Swapping is Boring

[Kring]

Swapping is boring. All it does is sacrifice a turn to switch out a pet. I think we could use some more interesting effects with swapping.

[ability]Haunt[/ability] is an exception as it’s an interesting effect added on top of swapping . It let you not only switch your pet but also adds damage, avoidance and AE protection to it. I would love if more spells would be added that combine swapping with an effect.

[ability]Lift-Off[/ability] could be changed to work in a similar way. You cast Lift-Off and your pet flies up high. But instead of “landing” next round it would show you the pet selection like haunt does. You can now select a different pet as active pet and your bird is waiting in the air and being protected from all AE that isn’t an “air effect” ([ability]Cyclone[/ability], [ability]Arcane Storm[/ability]). Whenever you select your bird as primary pet it will enter the front row by landing and doing it’s damage.

[ability]Burrow[/ability] could be changed in the same way. The pet would burrow under the ground and could stay there. It would be protected from AE but underground AE like [ability]Quake[/ability].

I would also love to see some “on swap” effects.

• Whenever this pet becomes the active pet its damage is increase by 50% for the next turn.
• Whenever this pet becomes the active pet all damage is avoided for this round, but the pet is rooted for 4 turns.
• Whenever this pet is backlined it applies a shield to every pet (or your new active pet).
• This pet can attack in the round it became the active pet but it’s damage is decreased by 50% for the next round.
• While on the back row, all damage done to this pet is redirected to the attacker.

[Digem]

Swapping is suppose to have some drawbacks or everyone would do it all the time.
Feign death works a bit like haunt too.
If too many moves allowed a free swap it would be a mess.
Most people hate haunt because it is OP.
No need to add more moves like it.

[Tekulve2012]

I think the swap mechanics are terrific in the game at the moment.

I wouldn't be opposed to a change in the 'racial' advantage of a weak pet group such as the Magic pets. Nobody seems to be a fan of their racial and they are one of the least used pet pvp types (despite being generally strong vs. the popular fliers!)

A racial that would provide some type of backline AoE protection sounds interesting ... any change would have to be well thought out obviously but Id love to see Magic pets get some love before Nov.13th
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I think the 'holding pattern' idea for Liftoff and burrow would be too OP { note that the dmg on these moves is intentionally higher due to being a telegraphed move}

It would also nearly negate shield moves' value ..The exception (and maybe there are others) being Pump that you can save for whenever you want to 'release' it

[JEC]

I don't agree that it is boring. I think it adds an element of strategy that can make it interesting.

Do you swap to try to entice them to bring in a different pet, do you swap to interrupt a set up move, do you swap to maximize your pets against theirs, etc. When you face the teams over and over and start to recognize their move patterns, you can also swap and throw them off their game.

[Jazeel]

In a word NO, this is a bad idea that would create a new nightmare of unbalanced OP teams. It would negate aoe based pets and abilitys in a stroke.

[Kring]

I think the 'holding pattern' idea for Liftoff and burrow would be too OP { note that the dmg on these moves is intentionally higher due to being a telegraphed move}

That's a balance issue. I'm not saying that the damage must stay the same, it could be reduced or even removed. At the moment AE teams are the only teams where no "counter", besides haunt, exists. I think every strategy should have a counter and the ability to make a pet immune to back line damage is something I miss.

We could also have something like stoneform. Would work like feign death but remove all dots and make the pet invulnerable and unable to fight for 4 turns.

I don't agree that it is boring. I think it adds an element of strategy that can make it interesting.

Exactly this. But there's only one team which can afford the high cost of swapping: Raindance. Raindance is an awesome team because of the interaction between the pets. I would like to see a lot more of such teams.

But at the moment it doesn't work for all teams but Raindance because swapping is to expensive. We don't see a lot of teams with Anzus Blessing or Mr. Wiggles. We don't see darkness teams (only pets that can cast and use darkness themselves). We don't see lightning teams.

[Klaital]

Sandstorm is pretty good counter against aoe teams.

Also Stormwing has both call lightning and flock so I would expect the number of lightning storm teams go up quite a bit once warlords goes live.

[Aulrek]

I get what you are saying. A lot of people are making it about balance, when you mean from a game design perspective (balancing comes afterwards). I too believe there is design space in the swapping department. I don't believe the current status is broken which is why people are initially resilient to it. So many abilities are "here is your big move" and "here is your move that isn't as accurate, but hits harder." As with any game, blizzard better use all the design space they can to keep the abilities fresh and new. I think this would be an interesting mechanic to pop up from time to time.

[Jerebear]

Exactly this. But there's only one team which can afford the high cost of swapping: Raindance. Raindance is an awesome team because of the interaction between the pets. I would like to see a lot more of such teams.

There are actually other types of teams that can afford it. If you keep up with Disco's blog much you might run into some of his celestial blessing teams, which are along the same lines as what you are asking for (though obviously doesn't cover all your points).

[Maleric]

Teams designed to use Wish, and healing teams in general, can also often handle the cost of swapping.

IMO the interesting part of swapping is how swaps interact with abilities with longer CDs. You can't avoid losing a turn from swapping, but if you use swaps to maximize use of a bunch of strong abilities with long cooldowns, you can sort of make up for it.

[Poofah]

at the moment it doesn't work for all teams but Raindance because swapping is to expensive.

Absolutely this. You can't plan on strategic swapping because losing a turn is way too big a drawback for all but the most overwhelming combos. But it's not like you can reduce the cost to 0.7 turns. The only way to make swapping more appealing is to make a turn worth less, which means making games longer.

In 5.1, strategic swapping was common. The good teams were things like Arcane Storm with Ghostly Skull, Darkness, Conflag, Blizzard. Games were longer because damage was lower overall, so losing a turn wasn't as costly. And the combos were stronger -- Darkness lasted 9 turns, Ghostly Bite and Conflag were 50 dmg (they're 40 now).

if you use swaps to maximize use of a bunch of strong abilities with long cooldowns, you can sort of make up for it.

True, but you're assuming that such abilities exist. There really aren't any abilities that strategically are worth paying an extra turn, except for Haunt and Cyclone+Raindance (certainly there are abilities that could be worth it tactically, but that's based on the particular situation you find yourself in).

[JEC]

I don't agree that it is boring. I think it adds an element of strategy that can make it interesting.

Exactly this. But there's only one team which can afford the high cost of swapping: Raindance. Raindance is an awesome team because of the interaction between the pets. I would like to see a lot more of such teams.

I disagree. Swapping can work for any number of teams. Obviously it all comes down to the matchups, but to declare that you can win by swapping pets with only one particular kind of team just isn't the case.

[Awq]

That's a balance issue. I'm not saying that the damage must stay the same, it could be reduced or even removed. At the moment AE teams are the only teams where no "counter", besides haunt, exists. I think every strategy should have a counter and the ability to make a pet immune to back line damage is something I miss.

I agree. The AoE heals aren't common enough sadly, and when I tried using AoE heals it did not work for me. I find it sad that my S/S Qiraji Guardling is the pet with the biggest advantage against AoE teams, even when they use BONESTORM.

Exactly this. But there's only one team which can afford the high cost of swapping: Raindance. Raindance is an awesome team because of the interaction between the pets. I would like to see a lot more of such teams.

Pretty much all the teams that i play rely on swapping, to some extent. There is even a team where it is beneficial to swap into a hard counter pet (despite taking 140% damage).

[Poofah]

Obviously it all comes down to the matchups, but to declare that you can win by swapping pets with only one particular kind of team just isn't the case.

Nobody is arguing that. Tactical swapping is common. But strategic swapping is not. Planning your strategy around swapping is difficult because very few combos are actually worth it, and your opponent can anticipate your gameplan and get good matchups. Clonedance and swapping back to your Valk post-Haunt are the only common examples I can think of. Otherwise the combos just aren't good enough. All the other combos are built in to one pet or else they get very little play (e.g. nobody plans on playing Darkness/swap/NocStrike, they play Crow; nobody plans on Arcane Storm/swap/Mana Surge, they play Nexus Whelp; etc.).

[Kring]

You can't plan on strategic swapping because losing a turn is way too big a drawback for all but the most overwhelming combos. But it's not like you can reduce the cost to 0.7 turns.

You can't reduce the cost of swapping to 0.7 turns, but you can add the value of 0.3 turns to swapping. That's what abilities like [ability]Feign Death[/ability] or [ability]Haunt[/ability] do.

A lot of spells do two things:

• [ability]Deflection[/ability] avoids all attacks and goes first.
• [ability]Feign Death[/ability] avoids all attacks and swaps.
• [ability]Haunt[/ability] avoids all attacks if it goes first, avoids all end of turn events, swaps and adds a dot to the enemy.
• [ability]Surge[/ability] Does damage and goes first.

I want more spells that add something to the swap.

Spells like [ability]Launch Rocket[/ability] could be changed to:

First use: Moves to the back row where it creates a rocket.
Second use: Launches the rocket.

[ability]Launch Rocket[/ability] would work like [ability]Feign Death[/ability], but instead of avoiding the damage it would "charge" the nuke. (Or maybe do both, that's again a balancing question.)

I already mentioned what I would to to [ability]Lift-Off[/ability] or [ability]Burrow[/ability] which would have the added advantage of removing a pet from AE damage.