Rise of the H/H Breed

[Vek]

I have noticed that I tend to go for H/H or H/anything breeds more and more in PvP lately. The H-Breeds where pets I usually never looked twice at before. But I find myself often switching to breeds with higher health where I previously mostly focused on power and/or speed. I am not saying H/H will dominate I'm just finding them much more useful than I did before.

I think there are two main reasons for this.
1. Plenty of AoE around nowadays and the extra health for one or two pets in the back can really make a difference when it's time to get them into battle. Often you won't notice "much" damage output difference but your pet will still last a long time even though you have already been hurt by the AoE.

2. Quite a lot of current favourites are glass cannons. They will dish out a lot of damage in a short time but in return quite a few of them have quite low health themselves. Having higher health will keep you in battle that one or two turns longer to make a difference compared to your average 1400 health pets.

Anyone else that have experienced something similar or am I just crazy(not entirely unlikely)?

[Poofah]

The short version is that it's more related to your point #2. The balance point between health and power is somewhere around 4-5 turns for a single pet. If your pet gets to take 4-5 effective turns*, then power and speed tend to be better; if your pet can't survive this long, then health becomes better.** PvP tends to be closer to the latter kind of environment, with lots of high-offense pets and pets that limit your effective turns with CC/avoidance. Health has arguably been better than power in pvp since 5.2 for this reason, and as we've gotten newer and stronger pets, the balance has continued to push toward favoring health. Whether speed or health is better obviously depends on the pet's particular moveset: any time a pet has a CC/evasion ability, speed is almost always going to be better.

The long version is [url=http://www.warcraftpets.com/community/forum/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=2765]this thread[/url] from a zillion years ago, which is (an attempt at) a more complete explanation of how the stats relate to one another.

* An effective turn means a turn in which your chosen ability lands for its full effect. Ie if you attacked while blinded or dodged then you didn't get an effective turn. If your heal was affected by Darkness then you got half an effective turn, etc etc.

[Tekulve2012]

This is encouraging in a sense. It may suggest that players are getting familiar enough to make all three statistics relevant. We all know the advantage of speed in pet PvP (one reason we see so many s/s DAH, crows and MPDragonlings)

Power will always draw players..big hitters (lil rags) or power boosting movesets like call lightning are common

To complete the trifecta there will be tanky types.. Scourged whelps, shield pets ,healers some of which are slower generally low power hitters.

I think pet PvP has excellent balance considering all the 575+ battlepets, their mixed breeds, attack sets and racial advantages...it seems tanks are perhaps lesser used but i see the unborn valk as a tank of sorts ..many undeads soak damage well. The h/h fledgling buzzard is an unreal tank too with its racial, big HP and avoidance with liftoff

Another h/h which gets very little PvP play is the living sandling , I'm not recommending it but if a person had one at lvl 25 already its a fun one to play around with.

[Poofah]

HH has always been a good choice in pvp. Power is better in most pve situations, which is probably why PP became the de facto 'best' choice.

Tank pets are generally better off with power, because heals/shields scale with power. There are certainly some tank-type pets that are good in HH, but they generally are not healers, and often it's because they don't have a PP breed -- pets like Spirit Crab and Anubisath Idol, and Scourged Whelp and Living Sandling that you mentioned.

The 3 stats remain relevant by virtue of the pet battle mechanics, as outlined in that old thread. Basically, when you stack power, you shorten the fight; and in a short fight, the opponent can gain an advantage by stacking health instead. So the stats are in dynamic balance with each other, and this is enforced by the underlying design, not by players' preferences. The original design is actually really elegant--pet battles have pretty much been autopilot since then, with the only significant mechanics changes coming in 5.3 (the accuracy changes, which created high-damage spammable attacks such as Crush, and thereby shortened fights and made speed more valuable).