1404 pets
- Ultimate Battle-Training Stones now cost 35 Polished Pet Charms (was 60).
Battle-Training Stone Changes
Similarly, Fel-Touched Battle-Training Stones will no longer give 5 pet levels per use in the upcoming patch, and will instead provide a flat 10k experience.
- Flawless and family-specific Battle-Training Stones now provide a flat 2,000 experience (was the amount required to gain one level).
- Fel-Touched Battle-Training Stones now provide a flat 10,000 experience (was the amount required to gain five levels).
It's estimated that these changes will mean fewer of these types of battlestones will be necessary to fully level a battle pet to 25. This is great news for players that may not have a large stockpile of stones!
As with all things PTR, the experience granted from the Flawless and Fel-Touched Training Stones could change. Regardless, saving up battlestones for some quick levels in the future couldn't hurt.
Pet Experience From Battles
Pet experience earned during a battle will also be changing somewhat in 9.1.5. More experience? Yes, please!
Pets closer in level to the enemy will receive double experience. The bonus only applies if all pets on your team are within 2 levels above the wild pet team. (Image above unrelated, experience shown doesn't represent this new boost.) It would seem this only affects wild encounters, but more testing on the PTR may be necessary.
Additionally, any pet that dies during battle can still earn experience, albeit a smaller amount than if it had stayed alive, as long as it was active for at least one round during the battle. This might add some leniency to "carry strats" and give more room for error.
And last but not least, pet experience from battles will be increased by 50%! To balance this, the buff from the Pet Battle Bonus Event (currently 200% experience) will be reduced to 100%.
- Battling wild pets with a team of comparable-level pets now provides double experience. Pets on your team are eligible for this bonus if no pet on your team is more than two levels higher than any pet in the wild team.
- The experience penalty for a pet dying has been reduced to 50% (was 100%). Pets still need to be active for at least one round to be eligible to earn experience from a battle.
- All pet experience earned in battles is increased by 50%.
To compensate, the Pet Battle Bonus Event buff Sign of the Critter has been reduced to 100% (was 200%). The net effect of this is that pet experience gained during the Pet Battle Bonus Event will remain unchanged from current values.
- Developers’ note: Pet battling is a fun and exciting mini-game, but the current incentives result in esoteric strategies being the only optimal choices. This results in a barrier to entry that discourages players from engaging with this system. We believe this set of changes will widen the range of optimal behavior without nerfing any existing leveling strategies.
What do you think of these upcoming changes? Will it change how you level your battle pets? With over 1400 battle pets to level, we hope these updates make it a little less daunting to upgrade pet collections!
@Pandawaffles16: Safari Hat and pet treats won't work with the battlestone changes. However, they do still stack with the wild battle experience update.
What about Safari hat and pet treats, will they stack on top of the new system? Or did we get those for no reason as well?
This is bad news. It means that everybody who worked hard and long over years to level up their 1400+ pets via pet battles, just got screwed. Now everybody will just use stones (which they pretty much throw at you now) to level up their pets without any effort whatsever. Kinda invalidates pet battles and everything we have put into it.
This will also drastically increase AH battle pet prices, since every schmuck is going to buy them now.
What do you fellow, ACTUAL pet battlers think about this?
@VLKious Convert? Only change the tooltip and the code in the back. No more.
I wonder if our current stones will convert???
I am really looking forward to this - this way means I won't need to stash my stones only to use them when the pets are lvl 20+
They can be used straight away!
Will be interesting to see how this impacts super squirt! I could level really quickly with that as well as Ryders WQ in Stormheim during pet week.
If we had a pet treat, does that impact the wild XP from matches as expected?
This bring the cost inline with the Flawless Battle-Training Stone, it,.Under the new system it takes 12 Flawless Battle-Training Stone to level a pet to 25 (23885/2000) and at a cost of 36 Polished Pet Charms (12@3 each).
Which oddly makes it cheaper and quicker (1QCD vs 12) to use the Ultimate Battle-Training Stones.
I did a test run on PTR for the pet battle leveling XP - even with doing my usual pet battle round with carry pets, doing the Pandaria Circuit (7 pandaria master tamers + 4 pandaria spirits + Anthea) with the safari hat on will currently (in 9.1) take six battles to get a pet from 1-25, meaning you can level two pets completely in a circuit. On 9.1.5 PTR it will instead take four battles to get a pet from 1-25, meaning the same circuit of 12 will fully level three pets.
This change will likely result in a lot more pet battles. This is nice for those of us still leveling our pets up to 25. But one downside to it is that with more people doing pet battles and those who already do them doing more, I hope that they also put in a decrease in spawn time for a new wild pet to appear, specially in pet battle bonus weeks.
The pet levelling stone are interesting 2000xp is more experience to gain one level at level 24 (1980) also 10,000 experience is more than needed for 5 levels (20-25 needs 9155 [1980+1920+1860+1800+1595)
To go from 1 to 25 will need two Battle-Training Stones and two Fel-Touched Battle-Training Stones, this would have just levelled the pet to 12 in the current systemI like these changes except for the change to the bonus from the pet week. As it is, the pet bonus week is already a bust, so why make it even less meaningful?
Why do I say the pet week is a bust? First, alts cant take the weekly quest if you've already done it on your main (the only weekly that doesnt allow alts iirc). Second, for the week quest -- win five pvp battles -- most people just play some OP meta team, get their 5 wins, recieve their purple stone, and then don't think about pets battles again all week. At least the 200% exp gives you another reason to look forward to the week, leveling your collection.
Pet week needs an entire re-work. Perhapse other "events" during the week? Maybe a battle mode where each player gets the same 3 random pets, 2 min to pick tallents, and then battle. Make Pet Battles Great Again!
Excellent, especially since I battle wild pets frequently and dont get to take advantage of many hours doing pet battle events.
I am also glad to see my poor dead pets will get some xp for the effort!!!
@Margaritha: The updated Battle-Training Stones are not affected by pet treats or the Safari Hat on the PTR atm.
I'm curious whether the new battle stones would be affected by the +% XP gains from pet treats!
@Fuxie cool so all positive change! :)
This change means I'd level them all the time not just during the pet battle even (which I literally wait for now) Seems like a good change!
This is actually a buff, since 24->25 is 1980 xp :)
And low levels are much much less..
This is actually a buff, since 24->25 is 1980 xp :)
And low levels are much much less..