Get ready, folks! A number of interesting changes were posted by Muffinus on the forums including a nerf to the popular Howl Bomb combo.
Cleave damage reduced by 25% (no longer has a 1 round cooldown).
Dev note: We heard your concerns about adding a cooldown to cleave and agreed that this felt like a better solution.
Shell Armor duration reduced from 3 rounds to 2.
Dev note: Shell armor was very powerful compared to other flat damage reduction abilities, this should bring it more in line with them.
The damage bonus from Howl now only affects one attack. Pandaren Water Spirit’s Whirlpool and Geyser now share the same ability slot.
Dev note: This is our first iteration at disarming the Howl Bomb strategy in PvE, which has proven to be very powerful in too many situations. The goal is to make PvE battles more interesting and encourage the use of a wide variety of pets.
It will definitely make things a little more interesting and if you’ve been following my strats for a while, you’ll know I like to use a number of teams.
So what do you think? Are you happy to say goodbye to one of the most popular strats known to pet battlers?
I love the howl bomb strat, but I have to admit, it does make me lazy. It’s so easy to just fall back on it instead of looking for different/clever ways to defeat pet battles. So as much as I’m going to miss this, I do think it’s what is best for pet battling in general.
Yes, exactly. That’s the whole challenge and why it takes me a while to come up with unique teams sometimes.
I agree with Cinder, I’m going to have to stop being lazy and think up some new teams. I also tend to overuse Chi-Chi. The battles are longer she usually out lasts everyone.
That was the first time I’d ever used that strategy. Back then it was a beautiful thing.