Pet-racial strength

[Genome]

Just want to get some feedback from the community on what their idea of the best-to-worst pet racials. I will separate them into three categories; Strong (or extra strength), Middle-of-the-pack, and weak. This isn't to say that a particular racial is "weak" per se under certain circumstances, but as an overall indication of usefulness.

Strong:
Undead (actually extra-strong) - This is an extremely useful racial and can be planned around to be devastating. Has the added perk of the undead being invulnerable for a full round, which speaks for itself. Very few ways to counter it outside of a one round stun or forced swap spell.

Critter (extra strong) - Immune to stun, sleep, and root effects is a great racial, and perhaps the most useful overall as it can completely swing the game plan in your favor throughout the life of the pet.

Flyer - The only reason this isn't extra-strong is that is goes away eventually. Honestly, this ability makes all-flyer type groups feasible and can really negate a lot of setups that should give it fits.

Middle-of-the-pack:
Humanoid - The regen can be a pain to deal with, or a real boon to the user. While it doesn't heal for an inordinate amount of health, it can be the difference (especially in the end when there only two pets left standing), and can be a superb tool to get a "free healer" for backline dmg dealers, such as a Imp using Immolate.

Mechanical - Very similar to the Undead racial, but in my opinion, a weaker variant as they can still take dmg on rebirth. Can be very strategic with things like a clutch Repair, but ultimately, it's ranking is hurt by the fact that it revives the pet with only about enough health for one more hit, and repeat attacks can still finish out and dmg the mech after the rez.

Dragonkin - This ability can be devastating, or useless depending on the opposing team's makeup. This racial is easily juked with a force swap, dodge, or stun.

Aquatic - 50% less dmg from DoT's is fairly strong, but only if the other player is using DoTs. Because the queue is over-saturated with Valks, this racial can almost be placed in the strong category just because of that.

Weak:
Beast - Dealing 25% dmg below half-health is nice and all, but once your are below half-health as a beast, you are likely 2 hits away from death at best. If you are on a slower beast (which many are), this means about one hit with 25% bonus dmg.

Magic - While this racial sounds very useful on paper, it really isn't anything too special. In essence, it means the magic pet can die in three hits instead of two. For instance, without mitigation, a slime with 1400 health will be dead in three Demolishes, even with the racial. It does come in handy for things like Surge of Power, though and makes magic pets a good choice to soak up big attacks if you suspect they are coming (like a SoP after a Howl for example).

Elemental - To me, easily the weakest racial. Not taking into account the multiple bugs discussed realting to this racial, it is pretty much the only racial that is not going to be a factor in 100% of your fights. If there is no weather to ignore, then this racial does nothing for you. It can be useful for things like Burning Earth (no dmg), Darkenss (no Blindness), or Sandstorm (no accuracy reduction), but even taking those into consideration, I believe that Elementals got the shaft when it comes to racials.

Thoughts?

[Astraldr0p]

Undead is really strong, god knows how many times I've won (and lost) just by the racial alone.

As for elemental, there have been a lot of Idols and Gilnean Ravens in my team so I place them stronger than most. A Jademist Dancer, for example, given rain dance + steam vent can still two-three shot an idol and it doesnt have to worry about sandstorm.

[Nagflar]

Beast - Death Adder hatching Super strong in PVP .

Jademist Dancer- Glass canon in PVP.

Tiny Snow man- can take out idol in few hit .

Tiny harvester - Demolish + extra plating - awesome pvp pets. due to demolish bug hit over 70%

Emperor Crab - Strong tank + decent damage .

Magical Crawdad . Durable + super healing

qiraji-guardling , stun, crush, sandstrom. Anti DOT and Good CC

they weak ? i dont think so

[Luciandk]

To Naglflar he was talking of the power of the racials, not pets in the family.

I think you underate the flying racial. Sure theres not as many interesting pets in the family as others, but come the WoD preorder sale the Dread Hatchling should be the posterboy for flyers. With its P/P breed and popular combo of Call Darkness and Nocturnal Strike. Its going to be a -VERY- hard hitting pet, delivering its payload fast thanks to the racial.

The Yellow Moth is after all a popular flyer because its one of the few flyers able to have a P/P breed and thusly hitting very powerfully while being inately fast.


I also think you undervalue the beast racial. Theres 2 pets in particular that makes great use of it.
Death Adder Hatchling and Xu-Fu.

DAH using Vicious Fang, Cower and Blinding Poison. Thanks to its skyhigh speed, the snake can pop Cower to reduce incomming powerhits and with liberal use of Blinding Poison its incredibly durable and able to survive for a long time at sub 50% life and enjoying the damage buff, while it builds Vicious Fang up to a nasty-powerful hitter.

Xu-Fu spams spirit claws until starting to get low, prowling just as he gets knocked under 50% life and hitting feed. Boosted by both prowl and the beast bonus to heal the pet to full and delivering a nasty hit.


But yes, I agree both flying and beast are far more situational racials.

[Vek]

I think you are a bit off in the comparisons. For example, Dragonkin racial is easily juked. Then I just must say that the Undead racial is even easier to juke, since it is only one time and after that the pet is dead while the Dragonkin racial can be applied over and over.

Undead: But I do agree that the Undead racial is very strong, essentially a bonus turn. And if you just go head to head with another pet chances are that they will die on the same turn, but the undead pet will live for another turn and either get a head start against the next pet or if it was the last two pets actually win the fight. That said your opponent will likely know when the undead racial will be applied and you can't do much other than an attack. Since your opponent knows you can't be hurt they could take this turn to do something else instead, heal/avoid/stun/blind/set up a buff. Best counter to this racial though is a switch move, and that you actually kill the pet with the switch move so that the racial will be wasted in the back line.

Critter: Yes very useful, but still can get sleeped by Moths... must be a bug. But critters in general seem to see much less playtime than other pet families(perhaps except magic). This racial is good since you can switch in a critter if you see a delayed stun. But your opponent can also avoid this racial by not using stun/sleep/roots, but if your opponents plan needs these moves then the racial becomes much more valuable.

Flyer - Speed is great tactical advantage, and birds have this more than most. I believe this is a very balanced racial. Also useful with healing teams or like Pterrodax Hatchling, since you can heal back up to above 50% and get the bonus back.

Humanoid - Amongst the humanoids this is very hit or miss. Some, like you said, heal from back line and others like Anubisath Idol has such a high health pool that the heals are bigger and coupled with sandstorm shield makes them even more durable. Other humanoids does not nearly get any benefit at all from this racial, heals are just too small.

Mechanical - Yes similar to the undead racial but it has both advantages and disadvantages. Disadvantages: If your opponent has multi hit move or you got dots on you you might not even get to use that extra turn since you don't get immune to attacks like the undead. Advantages: If you plan around it and get some repair or wish in you essentially get a second life, and you can back line the pet and perhaps heal again. This the undead raical can't do.

Dragonkin - In it's current incarnation I find this very useful. After you get your opponent to below 50% it can be pretty much game over if they don't juke it. That being said it does not seem to be able to be applied two turns in a row, luckily. I just don't think the ability is very clear when it activates, it seems that as soon as the opponent is below 50% any attack you do will activate the racial. It also activates when pets in back line gets hurt, so if you have dots or cyclone or other AoE attack that can hurt a back line pet that is below 50% the racial will activate even though the active pet might be 100%.

Aquatic - Good balanced racial, but since 5.4 I think I have faced a total of 1 DoT heavy team, so right now it is mostly used as a counter to Valks(which on the other hand there is an abundance of).

Beast - Yes, 25% is a bit of a risk. But you can increase this with abilities like Crouch. I love this with Scalded Basilisk Hatchling that can really put the hurt to your opponent after 25%. The S/S death adder attacks are actually pitifully weak until it hits 25%.
Other beasts with go-first moves also benefits nicely from the racial, direhorns/dimetardon.

Magic - I never get any use of this in PvP. No sane opponent would use a 100-150% damage booster vs a magic pet. I only find it useful when taking a level 1 up against a trainer to level it. The level 1 will take like 40 dmg from a lvl 25 pet.

Elemental - Yea pretty much only No Blindness from Darkness is useful.

[Vek]

As a side thought. I think that the Undead racial also feels powerful/useful since it really does not require much thought, it will always activate. As with most easy to use strong things(certain popular pets etc) they will be considered a bit on the powerful side.

[Luciandk]

Stuns are the bane of undead indeed. One well placed stun or other CC effect can totally null the undead advantage.

And Vek, the beast racial activates when below 50% life, to gain 25% damage.


I think Chi-chi is a better healing flyer. Not remotely as fragile. A Hot heal it can cast and keep running and a choice in evasion skill. The Pterrordax have too much wasted speed and too little life imo.


Edit: Regarding the Mechanical racial. Look at Son of Animus, one of the few mechs with healing ability. With a well placed Siphon Anima, it can get back into the game after failsafe pops.

[Genome]

I also think you undervalue the beast racial. Theres 2 pets in particular that makes great use of it.
Death Adder Hatchling and Xu-Fu.

DAH using Vicious Fang, Cower and Blinding Poison. Thanks to its skyhigh speed, the snake can pop Cower to reduce incomming powerhits and with liberal use of Blinding Poison its incredibly durable and able to survive for a long time at sub 50% life and enjoying the damage buff, while it builds Vicious Fang up to a nasty-powerful hitter.

Nice points that you made Luciandk, but there is a caveat to this one; I do not believe that I have faced more than one DAH running with Cower since I have started pet battling . From what I have observed, DAH users tend to play it cookie-cutter 99% of the time (1/1/2). They remind me of Valks, Direhorns, Fossilized Hatchliings, and Murk in this regard.

Dragonkin - It also activates when pets in back line gets hurt, so if you have dots or cyclone or other AoE attack that can hurt a back line pet that is below 50% the racial will activate even though the active pet might be 100%.

You make some great points about pet racials Vek. I did not realize that the Dragonkin racial kicked in for backline dmg as well. With a Cyclone running Dragonkin, this could make for some serious dmg output.

Aquatic - Good balanced racial, but since 5.4 I think I have faced a total of 1 DoT heavy team, so right now it is mostly used as a counter to Valks(which on the other hand there is an abundance of).

Sadly, this is true. I do face one serious DoT team occasionally who always users a Macabre Marionette/Gulp Frog/Scourged Whelpling, and the Aquatic racial shines here. Unfortunately, about all the Aquatic racial is used for anymore is Valk-countering.

Magic - I never get any use of this in PvP. No sane opponent would use a 100-150% damage booster vs a magic pet. I only find it useful when taking a level 1 up against a trainer to level it. The level 1 will take like 40 dmg from a lvl 25 pet.

Oh, they normally don't "mean" to use it on the Magic pet. It is usually relying on the other player to be smelling blood and pounding on the Super-High-Dmg-Move and not expecting the other player to swap in the Magic pet to soak the hit

[3wd]

The undead racial is superior than any other racial in my opinion.

Its just not only about the racial itself but the way how most of the undead pet had been designed - very low speed and high HP.

Since the undead racial basically will ignore your opponent's attacking speed, that means speed in most cases are irrelevant to the undead pet, having them in very low speed meaning they will have more points to spend on HP or power, that's the advantage.

Dragonkin's racial got a huge buff in this (or maybe last) patch, before the changes, onyx dragonling is a joke in PVP, but now it became a much vialble pvp pet and the netherwhelp is just a killer in pvp.

[Vek]

And Vek, the beast racial activates when below 50% life, to gain 25% damage.

Silly me.

I did not realize that the Dragonkin racial kicked in for backline dmg as well. With a Cyclone running Dragonkin, this could make for some serious dmg output.

Actually it seems that it does not have to be the Dragon itself that does the back line damage, only that the dragon is active while something else does the damage, like a dot or some other delayed move like CoD.

[Poofah]

If mech/humanoid are the balance point, then the racial seems balanced to be worth roughly 1 extra turn in a 5 turn fight, which is roughly the same as 20% health (see [url=http://www.warcraftpets.com/community/forum/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=2765]here[/url] for more detail, but be warned that it is very long). Ie the mech rez gives you a free 20% health, and the humanoid racial gives you 4% health per turn if you attacked successfully, which is 20% health in a 5 turn fight.

Aquatic: this is worth 20% health *if* 40% of the opponent's damage comes from DoTs. In a world ruled by Valks, that's true reasonably often, but in previous patches this was pretty worthless. Also, aquatics' resistance to UD damage contributes a lot to their anti-Valk power: the racial alone wouldn't be nearly as impressive.

Beast: this is worth 20% of the opponent's health *if* you can get off 4 average attacks with the passive active. If your beast lasts 5 turns, you'd only expect to get 2-3 attacks, so this isn't that great. A select few beasts make really good use of this, though. Direhorns and Zandalari Raptors have speed debuffs and/or priority moves, so they can stack a lot of power while still going first, giving the racial a lot more value. And pets with CC/avoidance such as Scalded Basilisk Hatchling can stick around for a while at low health, getting a lot of extra turns with the +25%. SS Death Adder Hatchling is absolutely brutal: he has 260 power but with the +25% up, he hits as though he had 330 power.

Critter: I think this is actually rather weak. Consider a generic stun such as Crystal Prison. This costs a turn to stun your opponent, with a 5 round cd. If you're slower, this is 1 turn for 1 turn, which is neutral; if you're faster, then it's 1 turn for 2 turns, ie you gain 1 extra turn out of 5. So *if* your critter is slower, *and* the opponent chooses to use a stun, then you have gained 1 turn out of 5, ie 20% health. But critters generally rely on speed, so using a slow critter is not common in pvp. And the opponent can always choose to use another ability instead of the stun. So this racial only measures up to 20% health in fairly limited circumstances.

Elemental: totally agree, this racial is terrible. Weathers themselves have to be balanced, so they typically provide ~20% health worth of value over 5 turns. So the *most* you can ever get out of the elemental racial is 1 turn/20% health. But this never happens, because weathers' effects are almost always split between negatives for your pet and positives for the opponent -- e.g. Lightning Storm procs, bonus damage from Cleansing Rain, etc. Elementals aren't immune to these positive opponent effects, so they never get full value. And of course the racial isn't relevant if there's no weather, which isn't at all rare. And of course it's bugged with Sandstorm and incorrectly prevents the shield effect on the elemental. So it's terrible.

Flying: again I think you've overvalued this. Most pets derive value from speed by dealing damage first: this allows them to deal the killing blow before the opponent, which is worth 1 turn/20% health in a 5 turn fight. For this type of pet, the flying passive is pretty useless, because by the time turn 4/5 rolls around, they will be below 50% health. So they don't receive a benefit on the turn where speed matters most. The only time this is really good is with high-power low-speed pets with big damage and CC, such as Yellow Moth. And even then, the impressive damage drops to well below-average as soon as your moth drops below 50% health.

[Luciandk]

To Poofah: What would you say regarding the upcomming Dread Hatchling? A 337 power flyer with Call Darkness and Nocturnal Strike. I would call it a superb flyer playing well with its racial. Possibly the poster boy for the flying family..

Pet info
https://twitter.com/TheCrafticus/status/426805485547704320

[Vek]

Dread Hatchling has a lot of health for such a strong bird. I think it could be even more useful to go with anti-human and consume corpse, not sure what is the second ability in the third slot(Caw from Ji-Kun Hatchling?). Since this guy is really slow for a bird it would be quite useful to have consume corpse with that high health pool. As soon as it looses the racial 244 speed will make it suffer, though it seems none of it's abilities are speed dependant.

I often use 341 power Imperial Eagle Hatchling or the Azure Crane Chick. The eagle speed is imperative to handle rabbits and death adders, it also makes Lift-Off easier to use. Azure Crane Chick benefits from the speed using Quills, and when speed buff is over Surge is there instead, so the low 244 speed is not used as much. The eagle hatchling suffers a great deal from even faster birds, like the Crow, and I can see the Dread Hatchling also having trouble with them, even though the Dread Hatchling hits are stronger. Still the Dread Hatchling looks like a very strong pet to come.

[Kpb321]

Poofah that is an interesting way to look at things and try to bring some objective numbers to what would seem like a completely subjective evaluation and I think it does illustrate why the undead racial is so powerful. It often times leads to 2 extra rounds of attack which is effectively 40% extra health or more. It also means that speed isn't important for that last round as they are always going to get those attacks off which works well with most undead pets being of the Hps and Power varieties.

I've also always been a little meh about the flying racial. It can definitely be handy for PvE when it is the only way to be faster than a epic or legendary pet and is why a single moth can solo No-No with a little luck but in PvP it just doesn't work well imo. Either you need to be faster than your opponent and are going s/s anyway which minimizes the benefit from the racial or you only have it for half the fight and loose out on that killing blow and only get extra dmg from something like alpha strike for two or 3 rounds out of the 5 rounds of combat. Maybe that is enough for you to kill the opponent in 4 rounds instead of 5 but you can't know ahead of time. It really feels like the only time the flying racial is really good is to counter your opponents flying pet.

[Poofah]

What would you say regarding the upcoming Dread Hatchling?

Definitely an impact pet. Darkness+Nocturnal Strike is 1250 damage, so it will 3-shot a lot of things while often still going first on turn 3. Alternatively, you could go for Consume Corpse, which is slightly interesting because it would let him regain the flying passive with a decent-sized heal. Chi-Chi has a similar toolkit but is kind of underwhelming, so I don't expect too much from this moveset. Consume Corpse is a much bigger heal though, so there's at least some potential.

Realistically, I expect people are just going to play this as a better version of Crow/Raven, with the added benefit of a possible UD attack in slot 1. Kind of boring, especially because the new ability (Anzu's Blessing) is marginally useful and will be skipped most of the time, at least as it is currently.

why the undead racial is so powerful. It often times leads to 2 extra rounds of attack which is effectively 40% extra health or more.

Totally agree. I ran out of time but will probably address the other 5 later. You are spot on -- the UD racial is completely out of line with the others.

[Poofah]

Magic -- this is pathetically weak, and probably worse than Elemental. It provides literally no benefit in most fights. First, limiting damage to 35% is not impressive when average attacks hit for 20% health per turn, and even long-cooldown nukes such as Call Darkness and Deep Freeze hit for 30%. The only time the magic passive even triggers is for things such as Minefield (40%), Surge of Power (50%), Ghostly Bite (40%), Wind-Up (45%), Deep Breath (50%); and even then, it doesn't prevent the damage, it only shaves a bit off the top. Second, the limit is 35% damage per hit, not per turn. So for example Conflagrate is 40% total damage (when burning), but it completely bypasses the racial because it's split into 30% and 10% hits. It is basically impossible to get 20% health worth of benefit from this, unless your opponent purposely misplays -- for example if they try to kill you with just Wind-Up, your magic pet will survive 6 turns instead of 5.

Dragonkin -- very similar to Beast, just with the numbers swapped around. This gives you a total of 1 extra turn/20% health if you can get 2 buffed attacks. That's generally a bit easier than getting 4 beast-buffed attacks, and you can game the system by hitting low-health backrow pets with AoEs or DoTs. Just like the beast racial, it's not too hard to counter the buffed attacks with avoidance/CC (or simply killing the dragonkin off), but when it works it can be really brutal. For example if PP Nexus Whelpling hits a low-health backrow pet with Arcane Storm, the following Mana Surge is 1080 damage. If Lil' Deathwing can trigger the racial with Cataclysm on turn 1 (850 damage, 50% accuracy), he can Call Darkness for 850 on turn 2.

Undead -- I think there's no debate that the UD racial is overpowered.

Since the undead racial basically will ignore your opponent's attacking speed, that means speed in most cases are irrelevant to the undead pet, having them in very low speed meaning they will have more points to spend on HP or power, that's the advantage.

Exactly, and this is bad for two reasons. The UD racial is worth 1 turn if your UD is faster, and 2 turns if slower. So first of all, the racial gives 2 free turns, or 40% health -- this is double the benefit of any other racial and is way overpowered. Second, the racial actually rewards you for being slower. The game values 1 power = 1 speed, but this value for speed is only true if going first prevents the opponent from doing damage on their last turn. The choice of investing in speed versus power is supposed to be an interesting decision, but UD get to retaliate on their last turn regardless of speed, so there is no decision any more: stacking power/health is always the right choice.

[Luciandk]

The ud racial is pretty much a reverse dodge, where dodge benefits from being faster than the other pet to get 2 turns of dodge. I suspect its a deep coding issue with how buffs works.


edit: Hrm, had an idea regarding the UD racial.

Once Immortality is triggered, you suffer a 20% damage debuff. Which would make the UD racial less of a fire and forget ability to rely on, and should rein in valkyrs some. Yes, Haunt would suffer if you cast it on your immortal turn, but it would be quite fine if you cast it while healthy. Perhaps it would also encourage more use of Unholy Ascension again as the last turn ability.

To Vek: The slot 3 ability of Dread Hatchling is Anzu's Blessing. A 25% damage buff, teamwide for 5 turns.

To Poofah: If playing the hatchling with Call Darkness and Nocturnal Strike, would it then be more beneficial to swap it to the backrow after the first 2 turns to wait for cds to come up again and preserve flying bonus?

[Poofah]

I suspect its a deep coding issue with how buffs works.

Sort of, yes. The UD racial is a debuff with 1 round duration that prevents the UD from dying, and then kills it when it expires. Buffs/debuffs always expire at end of turn, never in the middle of a round, so the UD always survives the full last round rather than dying before its attack (if slower).

If playing the hatchling with Call Darkness and Nocturnal Strike, would it then be more beneficial to swap it to the backrow after the first 2 turns to wait for cds to come up again and preserve flying bonus?

I'm sure it will sometimes, but sometimes the opponent will be within Peck/ShadowSlash range after those first 2 turns, in which case you'd press the issue. And ofc if the opponent has AoE, you have to worry about Hatchling losing his passive on the backrow. But generally, the vast majority of his value is Darkness/NocStrike, so it makes sense to preserve him and recycle these abilities whenever possible.