WoD and Pet battle mechanics?

[Ariella]

Hello! I haven't followed so much the development of WoD beta and such, but from what I see, apart from the addition of a great number of pet, and new abilities, in the upcoming expansion there is no big news in terms of pet battles, like legendary/epic pets, new mechanics and similar...
They have cancelled pet breeding which could have been a big hit... now it seems to me that even the garrison building Maenagery (or whatever is spelt ) just grants cosmetic stuff, achievement titles and this sort of fluffy stuff.

Don't get me wrong, I like the idea and the concept of new pets, but I was hoping in more substantial additions to pet system.
Or maybe Im wrong and Ive missed some upcoming feature?

[Luciandk]

Just think of it as refining the current system. The biggest change is arguably no more misses, but damage ranges on many skills.

Breeding was nice on paper, but it presented balance issues. Especially with the proposed epic pets for players. Noone really wants to be forced to upgrade their entire stable plus it invalidates all flawless battlestones.

[Poofah]

Don't get me wrong, I like the idea and the concept of new pets, but I was hoping in more substantial additions to pet system.

Yes, there's nothing fundamentally new. It's a missed opportunity imo. Also, although there are plenty of new pets, there are very few new abilities, which is what really drives innovation/evolution of the game.

My guess is that they had to triage pet battles somewhat to get WoD out on time. We can always hope that they have some time to develop some more creative new abilities/movesets later on, or possibly even introduce new features. But we have no info to base that hope on, as of yet.

[Jerebear]

Even though there aren't a ton of new abilities, there are a lot of new ability sets, which introduces a new dynamic. However, my guess is most people will stick more to what they are familiar with. We saw this a lot in Beta where people had trouble with some tamers but weren't trying out the new pets, some of which worked well.

[Luciandk]

One of the biggest wod highlights for me is [pet]Stormwing[/pet], the pet reward for collecting 600 unique pets.
Good looking and comming with a quite well designed moveset. No other pets can boast such a great use of Call Lightning without needing to waste a turn on swapping.

Sure it may not have new abilities, but comming with a very good matchup of older abilities not seen together before. Which might be the thing to look forward for in other pets in the foreseeable future.

So close to aquiring it, 596/600 unique pets. Argh!