More Changes Possibly Coming In 5.3

There are more possible changes coming in 5.3, which include the Pandaren Spirit bags dropping stones, "bad luck protection", and buffs to a few family passives (specifically elementals).

First up, two changes that will hopefully improve how often a player receives a Battle-Stone. The Pandaren Spirit Pet Supplies was long overdue for stones being added to their loot table, IMO. Even as a small droprate, it just doesn't make sense that you had a chance to loot a stone from all the other bags, but these were somehow left out. They're specifically named pet supplies, yes, but still pet supplies nonetheless.

Another change that will possibly increase how many stones you receive a week is the "bad luck protection" mechanic.

"Protection for bad luck streaks have been added to Battle-Stones from pet supplies bags and wild battles. Each bag or battle that does not provide a stone has a progressively better chance to award a stone to the player."

I haven't been keeping up with the idea behind this mechanic, but I think that they're implementing it for LFR loot too. My question is just how much bonus luck does it provide for every instance where you don't loot a battle-stone of any sort? I ask this because there are only so many daily bags you can get per day. If these bags are your only means for stones, and the "luck boost" is fairly small, does that mean you'll have less "bad luck protection" than someone that battles in the wild? I'm not saying that's a good or bad thing, but I'm just curious as to how this is supposed to work when taking into consideration two or three ways of "farming" for stones. Or perhaps I'm just over-thinking it. :P

In any case, hopefully this will help alleviate the Battle-Stone dry-spell that seems to pop up every now and then. Sometimes I'll get two or three stones from one round of dailies, and then sometimes I don't see a stone for half a week. Same goes with battling wild pets. At times I can get two or three in one sitting, and then I'll get nothing but charms for two weeks or more. And that's me battling consistently. I can't imagine how frustrating it is for those that just don't have the amount of time to sit and grind on dailies and wild pets for stones.

With the large amount of RNG already implemented into Pet Battles, a little consistency (if not predictability) would be nice. Let's hope that this "bad luck protection" works out for the best.

Pet Passive Update
The next update is about some pet family passives and how lackluster they are. Crithto just flat out says they plan on buffing some of these un-fun pet family passives. He names the elemental passive specifically, but there's a chance that some other passives will also be updated.

"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!"

We'll have to see how this one plays out. I do agree that the elemental passive was a bit meh, and hard to work with in terms of making use of it. There are only a few situations/weather types that it would actually benefit from, which makes it a pretty weak passive compared to other traits.