Ok, first of all, here are the CURRENT wowhead 5.2 PTR notes. Feel free to scroll through. There are SOME good changes which I like, and which I'll list. In brief:
-Pet bandages now stack to 25 and are BoA
-Battle stones can now be rewarded from PvP battles
-Pet tamer battle dailies now have a chance to reward Lesser Charms of Good Fortune
-Pet battles now award character exp if you're within 5 levels of the pets you fight
-New rare, ELITE pet battles are added to the game
-(Didn't see this in the patch notes, but from a blue post) Scourged Whelpling respawn times are now fixed. They were extremely bugged before, hence the rarity.
Well, that's about it for the good. Now the bad...
If you have a favorite pet that's pretty powerful, odds are it will be nerfed. TO THE GROUND! Among these, there's...
- Mr. Bigglesworth
- Flayer Youngling
- Fluxfire Feline
- ... Heck, anything with the following abilities, all of which are nerfed:
Reflection,
Volcano,
Ice Tomb,
Elementium Bolt
Stun Seed,
Geyser
Conflagrate
Supercharge (TO THE GROUND!)
Frost Shock
Deep Freeze
Ghostly Bite (TO THE GROUND!),
Spectral Strike,
Light,
Call Darkness (SLIGHTLY ABOVE THE GROUND!),
Blocking abilities that last for 2 turns like Decoy and the new Ice Barrier,
Feign Death
ALL of those have either decreased damage, last for a shorter period of time, or have a larger cooldown (as high as 8 rounds in some cases, like Decoy).
The other very bad change that's going to happen is that running away from battle will damage your pets. I can understand why in general (you don't want to have someone running through groups trying to find a rare), but they fixed that problem by making it so that you need to defeat wild pets or else they won't respawn. BS, I says! On some trainer battles I typically run away 5-6 times before I have the "right" pet come up first.
So, what does everyone think? Necessary balances, or unkind nerfs to the most favored pets and/or team compositions?