WarcraftPets Forum

I am certain that this has been addressed somewhere on this forum, but I didn't see it when I did a quick look.

Is it normal to have to throw your trap 7 or 8 times in order to capture a pet? I have the Strong Trap which gives a 25% increase with every throw. But what percent chance are we starting with?

I am not kidding. It is uncommon for me to throw my trap less than 5 times, with 6 being my normal and 7, 8 or even 9 times being a possibility (thankfully that was only once!)

Is this unusual? Should I speak to a GM?

Thanks!

Zenagirl wrote:I am certain that this has been addressed somewhere on this forum, but I didn't see it when I did a quick look.

Is it normal to have to throw your trap 7 or 8 times in order to capture a pet? I have the Strong Trap which gives a 25% increase with every throw. But what percent chance are we starting with?

I am not kidding. It is uncommon for me to throw my trap less than 5 times, with 6 being my normal and 7, 8 or even 9 times being a possibility (thankfully that was only once!)

Is this unusual? Should I speak to a GM?

Thanks!

My friend told me something about it increases your actual catch chance by 25%, not just 25%... I figured "Oh, 25%, that means after four tries it'll be guaranteed to catch the pet" - not the case. Say your catch chance is 10 out of 100. A 25% increase would be 12.5 out of 100... or something like that. I'm not great with math. I hope that this helps, but I'm sure somebody else can explain it better.

NB: All Numbers in this post are hypothetical.
Quarters has the right idea.I don't think anyone know the actual mathematics involved however I have been told the following:

- You start with a Base catch chance of approximately 25%.
- This is then modified by the level of the pet you're trying to catch (this is why level 1 pets are so easy to catch and level 25's take several go's).
- The trap you have then modifies this further, but only by the percentage of your current catch chance.

so e.g.:

Base chance: 20%
Pet Level modification +10%
Trap Used: Pristine (+30%)

The maths used would be (20% + 10%) * 1.3 (30% trap).
Your trap here increases your modified chance (30% from 20+10) by 30% (30% of 30% is 9%) which gives you a total of 39% chance to catch the pet.

I have noticed that reducing the target pet's health to a very low level means that I trap it faster. If I leave its health at the minimum to activate the trap it takes many attempts. I don't know if this is coincidence or not, but it seems to work.

Don't think I've ever had a trap missing 6, 7 times or more. Often miss twice or sometimes 3 times (higher level pets) but I'd say my 4th was always working. Lower level pets normally work the first or second time.

Only thing that annoys me if it misses twice and that pet heals over the 35% hp and I have to hit it again and start trying to trap it again.

But throwing 6 traps or more in a row with a constant miss seems very odd. Blizzard always makes a secret out of those calculations. I always thought it's like 35% chance on the first, than 65%, than 95% and basically 100% (95% + another 30%). That matches my experience with traps so far. But it wouldn't surprise if the calculation is completely different and I've just been lucky or you are extremely unlucky.

Bretonas wrote: I always thought it's like 35% chance on the first, than 65%, than 95% and basically 100% (95% + another 30%). That matches my experience with traps so far. But it wouldn't surprise if the calculation is completely different and I've just been lucky or you are extremely unlucky.

My experience has been the same, never failed to catch any pet in 4 throws (unless they heal/evade).
Getting them down to 1hp with terrible turnip usually has about 90% chance and then 100% (numbers are just guesses), but always within 2 throws.

Quarters wrote: My friend told me something about it increases your actual catch chance by 25%, not just 25%... I figured "Oh, 25%, that means after four tries it'll be guaranteed to catch the pet" - not the case. Say your catch chance is 10 out of 100. A 25% increase would be 12.5 out of 100... or something like that. I'm not great with math. I hope that this helps, but I'm sure somebody else can explain it better.

Quarters, and everyone, thanks for the responses. I was already aware of how the math worked. A plus 25 % to whatever the original catch chance starts at, ie: 20% start chance + an additional 25% (of 20%) = 25% chance to catch, not 20 + 25 = 45% like a lot of people think. In actuality when you work with percentages like that, you will only get over 100% on your 7th throw if you start at 20%. So since I once had to throw 9 times, I am assuming that the original start chance is around 15%. I was just wondering if anyone knew what the actual start chance is supposed to be?

with a +25% chance trap, I have missed up to 7 times when trying to catch a rare L25 pet.

No one actually knows the maths except for blizzard i assume but pet level makes a massive difference. (go catch a level 1 pet - you almost always catch it first time whereas L25 on average takes me 3 or 4 attempts.)