The new clone abilities

[Hobbitpolitics]

Has anybody tested all of them, after getting the new Blizzcon pet i decided to level it up, and my god the Clone ability is incredibly powerful, it gives you 2x damage on your spells and a free dodge. I havent tried the other pets with these new "meta" clone abilities like Blood boil's Split, Bloodgazer's hatchling Hatch (which seems to be significantly worse than murloc one which has 5 round duration and 5 round cd but Hatch has 3 round duration and 8 round cd, same with Split). Don't have the names of all but have you guys tried them at all? They seem abit broken to me.

[Norvel]

Those clone abilitys are very powerfull and the Alliance Murloc tops it off by far, basically becoming immune for up to 6rounds in a row meanwhile Even preventing the 50% sacrifice with it's own dodge.
The Blood Boil is pretty usefull too, through it's racial it just looses 35% but Even for damage it
'S Fantastic.
I guess a Little nerf would be app. For the Alliance murloc

[Hawg]

I did about 120 PVP battles yesterday (trying to get the 5 win with no pet deaths achieve, got to 4, 5 times but never made it). Out of those 120 I lost only about 5. The alliance murloc is insane.

But, it is easily countered by any pet with an ability that destroys objects (like tidal wave), this is why I had graves, I kept expecting to see other people using the murloc, but never did.

I guess the game treats the split copy as a battlefield object like a target dummy or turret, so those abilities wipe the copy off the map. Now if it weren't for the knight-champion's dodge I would say that is an ok balance (Since you also lost 50% of your hp to clone yourself) but since dodge lets you avoid that penalty, the pet is clearly in need of balancing.

How did this make it through testing?!

Another nice perk is the weekly quest for the pet event is not account-wide, I did it with 12 Alts and got 12 of the stones. The murloc makes this a breeze. Even if you haven't started leveling your Alts (mine are all lvl100) you can get to the new Dalaran easily by just talking to the quest person in SW or Org and telling them you have already heard the story.

Now to try again for the 5 wins with no deaths achieve, as I edge my way towards the 250pvp achievement before they balance the Knight-Champion.

[Igantinos]

Just like Hawg I played a bunch of matches with the Knight-Champion yesterday. His clones attack order has to be bugged. Somehow it's the very last thing that happens in a turn. So I have seen it attack through Deflection since that only lasts 1 turn. I have seen it attack while sandstorm was supposed to be up and not take the damage reduction probably since sandstorm disappeared 1 tick before it attacked. When an opponent is forced to switch pets since you defeated one the clone will strike the new one when it's switched in since apparently switching in a pet happens before the clone attacks.

There were a few more strange behaviors but the Knight-Champion is actually broken. I wonder how long it will take to fix it.

[Wootzy]

Has anybody tested all of them, after getting the new Blizzcon pet i decided to level it up, and my god the Clone ability is incredibly powerful, it gives you 2x damage on your spells and a free dodge. I havent tried the other pets with these new "meta" clone abilities like Blood boil's Split, Bloodgazer's hatchling Hatch (which seems to be significantly worse than murloc one which has 5 round duration and 5 round cd but Hatch has 3 round duration and 8 round cd, same with Split). Don't have the names of all but have you guys tried them at all? They seem abit broken to me.

Bloodgazer's Hatch destroyed a Teroclaw yesterday in a PvP battle, he did not see that coming.
However it is a weird ability I'm not used to yet; the automatic crit buff Warning Squawk does not always work, is this a bug or rng?

[Hawg]

I went home for lunch today and did some tinkering around with my team, I went 10-0 without losing a single pet (finally got the "No Time to Heal" achievement!!) before I had to head back to work.

Here is what I used:

Knight-Champion 2, 1, 1

Hyjal Whisp 2, 1, 1

Graves 2, 2, 2

Start with Murloc, dodge, then clone, then "for the Alliance", swap to Graves:

Destruction, consume, swap to Whisp:

Wish, arcane blast x2, then repeat staring with the murloc again.

Graves is there because of the destruction ability which is a nice aoe spell on its own, but more importantly it removes objects so would remove a cloned murloc if you happened to come across one (I still haven't).

I had an earlier team with the knight campion where I used his aoe attack instead of dodge. That one makes for faster wins, but it's harder to get five wins with no pet deaths. I'm going to work on a variation of that to come up with a good pet leveling team to take advantage of the pet holiday.

[Gráinne]

Congrats on NTTH! That one's not so easy these days.

Shame if they're dumping another OP pet not obtainable within the game itself on the meta, after the Year of Graves.

[Hawg]

Congrats on NTTH! That one's not so easy these days.

Shame if they're dumping another OP pet not obtainable within the game itself on the meta, after the Year of Graves.

Thanks

Yeah at least Graves was free, a huge pita, but free. Knight Captain Murky costing IRL money and being only available for a short amount of time, is certainly going to piss off a ton of people.

In the mean time, since there is no telling when they will balance him, I plan to finish getting my 250pvp win acheivment asap, then move on to leveling pets while the bonus buff is still active.

[Hawg]

Graves is there because of the destruction ability which is a nice aoe spell on its own, but more importantly it removes objects so would remove a cloned murloc if you happened to come across one (I still haven't).

I've come across of a handfull of other teams with Knight-Captain Murky on them and they all had the dodge talent for the middle talent. In that case, Graves' destruction ability is not a good counter because each time I wanted to cast it the dodge ability was active so it just ignores the ability (assume it would also ignore it with other similar abilities like tidal wave).

[Hawg]

So, you're openly and blatantly exploiting a bug?
/slow cap for the audacity

Piss off Mr. High and mighty. Why is this a bug? What am I doing to exploit a bug, nothing. This is using something absolutely as intended, I'm not doing anything unusual to get these results. The fact that it is not balanced well is not my fault. If you don't like it wine to blizzard, don't attack me.

This is no different than when a particular ability is overtuned in pvp or pve.

What is it that your holiness suggests? I should just bench my two new pets I paid real money for until Blizzard gets off their ass and properly balances them?

Take your slow clap and slap yourself for the stupidity of your insult.

[Gilneas]

Do tell what bug he is exploiting?

Taking advantage of a strong pet, I can see. But I see no bugs he is abusing here.

[Gorlab]

They removed the clone abilities today in a hotfix.

[Peanutty]

They removed the clone abilities today in a hotfix.

Was about to come and post this here as well. But as of the moment they're still in the game, I don't know when the hotfix will actually hit.

[Hawg]

Out of respect for Quintessence, I'm going to refrain from commenting further on the subject, nor your adolescent tirade.

I'll just leave this link here - watch this is try to defend that the pet isn't bugged at the moment.

https://youtu.be/d2xgDc812rA

You could have started the conversation without your snide comments and we could have discussed whether was bugged vs OP and that might have been an interesting conversation. Instead you chose to attack me, and now you call me adolescent? Give me a break.

[Norvel]

I hope they won't really remove them but scale them to an acceptable Level, they're pretty cool as a mechanic but just Need some Little tweaks.

[Quintessence]

Hotfix today:

"Clone"-type abilities on Blood Boil, Bloodgazer Hatchling, and the 2016 BlizzCon pets have been exchanged for other abilities.

https://worldofwarcraft.com/en-gb/news/ ... november-3

So it would seem these new abilities will be put on hold for a while or indefinitely. With all of the issues these abilities have, they could stand some tweaking and balancing before re-releasing.

Leaving this topic open for continued discussion for now. Let's keep the discussion civil, everyone.

[Vakeetah]

Tbh I hope it's not the end for the clones, as it was an interesting new mechanic... but the testing seems to have been poor or non-existant.

Besides, Bloodgazer Hatchling and Blood Boil were mostly fine - it was the Murkys that broke it and raised all red signs. Not just because of insane ability combinations (Queue Dodge/Overpowered) but also because it was a 5 round duration/5 round cooldown (permanent) vs a 3 round duration/8 round cooldown (at best 50% uptime). The fact that Knight-Captain used this for free just adds to the insult.

Indeed, it was not a bug nor an exploit, but definitely an extremely unfair pet that would make a Graves in its prime cry. The nerf is deserved - but mostly because it should have never shipped in this state to begin with.

In order to fix the ability, rather than axe it the way they have, they would've needed:
1) Unavoidable damage. You pay 50% health, period. This would also apply to Blood Boil, that currently prevents it partially.
2) Respecting cooldowns. Abilities have a cooldown for a reason, ignoring them would be beyond broken even without the need for duplicates.

Providing additional benefits to the active pet (such as healing and dodging) is still weird. Cooldowns would mitigate the issue somewhat, but ideally, they should simply prevent clone abilities from being combined with defensives (by sharing slots, for example, or not even adding them)

[Painbow]

Hotfix today:

"Clone"-type abilities on Blood Boil, Bloodgazer Hatchling, and the 2016 BlizzCon pets have been exchanged for other abilities.

https://worldofwarcraft.com/en-gb/news/20303039/hotfixes-november-3

So it would seem these new abilities will be put on hold for a while or indefinitely. With all of the issues these abilities have, they could stand some tweaking and balancing before re-releasing.

Leaving this topic open for continued discussion for now. Let's keep the discussion civil, everyone.

So wait, they can take our $40 and then just remove and change abilities? Why are they so arrogant? We spent money on this. It currently isn't changed, but if they change I'm getting a refund. I only bought the Blizzcon ticket for the pets.