Legion Pet Battle - Disarming the Howl Bomb!

[Jewsco]

Well okay, fine... so if Blizzard created a pet that could solo all the PvE bosses in the game, would that be fun? Is it a problem that we can't currently do that?

It wasn't one pet though. It still took getting and leveling multiple pets and it doesn't work in every fight or much in pvp. So how is that the same? Doing the tanaan jungle fights for the 100th time because blizz thinks rng is compelling game play to get the pets from it isn't exactly fun. So having a team that makes it quicker and easier helps a lot. And still can't use it for everyone of them anyway.

[chalon9]

I use Howl Bomb for most of the Tanaan pets but how can you say it's "fun"? IMO it would be more fun if you had to find a different team to counter each battle and I'm sure new strategies will surface after this change. New pets are not difficult for new players to obtain if they know what they're looking for, many powerful pets are handed to you like the Teroclaw Hatchling. And with addons like Rematch it's easy to save teams for each encounter. I think this change is putting fun back into PvE battles, because part of the fun is figuring out the puzzle, and with this strategy you never had to do that. It limited design space for new challenges.

If you feel forced to use howl bomb rather than try other strategies, that's your problem. It's not like the existence of it made it physically impossible for you to try other strategies. So if it takes them literally removing it as a strategy for you to try other things, then obviously you don't care much about other strategies. You only care about winning. So stop trying to sound otherwise.

[sunsmoon]

This is a fantastic change. The Tanaan legendary pets were beatable day 1 because of Howl Bomb (all but 3 of my Tanaan teams are Howl bomb). Nerfing something that was clearly overly strong is fantastic. It allows for more interesting PVE encounters, instead of having to build around howl bomb. It also means that new pet battlers aren't as "behind" because they didn't pick the most overpowered pets to level to 25 (Chrominius, PWS). Having two pets able to do so much content TOGETHER, and essentially make any difficulty non-existent, does nothing good for the game.

[Kazuchika]

Typical Blizzard.

"Hey this is overpowered and broken. Eh we'll fix it 2 expansions from now"

[zerocarbs]

Who cares? Any tough fight will have a guide on Wowhead telling you how to beat it. Or if you like challenges then this change is a bonus.

[Deleted]

Is this already hotfixed or a future patch? Im still farming celest. tournament with Howlbomb thing atm...

[doot]

Is this already hotfixed or a future patch? Im still farming celest. tournament with Howlbomb thing atm...

Future patch so if you want to finish Celest. Tournament you might want to hustle :P

[Yemkela]

Is this already hotfixed or a future patch? Im still farming celest. tournament with Howlbomb thing atm...

There's lots of easy ways to beat the Celestials without the Howl Bomb. Call Lightning pets for Xu-Fu/Zao (Zao only takes two cheap cageable pets to beat), snails for Chi-Chi and a rabbit or Pandaren monk for Yu'la. PM me if you want more details.

[Kelzam]

If you thought Blizzard was going to leave a team setup untouched that can easily defeat almost any challenging pet battle they put in the game (which by default makes most other pets unused), you're either very naive or purposefully being obtuse. "I don't see why / What does this effect" attitude is pretty transparent. Don't want the path of least resistance taken away.

[Kazuchika]

It doesn't change the fact they were well aware of this cheesy bullshit before WoD even dropped and just now are like "nah that's too OP"

It's like the goblin racial in Cata all over again where they went through all of alpha/beta and 9 months of live before they were like "nah stacking discounts with the guild perk is too overpowered".

I personally don't care because I only do pet battles for the achievements and there are plenty of other ways to faceroll pet battles. It's just funny how Blizzard loves to yank the rug out from under people after they get used to thing being a certain way.

[Jewsco]

It doesn't change the fact they were well aware of this cheesy bullshit before WoD even dropped and just now are like "nah that's too OP"

It's like the goblin racial in Cata all over again where they went through all of alpha/beta and 9 months of live before they were like "nah stacking discounts with the guild perk is too overpowered".

I personally don't care because I only do pet battles for the achievements and there are plenty of other ways to faceroll pet battles. It's just funny how Blizzard loves to yank the rug out from under people after they get used to thing being a certain way.

Exactly, if this was affecting pvp pet battles like I don't know graves has been for months now I could see th change. Something that is a side game some people might not care for a challenge and this will just turn them off. For someone that wants more out of it they could of always chose to use other teams/pets. Blizz's typical overreaction.

[ItachiZaku]

When is this going in, Legion? I need to finish up the CT, this was handy here and there.

[Lyraat]

Why is Blizzard implementing this change for Legion? Because they dont want the new PvE battles to be cheesed like WoD's PvE battles were. I dont know why they didnt nerf the Pandaren Water Elemental when WoD dropped; my best guess is, they were okay with it until players hammered the Tanaan pets with the howl bomb.

Why is Blizzard waiting for Legion to nerf Graves? Because they want people to play Heroes of the Storm. Long tail of the expansion, people pick up pet battles. They face opponents running Graves, get slaughtered, and think, "How do I get that OP pet? I have to play HotS? Sure. I can do that. Take a break from WoW during this lull and get an OP pet. Win win."

As others have said, this isnt "yanking the rug out" from under us. Blizzard waited to nerf the howl bomb. If you thought it would be around forever, I have gear with Armor Penetration and mp5 for sale. And, oh no! You have to follow trainer guides on Wowhead or *GASP!* make your own compositions to defeat the trainers! Stop whining.

[Deleted]

When is this going in, Legion? I need to finish up the CT, this was handy here and there.

I only use the Howl Bomb for some Menagerie dailys (when I have to combat 1 pet and just want to get fast through on all my 24 characters), and not for CT - but I definitely should finish the Plush Elekk achievement before this change goes live, just in case...

Edit: I probably will never get Graves, no matter how overpowered it is. I could not make it through the HotS introduction (hate click-to-move games), and just cannot imagine level a character there.

[Neruuna]

Admittedly I'm running around doing the old Pandaria legendary beast quests with Howl Bomb quickly before the nerf can come. I'm just glad the epic pets thing got canned, raising enough to cover all the types is difficult enough without having to do it all again.

[Socialhealer]

can't imagine tanaan dailies without this combo it means almost every legendary pet is going to be getting off 2 fel corruptions, meaning your team is at least half health from the insane damage that does, and your main pet near dead, now you need to heal/turtle for 9 rounds because the back 2 pets take 50% less damage and deal 50% more.

that's not difficult it's annoying and overpowered, i mean you have to burst the legendary pet down because a 3rd fel corruption basically kills your entire team.

- - - Updated - - -

Admittedly I'm running around doing the old Pandaria legendary beast quests with Howl Bomb quickly before the nerf can come. I'm just glad the epic pets thing got canned, raising enough to cover all the types is difficult enough without having to do it all again.

those are much easier you should find a good guide on wowhead to 2 pet them and level up a 3rd while you do it, amazing exp.

[Neruuna]

those are much easier you should find a good guide on wowhead to 2 pet them and level up a 3rd while you do it, amazing exp.

I wouldn't even begin to know how to two-pet these guys, I'm usually barely hanging on with the third pet. And the guides seem to always want hard to get pets or high-cost pets, or pets at 25 that are hard to level to begin with.

[Delaios]

can't imagine tanaan dailies without this combo it means almost every legendary pet is going to be getting off 2 fel corruptions, meaning your team is at least half health from the insane damage that does, and your main pet near dead, now you need to heal/turtle for 9 rounds because the back 2 pets take 50% less damage and deal 50% more.

that's not difficult it's annoying and overpowered, i mean you have to burst the legendary pet down because a 3rd fel corruption basically kills your entire team.

I'm hoping they'll tone that down a bit along with this nerf, especially the damage. The corruption is just insane. Was unlucky to end up against a rare snake as a side pet. My emerald whelp had to use the 3-turn self-heal 3 times before that single secondary pet was dead.
If they leave the fel corruption ability intact, you'll just end up replacing the howl-bomb with another fixed setup to call in another enemy pet.

[Socialhealer]

I'm hoping they'll tone that down a bit along with this nerf, especially the damage. The corruption is just insane. Was unlucky to end up against a rare snake as a side pet. My emerald whelp had to use the 3-turn self-heal 3 times before that single secondary pet was dead.
If they leave the fel corruption ability intact, you'll just end up replacing the howl-bomb with another fixed setup to call in another enemy pet.

yup i can see the magic broom + weebombination combo where you swap the deadly pet then spam cleave to slowly kill the whole team.

[Deleted]

Stupid nerf, those who use it probably isn't interested in "challenging and engaging pve pet battles" anyways...

For me, I would want a instant win attack/move so I could get the boring 5k achievement and be done.