Help me Beta Test Pets!

[Regillixavatar]

All, I was lucky enough to receive a Beta invite in the last wave (on my birthday no less!) and I was definitely going to spend some time testing out Pet Battles. Does anyone have any good suggestions for what I should test? I have a few ideas to start with listed below and I'll continue to update the OP with other things folks come up with here (in addition to a link to where I post results).

• 1. New 100% Accuracy abilities. Specific attention paid to mean and variance of damage
  2. Remaining low Accuracy abilities. Will see if there if there still is some bad-luck prevention built in
  3. The variation in damage of fixed damage moves (old 100% moves)
  4. Find out what the base miss chance is (if there is one) and how pet level differences changes this

If people would like to see journal entries or screenshots of the new pets (haven't caught any yet but will someday I swear!) I can post those as well.

Help me out guys and gals!

P.S. If anyone else on here also has beta access and keeps similar hours (morning to about midnight Central time) I would loooooove to do some duels to test random stuff

P.P.S. I am logging data on my battles and setting up a database to analyze the data so any big picture quests are welcome

[Kpb321]

I got in on the first wave of beta invites and I'd be happy to do some random testing battles with. I've done some testing in the CT on WoD. There really isn't much in the way of new pets yet.


Add me as a friend if you want kpb#1554

There is also a warcraft pet guild in the beta and anyone in the guild can invite you to it.

[Regillixavatar]

Add me as a friend if you want kpb#1554

There is also a warcraft pet guild in the beta and anyone in the guild can invite you to it.

I just sent you a request but I won't be in game until after work today (around 5:30pm eastern) so we should touch base then. I would also looooooove a guild invite if I catch you online. Since I will /who to look for people, is the guild name just WarcraftPets?

[Kpb321]

I believe it's warcraft pets. I'm generally on Friday nights so you should be able to catch me on line.

[Hermy]

I'm in the Beta too, Hermy#1783.

[Poofah]

There should be 0% base miss chance, and 2% per level difference. The old fixed damage moves should be +/-5% damage range. The new 100% moves should be as follows:

Punch (same as old Punch): 20 dmg +/- 5% (ie 19-21 damage range)
Claw: 21 dmg +/- 20% (ie 16.8-25.2 damage range)
Crush: 22 dmg +/- 30% (ie 15.4-28.6 damage range)

If you feel like testing, here's a list of bugs in 5.4: http://www.warcraftpets.com/community/f ... f=3&t=9397

The first two on that list have been fixed, but the rest haven't. Of particular importance are #s 11 and 12 (situations where Resilience doesn't protect pets from chain-CC), and personally I'm interested in #8 (the bug where Howl causes too much damage against legendary pets).

[Kpb321]

From doing the CT on WoD beta I can easily tell that #8 hasn't changed but I'd argue that it also isn't necessarily a bug. It's additive rather than multiplicative way of handling things but additive isn't inherently wrong. I think it would also mean that the Celestials would be a bit over tuned as Yu'la is about the only one I can think of that has any reliable strategies that don't use that particular feature/bug on the team. Yu'la also happens to be the only one that doesn't have a heal. Wearing down one of the other ones would be pretty challenging with their heals.

[Poofah]

Shattered Defenses says "increasing the damage they take by 100%", but whereas against normal pets it doubles damage, against the legendaries it triples the damage they take (50% normally, 150% with shattered defenses). It leads to a generic 2-pet strategy that trivially beats any legendary pet in 5 turns. It's hard to see that as anything but a bug.

The 4 celestials are all easy with normal strategies, and they can be 2-petted with normal strats too, but we're not encouraged to test out normal strats since there's a high price for failure and Howlbomb is so convenient.

Consider the flipside: how interesting is the WoD legendary pet content going to be if howlbomb works as it does now? We've essentially already beaten it.

[Jerebear]

Actually, the shattered defenses debuff is treated the exact same way on a normal pet as it is on a legendary.

You can also test against a normal enemy with crouch. If you wait for the alpine foxling to crouch and then stampede, you'll do between 20 and 25 damage on the first turn, but once shattered defenses goes up, you'll do between 60-75 damage, which is inline with 1.5x damage (or triple damage as you put it).

However it does make sense if the buffs and debuffs are additive. -50% + 100% = +50%, assuming additive percentages

If the base attack does 40-50 damage, then +50% would be 60-75 damage. I know we are often used to the multiplicative bonuses on player related buffs, but this appears to be an additive bonus system (also remember that in the old days, a lot of player related bonuses used to be additive as well). Pet Experience buffs act the same way (additive instead of multiplicative).

This is consistent with how the legendary pet buff works with shattered defenses. It doesn't appear to be a bug, but possibly a bad design decision.

[Poofah]

It doesn't appear to be a bug, but possibly a bad design decision.

Potato, potato.

I didn't realize Crouch was additive with other percent-based buffs/debuffs -- that's silly too and should be fixed. When percent-based buffs/debuffs operative additively, then order of operations matters, and you get silly results based on the order chosen (which is unpredictable, non-intuitive, and not listed in tooltips). It's almost as if the legendary pet buff is using the shield mechanics, ie subtracting a flat damage amount before other buffs/debuffs take effect.

I really don't think the legendary pets were designed with this little 'feature' taken into account.

[Jerebear]

They probably weren't. The mechanics were in pet battles before they were added. However, I am fairly certain they know it is happening and they haven't decided to change it as of yet.

I'm not sure it is a bug to be fixed though. That's a pretty intentional system. It's been in the game a long time (before pet battles). Doesn't mean it is a great system, but it isn't unexpected. The way they implement it, they make full use of addition's associative property so the order of the debuffs and buffs doesn't matter at all. They don't apply the debuffs one at a time, they do it in bulk, so that no matter what the order, the result comes out consistent. It doesn't matter if crouch comes first or crouch comes last.

Basically they do: base damage *(B1 + B2 -D1 - D2 + ....), which gives the exact same result as base damage *(B1 - D2 -D1 + B2 + ....). That way order of buffs/debuffs won't affect the final result. The shield mechanics are handled differently. This is very easy to test as even with shattered defenses up, if your pet is shielded it doesn't do any damage. The way shields are implemented are:

(base damage - S1 - S2 - ....) * (B1 + B2 -D1 - D2 + ....)

So no matter what the percentage debuffs get to, if a shield reduces base damage to 0, no damage is done.

I'm not saying it is a great system nor that I like it. I actually agree with you that it has annoying implications. I prefer the multiplicative systems myself. However, I do feel that considering it a bug is a bit strong. There's a very different context associated with bugs versus intentional decisions, even if they are bad.

[Poofah]

(base damage - S1 - S2 - ....) * (B1 + B2 -D1 - D2 + ....)

The problem is that in this case, the shield has to multiply to determine how much damage it should subtract. It's doing that before percent-based modifiers, thus it's not shielding 50% of the actual damage, it's only shielding 50% of the pre-buffed damage.

Anyway, I don't care what you call it. If you agree that it's a poor mechanic with negative ramifications for gameplay, then it should be fixed.

[Regillixavatar]

Regarding the new 100% moves I completed the below spreadsheet to compare the old dmg to the current dmg. The one thing that really jumps out is that Expunge's dmg got cut waaaaay down (line highlighted in red). I sent my first tweet in nearly 2 years to point this out too!

http://t.co/0Webq6GyNo

P.S. Looks like Alpha Strike and Pounce got a nice little buff

[Jerebear]

(base damage - S1 - S2 - ....) * (B1 + B2 -D1 - D2 + ....)

The problem is that in this case, the shield has to multiply to determine how much damage it should subtract. It's doing that before percent-based modifiers, thus it's not shielding 50% of the actual damage, it's only shielding 50% of the pre-buffed damage.

Shields (as I am referring to them) don't reduce damage by a percentage but by a fixed value. But for the sake of semantics, in the equation I mentioned

S1 and S2 are fixed damage reductions (stoneskin for example)
B1 and B2 are percentage based increases (shattered defenses for example)
D1 and D2 are percentage based decreases (crouch for example)

Looking back, I picked those letterings poorly.

So I think we are talking about two different things.

There are also some other factors that I didn't include:
Fixed Percentage damage (explode, etc.)
Fixed damage buffs (wild magic, etc.)

I haven't exclusively tested wild magic, but it should be included in with the S1 and S2's area (though as a + rather than a -). Fixed percentages like explode are just tacked on outside of any modifiers.

To alleviate (hopefully) any confusion, I'll relabel the equation:

Base = damage the attack normally does
FV = Fixed Percentage Attacks (Explode, etc)
FD = Fixed value debuff (wild magic, etc.)
FB = Fixed value buff (stoneskin, etc.)
PD = Percentage value debuff (shattered defenses, etc.). Values in decimal (50% is 0.5)
PB = Percentage value buff (crouch, etc.). Values in decimal (50% is 0.5)

FV + [(Base + FD - FB) * (1 + PD - PB)]

Though I haven't tested FD to verify that. So if you talk about a 50% "shield" it will be in the PB catagory. Everything that I have tested seems consistent with that model. If you have multiple PB's they can be in any order (same goes for any of the variables...order doesn't matter because they are grouped associatively)

[Dakender]

I'm willing to let ya tromp my pets hehehe, here is some info for ya... I have 2 of the new pets, and actually have 2 of the Zomstrok. Can give ya one for some testing.

Horde Guild Name: Warcraft Pets
Contact Toon: Datundra
Invite: Any member can invite to guild.
Guild is formed and up and running..... (6 Bank Tabs)

Alliance Guild Name: Allies of Warcraft Pets
Contact Toon: Dakender
Invite: Any member can invite to guild.
Guild is formed and up and running..... (6 Bank Tabs)

Or you can find me by battle net id Dakender#1566 or dakender@gmail.com

[Poofah]

FV + [(Base + FD - FB) * (1 + PD - PB)]

Though I haven't tested FD to verify that. So if you talk about a 50% "shield" it will be in the PB catagory. Everything that I have tested seems consistent with that model.

Yes, FD works that way, leading to comical damage when you combo build turret + black claw + hunting party.

Having PD and PB interact additively rather than multiplicatively is silly, because they're percentage based. For example any percent based damage buffs on the attacker do interact multiplicatively with the defenders buffs/debuffs. If we call an attacker's percent based damage buff APB (for example supercharge) and attacker's percent based damage debuff APD (for example Squawk), then in your equation it would be

(1+APB-APD)*(Base+FD-FB)*(1+PD-PB)

So it's a situation where a "+100% damage taken" debuff on a legendary pet results in 150% damage, but a "+100% damage dealt" buff on the attacker results in 100% damage against the same legendary pet. It's completely non-intuitive and it makes the 'shattered defenses'-type debuffs way too effective.