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Select pet types may receive new passives in Pet Battles

Alex Ziebart
Owner
Updated ·4 min read
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Blizzard community managers Nakatoir and Crithto have recently announced potential changes coming to Elemental, Aquatic, Critter, and Magic passive abilities in the Pet Battle system. The Pet Battle system is still relatively new compared to the 8-year-old World of Warcraft and very much in flux. As pets and their abilities are buffed and nerfed, the system as a whole needs to adjust to accommodate those changes.

The short version of these proposed changed are as follows:

  • Elementals will lose their immunity to weather, instead taking reduced damage on their first round in play

  • Critters will become completely immune to crowd control rather than reducing their duration to one round

  • Magic pets cannot be dealt more than 35% of their health in one attack, changed from 40%

  • Aquatic pets will reduce damage taken from Damage over Time effects by 50%, up from 25%

Crithto and Nakatoir's full posts can be found behind the cut below.


Crithto
We're going to be buffing some pet passives in a future patch, and elementals are on the list. We feel that the elemental passive is currently too confusing in that it is somewhat ambiguous with regard to direct effects of weather, but not effects that are not directly related to weather. For example, if your opponent has a pet that gains an additional attack in a Blizzard, they will still get the additional attack against your elemental pet. This can feel bad in some cases and we want pet passives to always feel good and useful. We also feel that weather is one of the more fun and synergistic elements of Pet Battles, so at this point in time, we're thinking of redesigning the elemental pet passive along the lines of a ~50% reduction in damage for the turn one is swapped in. Our goal being that we'd rather have a passive in place that increases the strategic depth of elemental pets, and is clear in its intention and functionality. Keep in mind, we're still evaluating the numbers and everything is subject to change, but we'd sincerely appreciate any constructive feedback you may have!

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Hopefully Aquatic pets are on that list too. :)

Indeed, as well as Critters and Magic! Here's what we're thinking and working on at the moment, and again, please share your thoughts and feedback:
Again, everything is subject to further adjustments, but our ultimate goal is to bring all passives up to the power level of some of the current favorites, such as Undead.

  • Aquatic: Harmful DoTs reduced by 50% (up from 25%) Aquatic-types currently reduce the effect of harmful damage over time abilities by 25%. Because few creatures have more than one DOT, this ends up being a less than steller damage reduction over the course of the battle. We feel increasing the effect to 50% should help aquatic pets benefit more from their passive.

  • Critters: Immune to CC completely Critters currently reduce the duration of crowd control effects by one round, which makes fast critters significantly more powerful. We'd like critters of all speeds to benefit equally from their passive, so we're considering making them immune to crowd control effects completely. This would include stuns, roots, and other incapacitating effects.

  • Magic: Cannot be dealt more than 35% of total health in one move (down from 40%) Magic-type creatures currently cannot take more than 40% of their maximum health as damage when struck. When balance changes were made to reduce the damage of some very heavy-hitting abilities, this passive was indirectly nerfed. We're thinking if we buff the effect to 35% of maximum health, that should compensate for previous adjustments.



Nakatoir
We're going to be buffing some pet passives in a future patch, and elementals are on the list. We feel that the elemental passive is currently too confusing in that it is somewhat ambiguous with regard to direct effects of weather, but not effects that are not directly related to weather.

For example, if your opponent has a pet that gains an additional attack in a Blizzard, they will still get the additional attack against your elemental pet. This can feel bad in some cases and we want pet passives to always feel good and useful. We also feel that weather is one of the more fun and synergistic elements of Pet Battles, so at this point in time, we're thinking of redesigning the elemental pet passive along the lines of a ~50% reduction in damage for the turn one is swapped in. Our goal being that we'd rather have a passive in place that increases the strategic depth of elemental pets, and is clear in its intention and functionality.

Keep in mind, we're still evaluating the numbers and everything is subject to change, but we'd sincerely appreciate any constructive feedback you may have!