PvP Mechanics

[Violetfemme]

In doing PvP battles, I realized that some things do not seem to work the same as in tamer/wild battles. Does anyone have any information as to why or how I could make it work right?

1. Blindness due to Darkness. I had Darkness up, and used Nocturnal Strike and it missed - twice!

2. Early Advantage does not always cause double the damage when my pet has lower health than the opponent. Is it a percentage or some other way of figuring it out?

3. Horn Attack. Does this mean that if my pet is faster, the opponent will possibly lose their turn or is it that I might lose my turn? In either case, I don't think I have ever seen the loss of turn actually happen when I have used it, though I think I have lost my turn when it was used on my pet.

4. Pets other than roaches and beetles seem to survive sometimes when Apocalypse is used. It has 100% hit chance so I'm not sure how it can miss.

5. Other moves that have 100% hit chance do not actually hit. No weather effects or debuffs to change hit chance and yet they still miss.

[Teacake]

Nocturnal Strike has a 100% hit chance against targets that are blinded; Darkness blinds targets, but also gives an accuracy debuff across the board. So Nocturnal Strike actually has: 50% hit chance when no weather/debuffs are present; 100% hit chance when opponent is blinded and no weather/other debuffs are present; 90% hit chance when opponent is blinded and Darkness is present. I really wish Blizz would make this clear somewhere, because it's a subject of constant debate. But bottom line, Noc Strike can miss during Darkness.

Horn Attack, if you go first, has a 50% chance of making the opponent lose their turn. Trust me, it happens plenty.

Apocalypse will miss if the pet that cast it is dead.

The others I can't speak to.

[Poofah]

Early Advantage comes in two hits: it performs the first hit, then checks the opponent's health, then performs the 2nd hit if the opponent is still higher than you.

[Cdeveau]

Early Advantage comes in two hits: it performs the first hit, then checks the opponent's health, then performs the 2nd hit if the opponent is still higher than you.

Thank you for this explanation as I'd always wondered why even though my pet started with lower health it only performed the first strike. Now I know.

[Violetfemme]

@ Teacake: Thanks! That explained darkness perfectly as I did notice the hit percent in red (meaning it was reduced) and couldn't figure out why it mattered for nocturnal strike. So my better option is to actually use another blindness causing move, rather than darkness if I want my nocturnal strike to hit each time. I guess I need to look into another option for that particular team.

@ Poofah: Thanks for that explanation on early advantage! I wish the tooltip made it more clear, but now that I know, I can roughly calculate it on my own and determine if/when it's worth using. I'm not sure why I never noticed it in tamer/wild battles, except that maybe it was always planned as my last move against certain tamers and wild teams, so it didn't really matter if both hits worked.

[Violetfemme]

One more question about PvP battles and the rewards for winning them. Are we supposed to get something with each win? Sometimes I get a stone, other times I get lesser charms, if on a lower level toon, I get XP, and other times I seem to get nothing. Is it all random or should I be getting some sort of loot/currency/XP for each PvP win?

[Kring]

1. Blindness due to Darkness. I had Darkness up, and used Nocturnal Strike and it missed - twice!

Darkness is a weather effect and therefore doesn't work on elementals. Nocturnal Strike during Darkness against an elemental has a 40% hit chance.

4. Pets other than roaches and beetles seem to survive sometimes when Apocalypse is used. It has 100% hit chance so I'm not sure how it can miss.

Apocalypse will always miss if the pet who castet Apocalypse is dead.

5. Other moves that have 100% hit chance do not actually hit. No weather effects or debuffs to change hit chance and yet they still miss.

If you're lower level you might still miss because of level.
If you opponent uses something like dodge you're 100% attack will not hit.

[Papazol]

1. Elementals ignore weather effects so they aren't blind during darkness, dont resive bonus damage from lighting storm etc. Out of this I didnt remember any case nocturnal strike missed in pvp in last 50 pet battles - I play with 2 ravens.
2. Bonus damage from faster/slower/lesser etc. conditions is an another atack in same turn, So you can simply miss one part of it and hit with just "half" damage.
3. Some effects block opponent move this turn if they go first. First of all this is humanoid Backflip atack with 100% interupt chance, and horn atack with 50% chance. Interupt doesnt mean what opponent will be stuned for next turn. He loses his move this turn and interupt multiround atacks. Also dont sure if it works on critters at all.
4. Apocalypse doesnt hit if caster already dead.
5. Need examples 100% hit atacks, what didnt hit. Also you dont need debuff to miss, it also may be absorbed dummy from Decoy or another simmilar effects http://www.warcraftpets.com/abilities/filter/?filter=block_effects

[Teacake]

One more question about PvP battles and the rewards for winning them. Are we supposed to get something with each win?

The satisfaction of a battle well fought.

Lesser charms and stones are random rewards. A non-max-level character will also get player xp only if the match lasted longer than 1 minute. Apart from that, the weekly 10 wins quest gives you a bag, and there are two achievements that give rewards at 250 and 1,000 wins (a pet and a title, respectively).

[Gromagrim]

Stones are occasional rewards. Player XP (for sub-90 players) and Charms (for level 90 players) Should occur every time.

XP isn't awarded if the opponent forfeits, unless the battle has been going on for a certain length of time.

[Violetfemme]

The satisfaction of a battle well fought.

That too!

I'll have to pay closer attention to my non-90's XP bars and see if they get XP every time even if it does not show up on the screen.

[Tahsfenz]

People keep bringing up the elementals with darkness, which is true, but it should be noted, Nocturnal Strike in its current form still has a10% miss chance due to YOU being blinded. Whether this is a bug or intended is the subject of debate.

[Violetfemme]

Hmm, I will really have to try out my original darkness/blindness team again and note what the move fails against. It could easily have been an elemental as it missed twice in the same battle. I don't like the other Blindness option (Flash, I think it's called) as it only lasts 2 rounds and I may lose the opportunity to switch in a new pet and use my nocturnal strike by the time it wears off, so it's worth giving my darkness team another couple of tries.

Update (about 20 mins later): I used my darkness team twice and both times my nocturnal strike actually worked during darkness (the tooltip said 40% hit chance). The opponents were NOT elementals in either battle.

Also noticed during these battles, that my level 87 shammy did gain XP each win (even though the text of XP gained did not show up on the screen) It was about 120 or 140k each time and I even managed to get a Flying Stone from one of the battles that also gave XP!

[Reapersbeast]

This is just another example of how Poorly thought out the pvp/turn based strategy of pet battles really is! They do not have "Common sense mechanics" like if a spell says 100% THAT SHOULD MEAN 100%!! If they can't design the game to have changing tooltips(which would be Amazingly cool and ideal for Pet battles!) then they NEED to word them properly at least!

The order in which Most of the abilities take effect is Completely broken!! Like if a spell puts a debuff on a target That Debuff should take priority over a defensive ability that has already been put on the target Mainly because the offensive ability/debuff was applied last and usually has a shorter duration, And since it's turn based strategy Last goes first when compiling damage! And what makes it worst is because in some instances that is Exactly how it works, Example being your instance above, Nocturnal strike hits 100% of the time if blinded, But the latest ability used was Darkness, blinding all targets and giving 10% miss chance to all spells! So it's overriding the spells natural ability to hit 100% when blinded Because it's blinded! Which makes NO SENSE AT ALL!

Especially when other spells don't work that way! Like I've said before pet battles are such a disappointment ! Which sucks because I had such High hopes for them!