Let's be honest here...this mini game is a complete rip off of Pokemon. Shifting battle scenes, turn-based system, and midi sounding music. But hey! Maybe that's the key here; taking a widely successful system and integrating it into the game. A perfect mini game to waste some time on.
I've put together some screenshots of my (extensive) experience with the Pet Battle System. I think overall, the system was handled nicely, but there is some room for improvement.
However, this is still beta...although I'm sure this is pretty much how the system will feel.
(Beware...mucho pictures under cut...I went a little Screenshot Trigger Happy. >.<)
Basics
So if you've never played Pokemon, the Pet Battle System is a turn-based RPG like battle system, with 1-vs-1 fights. Each pet has 3 active abilities, chosen from an eventual 10 once they hit the max level, 25. You can have 3 active pets in a battle at the same time, which you choose from your menu.
You have to learn Pet Battles from a trainer (currently they reside in Goldshire/Razorhill, and Stormwind/Orgrimmar), who will give you step by step quests on how to use the system. You also get Revive Battle Pets, which allows you to heal and revive them every 15 mins, which may seem long, but you can go to a Stable Master for that job for free anytime.
Make sure to mark Track Pets on your minimap, then start flying around with your head chopped off. (Beta...is like...SOOOO CROWDED....)"Capturable"/battle-able pets will have green paw print marks on them, and you can spot them on your minimap, like so:
Once you right click the pet, the camera shifts, and you are in battle! There aren't any cutscenes, just you moving a certain distance away and then you and your pets taking their position. Health bars appear at the top, while your action bars are replaced with a new set. You have 3 abilities, bound to 1,2,3; followed by a Swap pet, which is bound to 4. Finally, you have Trap, for when you want to capture them, and Forfeit, which basically is running away from combat. A golden square surrounds "pet portrait" for the pet who has the highest speed and thus will, in general, go first. On the other side of the health bar is their type.
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| Grunty! I choose you! |
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| Hey guys...look at my new Transmog outfit...:D |
Anyways, they have to be at 35% of their health, and then you can toss a crate at them to capture them. As far as capturing rate goes, I'd say its mostly on your side, even though you can miss. I got an "improved" trap from an achievement, but I's fairly certain I missed more with it. You can tell if you've captured it because your toon will start doing the CHEER emote even before the trap drops.
So that's the basics. Pretty simple and fun. And let's face it...a complete rip off of Pokemon. But like EVs and IV's and Natures, there are a little more complexities to the system as well.
Types and Pet Journal
There are 8 types: Humanoids, Elementals, Flying, Magic, Dragonkin, Mechanical, Critters, Beasts, and Aquatic. Each type has a Passive ability. For example, Undead will rise again after being killed once per a battle, and Beasts deal 25% more damage after being brought down to half health. Although each has a type, pets are still able to learn different type abilities, so you aren't necessarily confined to three types all the time. This is a major part of planning out teams if you plan to be fairly diverse. Luckily the Pet Journal...in essence your Pokedex, is ripe with information.
There are three stats to worry about, Health, Attack Power, and Speed. All fairly self-explainable. During combat, you can see these by mouseing over your or the enemy's portrait and it also shows the effects of Buffs and Debuffs. To the far left is your abilities, what you know and what you will know. This is great for deciding who to level up on your roster, so that you can have a good variety of offensive and defensive abilties, as well as types.
Finally, you can see where your active pets are. To switch them out, you simply drag the portrait into the slot's portrait. You can see the three active abilities and a drop down menu to choose between other abilities.
Pet Battle Captures: Capturing the Right One
Something I've taken a liking to is that pets you capture, as opposed to learn through old companion means, have a quality to them, and the higher the quality, the better they will be. Qualities range from Poor to Rare (I haven't seen an Epic one yet.) and the stats increase through each quality. From what I can tell by the stats given to learned companions compared to pets, it looks like companions learned through other means then Pet Battles have Uncommon quality, which is second highest. This basically means (unless things change) that the best Pets will be Rare ones.
Now at first, like a noob, I just captured a bunch of pets and hoped for the best. Then I noticed that, since you can see their stats, you can basically tell if a pet is going to be low or high quality. It takes a bit of just learning from your own pet's quality and stats, and comparing them to the pet you're fighting, but it'll save you a lot of time.
It's important to remember though, that when capturing pets, you can only have 3 of each kind at one time, so if you get a couple Poors, make sure to get rid of them if you wanna look for better quality.
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| I bet this pet will be Uncommon |
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| I was right! |
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| As you can see by my obsessive Rare hunting...this could become a problem... |
There are a few things you can do with Pet Battles. You can queue for a battle against other players (I haven't tried this yet, but it's an option). You can battle wild pets and capture what you want.
And you can fight NPC "Gym Leader" types called Pet Tamers. They seem to be abour 2-3 levels apart in terms of difficulty and they choose the pets that are around the different areas. They seem to follow one type as well, though I've only fought a few. They have silly names like Zabba Zabba and Bill Buckler and are in strange areas like atop mountains in Northern Barrens.
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| ...WHY IS THAT GAZELLE BIGGER THAN THE GIRAFFE??!!?!?! |
Things I didn't really like...
This is beta...so here's some feedback I 'spose.
1.) In general the Ui is great, but some of the Tooltips really confuse me. You get used to it eventually, but sometimes I catch myself having to rethink what it means.
2.) You are attackable when you are flagged during Pet combat. Although it kicks you out immediately, I can't understand why this is implemented. Blizzard wants Pet battles to be a stress-free thing, which is why they don't count losses, etc, but how can I be stress-free when I'm worried someone of the other faction is gonna kill me.
Which brings me to another point...
You may ask, then why? Why??? are you on a PvP server...I'm not.
For some reason, whenever I am in a Cross-Realm area, basically, anything contested, I am flagged. Even though I am on a PvE server. It doesn't seem fair, and I REALLY hope this isn't the final plan for Cross-Realm areas in MoP. You pick a PvE server for a reason..or at least I did.
3.) Unreachable pets. I mean...why do you put them there in the first place? Unless there are nets you eventually get, placing pets in areas that are unreachable is just mean. You can't fly and hit them, or jump, you have to be on solid ground to start a combat. And sometimes, there's no building roof or tree limb that you can stand on to reach them.
Final (for now) Word
I think the Pet System was a great idea. It's something that people can spend a lot of or a little of their time in. They can be competitive with other players, focus on min/maxing stats in their own way, or they can be competitive with the NPCs and not really take it too seriously. It's added hundreds (I'm pretty sure the new pet collection achievements are 300 now) of new pets to be hunted for, and it has some great little easter eggs (Gilnean Raven).
And while it may be a complete rip-off of Pokemon, it's a formula that works...so why question it?
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