Pet news from PTR (Updated 22th April)

[Luciandk]

I just noticed that on Wowhead, in the ptr area, pets are displaying their adjusted hitrates for their abilities now.

Though the search seems a bit wonky. Search pet species on live side, when finding one, flip it to PTR to see their adjusted abilities.

Heres a few I looked up.

http://ptr.wowhead.com/npc=45128
Im pleased to see that Agony and Curse of Doom have 100% chance to hit. To make dot and long cooldown abilities less punishing I figure.

Ihttp://ptr.wowhead.com/npc=68659
Just ouch about the severely reduced chance to hit on Crush. Sandstorm will be such a liability to use now with the Anubisath Idol.

http://ptr.wowhead.com/npc=69820
This fave pet of mine seems to have escaped unscathed and should remain a staple like Crawling Claw.


http://ptr.wowhead.com/petability=519
Seems Apocalypse might be more viable now.

http://ptr.wowhead.com/petability=870
This and like abilities seems more reliable now.


Edit:
More pet battles news:
http://us.battle.net/wow/en/blog/913537 ... 2_2013#pet

Pet Battles

General
Pandaren Spirit Pet Supplies now has a chance to drop a family specific rare Battle-Stone.
Battle Pet Quests
A new achievement and reward has been added for characters that complete every Pet Battle daily quest in a single day.
Protection for bad luck streaks have been added to Battle-Stones from pet supplies bags and wild battles. Each bag or battle that does not provide a stone has a progressively better chance to award a stone to the player.

This last change should make it a LOT easier to collect battlestones. Simply fight enemies of a type ad nauseam until one pops.

[Dakaf]

They must really hate the Idol. This will be two patches in a row to "punish" it.

[Formerruling]

They must really hate the Idol. This will be two patches in a row to "punish" it.

It should be expected. Sometimes nerfs happen to bring one thing back in line with others. Sometimes though, things are nerfed simply to get them out of the 'metagame' for awhile. People are sick of seeing them.

[Luciandk]

I like the Idol because of the following factors:

High Health
Healing from humanoid racial
Damage reduction
Dodge move that isnt dependent on super high speed to pull off.
Good looks.

Even with having to use Stoneskin, it should remain a powerful pet. Sure Stoneskin is more annoying to keep up, but your attacks will overall hit harder because you don't reduce them with Sandstorm. And Crush gets higher damage as a tradeoff for being less accurate.

For me it sounds like the nerf is more targetted at Sandstorm, which many have complained about, making it much more risky to use when most main attacks already have lovered accuracy. So Sandstorm use might fade away over time.

[Poofah]

Note that new Crush does higher expected damage than old Crush, though. ie old Crush was 20 damage*1, new Crush is 28*0.8 = 22.4. And although Sandstorm punishes new Crush more severely in terms of hit rate, new Crush suffers less from the shielding effect, because you are packing more damage into fewer hits. With Sandstorm up, old Crush was (20-5)*0.9 = 13.5, and new Crush is (28-5)*0.7 = 16.1.

[Maizing]

Pandaren Spirit Pet Supplies now has a chance to drop a family specific rare Battle-Stone.
Battle Pet Quests

Looks like I will have to add the Pandaren Spirits back in to my daily regimen if they do this. I stopped doing them once I had all the pets for myself and my guildies.