Breaking news in patch 5.3!

[Letifa]

The updated 5.3 patch notes made my day.

-Hit Chance is now displayed for all abilities.
-Abilities no longer have a base chance to miss or be dodged by opposing pets of the same level.
-Reduced the chance to miss when fighting higher-level opponents from 5% per level to 2% per level.

This means when fighting lvl 25 vs lvl 25 there's no longer a base chance to miss with normal abilities. They will show the % chance to miss on skills like moth balls or moth dust (high chance to miss stated in tooltip), and on top of that lower level pets not longer miss a ton which will boost pet leveling a bit! Huzzah!

And the best part of it all came a bit lower down the lines:
-Ethereal Soul-Trader has been returned to his original, larger size.

[Thestalker]

If it is not a joke, it is great !

[Ruzgofdi]

From http://www.wowhead.com/news=211819/upda ... 2-hotfixes

Species specific Flawless Battle-Stones are now Bind to Battle.net account.

I fail to see how that does anything, except maybe open storage space if one is saving all their unusable stones.

[Dakaf]

I just read the break up of the BoF quest. Anyone know if it will still drop the bag, or if they just changed it (and killed it) to charms and exp?

Thanks!

[NathKnave]

Species specific Flawless Battle-Stones are now Bind to Battle.net account.

I fail to see how that does anything, except maybe open storage space if one is saving all their unusable stones.

It does exactly that, and I for one am grateful. These take up far too much bank space since they only stack to a paltry five, being able to move them off to a character with an unused bank, or even a personal guild vault, is very welcome.

Also, what do you mean "if" one is saving their unusable stones? What possible reason could you have to be getting rid of them? They only vendor for 1 copper.

[Ruzgofdi]

Also, what do you mean "if" one is saving their unusable stones? What possible reason could you have to be getting rid of them? They only vendor for 1 copper.

One could upgrade certain craft and vendor pets that can be caged and sell the rares on the AH.

[Quintessence]

I just read the break up of the BoF quest. Anyone know if it will still drop the bag, or if they just changed it (and killed it) to charms and exp?

Thanks!

Each part of the broken up BoF daily rewards a bag. So choose to do one part, and you get one BoF bag. Choose to do all three, and you get three BoF bags! It's a little more reward for the amount of time/energy spent traveling/battling the BoF NPCs.

[Ishildur]

Also, what do you mean "if" one is saving their unusable stones? What possible reason could you have to be getting rid of them? They only vendor for 1 copper.

One could upgrade certain craft and vendor pets that can be caged and sell the rares on the AH.

It helps a little bit for some of us, I keep getting undead stones that are atm pretty useless and they're spread all over my various alts. Being able to consolidate all those stones on my pet bandage holder (yes, I really have a specific mule for that, go ahead and laugh) will help on space.

I'm holding on to the hope that Blizzard will at some point let us exchange these family specific stones for ones we could use - I mean the undead ones are in such low demand I can't even sell stoned undead pets. Ok, that last bit came out way too grateful dead - but you know what I mean, there's like 5-6 undead pets that are hard or impossible to get in rare without a stone vs 25+ beasts.

[Tahsfenz]

BoA stones are fantastic, especially if you are trading multiple stones across multiple alts. I've had to do this on more than 1 occasion.

[Basti]

Also, what do you mean "if" one is saving their unusable stones? What possible reason could you have to be getting rid of them? They only vendor for 1 copper.

One could upgrade certain craft and vendor pets that can be caged and sell the rares on the AH.

From http://www.wowhead.com/news=211819/updated-5-3-ptr-patch-notes-and-patch-5-2-hotfixes

Species specific Flawless Battle-Stones are now Bind to Battle.net account.

I fail to see how that does anything, except maybe open storage space if one is saving all their unusable stones.

I am thankful for this change. I have about 30 stones scattered across different toons and it is painful for me to track which stone is with what toon. If this change happens then I could dump all the stones to my bank alt for safekeeping until the need arises for me to use one. I don't upgrade vendor pets and resell them. I am actually hoping that Blizz would add something like a Battle-stone Trader so I could trade in stones I don't need for something I could actually use.

[Ruzgofdi]

A different part of it is probably how one does their dailies. I'm getting the feeling from the number of people mentioning that they've got stones scattered among half a dozen alts that I'm one of the few people that does all their pet battle stuff on one toon.

[Ishildur]

In my case it's simply for speed, I camp alts I'm not actively working on at some of the tamers (especially old world and the other expansion ones) so I don't have to travel as much for those bags. I used to do all of them on my mage since he could port, but I get more and more lazy as I do the dailies more often. They're like a daily grind now, I just try to get them done as fast as possible.

[Abyl1]

I use altoholic add-on, you can put in "flawless" in to the search and it will show all your stones on each alt so you know where they are!

[Threnody]

I look forward to this BoA stones change in 5.3. Tracking stones is one thing (and I use Altoholic too). For trading, having all stones in one alt will be much more convenient.

[Luciandk]

Seems people havent noticed this one yet:

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/blog/9425567/Pet_Battle_Accuracy_Changes_in_Patch_53-4_4_2013

Im not sure Im entirely pleased with the addition of extra miss to so many abilities.

Appears theyve made many slot 1 abilities stronger at the cost of some miss potential. But its a definite nerf to Anubisath Idol right there. Sandstorm will be -AWFUL- to use with it now, since both of its main attacks now have a miss rate.

[Maizing]

I look forward to this BoA stones change in 5.3. Tracking stones is one thing (and I use Altoholic too). For trading, having all stones in one alt will be much more convenient.

Agreed! Now if they would only change them so they stack higher than 5... that is the only other thing I find annoying about battle stones that I can't use.

[Beardydan]

Seems people havent noticed this one yet:


Im not sure Im entirely pleased with the addition of extra miss to so many abilities.

Appears theyve made many slot 1 abilities stronger at the cost of some miss potential. But its a definite nerf to Anubisath Idol right there. Sandstorm will be -AWFUL- to use with it now, since both of its main attacks now have a miss rate.

This. Sure dodge is down 5% but missing on a LOT of basic attacks is up 5%. not seeing a huge difference there.

[Dragonwizard]

Here is some more details on the changes to Hit in pet battles. [url=http://blue.mmo-champion.com/topic/258313-pet-battle-accuracy-changes-in-patch-53/]Source[/url]


Greetings, trainers!

We wanted to take a moment to discuss some of the broad accuracy changes we’re making to Pet Battles in patch 5.3. The overarching goal behind these changes is to provide transparency to reduce the amount of uncontrolled randomness, where one miss often makes or breaks a match. Once patch 5.3 is live, you’ll see “hit chance” listed for all abilities, and this value will update if the pet is affected by abilities that increase or reduce the chance to hit.

In addition, we’ve removed the base 5% chance to dodge, and reduced the chance to miss opponents of higher levels from 5% per level to 2% per level. The end result should be that your attacks that should hit, will hit, and there’s greater incentive to get out there and fight higher-level pets for greater experience rewards.

In a turn-based game, randomness can be a lot of fun if handled correctly. Without a little randomness, the outcome of a match could be predicted to a high degree of certainty before the first swing, and that’s no fun. Randomness often works best when it is opt-in, often in exchange for greater attack power, longer duration, etc. In fact, many higher-damage battle pet abilities already had a reduced chance to hit, which will now be visible.

With the removal of the base dodge chance, we were left with a large number of abilities that now had a 100% hit chance. We’ve made a handful of minor modifications to some of these abilities, giving them greater damage in exchange for a reduced chance to hit. It’s worth noting that every battle pet type (e.g. Dragonkin) have at least one ability that hits 100% of the time, allowing you to opt-out of the randomness if you prefer a less risky strategy. (Check out the full list of basic abilities that have gained additional damage in exchange for reduced accuracy below.)

Finally, we’ve left the base 5% chance to gain a critical strike (for 1.5x damage), and +/- 10% damage variance on all abilities, at least for the time being. We believe that getting a crit generally feels good, and the damage variance is often enough to make a match a bit less predetermined without swinging the match heavily in one player’s favor.

We also wanted to thank the community for the great feedback we’ve gotten so far about Pet Battles. Keep it coming!

As noted earlier, the following basic attacks have had their damage increased by 5-15% and accuracy reduced by 5-15%:

Beam
Bow Shot
Breath
Broom
Burn
Chomp
Claw
Creepy Chomp
Crush
Diseased Bite
Emerald Bite
Feedback
Frost Breath
Frost Spit
Gauss Rifle
Holy Sword
Hoof
Infected Claw
Jab
Jade Claw
Metal Fist
Missile
Onyx Bite
Railgun
Scratch
Shadow Shock
Shadow Slash
Shadowflame
Smash
Snap
Stone Shot
Strike
Sulfuras Smash
Water Jet

[Arcanicus]

The largest part of this change, from my perspective, is a stealth buff to build-up moves like Arcane Blast and Frog Kiss, because after a certain number of turns (4 for Arcane Blast, 5-6 for Frog Kiss based on CC procs), they will out-perform the changed basic moves like Strike and such - and that's assuming perfect accuracy on behalf of the latter. Because of how the game is balanced, it's unlikely that an enemy pet will have precisely enough HP that basic moves are preferable.

[Luciandk]

Seems people havent noticed this one yet:


Im not sure Im entirely pleased with the addition of extra miss to so many abilities.

Appears theyve made many slot 1 abilities stronger at the cost of some miss potential. But its a definite nerf to Anubisath Idol right there. Sandstorm will be -AWFUL- to use with it now, since both of its main attacks now have a miss rate.

This. Sure dodge is down 5% but missing on a LOT of basic attacks is up 5%. not seeing a huge difference there.

Ah, that does make it much easier to swallow. Missed the removal of basic dodge.