WarcraftPets Forum

Excuse me for my dumb question but why was this change done:
- Elemental pets should now correctly be taking less damage while the Sandstorm effect is active.

Edit: Oh I see Blizzard cheated again and change all elementals to ignore negative weather effects only.
When and why did this happen

Edit2: Okay I found it was changed in Patch 5.4 but still the question remains, why

Why? Because ultimately even now the elemental racial is pretty weak compared to say the Humanoid or Mechanical racial. It's only sometimes applicable as not everyone team uses weather and it only ends up ignoring the effects of the weather which are only part of the value of a weather move. They still take full dmg from a weather changing ability. They also still take damage when the weather is a beneficial buff for the opponent rather than a debuff against them (aka call lightning still procs extra dmg against an elemental). Honestly, the only time I can think of where the elemental racial is really useful is against a darkness team as it breaks their combo of Darkness/Nocturnal Strike as the elemental doesn't get blinded.

Burning/Scorched Earth and Conflag combos too, and no DoT damage from Scorched Earth. Also, Mudslide, but lolol. And yeah, I'd agree with the assessment that it's generally a fairly weak racial, even with the buff.

Adding to that, back when they ignored all weather effects the elemental racial was so weak Blizzard considered completely changing it to something like a 50% damage reduction on the turn they swapped in. They went with allowing the elemental to benefit from helpful aspects of weather, but as mentioned above, it is still one of the weaker racials.

Sorry you missed the change announcement in 5.4 and the ensuing discussions here, at the official WoW forums, Blizzard's Twitter feed, etc. about the sandstorm bug. Changes can be annoying when they sneak up on you