WarcraftPets Forum

I was wondering what the difference is between +attack and +defense for pets vs other families.
As far as I can tell, a weak attack is an attack that does 33% less damage, and a strong attack is an attack that does 50% more damage. (this is my assumption, so feel free to correct this)

a second assumption i am going to make is that the 33% in the list is actually 33.3333333% (or 1/3) because that would make more sense from a mathematical p.o.v. (which I will explain further on)

What follows is a plea to change the numbers on the ‘which family to use against which family’ list that is present in the pet battle guide section, because I think the numbers are inaccurate.

What we have there is the following :

Bonus strike: +50%
Bonus defense: +33% ( +1/3)
Weak strike: -33% (-1/3)
Weak defense: -50%

If we go out from the assumption we made above:
A bonus strike does 50% more damage, or 150% total. This means that the defense of the opponent (which is a weak defense as a consequence) is 100%/150% = 66%, or a -33% defense, and not the -50% that was mentioned in the list.

The same can be said about bonus defense vs weak attack:
A weak attack does 66% damage, which means the opponent’s defense is 100%/66% = 150%

So he list should, in my opinion, be:

Bonus strike: +50%
Bonus defense: +50%
Weak strike: -33% (-1/3)
Weak defense: -33% (-1/3)

Even if my assumption was not correct to start with, I guess it is logical to assume that bonus strike should cancel out weak defense and vice versa. And starting from that logical premise, it is safe to say the numbers are not correct.

And that
(100%+ 50%) / 100%
is the same as
100%/(100%-33.333333%)
(therefore my assumption of 33.333333%, because -33.333333% cancels out +50%)

Because my assumpion would make a pet with +defense equally useful against a perticular family as a pet with +attack, and that each family has got 2 counter families.

Or am I looking at it from a wrong point of view??

It feels like you're two things as different that are really the same.

When a pet has a weakness or defense vs a certain type, it is against an attack of that type not a pet. For example, a mechanical engages a beast. The mechanical uses a non-mechanical attack. The beast does not take any extra damage from that attack. When the mechanical uses a mechanical attack, the beast takes 50% extra damage from the attack. Conversely, if a humanoid engages a beast and attacks with a humanoid attack, the beast will take 33% less damage from that attack. However, if the humanoid uses a mechanical attack, the beast will take 50% extra damage from that attack.

Hmm, true , I am mixing things up:
The + attack is from an ability vs a pet family and the –defense is against ability family from any pet.

Question remains if my assumption still stands though:

For example I have a humanoid that is standing against a pet with undead abilities.
That means that this pets abilities do 50% more damage vs my pet, or 150% total damage.
(the humanoid pets show in the battle info that they take 50% extra damage from undead so I go out fom that premise)
That means I have a defense against that attack of only 66,6666%, or -33%, and not -50%. because -50% wold mean that undead abilities hit twice as hard.
The list in the pet guide show “weak defense: -50%”, and this is not correct, i.m.o.

Draconigena wrote:Hmm, true , I am mixing things up:
The + attack is from an ability vs a pet family and the –defense is against ability family from any pet.

Question remains if my assumption still stands though:

For example I have a humanoid that is standing against a pet with undead abilities.
That means that this pets abilities do 50% more damage vs my pet, or 150% total damage.
(the humanoid pets show in the battle info that they take 50% extra damage from undead so I go out fom that premise)
That means I have a defense against that attack of only 66,6666%, or -33%, and not -50%. because -50% wold mean that undead abilities hit twice as hard.
The list in the pet guide show “weak defense: -50%”, and this is not correct, i.m.o.

Yea, the description in the guide for that is wrong. It's nothing to do with defense. It's more accurately described as a vulnerability. The pet journal simply states that a pet will take 50% more damage from an attack, but that is not the same mathematically as being weak to an attack by 50%, so I agree with you there.

Draconigena wrote:Because my assumption would make a pet with +defense equally useful against a particular family as a pet with +attack, and that each family has got 2 counter families.

This part is spot on. You'll see the kind of math you've done in discussions about tanking--people usually call it 'time-til-death': in this case, if your attacks are strong against a pet (+50%), it will die 50% faster; if your attacks are weak against a pet (-33%), it will die 50% slower (1/0.66). This way the +attack and +defense are balanced against each other, so that you don't have a situation where +attack is always better than -defense (e.g. a situation where Undead would always be a better counter to humanoids than Beasts). Also, if it were possible for a pet to get a +attack bonus at the same time that its opponent got a +defense bonus, then they would exactly cancel each other out, and the damage would be back to 100%.