Anyone notice difficulty in getting Rare spawns

[Luckyrabbit1982]

I have been doing the battle pet collectioning since MoP released, and have all wild pets except the qiraji gaurdling, which we won't see until summer. I am now working on upgrading all of my pets to rare quality. When I started I would only keep uncommon or rare, and usually search a bit for a rare before moving on and being satisfied with an uncommon, so my list of missing ones is not too hefty...

That all being said, I am really struggling to get these last ones upgraded. Has anyone else noticed a drop in the amount of rare quality spawns? I am not talking about something like minfernal or tiny twister....

For example, I am currently going zone by zone. The pets that are primarily caught as secondaries are tough, but I just spent a couple hours circling and clearing Arathi for a rare Grasslands cottontail. I have engaged all pets in the area, and have yet to see a rare. I would estimate hundreds of engagements at the least. I have experienced similar for Spiny Lizards in Org and Durotar.

I am wondering if this got nerfed and anyone else is experiencing similar hardship for plentiful creatures or if I am just having really bad luck... I even tried to up my karma by announcing a tiny twister spawn for other pet hunters instead of engaging myslef, since I already have a rare.

[Azmeaiel]

not really, tbh with the rares its pure RNG . I notice one problem though and that is that all mobs spawned at the same time usually have the same quality. If you notice in particular that mobs all have the same breed id (if using the addon) and the same adds that are the same quality it might be that they have just spawned at same time. Only real way to fix this is to kill them all and start again and hope you have better luck with the new spawns. This can be a particular problem after a server reset.

[Mathew013]

The wild pets are still showing up rare to me, but not any less (or more) so than normal. (usually a pet I DON'T want)
Word is that the chance of encountering a rare is 10% - maybe someone can confirm this, please?
As Azmeaiel said, sometimes you get the "3 packs" of the same identical primary - all the rarities and even the secondaries are usually the same, so that might skew the numbers a bit.
Hang in there; RNG can be spiteful at times, and other times you can nab a rare AND a Flawless stone.

[Poofah]

Iconyx compiled statistics from a very healthy sample size, see here.

[Frozenpets]

personally I get FAR less rares, as I am also down to the few here and there like swamp moth etc. and I must beat the changes in 5.2

but I also had a day where I got FIVE battle stones from tamer bags early on, and have gone....the last 4 days up til last night, without getting one til finally a magic popped up. so its just tough to say with this random luck garbage, if its really just random luck, or if they are changing it.

I think its been lowered, but hey,who knows.

what we DO know, is that once teams dont go away when you disengage, you will eventually have maps full of junk pets, needing to be cleared. get your rares while you can!

[Rhoswyn]

It took me awhile to find a Rare on the Grasslands Cottontail. Also there are different colors of that one argh So I have a spotted one in Rare but not a brown or a white one and haven't been able to find those.

[Luckyrabbit1982]

Well at least I am not the only one noticing, thanks Frozenpets..

I understand the RNG factor, but up until the last patch or so, it didn't seem so bad. I wasn't having to farm hours upon hours to get a rare, especially on mobs that are common spawn in an area and common as secondaries. Before it seemed you would frequently run across rares as secondaries, even if you didn't need it.

I can now clear a zone 2 times or so without seeing a single rare or anything, so it seems the rates were dropped. RNG is based on a percentage chance for a mob to populate as a rare. It seems as if this was dropped.

And yeah, I am trying to get my remaining uncommons to rare before they implement more battle pet changes. I also figured that as more people get to leveling their pets into the expansion, there is bound to be more competition. I would use stones, but they are hard to come by, and I want to save them mainly for pets that I cannot work on capturing a rare.

I suppose it give me something to do

[Mathew013]

I can now clear a zone 2 times or so without seeing a single rare or anything

Wow, that does sound pretty bad. How long are your 'clears'? Are you battling, or just abandoning wild pet encounters?

I spent over ~ an hour and a half last night in Silithus, looking for a rare Spiky Lizard. If each battle takes about 2 minutes, or so - and with time flying around, I probably had about ~ 30 battles before I found one. I stayed to fight what I saw, leveling up a lowbie pet.

[Luckyrabbit1982]

I can now clear a zone 2 times or so without seeing a single rare or anything

Wow, that does sound pretty bad. How long are your 'clears'? Are you battling, or just abandoning wild pet encounters?

I spent over ~ an hour and a half last night in Silithus, looking for a rare Spiky Lizard. If each battle takes about 2 minutes, or so - and with time flying around, I probably had about ~ 30 battles before I found one. I stayed to fight what I saw, leveling up a lowbie pet.

Depends if I am leveling pets or just farming... I have noticed the tendency with both options though. I cleared all the pets in Arathi Highlands probably 30 times before getting a rare grasslands cottontail finally yesterday. And its not that I didn't see TONS of grassland cottontails spawns or secondaries... just not a single rare.

Its a very different feel from before, and I see a lot fewer rares in any battle I engage now...

[Bonhomous]

I am also seeing a lot fewer rares than I did before the last patch. I flew around Dun Morogh and fought maybe 50 black rams, none were rare. I'm also finding a higher lvl of poor quality pets. Doing quests in Dread Wastes I fought any Clouded Hedgehog I came across. I would have taken an uncommon because i don't need one for fighting, just to add to the collection and I never found even an uncommon.
I spent hours one day trying to get a rare Twighlight Fiendling and no luck. I have never seen a Wildhammer Gryphon Hatchling that was better than common.

I'm used to how long it takes to farm a rare in a given area. Sometimes you luck out and you get one early, and sometimes you have bad luck and it takes longer - but overall you get a feel for how long you're going to have farm for something and that "internal clock" has gone way up lately. It's like farming for the Nether Faerie Dragon all over again.

[Luckyrabbit1982]

Sometimes you luck out and you get one early, and sometimes you have bad luck and it takes longer - but overall you get a feel for how long you're going to have farm for something and that "internal clock" has gone way up lately.

This is precisely my "feeling" worded perfectly.... I don't expect it to be easy on certain pets that are primarily secondaries or are hard to find overall... but when I start feeling like I am farming Minfernal and it is just a Forest Moth /facepalm

[Mathew013]

I just did a run of Terrkkar Forest for a rare Warpstalker Hatchling.

Out of 50 encounters with the Warpstalker Hatchling as the primary, (only fought once, fled the rest), I saw:
x26 Poor
x19 Common
x5 Uncommon
x0 Rare (yes, a big fat zero - argh!)

But I did see a fair bit of rares of the secondaries, skunks, striped-tailed scorpions, etc.

So, I gotta say it DOES feel like the rare population (for primaries at least) is lower.
But that's all in a IMHO, YMMV - kinda way.

[Jandrill]

i must agree on the fact that rares are very rare idd...
When I started my collection I did it in a rush but even so was at 50% rares. Yesterday I decided to upgrade what I have left... I end up spending 3h per zone (ex Swamp of sorrow) and I still didn't find what I was looking for...

[Graven]

I'm inclined to believe it's just the RNG and the psychological effect of the patch, since the pets that people are having trouble with seem to differ from person to person. For example, I myself have found some of the new 5.1 additions in rare quality without too much trouble (Harpy Youngling, Fluxfire Feline, Arcane Eye) which many people seem to have been having problems with, and yet of course I have other pets which are stubborn for me that others may have found more easily.

[Jordicus]

what we DO know, is that once teams dont go away when you disengage, you will eventually have maps full of junk pets, needing to be cleared. get your rares while you can!

ummm.. all you have to do is kill them outside of the battle pet UI and they will respawn... so if you engage a critter and it's not what you are looking for, you can simply forfeit and then kill them one-shot...

[Seeweda]

I got a rare Grasslands Cottontail as a secondary to a tiny twister. Some rare pets are meant to be rarer than others and it's not just pets like Minfernal, pets like the Jungle Grub are also very hard to find in a rare quality.

[Quintessence]

I don't think rare quality spawns got nerfed post-patch. I'm still seeing plenty while battling, then again I haven't been looking for a specific pet.

One thing that I have noticed is that the last ones always seem to be the toughest and take the longest to find, and you usually end up finding them when you're not really looking. That's more of a psychological factor than a game mechanic, though.

[Azmeaiel]

Shortly after 5.1 and a reset a friend and I in valley of 4 winds were encountering every single pack, while hunting bandicoon containing a rare marsh fiddler as a secondary, all with same stats. If the mobs respawn at same time they seem to have same ids. if your unlucky and first in the zone you might get identical packs of greys uncommon or whites, or if your lucky even rares. once mobs have been cleared at least once so spawnrates are properly staggered they go back to working by normal rng, just look at if the packs always come in same order with same adds and same ids to see if this has happened, full clear them and start again. I have also seen this happen recently during a sandstorm in tanaris, all the silithid hatchlings spawned at once at the start of a storm and every pack had same uncommon primary with same adds. A clear soon reset them.

[Shargmike]

I'm seeing its 100% random. Sometimes its the first one i battle, sometimes it takes hours of farming. Sometimes its better to be lucky than good.

[NathKnave]

If the mobs respawn at same time they seem to have same ids. if your unlucky and first in the zone you might get identical packs of greys uncommon or whites, or if your lucky even rares. once mobs have been cleared at least once so spawnrates are properly staggered they go back to working by normal rng, just look at if the packs always come in same order with same adds and same ids to see if this has happened, full clear them and start again. I have also seen this happen recently during a sandstorm in tanaris, all the silithid hatchlings spawned at once at the start of a storm and every pack had same uncommon primary with same adds. A clear soon reset them.

Finding identical groups while starting a farm is the biggest problem I see. I'm on a pretty low population server, and I've been trying to get rares in Pandaria, where cross-realm zones still haven't been implemented. Most of the time I'm pretty sure I'm the only one out there battling. It can take awhile to clear out the initial spawns to where they start appearing with actual random groups. I'm making pretty good progress though, and I hope to have them all in rare before 5.2 is implemented. It's also allowed me to level several of my pets and every once in awhile a battle-stone is a nice bonus.

One thing that I have noticed is that the last ones always seem to be the toughest and take the longest to find, and you usually end up finding them when you're not really looking. That's more of a psychological factor than a game mechanic, though.

This is the biggest factor for me. The last one in a zone can be really frustrating. In Jade Forest, I ended up just using a critter stone to that dropped to upgrade a Masked Tanuki Pup that I spent hours trying to find a rare of. I really just wanted to put Jade Forest in the "finished" column and move on.