alt="Header" />

One of the biggest hits of Mists of
Pandaria is Pet Battles. Players really seem to love taking their
once slightly useless vanity pets and pitting them against each other
to see who comes out the victor. While it is true that there is
insane amounts of fun to be had while pet battling, it is not quite
perfect. However, with giant changes coming to accuracy and damage in
Patch 5.3, Blizzard is making some giant leaps towards perfection.
Read on to find out about one of the biggest changes expected in the
upcoming patch:

Pet Battle Problems

If you are familiar with turn based
strategy games, you know that one of the biggest elements is the
chance to hit, miss, and crit. These elements are what make the
entire game go around and ultimately determine if you win or lose.
The way these elements fall into place is controlled chaos.
Random....but not totally. This balance of randomness and control
makes for an interesting, but not frustrating, game.

Pet battles are essentially turn based
games. Currently, however, they have a huge amount of randomness and
not enough control to balance it out. Not sure of exactly what the
big deal is? The next time you have a chance to take part in a pet
battle pay extra close attention to the logs. Check out the number of
hits, misses, and crits. They will likely be all over the board.

alt="Pet Battle Log" />

Or simply watch your pets health after
each battle. You are sure to notice huge inconsistencies. For
example, you may find your pet goes from 100% to 15% health in one
battle, only to go from 100% to 80% in the next battle against the
same opponent. As you can imagine, these significant inconsistencies
can make pet battles less than fun and has left more than a few
players with feelings of frustration and discouragement. The accuracy
changes in Patch 5.3 hope to tame the randomness and bring a bit more
control to pet battles.

Pet Battle Accuracy and Damage in Patch
5.3

It is pretty obvious that to make pet
battles successful turn based games, something has to change. That
something is coming in the form of changes to accuracy and damage
output. In Patch 5.3 the base 5% chance to dodge has been removed,
and the chance to miss opponents has been reduced at higher levels.
Hopefully this chance will mean that your attacks that should hit
will actually do so. This will in turn likely give players more
incentive to get out there and take on higher level pets.

Despite this new level of control,
everyone knows a little randomness is essential to fun. With the
removal of the base dodge chance however, a lot of abilities would
have 100% hit chance. To allow some randomness back into the game,
some minor changes have been made that allow some abilities to have
greater damage in exchange for a reduced chance to hit. This allows
players to opt in or out of the randomness depending on if they like
to play it safe or not.

alt="Pet Battle" />

Same Old, Same Old

Not everything is changing when it
comes to accuracy and damage in World of Warcraft Patch 5.3. Players
may be surprised to find that the base 5 percent change to gain a
critical strike and the +/- 10 percent variance on all abilities will
remain the same. Blizzard is of the belief that getting a crit is a
good thing, and the damage variance happens often enough to make a
battle less predictable without leaning to heavily in one direction.
However, a lingering “for now” hangs around both of these factors
and so we may see changes to them in the future.

Want to know more about the changes
coming to pet battles in Patch 5.3? Check out the full
patch notes on
Blizzard's website
or for more details on accuracy changes, be sure
to check out Crithto's
post on Blizzard's blog
.

Conclusion

With these changes in place pet battles
are likely to become more fun, and (hopefully) less rage inducing. I
personally can see these changes being a great service to the pet
battle mini-game and a giant step towards making this mini-game more
enjoyable. Do you think the changes coming to pet battles in Patch
5.3 are enough? What else needs done to make pet battles consistently
more fun? Share your thoughts with us using the comment section
below!


To read the latest guides, news, and features you can visit our World of Warcraft Game Page.

Last Updated: Mar 29, 2016

About The Author

Amunet, also fondly known as Memtron, is an organic life form best known for its ongoing obsession with Blizzard Entertainment's numerous properties. To that end, Amu has authored hundreds (thousands?) of the most popular World of Warcraft guides, editorials, and Top 10 lists on the planet. When not gaming and writing, Amu is busy chasing after her three children in a perpetual loop of ongoing disaster.

Comments