still hunt to make some money. Nothing wrong with making money, but if some pet is taken away by someone else right before I was about to rightclick it, I can comfort myself that this is a fellow collector who actually cares, sorta, for the pets. But after 5.1, it can be someone who is just mining the animals for those stones.

I'd rather see Blizz making the pets themselves tradeable but only after raising him a given number of levels, or after a time interval, or some other wise restriction I cannot think up atm.

Btw I'd rather spend a 'rarity upgrade' stone on a pre-Pandaria (= not wild) pet like the Tirisfal Batling, than on one that I could, at least theoretically, catch myself.

I feel similarly. I'm looking forward to upgrading my Panther Cub and Gilnean Raven. Since one is a quest reward and the other vendor purchased, there wasn't a rare option available. Now these two pets will be more competitive.

Yes, that's the idea

Btw I don't have a Gilnean Raven, but it sounds cool, and I suspect it to be sold in Stormwind? Luckily, I have some alts at the other side of 'the conflict'

[Quintessence]

After looking at the Battle-Stones on MMO-Champion's database, it seems like only a few will be Bind on Use, while many others will be soulbound. If this is the case, and the Bind on Use stones are a very rare drop, I don't see this being much of a problem in terms of being sold or "farmed".

In the end, how the Battle-Stones will affect gameplay all depends on how often we'll come across the stones. If they are rare enough, then it will probably still be worthwhile to manually hunt for rare quality wild pets.

[Ryken]

Every rare pet you catch now is one less stone you "need" later. As a poster above said, I'd rather save my rare stones to upgrade all my pets that can't be rare any other way, like the Tabby cat, or the Golden Dragonhawk Hatchling. There's over a hundred ones that can't be rare. There are over 200 catchable pets that can be rare... Pretty obvious that rare quality pets are valuable. It is when epic stones come (and according to Mumper on twitter, they will come, just not in 5.1), then the catching system will be pointless.

[BlueFlameWolf]

i still yet to see why so many people are complaining about the battle stones. There are hundreds of pets in the game now. To me these stones imo sound more like the ones used in pokemon lol example thunder stone, fire stone etc. Its likely these battle stones will be type specific as well (beast stone, dragon stone etc)

either way...dont think of just the battle pets uv caught. there are many other pets out there that will never show up "rare" unless they have these stones. For example. Black Tabby Cat. this is a pet that has a 1 in 8000 drop rate an shows up GREEN. Or say the other cats from the VENDER. Use the stones on them

[Draugarögnir]

It is when epic stones come (and according to Mumper on twitter, they will come, just not in 5.1), then the catching system will be pointless.

I think it's kinda bad design that the stone achieves an absolute outcome instead of a relative one...

I mean: from a game design point-of-view I'd prefer stones that would upgrade a pet one (or maybe two) rarity levels, rather than one that just makes it <Epic> regardless of what rarity it had before the upgrade. So, <Poor> pets would become <Common>, <Uncommon> would become <Rare> etc.

[Snowyjoe]

I think it's to control the drop rates and not make it so easy to upgrade to a Rare, Draugarögnir.

If the stones upgraded the pets per rarity level, more people will probably buy or farm the 1 rarity level upgrade since it's just so much easier to find a uncommon then use the "1 level stone" than using a "2 level stone" on a poor or common.

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Anyway, from the way I see it rare upgrade stones are going to have a really low drop rate from daily bags.
Currently I think you can do 4 pet battle dailies per day? So if the drop rate for a rare upgrade stone is 0.5%, you only have a 2% chance of it dropping per day.

Even if they are sold on the AH, I think they'll be very expensive, I'm going to guess around the same price as the whelplings.

It might be an alternative to finding rares, but I don't think it'll be an easier one.

[Draugarögnir]

Currently I think you can do 4 pet battle dailies per day?

Do the stones drop from dailies?? I was under the impression that they were a low-chance addition to winning a pet battle and/or catching a pet. I'm gonna read the patch notes again.

EDIT:this is from the official patch notes at http://us.battle.net/wow/en/blog/7540458

Battle-stones are available in two basic types, general purpose Battle-stones that can be used to upgrade the quality of any pet, and family specific Battle-stones, which can only be used to upgrade pets of a specific pet family.
Battle-stones are available in two qualities: Flawless Battle-stones can upgrade pets directly to Rare quality, while Polished Battle-stones will upgrade a pet to Uncommon quality.
Players will have a very small chance to obtain a general purpose and family specific Flawless Battle-stone after winning a match against wild pets; defeating higher level opponents increases the chances of obtaining a stone. Family specific Flawless-Battlestones will be of the same family as the pets that were defeated. These valuable items are not soulbound, and can be sold on the Auction House.
Family specific Flawless Battle-stones can be found in the Sack of Pet Supplies obtained from performing Pet Trainer quests, and are Bind on Pickup.
General purpose Polished Battle-stones can be purchased for 1000 Justice Points.

So, it's from any pet battle, not from dailies.

Btw these Polished Battle are relatively worhtless, imho. Only a very small minority of my wild pets are <Poor> or <Common> and these are from areas that I did fast*. And if my addon is correct (which I'm inclined to believe) most of the pre-Pandaria pets are <Uncommon> and a few <Rare>.

I must admit that I've only just started not too long ago, and haven't run into hard-to-obtain pets.

[Arvelayne]

Hi,

I think that the inclusion of the GP stones is more for those pets that are stupidly hard to get, e.g. Minfernal, Scourged Whelpling, etc.

Now yes you can try and farm a rare, but I've spotted one spawn of three whelps since I started, and at least if you can upgrade to uncommon you can make it more viable to level if you've only managed to scrape a poor or common one.

I do agree up to a point, however, that it could turn pet farming into another money grind for those who really aren't interested.

Right, back to camping Tanaris and Felwood.

Arve,
rare alt.

[Valtier]

After looking at the Battle-Stones on MMO-Champion's database, it seems like only a few will be Bind on Use, while many others will be soulbound. If this is the case, and the Bind on Use stones are a very rare drop, I don't see this being much of a problem in terms of being sold or "farmed".

The only battle-stones that are soulbound are found in Sack of Pet Supplies obtained from performing Pet Trainer quests. Battle-stones acquired through pet-battles can be sold on the AH or traded.

[Zenbuddhist]

Something else to consider is that this means there will be more pets available for folks to tame, rather than one person arrive in a cluster of say Scourged Whelplings, and starting battles with each and dropping till they find a rare. If you can just quickly snag whatever appears first and then bump it up to rare, that will leave extras for other folks.

[Sesamee]

I think the rare battle stones are an awesome idea and not pointless at all. There are so many pets for whom that will be the only way to make them rare.

And I don't care if people farm wild pets to sell the stones. Their desire for the stones isn't any less important than my desire to have the pet in my collection. If anything it will mean I can just buy one off the AH if there's a pet I'm dying to make rare right at the moment.

The Flawless Battle Stones seem like they are going to be pretty rare anyway and a lot of them will be family specific. I don't think they'll be a problem but rather an excellent addition to the game. What I think is pointless is the stones that only upgrade to common. With regards to actual battles it's rares or nothing. Collectors get the same look regardless of quality. My common giraffe calf is as adorable as anyone's rare but even if I upgraded her to uncommon she'd still be useless for pet battles. I hope they rework these things.

[Adashiel]

I fully intend to upgrade every single pet I have, so any rares I get now mean that much less gold or time I have to spend later. When 5.1 rolls around, I hope to have no more than three or four wild pets at less than Rare quality.

When the Perfect battlestones debut, I'd like to see them only work on level 25 rare-quality pets. I do NOT want a per-account limitation of epic pets, though, as some have suggested.

[Jumi]

Btw I don't have a Gilnean Raven, but it sounds cool, and I suspect it to be sold in Stormwind? Luckily, I have some alts at the other side of 'the conflict'

It's a vendor pet for Worgen. Only Worgen can purchase it. Pandas, Goblins, and Worgen have vendor pets that cannot be acquired any other way. The rest of the species vendor pets are capturable. You can purchase it from the Battle Pet Trainer at whereever the Worgen starting area is.

[Briqitta]

Btw I don't have a Gilnean Raven, but it sounds cool, and I suspect it to be sold in Stormwind? Luckily, I have some alts at the other side of 'the conflict'

It's a vendor pet for Worgen. Only Worgen can purchase it. Pandas, Goblins, and Worgen have vendor pets that cannot be acquired any other way. The rest of the species vendor pets are capturable. You can purchase it from the Battle Pet Trainer at whereever the Worgen starting area is.

Actually, it its purchased from a guy (i think the stable master, i don't recall) in the town that replaced Auberdine in Darkshore, only by a worgen.

[Feathered]

Btw I don't have a Gilnean Raven, but it sounds cool, and I suspect it to be sold in Stormwind? Luckily, I have some alts at the other side of 'the conflict'

It's a vendor pet for Worgen. Only Worgen can purchase it. Pandas, Goblins, and Worgen have vendor pets that cannot be acquired any other way. The rest of the species vendor pets are capturable. You can purchase it from the Battle Pet Trainer at whereever the Worgen starting area is.

Actually, it its purchased from a guy (i think the stable master, i don't recall) in the town that replaced Auberdine in Darkshore, only by a worgen.

Actually, I purchased mine in SW from the pet battle trainer under the tree by the portals. And yes, it is worgen specific. Just as the Jade Crane Chick is Panda specific and the crab pet for the goblins...did not like having to finish that area. Love the pet though