Badpathing wrote:the hard numbers in a vacuum show it to under-perform, but you and everyone else knows that most games do not play out this way.
I agree, to an extent. But besides the raw numbers, there are several existing abilities that we can compare fairly directly to Anzu's, e.g. RI, Lucky Dance, etc.
Luciandk wrote:Think the big problem with most buff spells is that you waste time on setup, where you take damage while doing none in return.
Papazol wrote:This buff is worse any similar buff like Evolution
Anzu's biggest problem is that it does nothing up-front, ie you accomplish nothing on the turn you cast it. This is similar to Lucky Dance: Lucky Dance actually gives a higher damage bonus overall when you combo it with Demolish/Cataclysm, but Lucky Dance teams are not particularly competitive because you have to waste turns casting a buff and swapping. By the time you can take advantage of the buff, you are already behind by multiple turns. *If* the buff were overwhelmingly strong, then perhaps this trade-off would be worthwhile. But both Lucky Dance and Anzu's are 'balanced' in a vacuum, ie they provide a benefit that is 'worth' roughly 1 turn. So even if you don't waste a turn to swap, you are still only getting 1 turn of benefit at a cost of 1 turn, and you are waiting 4+ turns to get that benefit. Turns are simply worth too much in pet battles: there isn't time to use abilities that require multiple turns just to break even.
More modern buff/debuff abilities such as Rain Dance, Autumn Breeze, and Evolution include an up-front benefit (heal or damage). This allows these abilities to break even almost as soon as you cast them, and makes them much more attractive than their outdated counterparts like Lucky Dance and Slippery Ice. RI in particular gives you a huge up-front benefit in the form of a free swap.
The original implementation for weathers had a similar problem: they did 0 damage. Consequently, weather was simply never used. Bliz's solution was to add a decent-sized chunk of up-front damage or healing. This led to new problems such as Darkness/Conflag teams being overpowered for a little while (and Sandstorm being overpowered once Anubisath came out), but it did accomplish the goal of getting people to play with weathers.
So, it's disappointing that they've gone back to the outdated team buff model for Anzu's. They clearly wanted to design a neat new ability to go on the CE pet, but they seemingly have failed to learn from all the balancing they did in MoP.
