Undead racial

[Rosqo]

So as most people know the undead racial is by far the most overpowered of all the families. Immortal for 1 round whilst doing 75% damage.

How could this be brought into line whilst still retaining its current design/flavour?

It’s been mentioned by a few people would a 50% stat reduction be more appropriate?

Just wondered what other people thought.

[Spinning]

Flat -50% damage nerf

[Sile9]

Not sure. Further penalized damage might reduce Bone Serpent spam, but as a family the undead are probably the least affected by reduced damage on their final turn out of all.

Many would remain just as powerful simply for the utility/dots they can toss out while debuffed: Plagued Blood, Cyclone, Unholy Ascension, Death and Decay, Haunting Song, Corpse Explosion, Curse of Doom, Stampede, etc. are not meaningfully affected by a single turn of nerfed damage. If Immortal left a permanent debuff it would at least impact long dots as well instead of just basically Ghostly Bite, Darkness combo, and AoE.

[FuxieDK]

25% damage reduction is already a huge penalty... No need to ruin an entire family..

[Lordy]

Is the Undead Racial that overpowered? True its probably the best racial but other than Bone Serpents it doesn't feel that bad going up against undead enemy pets.

Maybe rather than Nerf the undead racial Blizzard should give a buff to some of the weaker racials instead? I would vote for example to double the effectiveness of the aquatic racial to make it more noticeable an effect. Or how about changing the magic racial to be a fixed maximum damage rather than based upon stamina so H/H magic pets actually have a racial ability? That kind of thing

[Rosqo]

It’s a pretty overpowered racial, basically you or your opponent can sometimes get off two extra hits they wouldn’t usually albeit at 75%.

I kinda feel that a stat nerf would be better that the flat damage nerf as this would affect a wider range of abilities.

[Spinning]

25% damage reduction is already a huge penalty... No need to ruin an entire family..

My avatar eats your avatar for breakfast. And 25% is not enough. If we do a poll about the best racial, undeads would STILL win.

[Gráinne]

I remember posted about this at the time, in the Blue thread. I remember it wasn't clear to me at the time from the suggested wording whether the reduction took place on the round the Undead went to zero as well as on the Damned round proper.

The typical sequence, for a slow undead (and most of them are slow) went:

1. Undead brought to zero
2. Undead goes second: uses Attack 1
3. Undead enters Damned round
4. Undead uses Attack 2

So the Undead gets off two extra attacks.

As it stands, the Undead gets 2 attacks @75% = 150% of an extra round.

I say now, as I said then, that 50% is the appropriate reduction, not 25%. That means that the Undead still gets an extra 100% of a round as its racial, plus whatever bonus benefit might apply from a CD like Unholy Ascension.

Having said that:

1. Where the Bone Serpent specifically is concerned, the relatively small potential nerf from a change to the Undead racial is not enough for it. I say we take off and nuke the entire Serpent from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.

2. I have some sympathy with Lordy's view that a buff to some of the weaker racials would do more good overall than a nerf to Undead.

[Rosqo]

They are some cool ideas for adjusting the racials Brawler. I don’t think a massive overhaul is needed just a few minor changes

I think a couple could be different though:

Humanoid: Agreed except healing effect reduce by half whilst on backline

Dragonkin: I really like your idea but feel it might be overpowered.

Fliers: Agree

Undead: 50% stat loss, it reduces the effectiveness of more abilities

Critter: Agree

Magic: 33% seems like a good number to me

Elemental: Agree I think a few things need to be added to not affect them such as surge of light stunning then under darkness and the arcane winds abilities

Beasts: Agree

Aquatic: What if every debuff was halved slows, dmg increases, power reductions? Might be a bit op though thinking about it.

Mechanicals: Agree

[Paladance]

In the pre-Legion EU thread there was a suggestion to address undead racial by simply limiting a damned pet to only one ability. And as bugged [ability]Bend Time[/ability] shows, it isn't impossible. Sadly it won't prevent soaking but hey, that's better than nothing, right?

I was also for tweaking the dragonkin racial due to its repetitivity that makes them more powerful than they're supposed to, but as their natural attacks are ineffective to undeads it doesn't draw attention unless TCS is concerned.

And yup, magic deserve a buff (even to differentiate them from Boss passive, if it has to exist), and aquas too. The exact way is unclear to me, magic going back to 30% isn't bad, but it would be something more, for example dealing an amount of damage (or a part of it) prevented by racial back to attacker. (It wouldn't happen as often as it seems anyway). Similarly, aquatic pets can be still resistant to DoTs but also (as implied above) mitigate all "cast and forget" abilities, from traps, through geysers, whirlpools, entangling roots etc. Alternatively, they could mitigate/have a chance to dodge thorn/brittle webbing effects, although this might be not too plausible as many elementals rely on them.

I agree that critters immune to forced swaps would be nice but perhaps it would bug out feign death. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

What do you think of beast racial (currently) persisting through death? It's a fun with Pyreclaw isn't it?

[Nurasu]

I don't think it's that overpowered though. How does the extra damage they are able to do compare to a beast that is able to live a couple rounds with its racial? Against an Elemental with Sandstorm or Darkness up all match? Against a flier that uses moves that hit extra times if it goes first? Undead's racial is not beneficial during all of its turns like other racials, it's obviously only active for 1 or 2 turns the pet's entire time in the match.

[Rosqo]

I don't think it's that overpowered though. How does the extra damage they are able to do compare to a beast that is able to live a couple rounds with its racial? Against an Elemental with Sandstorm or Darkness up all match? Against a flier that uses moves that hit extra times if it goes first? Undead's racial is not beneficial during all of its turns like other racials, it's obviously only active for 1 or 2 turns the pet's entire time in the match.

Ok, so I did some quick napkin math using the beast racial as a comparison just to give you some context of how strong the undead racial can be. For the purposes of the example the beast and undead have 1400hp, both take and do 280 dmg per round to the opponent but go second in the turn.

The beast does 1,260 damage before being killed on the 5th round. It benefited from 2 rounds of beast racial buffing damage by 70 to 350 per turn.

The undead does 1,540 damage it’s undead racial procs on the 5th round. The undead racial lasts 2 turns reducing damage to 210 per round.

I appreciate that this is not how most if any battles ever play out but it does demonstrate the power of the undead racial. The large difference in damage actually comes from the undead continuing to attack after other pets would have died.

[Drudatz]

It’s a pretty overpowered racial, basically you or your opponent can sometimes get off two extra hits they wouldn’t usually albeit at 75%.

So an undead getting to hits of is op but a mechanical that does the same aint


Damn sad to see I am the only one that thinks all the racials are fine

[Rosqo]

It’s a pretty overpowered racial, basically you or your opponent can sometimes get off two extra hits they wouldn’t usually albeit at 75%.

So an undead getting to hits of is op but a mechanical that does the same aint


Damn sad to see I am the only one that thinks all the racials are fine

I hate to rain on your parade but a slower mechanical would actually only get off one extra attack. See the example above for a reference but essentially the mechanical dies on the round an undead gets its second hit off during its damned state.

[Tekulve2018]

I feel that a big part of the issue here is the fact that undead do weak dmg to aquatics.

Thus, we would love to run more aquatic pets in pet pvp...the aqua pets seem to have potential since many have lots of hp
and self heal...but look again ...fliers have a tremendous racial advantage and are super speedy already...so aqua pets get double slammed as far as their true value.

So...that's the problematic triangle here... coming up with a meaningful aquatic racial advantage could possible solve the dominance of undead pets in pvp.

Personally, I wont say the pet pvp game is really too imbalanced but running aqua pets (and most magic pets) due to their 'meh' racials, is tough atm.

The joke is some people may have even forgotten how common undeads were in pvp because currently many players are slugging it out for the tabard (3× whatever family)

[Paladance]

Aquatic pets with Dragonkin damage [ability]spiked skin[/ability] only
Beast pets with Magic damage
Critter pets with Undead damage
Dragonkin pets with Critter damage
Elemental pets with Beast damage
Flying pets with Humanoid damage
Humanoid pets with Mechanical damage
Magic pets with Elemental damage
|Mechanical pets with Aquatic damage| poor stats or a crude mechanic
Undead pets with Flying damage

Some of them don't even exist, but all share a certain feature.
They have attacks strong to family defined as resistant to their natural attacks.

Now, tell me which undead pet is one of the most popular culprits?

[Drudatz]

Now, tell me which undead pet is one of the most popular culprits?

I dunno about you lads but the most undead pets I see are Unborn Valkyr, Bone Serpent (in tripplets, yeah /s), Ghostly Kid, Fossilized Hatchling and Son of Sethe to name my top 5 I regularly encounter.

[Skid1989]

I like the idea. The math makes sense at two additional attack opportunities at 50% each instead of two additional attack opportunities at 75% each which adds to 150% of what any other pet family could accomplish. It’s why we all like to use undead pets in pvp or pve to tank enemy fliers, etc. The impact of the undead racial is also why I’d bet most of our pvp teams with more than 100 wins have at least one undead pet. Now, if we could only convince Blizz to ability nerf the Tier 0 Bone Serpent. Leave the increased stat set alone, that’s not the issue with this pet, just force a player choice between the big nuke ability & the decoy breaker ability, put them in the same tier maybe. It would make our metas more fun again. Combine the current BS monster move set with its OP undead racial and it’s why our metas sometimes devolve into un-fun “Darkness Festivals” IMO. I appreciate all the thoughts & discussion in this thread though.