BfA Experience Changed

Many of us can no longer battle Ashlei after this patch.
I have been able to battle each of the Draenor and Pandaria trainers (other than Ashlei) once each, but trying on subsequent days I can no longer battle any. I’m in a large guild in which pet battling is popular, and others are reporting an inability to battle these tamers too.

So much for someone’s previous suggestion that we should be grateful to still be able to use these tamers for leveling.

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#1 I never had an issue with inconsistent xp from the BfA WQs and I have never heard of anyone (other than you) with that issue.

#2 I have over 1000 pets and I can definitely tell you with 100% certainty that I did NOT spend 12.5 hours on every single one and I am NOT willing to.

#3 The family achievements each award ONE pet…they ARE for hardcore pet collectors. Yes, you could do the WQs and eventually get the achievement but the change to pet xp for BfA WQs was NOT for those people. The change was for people that want to grind 12.5 hours for one pet. Pvp pet battles give almost nothing and aren’t really worth it.

#4 Nobody’s time is free. You really need to go take an economics 101 class or open your eyes. The cost of your time is comparing what you COULD be doing to what you ARE doing. Open your eyes please.

#5 BfA WQs aren’t good xp now and give LESS than 1/10th what they gave before 8.1. <–FACT Your response to my comment is irrelevant and has almost nothing to do with leveling pets with BfA WQs. There is no efficient way to level pets with current content now. The 4-6 pet-type-specific leveling stones you get aren’t even close to the 9+ levels you’d get with ANY leveling pet. I have over 750 level 25 pets and I HAVE been doing this for a while. You said to “…stop thinking of yourself…” but your last sentence says

But you’re telling ME to not care about myself? I want to expand the pet battling community. When leveling pets to 25 is harder than it was…the community isn’t going to expand.

–I’m not sure if you think before you type or you just mindlessly want to defend an awful “update”.
Also, was the “update” for pet battlers or for achievement hunters? THINK ABOUT IT! It was obviously for achievement hunters so they could grind the achievement. In the long run, it is not helping pet battlers at all.

This issue is for BfA Pet battle WORLD QUESTs. Squirt is up once every 14 days and the level 25 battle stones are 60 polished charms. 60 polished charms is at least 4 BfA WQs, if not more. You could get a level 1 pet pretty close to 25 before 8.1 from those 4 BfA WQs AND you could keep the rewards from the WQ.

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I am not asserting anything, except perhaps that i am not doing it now. Am I the only one?

Not everyone is a long time pet battler. i myself started about 2 weeks before legion ended.

i built my menagerie out recently and was doing MoP and WoD content until this patch broke it all. Apparently, they also broke celestial tournament, wailing caverns and deadmines. FYI I leveled 2 alts to 120 by doing pet battles.

I have 694 unique pets-1039 learned, and a ton more in storage. Let me know when I can be a long-time pet battler too. :wink:

Right now all there is (or was) for leveling is in BfA.

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The simple fact that you think that you get variable experience from the same battle, with the same level pet (ie pet is level 1, gets to level 9; next time you have another level 1 pet and it will get to level 9) shows how poorly you understand experience for pet battles.

A pet will get the same experience each time, but as they gain levels the experience differs based on level and trainer fought.

Here is a link to how experience works for pet battles:

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getting 100-300 exp from the only content currently not broken doesn’t need much understanding on my part.

If trainer “X” gives a level 1 pet 3k exp that same trainer should give all level 1 pets the same.

How about if the single pet battles (like Jammer) gave “normal” exp, since they aren’t used for the Family Battler achieve.

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I’m genuinely surprised there’s this much fuss over the pet experience change. Does anyone not remember Legion…? The extreme frustration and outrage over waiting for a specific trainer to pop up for the Family achievement? The relief when it was announced the Argus Family achievements could be done at your own pace because the trainers would always be up and repeatable? The change that made Legion trainers repeatable, but also nerfed their pet experience yield too?

I completely understand why the nerf was necessary. It’s just not reasonable if every BFA trainer battle was repeatable and awarded master trainer level pet experience. Would it be convenient? Hell yes. But that’s not the intended design.

Could there be a compromise? Sure. Make active WQ battles reward decent experience upon first completion, but nothing on subsequent battles.

Or maybe they should have released the ‘Family…’ achievement later in the expansion with another set of trainers, ones that offer zero pet experience from the start, and leave the initial BFA trainers unchanged.

Should have they announced the experience change beforehand? Yea, probably. Including information on this in the patch notes before release would save some people from feeling completely caught off guard.

Need/want to level pets? There are other options available. Farm up charms and buy stones, do the Pandaria/Draenor trainer route (once dailies get fixed, that is… >_>), or even go super old fashioned and sit around grinding wild battles for pet levels. Pet Battle Bonus Week AND Super Squirt day for the US is coming up soon (December 25, what a day lol), so there’s also that. I just hope that they fix the dailies before that week heh.

My point is that the BFA pet trainers were a convenience, never an absolute must-have. There are other ways to level your pets. Blizzard traded in slight convenience to give us content (some would argue artificial content, but that’s another discussion). I’m sorry to those that feel slighted and blindsided by the nerf, but the change is not really new and should be expected at this point. Just IMO.

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Nerf PLUS broken old content is the issue.

Nobody is suggesting that a repeatable Family battler trainer should give full exp each time.

yes IF the old MoP and WoD content is fixed any time soon, that would be great. I fear that the upcoming Super Squirt Day isn’t going to happen this round. 12 days to go. Does anyone think that fixing old content in general, much less a smaller sub-set that is pet-related, is anywhere near the top of Blizzard’s priorities on a just released patch full of new content?

Yes, another set of trainers or getting full exp one time for a WQ sounds like a better idea.

Some info would have helped too.

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Bottom line: You can argue this all you want; but ultimately, it will amount to nothing. The Family Battler is here to stay. You’re arguing a debate you already lost.

Regarding Draenor: I just now completed the Draenor circuit on my Warlock, who is now level 100, thanks to the experience he gained. He just leveled the pet I got as a reward for completing the pet dungeon, the Spider Tank thing, whatever it’s called. From one to twenty-five, with six tamers, thanks to my Safari hat.

So, it’s working. Perhaps your files are corrupted?

And yes, it’s been my experience that pet battles are inconsistent, for whatever reason. I go to a pet battler with two twenty-fifth level pets and a carry pet; sometimes the first level pet leveled to nine. Sometimes the first level pet levels to four.

It is inconsistent, and never as good as Draenor or Pandaria. You have a means of leveling your pets. Avail yourself of it.

What I find so perplexing is your sense of entitlement. You act like it’s your right to be able to level your pets from one to twelve in a pet battle where your carry pet did absolutely nothing but swap in and out.

It happens, whether you admit it or not.

And how many pets did you spend 12.5 hours on?

And even if you didn’t get a pet for completing the achievement, so what? There are achievements you’ve spent far longer on, you know.

Can you fly in Draenor and Legion? I rest my case.

That’s like saying flying is for hardcore questers.

How much of this game is “worth it” to you? It’s utterly amazing to me that you’re deciding what is and isn’t “worth it” in a game. If this were a game where prize money were at stake, I could understand this fuss. But it’s not. You’re doing something that in no way adds to your life. In fact, it’s arguably an unhealthy obsession.

You have more twenty-fifth level pets than I do. What pets do you have that are so almighty important that you must, must, must level them, and you’re too high and mighty to click on a hearthstone and go to Draenor to do it?

Your time is free. Unless Blizzard is paying you to play WoW, which it isn’t.

You have Draenor. You have Pandaria. You also have a Pet Battle Master on Broken Shore every day that gives a generous chunk of experience. Travel to any one of those areas is convenient and easy thanks to Hearthstones, portals and hippogryphs.

But apparently, Your Majesty needs to have pet battle experience delivered in current content. Poor baby. Not only do you think you deserve to have pet leveling where and when you want it. But you actually think you’re entitled to swap a one level pet into a pet battle, where it does absolutely nothing, and BOOM! your pet is now ninth level.

It’s starting to get cold in this room with all the snowflakes in here.

Let me just explain something to you, Boo-boo. I first got into pet battling during Legion. And when building my collection, I didn’t have a whole lot of pet battle masters in Legion that I could use give carry pets any decent experience. In fact, I don’t recall ever using any of them for leveling, except for the ones on Broken Shore. So, how did I level my collection?

I went to Pandaria and Draenor. I did the circuits in both expansions daily, gaining enough experience from the two expansions to level about three pets from one to 25, and get another pet about halfway there.

If I did it, Boo-boo, you can, too. Get over yourself, princess. You ain’t special.

So you have now taken a civil conversation and turned it into calling people special snowflakes as well as ignoring the points made and reconstruct it into something that can better win your arguement?

Well Done sir.

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Ok, first of all…I’ve now realized that you are arguing for the sake of arguing. You don’t want anything changed because maybe you think it won’t be changed no matter what. I supposed this will be my last post because you don’t want to see the truth and you will butt heads with me in any way possible. On your reply, you supposedly quoted me saying something that I didn’t say. On post 49, the 4th quote starting with “The rewards…” was not said by me. I DID say the stuff starting with “#4…”. I don’t know if you’re trying to trick people to convince them that I am wrong but you aren’t fooling anyone and I would assume that faking a quote is against the forums Terms of Service.
This was said by YOU 100% (below)

Also…please do take an economics class because your idea of you ALWAYS being correct and everyone else is wrong no matter what…isn’t helping at all, not a good way to discuss things, and not a good way to make friends.

I also now realize that you don’t read what I type. You quote stuff that I say (if i even said it…) and then you reply with a comment that is completely unrelated.

I said this:
#5 BfA WQs aren’t good xp now and give LESS than 1/10th what they gave before 8.1.

Your reply to this was -->

I mentioned BfA WQs and leveling pet battles with them. Your reply mentions Draenor and Pandaria. – Fun fact: Your reply is irrelevant…again.

Please realize that you aren’t bringing anything to the table in this discussion and you are only trying to upset others. You REALLY just don’t understand the issue …at all.

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No, it’s you that doesn’t understand the issue.

In Legion, other than a handful of trainers on Broken Shore (who appeared only one at a time on any given day), there was no way to bring carry pets on WQs to get viable experience.

If I wanted to level my pets, I took them to Draenor and Pandaria. And I did both circuits every day, and for a long time.

I managed to level my pets that way. You can, too.

I didn’t complain about not having enough pet battle masters in current content to allow me to level them. I went to where I could level my pets, and it’s no exaggeration to say that I built my collection that way.

Fun fact: My reply was not irrelevant. You simply don’t like the solution being offered. Tough.

You’re complaining about not being able to level your pets in BfA. I have pointed out to you that there is a way to continue leveling your pets. A way that I have used for months on end.

You can manage. It won’t hurt you to go to Draenor if you need to level pets, or Pandaria.

Again, we didn’t have this in Legion. You get it for a few weeks in BfA and now you think you’re entitled to it.

I’d like to just say that I hate this change. I don’t want to be forced to do even more pet battle WQ’s to get the same pet xp I was getting before. I want to do my pet token quests, and go do something else.

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I think some people who are bring up Legion are forgetting that the pet charm change hadn’t happened there. So, you had a ton of ways to get charms to turn into leveling stones which were also cut previous to this. Now all those charms are fairly useless except to get some gold from pet sales. In both WoD and Legion, I was easily gaining hundreds leveling stones per day that are now gone too. Its a frustrating change due to the combination with other recent changes.

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Many of the trainers all over the Broken Isles were great ways to level pets. The Stormheim giant-beasts one, for instance, or Dazed, Confused, and Adorable. Nearly every day I was able to level a few pets by doing WQs on a number of characters.

The idea that current-content pet battle WQs were not generally useful for leveling in Legion is just wrong. Breaking that in BfA is a large, and unwelcome, change.

No — no one is “entitled” to WQs being a viable way to level pets. No one is entitled to level pets at all; if Blizzard wanted, they would be free to remove all sources of pet XP. This has nothing to do with entitlement.

However, people are not “spoiled snowflakes” by believing that it makes sense for current content in the game to be the thing players are most focused on. This change breaks that by shuffling pet battlers off into other paths to level pets.

Yes, you can level in current content by non-quest pet battling. This hasn’t been the preferred means of leveling for the last three expansions; why are we returning to it, especially as an unannounced change?

And the comment about a carry pet getting XP for “doing nothing” is specious; you can’t level a level 1 pet in current content without swapping it in and having it do nothing, regardless of whether it’s a quest or an open-world battle. If that’s the argument, we should all be flocking to the lowest level zones and pitting our level 1’s against wild level 1-3’s or so. Is that the model of leveling you’re seriously advocating?

Bottom line for me: this unannounced, unexpected change affects the game negatively for many people. The goal is clear and makes sense, but there are ways to accomplish the same goal (normal XP when completing a WQ, or bonus pet XP for non-level-25s when completing a WQ, for instance) that don’t cause negative impact. Asking that things that cause a poor customer experience be remedied is not “being a snowflake”, it’s the basis of customer service everywhere. Do we have a right to have it fixed? No. Would it be good customer service for Blizzard to seriously consider changing things, or provide a more concrete statement that it’s intended that leveling pets is meant to be a fundamentally different experience in BfA compared to Legion, and why? It would.

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I keep seeing mention of Legion WQs not being worth it. Not sure why anyone would think that since the “three pet” WQs award the same 12.5x level of experience that MoP, WoD, DMF, and Squirt pet battles do.

I’m actually kind of bummed that I can’t use the BFA WQs to level my pets now, since I was just doing it casually while chasing charms.

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It’s too bad this didn’t make it to the patch notes. It would have been nice to know - in advance not after the fact.

For someone that leveled the bulk of her 1000+ pet collection through MOP with various pet battles and did it the ‘hard way’ - including leveling a couple of toons to the next max level where the view of Halfhill was the main scenery - it lost it’s appeal somewhere around the 400 pets range.

I sincerely enjoyed being able to get out enjoy the pet battle quests, while also leveling many of the new companion pets which I am thrilled to add to my collection, in BFA. As one who also has all of the pet achievements (except for the PVP related ones) I also appreciate the ability to work on those achievements regardless of the world quest being up.

I will say though that the nerf is significant enough that it might even be considered excessive and overkill. Hope you guys look at a compromise.
Even if you don’t … I hope you guys get better at putting this stuff in the patch notes - I would rather know about it in advance then find out after the question is asked. (This seems to be a recurring statement from me these days :thinking:)

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Personally kinda grateful for making the BfA trainers useless for leveling lowbies. With the various published 3-25’s strategies can finish them off quickly, the carry pet ones sometimes take 2 or 3 or more tries.

If you want to level lowbie pets, do Draenor or Pandaria, preferably on a lowbie toon, they both get very nice XP out of it.

I would say that best proposal I’d heard was one where the non-pet tamers battles could award decent experience. For instance, Jammer and the plant thing, I can’t remember what it’s called. The one where every attack you use on it is blocked for five rounds.

Since they’re no part of the meta achievement, there’s no reason they should give diminishing returns on experience. Although, as I recall they never gave good experience to begin with. Maybe they should.

And yes, I agree that these changes should have at least made the patch notes.

Here’s a suggestion that might be acceptable to everyone. Subject to the note that since I have not seen either the source code or the data for WoW I have no idea if this is even possible.

That said, leave them as “battle any time you want”, but restore the XP gains if and only if the pet battle victory causes completion of a pet battle daily quest.

As far as I can see, that gives us back the XP gains exactly as they were pre 8.1, while allowing us to work on the Family Battler achievement as time permits for us, without opening up an XP exploit.

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Don’t really have much to add that hasn’t already been said, for me however the fundamental issue I have with this change is that rather than being able to gradually level pets while collecting pet tokens and completing current content if I want to level new pets now I’ll have to go back and grind old trainers or do extra world quests for leveling tokens. For the same gains I’m effectively having to do twice the number of battles and spend twice as much time.

It feels like a step backwards in a game that already places so many varied demands on our time for the content that’s available. Inevitably it means that in the time I have available to play, I’m going to see less content because assuming I do make the effort to keep leveling pets, it will be at the expense of something else, whether it be wq/expeditions/warfronts/dungeons/pvp/raids/etc. no matter which way you swing it that represents a net loss and simply saying “play the game more” as many people above have is not a viable option for everyone.

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