Along the way of getting sucked into pet collecting and battling, I read up on the pet stats, and found out that 3 (B/B) had the lowest amount of stat points allocated.
Since then I've been avoiding that stat type religiously, whenever I have a choice. And I wonder if I'm just being silly. I'm pretty casual about battling; I'm not a PvP'er, although I would like to conquer all the PvE challenges someday. Does the stat type really matter too much for me?
Is avoiding 3 (B/B) illogical?
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Melmo
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Re: Is avoiding 3 (B/B) illogical?
A B/B pet always has 2 higher stats than its purebreed counterparts (H/H, P/P, S/S) so B/B is not a bad breed, it's just the one with the fewest total points to share. I have a few B/B's that I prefer over some other breeds of those particular pets because the B/B makes more sense with that pet's moveset. Then again maybe that extra little power isn't enough to make you prefer it over an H/S breed for example. Usually if it's a pet with B/B or P/B as the only choices I'll go with the P/B because that extra little power makes me feel a little more secure. But the B/B will be faster than the P/B. So it all really comes down to what you prefer as a stat.
One pet I recommend getting in B/B is the Crystal Spider. And if you fight with any of the B/Bs in your collection and you're just not happy with it, try a different breed. For the most part I'm not too picky, because all the cats have the same moves as do the rats/snakes/roaches... there's no point in getting rid of a rare B/B if you already have other rats/snakes/roaches who all do the same stuff. I have an S/S roach and a P/S roach, all the other roaches I didn't care as long as it was rare
One pet I recommend getting in B/B is the Crystal Spider. And if you fight with any of the B/Bs in your collection and you're just not happy with it, try a different breed. For the most part I'm not too picky, because all the cats have the same moves as do the rats/snakes/roaches... there's no point in getting rid of a rare B/B if you already have other rats/snakes/roaches who all do the same stuff. I have an S/S roach and a P/S roach, all the other roaches I didn't care as long as it was rare
Re: Is avoiding 3 (B/B) illogical?
When I started out I just tried to get each wild pet, hopefully a rare but since you couldn't really check the quality until you captured it I didn't mind as much(at the time). After getting more experience and finding this site I of course "needed" to get all pets in rare, by now you could see the quality before you captured the pet. Next step was when I started to PvP, not until I had lots of games under my belt did I feel that Breeds started to become a factor. Nowdays I can go out and hunt for a particular breed just to check if I can make use of the percieved advantage.
For PvE breeds are much less likely to matter. Only in certain rare cases I guess you would really need a specific breed.
PvP here is where I find you can make best use of different breeds. Yes B/B might have less stats but that is not saying they are worthless. An often discussed example is H/H vs B/B Unborn Val'kyrs, B/B is faster than H/H which some think is an advantage.
I don't think you need to go out of your way to avoid B/B breeds until you really feel that this certain pet would be more useful with another breed. And many of the wild pets you will probably never actually do battles with. If you get 15 different Moths at least one will be of a breed you like, no real need to avoid B/B on every single Moth you will capture.
For PvE breeds are much less likely to matter. Only in certain rare cases I guess you would really need a specific breed.
PvP here is where I find you can make best use of different breeds. Yes B/B might have less stats but that is not saying they are worthless. An often discussed example is H/H vs B/B Unborn Val'kyrs, B/B is faster than H/H which some think is an advantage.
I don't think you need to go out of your way to avoid B/B breeds until you really feel that this certain pet would be more useful with another breed. And many of the wild pets you will probably never actually do battles with. If you get 15 different Moths at least one will be of a breed you like, no real need to avoid B/B on every single Moth you will capture.
Re: Is avoiding 3 (B/B) illogical?
There are some pets that benefit from the BB more than others. See, in my personal opinion, it comes down to speed in the end. Lets say you have a S/S pet with a speed reduction/speed buff. And lets say the other breed options are B/B and H/P. Now you already are fast, but maybe not as fast someone else, BUT with the speed Increase/Reduce, you end up with say (imaginary number from nowhere) 386 speed. This is definitely faster than then enemy, but also a bit of a waste of stats. And perhaps the Speedless Breed does not have enough, shy of say, 10-15 speed to beat the 325 mark. In such a case, B/B works best since the speed is not wasted, and you get more power and health than the S/S one. My general rule of thumb is that a Pure X/X Breed is best and should be used above the others, but there are always exceptions to this, such as the Direhorn and Val'kyr (though I hate to admit the B/B is "better" for her)
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Kpb321
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Re: Is avoiding 3 (B/B) illogical?
For big questions that are hard to answer like this I think it is helpful to break it down into smaller simpler questions that help you answer the big question.
1) Is B/B a bad breed? In general, I'd say yes because as you noted the it gets less total bonus stats on top of them being spread out so less likely to provide a meaningful difference but as others have noted this isn't always the case. Sometimes the situation or limits on available breeds mean that B/B might be the best option you have right now. WoD may change that if breeding does make it in and allows you to change the breed on most if not all pets.
2) How hard is it to get a different breed? This primarily applies to Wild Pets where you might be trying to get lucky on getting both the quality of the pet and the breed but even that still depends on the situation. How many different breeds are available? How common is the pet? How spread out is the pet? These all affect how hard it will be to capture a rare wild pet in the breed you want. There are also some dropped pets that can be hard to get period that do come in different breeds so you may want to just take what you get. DM Rabbit or SpineClaw for example.
3) How unique is the pet? There are 20 different moths with most of those having the exact same move set. Once I've got a few H/S, S/S or P/S months do I really need one more of any particular type? There are a lot of other pets where they may have a unique move set or only one or two other pets with the exact same move set.
4) How unique are the breed(s) available to this type of pet? Going back to Moths there is only one moth available as P/P, the yellow moth, but H/S, H/P, S/S and even H/H are all available on several different moths.
If you answer all these questions for your particular situation it should be easy to answer your big question of is it worth avoiding B/B breed pets. Using the example of the Yellow Moth again I'd say yes that B/B is a bad breed and I do have options for other breeds. It is really easy to get a different breed as the moth is 50 silver from a vendor with unlimited supply so I just need to keep buying them until I get the breed I want. Quick to do and very low cost. It does require a stone to upgrade to blue quality but there is no way to avoid it. P/P is unique to that moth and can be a very good breed. That leads to a very obvious answer that P/P is the breed to get and settling for a B/B Yellow Moth would be a bad idea.
On the other hand. I've got a B/B blue moth because I didn't bother to get H/B version. I've also got a H/B forest moth and S/B oasis moth because they were some of the last wild moths I captured at rare quality and by that time I literally had 2 or 3 other moths that were S/S, H/S, H/P or what ever other better breed they might have been available in so I was happy to just get a rare and didn't care what breed it was. In an odd way I actually preferred the H/B and S/B breeds as it gave me more variety in case there was that specific situation where S/B did end up being just fast enough to go first and be the best option.
This also works well if you are trying to decide if you want to "upgrade" the breed on a pet before leveling it. My rare Ashwing Moth and Skywisp Moth are both B/B and since they both have unique move sets I'll probably end up trying to capture a better breed before I do the little bit of leveling needed to get them to 25. Given the difficulty in getting to the Skywisp moth to battle it most of the time I wouldn't be at all surprised if I ended up stoning the green P/S one I've already got rather than capturing one wild.
1) Is B/B a bad breed? In general, I'd say yes because as you noted the it gets less total bonus stats on top of them being spread out so less likely to provide a meaningful difference but as others have noted this isn't always the case. Sometimes the situation or limits on available breeds mean that B/B might be the best option you have right now. WoD may change that if breeding does make it in and allows you to change the breed on most if not all pets.
2) How hard is it to get a different breed? This primarily applies to Wild Pets where you might be trying to get lucky on getting both the quality of the pet and the breed but even that still depends on the situation. How many different breeds are available? How common is the pet? How spread out is the pet? These all affect how hard it will be to capture a rare wild pet in the breed you want. There are also some dropped pets that can be hard to get period that do come in different breeds so you may want to just take what you get. DM Rabbit or SpineClaw for example.
3) How unique is the pet? There are 20 different moths with most of those having the exact same move set. Once I've got a few H/S, S/S or P/S months do I really need one more of any particular type? There are a lot of other pets where they may have a unique move set or only one or two other pets with the exact same move set.
4) How unique are the breed(s) available to this type of pet? Going back to Moths there is only one moth available as P/P, the yellow moth, but H/S, H/P, S/S and even H/H are all available on several different moths.
If you answer all these questions for your particular situation it should be easy to answer your big question of is it worth avoiding B/B breed pets. Using the example of the Yellow Moth again I'd say yes that B/B is a bad breed and I do have options for other breeds. It is really easy to get a different breed as the moth is 50 silver from a vendor with unlimited supply so I just need to keep buying them until I get the breed I want. Quick to do and very low cost. It does require a stone to upgrade to blue quality but there is no way to avoid it. P/P is unique to that moth and can be a very good breed. That leads to a very obvious answer that P/P is the breed to get and settling for a B/B Yellow Moth would be a bad idea.
On the other hand. I've got a B/B blue moth because I didn't bother to get H/B version. I've also got a H/B forest moth and S/B oasis moth because they were some of the last wild moths I captured at rare quality and by that time I literally had 2 or 3 other moths that were S/S, H/S, H/P or what ever other better breed they might have been available in so I was happy to just get a rare and didn't care what breed it was. In an odd way I actually preferred the H/B and S/B breeds as it gave me more variety in case there was that specific situation where S/B did end up being just fast enough to go first and be the best option.
This also works well if you are trying to decide if you want to "upgrade" the breed on a pet before leveling it. My rare Ashwing Moth and Skywisp Moth are both B/B and since they both have unique move sets I'll probably end up trying to capture a better breed before I do the little bit of leveling needed to get them to 25. Given the difficulty in getting to the Skywisp moth to battle it most of the time I wouldn't be at all surprised if I ended up stoning the green P/S one I've already got rather than capturing one wild.
Re: Is avoiding 3 (B/B) illogical?
Thank you! I appreciate all the thoughtful responses.
Re: Is avoiding 3 (B/B) illogical?
B/B Val'kyr is OP 