What were they thinking with this design?

[Hobbitpolitics]

In legion they introduced a new ability for pets called Ironbark, now only 3 pets have this pet in the game, Direbeak Hatchling, Runeforged Servitor and Ironbound Proto-Whelp. This ability, Ironbark has a 4 round cooldown and lasts for only 2 rounds, the default damage reduction that this ability gives is 98,5 from the warcraftpets.com ability database. With this in mind and that this ability was introduced in Legion we should also keep in mind that there is also an old Magic type ability called Stoneskin. Stoneskin has no cooldown and lasts for 5 rounds, seems awfully better than Ironskin right? It actually is, because the default damage reduction for Stoneskin is ALSO 98,5, making Ironskin SIGNIFICANTLY worse than the old Stoneskin ability that is found on multiple pets in the game. When I realised this I was baffled by how this made no sense, isnt Iron usually considered "harder" than Stone in most games. I feel like this is an incredibly bad design and a lack of attention on Blizzards part, please whoever is working on pets and pet battles, look at your pet abilities and make some changes.

[Gráinne]

You mean [ability]Ironskin[/ability]? [ability]Ironbark[/ability] has been in the game since battling was introduced in 5.0.

Your point about Ironskin is well made, though.

[Paladance]

I second (third?) that!

A similar concern, but in the opposite direction, can be assumed against [ability]Falcosaur Swarm[/ability]!:

• A classic [ability]Stampede[/ability]: 3x3 damage, 3 round ability, 2 round duration, no cooldown
• [ability]Hunting Party[/ability]: 3x4 damage, 2 round ability, 1 round duration, 4 round cooldown
• Falcosaur Swarm!: 3x4 damage, 2 round ability, 2 round duration, no cooldown,
  ergo
  first part of Hunting Party (more concentrated output) + second part of Stampede (better time management)

Now the infamous [ability]Howl[/ability] problem looks pretty tiny…

Maybe they just have a novice here that hasn't seen all the "system"? Because this reminds me old times of being a Wiki editor, where maintaining a textpiece in a single writing style wasn't an easy task just because each person was eager to write their stuff like there was nothing else.

[Hobbitpolitics]

Yes Ironskin ofcourse, I was online on my druid when I wrote this rant, thank you for correcting me.

[Peanutty]

As nonsensical as it seems to have abilities that do the same thing, with different names, that are more or less effective than others (due to duration, CD, etc) my guess is that they did that to force us to make choices in deciding what pets to use and what 3 abilities to choose on said pets.

For example, Falcosaur Swarm vs Hunting Party... it's more than just looking at the ability, you're also choosing between a falcosaur versus a Zandalari raptor. The racials come into play (flyers getting a part-time speed buff, beasts hitting harder at half health + swarm strong against aqua, hunt party strong against critter), the pet's other abilities come into play (most notably the Black Claw buff to the Hunting Party, so on and so forth.

I agree that overall the Ironskin ability isn't seem great. If I'm using a pet with that ability, I'm probably going to give the other ability in that slot a closer look. Just as not all pets are equally great for battle (boo spores!) not all abilities will be optimal choices.

[Jerebear]

I asked about Ironskin on twitter. Just a tooltip error. It is more like shell armor than shell shield
https://twitter.com/jere1227/status/795315320177197056

I tested it with the falcosaur version if that matters.