Breaking PTR news, 15th April. Tons of pet changes

[Luciandk]

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/blog/9135374/53_PTR_Patch_Notes_-_April_15-4_15_2013#pet

(Bolded the new stuff)

Pet Battles

Bonus damage has been added to many basic abilities, at the cost of slightly reduced accuracy.

Check out our blog: Pet Battle Accuracy Changes in Patch 5.3 for additional information.


Pet Battle Duels are now available in all dungeons and raids. Enjoy!
Pet Battles in the wild and duels are now viewable by other players in the world.
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.
A series of new achievements and rewards have been added for max-level matchmaking PvP pet battles
Wins for max-level, matchmaking PvP pet battles can now be tracked in statistics.
Battle pets' recent ability loadouts will now be saved when pets are swapped in and out of battle slots.
Species specific Flawless Battle-Stones are now Bind to Battle.net account.
Black Claw now deals 20% less damage.
Blistering Cold had now deals 100% more damage.
Corrosion now deals 5 damage-per-round, up from 2, and increases damage taken by 2, down from 5.
Counterspell now deals 10 damage in addition to the ability's previous effects.
Deep Freeze now has a 10% reduced chance to hit.
Fury of 1,000 Fists now has a 4-round cooldown, up from 3 rounds.
Haymaker now has a 3-round cooldown.
Headbutt now has a 4-round cooldown, up from 3 rounds.
Hunting Party now has an increased cooldown of 4 rounds, up from 3 rounds.
Impale now has a cooldown of 3 rounds, down from 5 rounds, deals 17% less damage, and no longer deals damage as a percentage of the target’s health. The ability now deals a flat amount of bonus damage instead.
Interrupting Gaze now deals 50% more damage.
Interrupting Jolt now has a 4-round cooldown, down from 5 rounds.
Kick now deals 50% more damage.
Minefield now has a 5-round cooldown, and lasts for 9 rounds, down from 10 rounds.
Mudslide now has a 4-round cooldown, up from 3 rounds.
Predatory Strike no longer deal damage as a percentage of the target’s health. The ability now deals a flat amount of bonus damage instead.
Quicksand now has a 4-round cooldown, up from 3 rounds.
Reckless Strike now has a 1-round cooldown.
Rupture now has a 4-round cooldown, up from 3 rounds.
Shock and Awe now has a 4-round cooldown, up from 3 rounds.
Soulrush now has a 4-round cooldown, up from 3 rounds.
Fixed an issue where pet abilities that had a chance to stun were not working correctly.



The instakillers Impale and Predatory strike was effectively killed. Most likely because they could be used to make the beasts of fable a joke with Sunlight and a bit of damage done.

I think Blizzard typoed Counterspell and meant Counterstrike.

[Poofah]

Corrosion now deals 5 damage-per-round, up from 2, and increases damage taken by 2, down from 5.

This is a smart preemptive change. Oozes have a rigid rotation that's extremely vulnerable to bad miss RNG, but now that the base miss rate is gone, their damage became very high *and* very consistent.

Deep Freeze now has a 10% reduced chance to hit.

this is not the right fix -- the problem is KunLai Runt/Tiny Snowman and the fact that they can apply Chilled while also having deep freeze. This change overnerfs Deep Freeze for all the other pets that have it, while still leaving KunLai/Snowman head and shoulders above the others. The better fix would be to reduce the difference between Deep Freeze and Chilled Deep Freeze, for example just give +25% chance to stun versus Chilled instead of +75%.

Haymaker now has a 3-round cooldown.

I suppose this is in response to Lucky Dance teams? I'm not sure why this needs addressing tbh.

Impale now has a cooldown of 3 rounds, down from 5 rounds, deals 17% less damage, and no longer deals damage as a percentage of the target’s health. The ability now deals a flat amount of bonus damage instead.

Predatory Strike no longer deal damage as a percentage of the target’s health. The ability now deals a flat amount of bonus damage instead.

This is almost certainly to make the Beasts of Fable less trivial: I'm surprised they didn't touch Life Exchange while they were at it.

[Luciandk]

Im hearing some blabber about even more abilities having had accuracy reduced.

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/8569600040#5

This poster claiming it, can anyone verify or deny?

Whats really the point about making a show out of removing baseline dodge/miss, when they bake it right back into the abilities again?

[Quintessence]

Im hearing some blabber about even more abilities having had accuracy reduced.

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/8569600040#5

This poster claiming it, can anyone verify or deny?

Whats really the point about making a show out of removing baseline dodge/miss, when they bake it right back into the abilities again?

I don't think that the poster meant those listed abilities have had their accuracy reduced. Simca is just comparing their list to the official list of nerfs/changes. I think?

The official blog post on accuracy changes was updated too (changed values in bold).

"the following basic attacks have had their damage increased by 10-30% and accuracy reduced by 5-15%"

And the rest of the post which includes all the attacks that are getting changed can be found at the bottom of the post.

[Ryazan]

QQ @ Minefield nerf. :|

[Poofah]

Whats really the point about making a show out of removing baseline dodge/miss, when they bake it right back into the abilities again?

They're only baking it into basic damage abilities (albeit a lot of them) -- most abilities with cooldowns and/or secondary effects will no longer miss versus equal level. They clearly want RNG to still play a role, but now it should only affect damage output and not tactical decisions. Personally I'd rather only have RNG in the damage range of abilities and not in hit/miss, but this will definitely help -- it's a much smaller swing in the fight when Punch misses than when Elementium Bolt misses (for example).

"the following basic attacks have had their damage increased by 10-30% and accuracy reduced by 5-15%"

This is troublesome, because now the low-accuracy attacks have higher overall damage than the normal attacks (ie an ability that does +30% damage with -15% accuracy does +10.5% damage on average). Their quote on the subject is this:

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.

But the problem is that it's not opt-in any more -- the low-accuracy attacks are just better. The current low-accuracy moves (Expunge, Demolish, etc) are not like that: they average out to the same overall damage as the other basic attacks.

[Formerruling]

Seems all chance to stun abilities have gained an extra round of cooldown. Anyone know/guess the specific reasoning? Did the 3 rounds have synergy with other abilities?

They added cooldown to Haymaker I'm assuming due to Lucky teams, but didn't seem to touch Demolish or Cataclysm, and Demolish is as far as I know the most used ability for this propose...

It's also interesting they hit Reckless Strike Bat teams, but haven't touched Nocturnal Strike?