It seems like the 10% chance to happens so much more often than it should, and losing a match due to RNG that seems like it should be on such a small scope is infuriating. I was doing PvE pet battles earlier to level up some pets, and darkness made me miss 4 times in a row. 10% accuracy loss on normally 100% hit moves. Now I just forfeit a PvP match because of two missed attacks in a row (also to darkness), then went into another match and missed my first attack, a 2 round setup attack. 10% chance. So that’s technically another 3 10% chances in a row. This was in the same day, in the span of about 5 or 6 matches.
Not to mention attacks like minefield can apparently miss both on using the attack and on detonating for the swap. I saw both happen in one match.
With Sandstorm also being super meta right now, you see it with that a ton too.
Stop balancing effects around “only” being a 10% accuracy loss, because when it screws you over, chances are it’s not even the only thing you have to deal with. And it happens way too often. Honestly if they nerfed it to like 5% and kept it only on Darkness (no idea why sandstorm needs it to add to the tankiness/uncertainty of the two meta idols who have access to it), it would probably be more manageable.
Pet Battles are RNG enough with crits, and attacks that have built-in low accuracy are balanced to be such. With only 3 pets and secondary effect attacks that can nuke half your health (looking at you again, sandstorm), RNG is so much more prominent and annoying because every attack counts.
I know the point of the mode is to basically just roll the dice, but it’s a really unrewarding game mode when meta pets are so dominating with basically zero hope of conquering them even if you get perfect RNG.
It’s known as Observational Bias, you notice it when it happens but don’t notice when it doesn’t.
That missed hit, especially at a really critical point, is infuriating. Overall though, it balances out. Opponent misses sometimes too. Well, except that pretty obvious that the wild pets and the Trainer pets have a better RNG than we do.
I’ve scared the cat many times screaming obscenities at the monitor after a critical attack misses. But it’s luck. I run a lot of wild pets battles and a few trainers with an Anubisath and yeah, I miss a little more than they do, but not a lot.
Yeah, I get that observation bias is a thing. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that it ever happening really has a place in a fun gamemode. The fact that what I described can happen, in addition to all of the other factors, is what makes it a poor design choice imo. It’s a passive effect on several attacks, lasts for multiple turns, and is always accompanied by another passive effect.
I guess I’m just wondering why they put so much more RNG into the game than there already is, when it doesn’t even really give a fighting chance to non-meta teams anyway. Because realistically, you’re probably fighting that 10% chance every turn (if stuff like sandstorm is consistently being activated), so the odds of you actually failing at least once is way more than just 10%.
I just wonder what the goal is behind adding lowered accuracy. Maybe it’s just because Idol is broken right now, but it already always feels like an uphill battle, so adding RNG to that doesn’t really have (what I would assume to be) the intended effect of giving both sides a chance thanks to uncertainty. It rarely seems to hurt the sustain that the Idols have, and only serves to waste a turn and give them one less turn to wait for their 666 (or 999) damage two-multi-turn-secondary-effect attack (and if they run the immunity, that’s another turn they don’t have to worry about).
I just personally wish stuff like blinds and crit chance were more on the extremes (use a full turn to set up dealing little to no damage, and then reaping the benefits if you pull it off) so you actually take a risk to set it up, rather than having an inherent risk thrust onto the moves that are balanced around being “safe” 100% hit rates. The thing is, moves like that already exist in the game. Balanced around making callouts and potentially getting screwed by being outsmarted, rather than raw RNG. The meta pets are always the ones that don’t seem to require any of those callouts, and just win by default using the same rotation over and over (Anomalus AoE and DoTs are another instance of that playstyle which feels really lame).
I love Pokemon, and I wish Pet Battles were more fun. Obviously Pokemon has its fair share of RNG bs, but looking to the grassroots competitive scene like Smogon, you see a lot of consistent rules and bans on things (like the evasion clause, for similar reasons to what I’m whining about here lol). Nintendo is sort of famously negligent of that sort of balance (both in Pokemon and Smash, hence why they have such big grassroots scenes), but I feel like Blizzard is usually better about this.
This is Blizzard’s RNG in a nutshell. After playing their games for so long, you start to accept that 10% is 100% 50% of the time, and 90% is 10% 40% of the time.
That said, % chances in Blizzard games don’t really mean much to me anymore. 50% miss chance = missing 3 times in a row and dying, and while frustrating, I know that’s part for the course and just don’t use those abilities anymore.
I mean how often do you have a 10% chance to miss? In my experience, I’m very aware every single time due to how rare it is, yet if I were to objectively track my misses, it’s closer to 30-40%.
I mean that’s the hope, but the sheer randomness of it means it doesn’t balance out in a meaningful way. You could miss 10 times in a row, they could hit 10 times in a row with the same ability; when does the balancing out happen? Too late, far as I’m concerned.
That’s a slight exaggeration, and I know what you’re getting at; sometimes I get lucky, and I enjoy those moments.
All that said, 10% doesn’t seem to mean 10% in Blizzard games, and I try to pay close attention to these situations inparticular.
I thoroughly agree. It occurs elsewhere in WoW, but it’s especially egregious in pet battles. Call Darkness and similar abilities that give a slim 10% chance for these debuffs to occur, occur far more than that. Observational bias would make sense if the percentages were truly the case, but if you’ve played this game long enough you know that you take each 10% in quests and pet battles with a huge grain of salt.
Being very succeptible to Observational Bias myself, had been meaning for years to get around to doing some actual testing. Here’s the test base I’m trying tonight, a level 60 mage with three Void-scarred Anubisath 25’s working various Kul Tiras trainers. Rule is that only while Sandstorm is up and there’s a 10% chance to miss, I record only hits and misses with Takedown attack when opponent has no buffs or blocks that would affect my hit chance.
Results are over 20 tries, 5 each with Delia Hannako and her aquatics, Eddie Fixit and his mechanicals, Burly and his undeads, and Ellie Vern with her magics and undead. A true test would involve much more that 20 samples of course, but this started getting really boring after a while.
My results over all 20 of these trials: Sandstorm up, 255 successful hits, 26 misses. Which is so close to exactly 90% success that it looks like I’m fudging the data, but that’s what I got. Wasn’t paying that close attention to their misses but saw at least 19 unquestionable ones.
Interestingly of my misses, 3 times missed twice in a row (1 in a hundred chance) and once missed 3 times in a row (1 in a thousand chance). When you see something like this in a pet battle, increases ones suspicion that we’re getting screwed over. Wondering if it’s because of the way Blizzrd’s RNG works, instead of rolling the dice on every move everyone makes, do they calculate a random number once and let it cover everything you do over next few seconds.
I’ve often suspected that it is a single dice roll at the start of the match and the rest is simply a sham at making you think it is actually calculating rolls.
Challenging a NPC in a pet battle, you have to beat them decisively, winning because RNG went your way is more a case of getting lucky.
NPC pet battles, your opponent will never out-smart you.
They will out-lucky you, more often than not. Think of it as Defender’s Advantage. It’s a poor advantage, compared to changing pets, abilities, attack orders, and line-up, all of which we can change.
Let them be lucky. Smart Rules.
I appreciate what you’re saying here. It’s like what Morpheus said, “they operate in a world based on rules, meaning they will never be as strong or as fast as you can be.”
The problem here is that the NPCs have epic and legendary pets, meaning they have higher stat budgets than you, and “smart” can only go so far when the enemy does double your damage, can one-shot you with a crit, and has that annoying “50% damage taken reduction” buff. At that point they don’t need to be smarter than you, they just steamroll you.
This is why I never bother going for pets that have higher speed in exchange for lower attack. What’s the point when the enemy is going to have more attack AND speed than you to begin with? You’re just trading power for nothing.
That is going to depend on the enemy team’s moves and the pet’s abilities. In general, if you match speed with a good set of counter moves you’re going to be alright. It’s why rabbits are popular in speed breeds. There are also battles where matching power with power works. Again, it depends.
It’s definitely higher than 10%. In any given Call Darkness length you’ll see 10 (or is it 9) attacks, and 2-3 of them missing is the norm. If 2 total attacks miss it’s 50/50 that they will both be from the same side, which is where the immense frustration comes from.