Quick question about Kovok and Blackfuse Bombling

[Pinrut]

Do these drop in Flex? LFR? I was talking to a friend today about this and he didn't think they did. I know the Warcraft Pets pages for them say that they drop in all 4 raid formats, and Wowhead doesn't seem to say.

Wondering if someone can shed some light on this for me.


Thank you in advance!

[Gilneas]

The only difficulty specific pets this tier are the ones from Sha of Pride (Gooey Sha-ling -- LFR/Flex, Droplet of Y'Shaarj -- Flex/Normal/Heroic). Kovok and the Bombling can drop from any difficulty, just like the non-Primordious ToT pets.

WoWhead probably wouldn't show that, since the wing that they drop in (the 4th) is still unavailable in both Flex and LFR.

[Redacted]

Gilneas is correct.

If the pets was restricted to a certain level of raid difficulty it would be noted on the tooltip like the Gooey Sha-ling, Droplet of Y'Shaarj, Living Fluid or Viscous Horror.

There is the smallest possibility that Blizz messed up and didn't put in the tooltip right but I think that is very very unlikely.

Honestly. Blackfuse Bombling and Kovok can command a high premium because the LFR and Flex are not open yet.
Right now they are 100K-200k easily (depending on server)...once Flex opens next week expect the price to drop as more supply hits the market.

My guess Day one of Flex you will start seeing them for 70-80k..by the weekend 40-50k on those same servers.

When LFR opens on Oct 8th. Day one of LFR easily 20-30k, weekend 15k-20k.

By mid-Nov I suspect <10k for either of them. Low and some medium pop server prices always tend to be higher because there is less supply.

This of course depends on drops rates but it is the same pattern almost all pets have followed with slight variances in the time span. The fact that coin rolls give extra chances is going to help a lot of people get them.

I think the rumor about them only being Normal and Heroic is to keep people comfortable with paying a premium. Most people will probably wait if they know something is going to be 50%-90% off in the near future.

Either that or wishful thinking about how rare the pet will continue to be for one reason or another.

[Luciandk]

Id imagine Kovok staying very high, especially the HP breed as its a supremely nasty pvp pet.

[Gilneas]

Id imagine Kovok staying very high, especially the HP breed as its a supremely nasty pvp pet.

I'd imagine they'll settle into the same range as the ToT pets.

[Redacted]

That really depends on how many show up and stay up in the AH with people trying to constantly undercut each other.

And there a lot of people that don't know anything about breeds and they just look at the lowest price and undercut when they post a pet.

And even the people that know about breeds sometimes get caught. I found a discontinued breed (one of the pets Blizz switched to B/B only a few months back) from a high profile pet trader that he just put up on the AH and kept undercutting the B/B breeds. Not sure he realized which one it was because if he had I would think he would have charged way more for it.

But yes if it is a sought after pet breed combo it can add some cost...but they are not going to be 200k, 100k, or even 50k.

Maybe 15k in 6-8 weeks.

Once again it will be dependent on drop rates and server pop. If the drops rates are super low it will keep them high. But given we already seeing several, I don't think that is the case. More likely than not they will follow the path of the Gooey Sha-ling but not quite as bargain basement.

But only time will tell if I am correct. I may have to eat crow and I am OK with that. Its just that is the pattern that latest releases have started follow. And especially given what happened with the Dandelion Frolicker, it doesn't look like Blizz wants pets that are so rare they cost players 100k-200k in gold. Or another example I have seen multiple Pygmy Direhorns at or below 5k now...and those we were introed before coin rolls got you a extra chance at pets.

I just know I am not in a rush right now and will wait until the last wing of LFR releases to really start looking for mine.

[Redacted]

Gilneas is far more succinct than I am.

[Luciandk]

high end pet battlers will be throwing big money at the right breeds of kovok. But yes, once supply increases from when flex and lfr wing 4 opens, we should see a gradual lowering of prices. Though Ive a feeling Kovok will remain high for a while.

[Azrile]

In 2 months, every pet will be under 5k, including the droplet. The Sha droplet is not the same as vicious horror for three important reasons.

1. The first wing of Flex mode will be faceroll easy in a few weeks when everyone has at least LFR type gear. Even know we can do it in under 50 minutes with very little chance of wiping. Once players have their LFR gear, expect a ton of people to step up to pugging Flex.
2. Flex is cross realm and very puggable. 10N TOT was not. Even a month ago you did not see many 10N TOT pugs
3. Sha is the 4th boss, Primoridous was 7th boss

I don´t think the breeds of Kovok will matter that much. Most of the playerbase has no clue what HH and HP even are, so they will all get listed together. Yeah, pvpers will gobble up the breeds they want first, but it is doubtful people will be listing them for different prices.

None of these pets look daunting to get. Every one of them is available in LFR, with the only exception being available in the very first wing of Flex. I have none of these pets yet, but I am not buying any of them above 5k. We only need to look at history to show how fast the prices drop of these things, and adding Flex mode ( which doesn´t share a lockout with anything) just makes it even more likely they will go lower than even the TOT pets.

[Worgenbait]

I'm on a medium population server, and watch the AH closely. The drop pets will all be under 5k within weeks. I've already gotten plenty at 2-3k. Within a month, so will the crafted pets, though they are high to start with the first batch out. The raid pets will likely stay in the 10-15k range on a medium traffic server, but on a high one, expect to see them drop well-below that once LFR opens up fully. I'm already seeing gooey in the 7k range on Illidan. My advice, you get a Kovak or Blackfuse, sell it now while it's high and buy your own in a few weeks if you haven't gotten a new one by then.

[Poofah]

high end pet battlers will be throwing big money at the right breeds of kovok. But yes, once supply increases from when flex and lfr wing 4 opens, we should see a gradual lowering of prices. Though Ive a feeling Kovok will remain high for a while.

The past few months I've probably spent more time on pet economics than pet battles.

Basically, the pet market is driven almost entirely by supply. Demand seems to be pretty much fixed: I believe this is because the vast majority of consumers are collectors, so everybody wants 1x of each pet. This is most pronounced for high-end pets (>20k) but is true for basically all of them. And since battle-prowess only affects demand and not supply, as a corollary the battle-prowess barely factors into price. As a case in point, look at the ToT drops: Son of Animus, Living Fluid, and Ji-Kun Hatchling are all basically the same price, even though Animus is quite good and unique compared to the others. Along the same lines, the premium commanded by a 'good' breed versus a 'bad' breed is very very small in most cases.*

The exceptions to this are pretty much all low-end pets: I assume that this market is driven by casual pet battlers who want to do the pet PvE content without too much investment. The Celestial Tournament had a major impact on the prices for many old pets that are especially good versus the Celestials, for example. But this effect was restricted to the low-end pets (Zeppelin, Ion-Cannon mechs, Chrominius, etc.--and especially at level 25). Dragon Kite is really good versus Xufu/Zao, for example, but its price barely budged in 5.4. Maybe this is due to lack of awareness, since Dragon Kite doesn't really appear in guides for the Celestials. But I suspect it's mostly due to the price point.

As an aside: selling to this smaller demographic of 'casual' pet battlers is very lucrative. It's the only segment of the pet market with genuine elasticity of demand, which is what creates opportunities for people like us to profit.

Anyway, that's a long way of saying that we are a minority when it comes to the pet market: there aren't enough people who care about a pet's battle-prowess to meaningfully impact overall demand. And, Kovok and Bombling don't appeal to the casual demographic because they're not PvE superstars, and are slightly above the 'casual' price point. It will take time, but they'll end up in the 5-8k range just like the other raid pets.**

* Darkmoon Rabbit is the only case I can think of where SS actually sells for significantly more than the other breeds. Fiendish Imp is a little bit similar, but I've only noticed this for level 25 Imps and the margin is small.

** Unless, for some reason, the end of SoO is brutally difficult or unpopular in lfr.

[Redacted]

** Unless, for some reason, the end of SoO is brutally difficult or unpopular in lfr.

At which point massive whining will ensue...prompting a Windfury of nerf bats.

[Avalee]

Whining is already happening on the 2nd wing that just opened for LFR; It's too long. I spent over 3 hours in that wing and didn't even see the last boss. Too many wipes, too long waiting que, too much trashmobs.
If the rest of the raid is like that, it may put off many players and will surely affect price of raidpets.

[Luciandk]

Mind you, only the first 2 wings have 4 bosses each. The last 2 wings only have 3 bosses each.

Though Im sure wondering how blizzard is going to make those bosses kid-friendly. Malkorok, Spoils and Thok is sure recipe for disaster with the communication needed.

[Ishildur]

Whining is already happening on the 2nd wing that just opened for LFR; It's too long. I spent over 3 hours in that wing and didn't even see the last boss. Too many wipes, too long waiting que, too much trashmobs.
If the rest of the raid is like that, it may put off many players and will surely affect price of raidpets.

That 2nd wing is too long in LFR, and it's almost entirely due to the huge amount of trash mobs. I know they've already reduced some of them in LFR but I'd expect them to reduce them by quite a bit more as the time spent clearing trash was starting to remind me of AQ40. Ok, the reminding me of AQ40 was also the amount of people who got lost when they got ported in to the start and had to be escorted.

[Gilneas]

The first week or two of pretty much any new LFR wing can be rough. People are learning. Its not going to take near as long once people are more familiar with it/have more gear. Plus they've indicated they are considering some changes to Nazgrim. That's probably the biggest problem, though the shaman trip raids up too. The shaman are something that people are going to "get" fairly easily I think (much of it is awareness of the mechanics that kill you fast).

Its not really the trash either -- except for the 3rd boss, most of it goes fairly quick. The 2nd boss doesn't even have any trash at all.