WarcraftPets Forum

I love this pet, however, while leveling it in PvP mode I noticed the ability "Instability" only does half damage against other players. I find this annoying since it already misses 50% of the time, but the base attack hits harder.

Against PvE battle pets, it does regular damage and nearly one shots most equal level animals. It doesn't matter much since at 20, it is replaced by the heal, but it is still anooying.

Has Blizzard nerfed the damage of 50% chance high hitting abilities for PvP battles?

Also, before a wise guy comments, no, there was no reduction shield. I battled well over 20 times and tested the ability against a variety of pets.

I doubt they nurfed it in PvP as it isn't a popular ability that is in the FOTM team to warrant nurfing and I haven't seen a single instance where a pet ability behaves differently in PvP vs PvE. There must be some other explanation.

Do you have screenshots of the pet battle combat logs?

It is a dragonkin ability so it would be weak against undead and there are several undead that are popular right now in pvp so that could be it.

It is also a big enough hit that it could be getting capped by the magic racial, which is ironic since it's strong against magic pets.

On the other hand it shouldn't be "nearly one shots most equal level animals". It does 700 dmg at level 25 which is half the typical 1400 hps most pets have for non-Health breed pets. There are a few pets lower than that but I can't think of anything below 1000hps at level 25. A crit would be ~1050 which could be close to one shotting something like a Zandalari Raptor at ~1200hps or a Sapphire Cub at 1075hps. Now maybe if you are looking at lower quality wild pets you might be nearly one shotting them especially if they are a couple levels lower than you but not an equal level/quality pet.

Odd.

I made a team with the 3 blackwing lair pets (all dragons) to test this. As luck would have it, my opponent had two flyers, so I won, and I got a flawless stone to boot.

Instability hit for ~700 damage both times it landed, which matches the tooltip. I don't know how to explain your result OP.

It isn't level 25 yet, so when I state it nearly 1-shots the PvE animals, I'm referring to critters found in the world sub-25 (thus far).

Also, I was not using the ability against creatures it is red against. But rather, it did half damage to creatures it was STRONG against! (PvP only of course) That totally thrrew me a loop, because I expected it to at least do the damage stated in the tooltip plus a green bonus--but nope.

The base attack was doing twice the damage on same targets--which is how I noticed this in the first place.

I did not take screenshots, but I will see if I can make that happen while testing it further.

Stibnite wrote:It isn't level 25 yet, so when I state it nearly 1-shots the PvE animals, I'm referring to critters found in the world sub-25 (thus far).

Also, I was not using the ability against creatures it is red against. But rather, it did half damage to creatures it was STRONG against! (PvP only of course) That totally thrrew me a loop, because I expected it to at least do the damage stated in the tooltip plus a green bonus--but nope.

The base attack was doing twice the damage on same targets--which is how I noticed this in the first place.

I did not take screenshots, but I will see if I can make that happen while testing it further.

As Kpb321 said, Instability is strong against Magic pets, and their racial prevents them from losing more than 35% of their maximum life in 1 hit. So that's why you see it dealing reduced damage.

Simenon wrote:

Stibnite wrote:It isn't level 25 yet, so when I state it nearly 1-shots the PvE animals, I'm referring to critters found in the world sub-25 (thus far).

Also, I was not using the ability against creatures it is red against. But rather, it did half damage to creatures it was STRONG against! (PvP only of course) That totally thrrew me a loop, because I expected it to at least do the damage stated in the tooltip plus a green bonus--but nope.

The base attack was doing twice the damage on same targets--which is how I noticed this in the first place.

I did not take screenshots, but I will see if I can make that happen while testing it further.

As Kpb321 said, Instability is strong against Magic pets, and their racial prevents them from losing more than 35% of their maximum life in 1 hit. So that's why you see it dealing reduced damage.

Yeah, being weak to Dragonkin, I'd about put money on this.

Thanks guys, going to retest it!