- Supercharge now provides a 125% damage bonus (was 150%), and its cooldown is now 4 rounds (was 3).Very interesting! I'm glad the non-wild color-changers will be making a comeback, and some new ones soon? Or existing non-wild pets will change skins each time they're summoned in 5.2? Can't wait to find out. :)
- Sprite Darter Hatchling – Evanescence and Arcane Blast have swapped ability positions.
- Nether Roach is now a real roach and can now survive the apocalypse.
- Battle Pet Bandages now stack to 25 and are Bind to Account.
- Battle-Stones now have a chance to be awarded from PVP Pet Battles.
- Pets whose color schemes change each time they are summoned have returned. Older pets with this behavior now have it back, as well as some newcomers.
- Pet levels will now only display on the map when pets are tracked.
- Taming the World now lists its reward correctly in the Achievements pane.
- Level capped players will now have a chance to each Lesser Charms of Good Fortune after winning a pet battle versus a Pet within 5 levels of the highest level pet on their team. Higher level pets will offer a better chance to earn a Charm.
- Winning a pet battle versus a team within 5 levels of the player's highest level pet will now award player experience.
- Fleeing a pet battle will no longer despawn the pet that was being battled, but doing so will now inflict some damage on the fleeing pet battle team.
- Disconnecting from a pet battle will once again respawn the pets you were fighting.
- Any pet that has been killed in a pet battle will now never respawn.
- A number of new pets can be found on the Isle of Lightning, including Rare spawn drops, wild pets, and raid boss drops.
- Elite Battle Pets have been added to the game world. These rare pets will spawn alone against an entire team. A new quest has been added to track progress as these new pets are hunted down, and defeating that quest will award the new Red Panda pet.
I also can't wait to see what an "elite battle pet" is like.
One thing I hope is that if you happen to engage in a battle with an "elite", you'll be phased out like with the Tamer battles. Unlike a normal wild battle, an elite one sounds rare and difficult. Imagine how heartbreaking it would be if you're nearly done with the battle, but you get pulled out due to world PVP. All that progress for nothing. It's the same with the Tamer battles, so it would only make sense to phase out during an elite one too, right? Well, we'll see.
I'm a little nervous about the new pets on the Isle of Lightning. Rare spawn drops and wild pets are acceptable, but raid boss drops? This worries me a little since I've never been a huge fan of making 10 or 25 people defeat a and then fight over who gets the companion pet. At least with the vanilla raid boss dropped pets, you could go in and kill bosses without having to drag in a full raid of players.
It looks like developers have found more of a middle-ground with the whole despawning situation. Here's my take on the notes above:
- They've added a penalty for forfeiting battles.
Damage to your pet team might not be a complete deterrent to forfeiting while rare hunting, but it does make it clear that it's not exactly how Pet Battles are meant to be played.- Pets won't despawn if you DC during a battle.
To prevent players from abusing this mechanic in order to save rare pets that may have accidentally been killed, pets that were defeated won't respawn.
This makes me wonder though, will a new wild pet spawn in its place? Or will that team you engage with simply have a dead pet or missing team slot?
Still, it'll be good to have the ability to help others find certain pets again. :)
Oh, good. I was more worried about being able to pass a rare on to someone else than I was getting a second shot at a rare I killed by accident. That's a nice compromise between the two!
ReplyDelete@Kay: It's not completely ideal since many are used to having a second shot if they accidentally kill a rare, but this solution is better than nothing at all imo.
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