Fluxfire Feline change in 5.2 :(

[Frozenpets]

Im more concerned about reflect, and my fav pet the anubisath idol, the flayer youngling. I fear what is going to happen to reflect, a spell that is slightly op, but nothing like the FFF's dominating damage

and to above, yeah 325 is a lot of speed, but you can get a pretty fast mirror strider too, 309 isnt too shabby. the damage doesnt quite match up though.

[Poofah]

When only a small handful of very specific pets are good enough to counter a single pet (that itself beats 90% of pets), then that's when I think game design has gone wrong.

Ooh I'm certainly not going to argue against that hehe.

Yes, sorry, I moved the goalposts a little, and/or wasn't clear about the magic vs mechanical argument.

Also sorry if I was a bit grumpy, I'm having battlestone withdrawal issues atm.

Lil' Deathwing's Roll+Elementium Bolt is 943 damage: combined with a Tail Whip, it's a lot of damage on one turn (but still less that FFF's 3 turn combo). However, you know precisely when it will land, and you have multiple turns to do something about it. Unlike FFF, most of the avoidance moves counter it effectively (Dodge, Burrow).

Along those lines, I haven't seen many complaints about Mr. Bigglesworth. Prowl+Ice Tomb has the same fundamental issue that Supercharge+Wind-Up does in terms of damage, although this combo hits for 'only' 1400 since Bigglesworth has fairly low power.

I'd add Magical Crawdad on that list too. I believe only a handful of pets can actually take him down if he's using his Shell Shield and Wish to their full potential.

I can totally agree that Wish is overpowered--it heals for massively more than any other one-turn healing move. Against tamers with predictable dps, he is extremely strong. In PvP, I think people have tended toward very high dps and/or burst damage so far, which plays against Crawdad's strengths. If PvP ever moved toward a slow-and-steady style of play, Crawdad would probably start to be pretty overwhelming.

But I still think a bugfix for Wind Up could be the solution, because in that case a lot of undead and also some mechanical pets would be nice counters. ^^

I'd love it if they'd fix this issue with Wind-Up (and Pump). It would definitely help. I would still like to see Supercharge+Wind-up deal less damage though.

[Suspiro]

Im more concerned about reflect, and my fav pet the anubisath idol, the flayer youngling. I fear what is going to happen to reflect, a spell that is slightly op, but nothing like the FFF's dominating damage

and to above, yeah 325 is a lot of speed, but you can get a pretty fast mirror strider too, 309 isnt too shabby. the damage doesnt quite match up though.

I don't think they'll touch Reflection again. They already nerfed/fixed it such that it can no longer reflect heals or cause situations where the user becomes permanently invulnerable. It can also be countered in certain situations if you get lucky with predicting it. (NOTE: I've been unlucky many many times.) =X

[Bistromath]

I am glad they are fixing the Fluxfires combo, all ive seen in PvP battles once that pet came out is that pet.

Plus i wish they would nerf the Crawdad, its wish is way to powerful, it should at least have alot longer CD or at most not be able to loose any of it CD timer when switched to the back row or it only heals the Crawdad.

Ive beaten people with the Crawdad / Sunflower / Molten Spider combo and such it just takes for ever and a day to do it.

[Zaelo]

Plus i wish they would nerf the Crawdad, its wish is way to powerful, it should at least have alot longer CD or at most not be able to loose any of it CD timer when switched to the back row or it only heals the Crawdad.

A longer cooldown (5 rounds instead of 3) would be a decent "nerf". The reason why it's so strong on him though is because he has SO MUCH health
I know you can use wish on another pet, but at least it would require some sinergy work to have it this powerful, right now it's this powerful on its own.

Also sorry if I was a bit grumpy, I'm having battlestone withdrawal issues atm.

Aawww poor Poofah!! Hehehe, totally sympathise with you!
You didn't sound grumpy to me though, I always enjoy reading and commenting on your posts

[Countcross]

I'm surprised no one has mentioned [pet]Lil' Deathwing[/pet] Elementium Bolt>Tail Sweep> Roll. There is many combos that will be unbalanced, they cant fix them all.

This this this this and this. Even though you can see when it'll hit-- ... UGHHHH. Admittedly though on the topic, I only use FFF with wild pet battles as the whole combo seems unfair to me and I /want/ a challenge.

[Frozenpets]

crawdad should be powerful. he can be a tough one to get, and hes pretty unique. they need to just make reflect not work vs end of turn spells, and bump wish to 4* rounds

[Mawder]

I feel that the "nerf" described in the twitter reply is actually the stated change to Supercharge in the 5.2 PTR notes:

"Supercharge now provides a 125% damage bonus (was 150%), and its cooldown is now 4 rounds (was 3)."

It's also possible that damage modifier for Wind-Up is incorrect and they could be changing that.

[Yannock]

Guys what do you think of this combo ?
1. Fluxfire: Super charge, wind up, Swap
2. Devouring maggot: Non magic pet:then - Stickey goo (trapped for 5 rounds), Swap
Could burrow to avoid any big hits if still in play
3. Magic Lamp: Sear Magic (if necessary), Wish, Swap
4. Fluxfire: Step into heal, Wind Up (one shot most things), Super charge, Wind Up, Swap to line 2 - rinse and repeat
I think it should work - need to level my lamp or catch mr pinchey

[Poofah]

I feel that the "nerf" described in the twitter reply is actually the stated change to Supercharge in the 5.2 PTR notes:

"Supercharge now provides a 125% damage bonus (was 150%), and its cooldown is now 4 rounds (was 3)."

It's also possible that damage modifier for Wind-Up is incorrect and they could be changing that.

I think you're right, but this only nerfs Supercharge+Wind-Up from 1800+ to 1600+. It's still pretty much a one-shot on most pets, and it still has all the problems that make it overpowered (FFF has 325 speed, Supercharge doesn't fall off on a block/dodge/miss or when you backrow).

Also, this nerfs several pets that have Supercharge but were already totally harmless.

crawdad should be powerful. he can be a tough one to get, and hes pretty unique. they need to just make reflect not work vs end of turn spells, and bump wish to 4* rounds

Wait what? that would make reflect completely useless and never worth using (like it pretty much is against fluxfire feline as it has to use it twice to get a wind-up off). Reflect is already very balanced if you play against skilled players as they will delay their 1 turn strong attacks and then you end up reflecting a normal attack instead.

Reflecting a normal attack is still extremely strong--you've dealt an attack's worth of damage and skipped the opponent's turn. Also, it doesn't take skill or mind games to reflect an end-of-turn effect: you just press Reflect when the debuff has 1 round left. So Reflect might be balanced with skilled players when you're talking about strong attacks that aren't telegraphed, like Ghostly Bite/Surge of Power. But it's not balanced when you can reflect e.g. Elementium Bolt *and* skip the rest of the opponent's turn, while the Bolt player's only legitimate counter is to not cast Bolt at all.

Wind-Up and Pump should not be exempted from getting Reflected though--I agree with that part.

Guys what do you think of this combo ?
1. Fluxfire: Super charge, wind up, Swap
2. Devouring maggot: Non magic pet:then - Stickey goo (trapped for 5 rounds), Swap
Could burrow to avoid any big hits if still in play
3. Magic Lamp: Sear Magic (if necessary), Wish, Swap
4. Fluxfire: Step into heal, Wind Up (one shot most things), Super charge, Wind Up, Swap to line 2 - rinse and repeat
I think it should work - need to level my lamp or catch mr pinchey

Instead of swapping at the end of step 1, just Wind-Up unless the opponent has an evasion buff up. Instead of steps 2 and 3, just use 2 more fluxfires and repeat step 1. FFF is overpowered precisely because he doesn't need these extra bells and whistles to make him super effective against all but a very select few opponents.

[Poofah]

I think the best thing to do is make reflect able to reflect the first use of elementium bolt (this might already be possible, I never tried it tho) and not able to reflect the bolt debuff. That would also allow a skilled player to use elementium bolt by "faking" it until the other player has used reflect on say a regular attack instead.

Yep, I agree with this. Currently Reflect works on both the initial cast as well as on the turn the debuff expires. In the first case, you'll prevent yourself from getting a debuff, and you'll also cast Bolt--this is really powerful, but it's clearly how Reflect is supposed to work. But currently you should never gamble on reflecting the initial Bolt cast, because if you wait til they cast it and let the debuff tick down then you're guaranteed to reflect it, plus you prevent whatever other attack they choose that round. I really don't think this is how it's intended to work--my guess is it's just poor coding.

[Laxman22]

Maybe I missed it because its like 4am here but no one has mentioned how OP lil' XT is. Even against non- beast pets I can usually kill all three pets in one Tantrum with heartbroken.

If its 3 beasts in a wild battle? They all die. Heartbroken + Tantrum.

As far as the FFF goes, you can one shot every single wild pet combo there is as long as they don't dodge/burrow etc etc. even the grand master tamer in Icecrown (his bear grizzle) was one shot by my uncommon FFF while he was in hibernation. If things got dicey I'd switch to Mr Pinchy, drop a healing mist, activate wish, switch back to FFF and do it all over again.

Both of those pets seem to be very OP. I'm loving it though. I'm using FFF + Crawdad atm to powerlevel pets in Kunlai lol. FFF doesn't even need to use supercharge, just a double wind up for most pets even pets that aren't beasts.

[Erian]

Yeah, wild battles are not really representative.

Against same lvl pets XT deals ~50% dmg to the front line pet and ~25% to both backline pets with a full Tantrum, twice as much with an active Broken Heart, making it a very strong skill - however:
a) you need 4 Rounds for that
b) you are fully commited from round 2
c) you get 1-2 hits with +50% dmg - which can be pretty devastating
d) if you are slower (and XT is rather slow) most enemies can just sit out the Broken Heart (and e.g. buff themselves in that time), resulting in a rather weak Tantrum.
e) Abilities like Sandstorm make the Tantrum dmg laughable.

Don't get me wrong: XT is a pretty strong pet and I used it for a long time. At lvl 20 it got me my 5 wins without losing a pet achievement. But in PvP it is rather easy countered. Against a bad played enemy XT can be devastating. Against a well played enemy XT gets devastated.

[Exel]

Fluxfire Feline requires no skills at all and you can't counter it unless planning specifically for that. And making a strategy to counter one pet cripples you against every other team. Not to mention wind-up is bugged and prevents mechanical and undead ability from activating.

What I'm surprised is that it took a content patch to nerf and Clockwork Gnome turrets got nerfed in a week and they weren't that overpowered.

What I dislike much more than FF are simply ridiculously annoying pets like every single crab and Flayer Youngling. Don't know how anyone can enjoy 30 min duels. It's like a torture.