Interesting new pet changes theyve snuck in

[Luciandk]

Going from the list on the frontpage:

Quake gains a 15% ramping damage bonus.

Nocturnal Strike has the wording changed:
Base hit chance increased to 100% if the target is Blinded.

Rapid Fire appears to have gotten a slight damage buff to 112, up from 98.

Hawk Eye is buffed from 25% to 75%, but nerfed to 3 turn duration

Crouch have gotten a significant buff and now matches Extra Plating
4 Turn Cooldown
The user lowers its body close to the ground, reducing all damage taken by 50% for 3 rounds. (used to be 3round cd and lasting 2 rounds)

Significant buff to Adrenal Glands and Stimpack, the -25% accuracy debuff has been removed.

Significant buff to Rebuild and Healing Stream. Will heal the user for about 370 and half that to other mech/aquatic pets. Used to only heal all mech pets for a very low amount.

Horn Gore appears to have been nerfed from 95% chance to hit to 90% with no damage change. (used by Zao)

Collosal buff to Croak
4 Turn Cooldown
100% Hit Chance
Deals 280 Aquatic damage and reduces the enemy pet's critical strike chance by 100% for 4 rounds. (used to only debuff enemy pet crit chance with 25% and dealing no damage)

Magic Sword had accuracy lowered to 75% and recieved a damage buff. Going to be a SICK ability when comboed with the likewise buffed Anzu's Blessing.

Nature's Ward was clarified:
Wearer takes damage as if they were an Elemental pet.

Smackthat.exe got a minor name change to Smckthat.exe.

Significant buff to Spiked Skin. On a Purple puffer its 69 damage reduced and 51 damage dealt each time you take damage, used to be 34/34.

NEW
Anzu's Blessing have been buffed to give 25% damage AND accuracy bonus.

Edited my post to reflect later observations in the thread!

[Ligre]

It's just too bad that they left out the changes that are the most needed.

[Quintessence]

Quake changes -

• Old "Quake continues for 4 rounds and can affect enemies underground."
  New "Quake continues and increases in damage for 3 rounds and can affect enemies underground."

Hawk Eye changes -

• Old "Increases your critical strike chance by 75% for 4 rounds."
  New "Increases your critical strike chance by 75% for 3 rounds."

Healing Stream changes -

• Old "Heals itself and any aquatic allies, restoring 15 health." (value isn't scaled to that of a level 25 pet) / 4 round cooldown
  New "Calls upon the healing streams, restoring 370 health to the user, and half that to other aquatic allies." / 3 round cooldown

Smackthat.exe changes -

• Old "SMACKTHAT.EXE"
  New "SMCKTHAT.EXE" (trivial change, I know )

[Luciandk]

Hrm, I see. So a solid nerf to Hawk Eye then.

But Quake should be an interesting thing to try out on a Pocket Reaver. Though I sure wonder just how much the new damage increase is. Id really want to know how it compares with Tympanic Tantrum buffed with heartbroken.

[Jerebear]

I thought Hawk Eye used to be 25% crit for 4 rounds. 75% for 3 would be a buff if so. Wowhead seems to agree with my memory. EDIT: though wowhead isn't always correct either.

Also, rapid fire still shows 112 for me, though I don't 100% remember what its value used to be.

EDIT: Out of curiousity, how were these changes gleaned? I couldn't find a site that listed any pet battle changes for this patch. They obviously happened, but was more curious so I could look for future things.

[Quintessence]

EDIT: Out of curiousity, how were these changes gleaned? I couldn't find a site that listed any pet battle changes for this patch. They obviously happened, but was more curious so I could look for future things.

WarcraftPets uses an LUA file generated from the game. Once that file's been uploaded (necessary for adding a new pet to our database), we can view a full list of changes (pets, abilities, etc.)

I don't know enough about development and the inner-workings of the game to say how this may be done by an individual for personal use, though. Perhaps there's an addon out there that you can use.

[Badpathing]

Magic Sword had accuracy lowered to 75% and recieved a damage buff. Going to be a SICK ability when comboed with righteous inspiration. If it hits that be.

I cannot find this ability, which pet has it?

[Jerebear]

WarcraftPets uses an LUA file generated from the game. Once that file's been uploaded (necessary for adding a new pet to our database), we can view a full list of changes (pets, abilities, etc.)

I don't know enough about development and the inner-workings of the game to say how this may be done by an individual for personal use, though. Perhaps there's an addon out there that you can use.

Ah gotcha. I'll have to look around and see. I'll admit, when I saw the announcement, I got excited about learning about new changes, but then I couldn't find anywhere that listed what the changes were and the news announcement only listed ability names. Some of the abilities I could figure out the changes by inspection but couldn't on some of the others. That was before this thread happened though, so this thread helped a lot. I wish they would list this stuff in the patch notes.

EDIT: After re-reading that, I think I sounded ungrateful, but in reality I am really really grateful you posted that they got changed at all. I would never have noticed if you hadn't. I hope it didn't sound like that. I really do appreciate all the hard work and for notifying us of the changes!

[Adumbledore]

I thought Hawk Eye used to be 25% crit for 4 rounds. 75% for 3 would be a buff if so. Wowhead seems to agree with my memory.

I thought it was only 25% as well.

Magic Sword had accuracy lowered to 75% and recieved a damage buff. Going to be a SICK ability when comboed with righteous inspiration. If it hits that be.

I cannot find this ability, which pet has it?

The only pet that I know that has that is the Treasure Goblin, which isn't out yet.

[Quintessence]

EDIT: After re-reading that, I think I sounded ungrateful, but in reality I am really really grateful you posted that they got changed at all. I would never have noticed if you hadn't. I hope it didn't sound like that. I really do appreciate all the hard work and for notifying us of the changes!

No worries! In the future we'll be sure to list the detailed changes or a link to a list within the news post (it completely slipped my mind this time around). Many thanks to [profile]Luciandk[/profile] for writing up the changes to the abilities.

[Vek]

Thanks a lot for the write up Luciandk.

Nice with Crouch. I always thought it was the same as Extra Plating already. Guess I'm not that observant.

Adrenal Glands. I just have to get out the Twilight Fiendling today and try this out. Hope I run into some Idols.

Nice buff to Rebuild and Healing Stream. Nice that the self-heal part went up, before it was just a waste of a turn since you couldn't even break even if you got hit.

Spiked Skin. I like the buff to the shield part. The damage part buff probably won't be noticed much but still better than nothing. Perhaps it adds up during the match. I'll try this today as well, probably with Death Talon Whelpguard or Untamed Hatchling. For the Puffer with it's aquatic racial I believe that Healing Wave still is more useful.

[Poofah]

Quake's damage ramps up by roughly 15% each turn. So it seems to be 12 base damage frontrow/6 backrow, then 14 front/7 back, then 16 front/8 back. Supercharge still interacts poorly with Quake: it only modifies the initial frontrow hit, and not the backrow hits, making it a very lame combo.

Tympanic Tantrum is 14 base dmg frontrow/7 backrow, and doesn't ramp up. And Heartbroken can buff the entire duration of Tantrum, for a fantastic amount of damage. The only downside is the longer cooldown.

[Terranoch]

Oh, that Crouch buff. Everyone was expecting a Death-adder nerf but he gets buffed instead. Does that mean death-adder will have %50 damage reduction buff whole fight? (Since he can ignore 2 attacks with blind)

[Luciandk]

Updated my initial post and made an observation.

With the buff to [ability]Hawk Eye[/ability], [pet]Ji-Kun Hatchling[/pet]'s [ability]Caw[/ability] is now considerably underpowered.

Hawk Eye have no cd, stronger buff and lasts longer.


Edit:

I just noticed Anzu's Blessing have been buffed!

Increases damage AND accuracy of active pet by 25% for 4 rounds.
Now -THAT- have some truly sick potential for nasty compositions.
I could see it playing well with the Treasure Goblin. Cast Anzu's Blessing, swap to goblin. Spam Magic Sword until the buff wears off. Profit. Then use Portal to cause a free swap back.

Used to just be a 25% damage buff.

Edit 2: I wonder if Warcraftpets have missed more updated abilities, since Anzu's Blessing wasnt listed among the 15 on the frontpage.

[Vek]

Spiked Skin is now more useful as a dot-stopper, a lot less damage from Haunt for example. The damage component feels like a small bonus, nothing significant. Better than before. Still not very many dot's in my meta other than Haunt and Haunt will still deal some damage through Spiked Shield.

Twilight Fiendling ate Idol good, nom nom. But I think there are better humanslayers out there. Still nice with the option to either Leap to eat the face of quicker humanoids or go with Creeping Ooze(which seems to be the dot that does most damage after Haunt) which also benefits from Adrenal Glands crit bonus. Creeping Ooze was quite nice against elementals.

Edit: Starting to enjoy the Fiendling more and more. With Adrenal Glands the Creeping Ooze keeps ticking harder than Haunt and the 95% hit of Creepy Chomp crits for about 500. Very nice.
Edit 2: Noticed I didn't have a P/P Fiendling, so got one of those. It hits for quite a bit more.

[Quintessence]

Edit 2: I wonder if Warcraftpets have missed more updated abilities, since Anzu's Blessing wasnt listed among the 15 on the frontpage.

Anzu's Blessing wasn't listed because it wasn't an updated ability that existed prior to the most recent patch. Although we got a preview of it on the PTR and it may have changed between then and now, it's still technically a "new" ability. If any changes are made to it in the future you can be sure we'll update it then.

All abilities in our database should match up with the abilities in the Pet Journal. If you find any inconsistencies, please let us know and we'll look into it. Thanks!

[Vek]

Edit: Nothing to see here, just an old and confused idiot making no sense.

[Ligre]

Ok, so they "nerfed" Horn Gore...but why not buff Trample in this case, as well? This ability is really weak, and hard to justify taking in any capacity.

[Luciandk]

Call Lightning has seen a HUGE change. Bonus Lightning damage is only 29(for Yeti, 34 for sunreaver) but during Lightning mechanical attacks does 25% more damage. So for non mechs it's a nerf. And for mech attacks I guess a huge buff.

I think you are confused, Vek. Call Lightning have always given +25% damage to mech attacks, beside offering a roughly 30 bonus damage per hit.

[Ligre]

Call Lightning has seen a HUGE change. Bonus Lightning damage is only 29(for Yeti, 34 for sunreaver) but during Lightning mechanical attacks does 25% more damage. So for non mechs it's a nerf. And for mech attacks I guess a huge buff.

Um, what? What are you talking about? Lol...nowhere in these changes is Lightning Storm cited.