Pet news straight from the blues (29th May)

[Luciandk]

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/8796522753?page=4#75

Thank you to everyone who has shared their feedback with us so far, we appreciate it. Based on some of the comments we’ve received, here is an updated list of potential changes we’re hoping to include in Patch 5.4:

The Magic passive now caps damage taken at 35% of maximum health, buffed from 40%.
The Dragonkin passive effect now activates when the enemy is taken below 50% health, up from 25%.
The Aquatic passive now reduces DOT damage by 50%, up from 25%.
The Elemental passive effect now only affect negative, direct effects of weather (e.g. the accuracy reduction of Sandstorm won’t be applied, but the damage reduction will).
The Critter passive now makes critters completely immune to roots, stuns, and sleeps.
Keep that feedback rollin’ in!

[Anasa]

BRB leveling a million critters.

Also a very nice proposed change for elementals.

[Poofah]

Very interesting. Sadly the critter buff is really only a buff for slow critters, like snails: those things are in a great place now. Rabbits are still pretty bad, despite being the best 'dodge'-type pet.

The dragon change makes sense, mainly because the current version usually gets wasted on killing a pet that's at very low health anyway. Still, there's already some very good dragons, and this makes them quite a bit better. Lil Deathwing for example is going to be able to Elementium Bolt, Tail Whip, Tail Whip, and if the 2 Tail Whips (470 each) bring you below 50%, then the Bolt lands for 850 damage. Or just Tail Whip, Tail Whip, Tail Whip, which is 1650 damage if the last Tail Whip is buffed.

The magic passive change is ok, but the real weakness for magic pets is multi-hit attacks. The passive doesn't do them much good versus several of the big-hit abilities because those abilities are broken up into distinct hits, e.g. Conflagrate.

[Luciandk]

Why do you think rabbits are bad? Im curious.

[Saasan]

Elemental change woohoo! I may actually use my Singing Sunflower, but not likely. Ugh, the singing! Critter change sounds good, but that dragon change will make ALL the difference. I really only ever got on a hit that would have killed them anyway. Aquatic change is very needed, too. At least when compared with say, the Mecha racial dragonkin and aquatic felt useless. Magic change = meh.

[Luciandk]

Ive muted the sunflower. Blessed silence!

But you guys do realize what the elemental change means? Tons upon tons of sandstorm spamming elementals, having high damage reduction and forcing an accuracy debuff on anyone else. Every team will have an elemental sandstormer as the new FOTM pet.

If you guys hate Anubisath Idol. Its going to get MUCH worser!

[Saasan]

Can you mute the sunflower without muting everything else??????????? "Inquiring minds just got ta know!"

[Luciandk]

Read up on whats found here:
http://www.curse.com/addons/wow/mute-wow-sounds

Have taught me how to mute specific sounds in game that I find annoying.

Combine with this script list to locate and play specific sounds so you can test them to see if its that one that particularilly grinds your gears.
http://www.wowinterface.com/downloads/info13194-SoundcommandsforeverysoundupdatedforMoP.html

[Poofah]

Why do you think rabbits are bad? Im curious.

Rabbits excel versus tamers, when you know when the attacks are coming and you know precisely how much speed you need to go first.

PvP is another story, and there's lots of reasons. And I should preface this by saying that I would really really like for Rabbits to be good, because I think the 'lightweight but agile' archetype should be viable, and Rabbits are the premier example. But in practice they fall short, for various reasons. The most fundamental is that power is good longterm, and speed is good shortterm: but rabbits use speed to prolong the game. Here's more specifics

First, speed costs a lot, and you have to invest heavily in it to make Dodge/Burrow useful. The cost is in power: a breed 5 rabbit hits for ~300 per turn with Flurry. So suppose you're fighting a pet that can deal 400 per turn, which is not particularly rare. It doesn't matter that you can spend 1 turn to dodge 2 turns of attacks, because in your 4 turns you do 1200 damage, and in the other guy's 3 turns they'll do 1200 damage. The only mathematical advantage for Dodge is if you can avoid the big hits instead of the small ones, but in PvP you have to guess when they're coming. *And*, when the Dodge buff is up, it's not like the opponent has to attack and waste their turn. They can swap or heal or buff.

Second, speed debuffs are common and highly effective (Primal Cry, Frost Shock), and so are 'go-first' moves like Trihorn Charge and Surge. All 3 rabbit abilities are extremely bad when you don't go first.

Third, the mechanics of Flurry make it bad, because it's a multi-hit ability that does ~120 per hit. So you lose to anything with Sandstorm or a shield.

Fourth, dodging does nothing against healing, and your power is so low that you can't out-damage the heals. So you lose to anything with a decent heal.

Fifth, the mechanics of Burrow make it bad. It's one turn of dodge followed by 'I just told you that I will definitely not be able to dodge next turn.' If the opponent has a big nuke and can wait for you to burrow, then you're guaranteed to eat the damage. And since rabbits do so little damage, the opponent typically has plenty of time and can afford to wait.

[Darkke]

I could see the critter ability change benefiting Red Cricket. It's slow (249@25) but has a very high power (370@25). Definitely gonna experiment with him.

[Luciandk]

Unfortunately its base attack is quite weak. Having a 100% chance to hit and thusly quite low damage for its strenght. Lil Raggy does 512 damage per sulfuras smash, compared to a mere 390 here.

[Yalina]

Read up on whats found here:
http://www.curse.com/addons/wow/mute-wow-sounds

Have taught me how to mute specific sounds in game that I find annoying.

Combine with this script list to locate and play specific sounds so you can test them to see if its that one that particularilly grinds your gears.
http://www.wowinterface.com/downloads/i ... orMoP.html

So it's possible to mute the background burning/smoldering sound the core hounds make that made me physically ill? This is awesome. Definitely going to check that out tonight. Thank you so much for mentioning this!

[Luciandk]

Read up on whats found here:
http://www.curse.com/addons/wow/mute-wow-sounds

Have taught me how to mute specific sounds in game that I find annoying.

Combine with this script list to locate and play specific sounds so you can test them to see if its that one that particularilly grinds your gears.
http://www.wowinterface.com/downloads/i ... orMoP.html

So it's possible to mute the background burning/smoldering sound the core hounds make that made me physically ill? This is awesome. Definitely going to check that out tonight. Thank you so much for mentioning this!

Yup, that sound and many more is muted in the package above. And once I understood it it wasnt hard to mute many more terrible sounds, like the AH dinging that is so much alike my tinnitus.

[Gilneas]

Unfortunately its base attack is quite weak. Having a 100% chance to hit and thusly quite low damage for its strenght. Lil Raggy does 512 damage per sulfuras smash, compared to a mere 390 here.

That's still pretty decent for a basic attack; and his basic attack isn't his strength. His heal does 600 damage. Don't underestimate the cricket like I did for a long time. The change is very nice for him.

[Phraide]

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic ... ?page=4#75

Thank you to everyone who has shared their feedback with us so far, we appreciate it. Based on some of the comments we’ve received, here is an updated list of potential changes we’re hoping to include in Patch 5.4:

The Magic passive now caps damage taken at 35% of maximum health, buffed from 40%.
The Dragonkin passive effect now activates when the enemy is taken below 50% health, up from 25%.
The Aquatic passive now reduces DOT damage by 50%, up from 25%.
The Elemental passive effect now only affect negative, direct effects of weather (e.g. the accuracy reduction of Sandstorm won’t be applied, but the damage reduction will).
The Critter passive now makes critters completely immune to roots, stuns, and sleeps.
Keep that feedback rollin’ in!

Good changes overall.

I would really like to see another pass on Accuracy though. I think the miss mechanism has no place in a game like this (except for guaranteed defensive abilities such as Dodge). It is much to frustrating. RNG is interesting I agree, but not in the actual 'binary' (hit or miss) implementation. Instead of a '1000 damage/80 accuracy' ability, I would much prefer a '800-1200 damage/100 accuracy'. At the very least, I would like to see the 10% miss chance from Darkness and Sandstorm removed: these weathers already have interesting mechanism on their own without this 10% penalty, and nobody wants to see a Surge of Power ruined because of a 10% RNG factor.

[Luciandk]

If there was no mis chance then you could entirely predict whom who would win a round. Sure its fun for the one with powerful abilities, but not for the one on the recieving end.