6.0.2 First impressions

[Jerebear]

Well it will definitely make previous RNG abilities feel more RNG due to the 50/50 split on high vs low hits. I think what is happening is this effect shows up more on teams that relied more on RNG. I've been doing all the dailies most days since the patch and none of my teams have been having any noticeable issues. BUT, I tend to make more RNG safe teams (not that they don't have RNG but that RNG has little impact on the success). This tradeoff has always been the case, but I think the RNG teams feel more RNG now so it makes it more apparent.

It's very similar to the Celestial Tourny effect. You'll find lots of posts here and on the official forums about how RNG the CT is and how terrible it is (this is before the current patch). I've never had any major RNG issues with it because I modified my teams to account for RNG and the teams that have the most RNG change I do first to be safe.

Long story short, I think the changes really push the idea of speedy/risky vs safe teams.

[Kpb321]

Yeah the new range can definitely affect things depending on exactly where your opponents pets ended up. I do the deadwind pass guy with lambs and it has definitely added a turn or two to that fight most of the time. Before the change I'd always kill the first pet in 3 attacks and the second in 2 attacks unless I missed. At 80% odds are I should miss once in those five attacks so should take a total of 6 rounds to kill both. Now it's almost always 4 and 3 because I need most or all high hits to finish them off in the old number of turns without a miss.

[Poofah]

Now it's almost always 4 and 3 because I need most or all high hits to finish them off in the old number of turns without a miss.

Yes, this should be typical. The new abilities tend more strongly to the average expected damage over 3+ turns, and the expected damage is less generous than the old abilities.

If you use Anubisath for a lot of tamers, this is going to feel especially noticeable, because the difference between a high hit and low hit is proportionally larger with Sandstorm up.

high hit = 415
low hit = 237
(this is a 43% reduction)

high hit (with Sandstorm) = 340
low hit (with Sandstorm) = 163
(this is a 52% reduction)

On the flip side, Tail Sweep/Alpha Strike are fantastic for tamers now -- their damage is very high for a spammable attack (especially in relation to the new and not-really-improved RNG spammables), and they no longer have the annoying 5% miss chance.

Yeah the new range can definitely affect things depending on exactly where your opponents pets ended up.

I think this is exactly the problem. Depending on the precise health of the opponent, different abilities will be better or worse. For example if you have a 325 power pet and the opponent has 1400 health, then you want a RNG ability. If they have 1380 health, you want Claw/Punch. Because Claw/Punch do *exactly* 1380 dmg in 4 turns, every single time. With an RNG ability, you will do 1380 over 5 turns only if you roll low every single time: otherwise you will always do as well or better than Claw/Punch.

So we have these health plateaus that require precise math to figure out optimally. That's fine for tamers because we can find a team and then stick with it. I'm hating it in PvP -- because this math is completely deterministic, it's a huge advantage to figure it out in advance, and we only have 20 seconds to do it.