Hey :-)
Just now a new item came up in the Legion alpha files that upgrades a pet to Epic quality: http://legion.wowhead.com/item=137627/immaculate-battle-stone
The existence of it was acknowledged by none other than Jeremy Feasel on Twitter, saying:
I didn't see a discussion thread for it here so far, but I'd love to hear some EU thoughts on it as well!
Personally, I see it as a double edged sword. Depending on the effects an epic pet would have (higher stats, most likely?) it would change everything we know around pet battles, and that's both a scary and exciting outlook.
In PvP I guess it would skew over PvP for a long time towards people who collected more epic pets already, until there is a competitive balance reached by the majority of players again. But once that's reached it could work very well.
On the PvE side things are different. Most of the old content is already trivialized by the abundance of strong pet combinations and guides. Making the fights a bit more easy would not change anything in the need to level up pets (for those who don't have 700+ lvl 25 ones), which is among the main time-sinks in pet battling.
It would mean however that most people would like to upgrade their whole collection and getting 700+ of those stones, or even worse going back to re-capturing wild pets in epic quality and abandoning their blue ones, sounds like a horribly tedious (and boring) task. I would definitely not look forward to this, if that's all the epic quality brings.
Speaking of benefits then, what could this additional quality level bring? Additional skills for more variety? Maybe not higher stats but instead a buff that's different for each pet family, or a racial skill that can be activated once per fight?
Just now a new item came up in the Legion alpha files that upgrades a pet to Epic quality: http://legion.wowhead.com/item=137627/immaculate-battle-stone
The existence of it was acknowledged by none other than Jeremy Feasel on Twitter, saying:
Hi! We are testing out the impact of epic battle pets and training stones. This is a good thread for feedback: http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/20742364802
I didn't see a discussion thread for it here so far, but I'd love to hear some EU thoughts on it as well!
Personally, I see it as a double edged sword. Depending on the effects an epic pet would have (higher stats, most likely?) it would change everything we know around pet battles, and that's both a scary and exciting outlook.
In PvP I guess it would skew over PvP for a long time towards people who collected more epic pets already, until there is a competitive balance reached by the majority of players again. But once that's reached it could work very well.
On the PvE side things are different. Most of the old content is already trivialized by the abundance of strong pet combinations and guides. Making the fights a bit more easy would not change anything in the need to level up pets (for those who don't have 700+ lvl 25 ones), which is among the main time-sinks in pet battling.
It would mean however that most people would like to upgrade their whole collection and getting 700+ of those stones, or even worse going back to re-capturing wild pets in epic quality and abandoning their blue ones, sounds like a horribly tedious (and boring) task. I would definitely not look forward to this, if that's all the epic quality brings.
Speaking of benefits then, what could this additional quality level bring? Additional skills for more variety? Maybe not higher stats but instead a buff that's different for each pet family, or a racial skill that can be activated once per fight?