no ion cannon for yeti

yesterday i was talking about the darkmoon tonk's high-power ion cannon. essentially it does 2.5 times the damage of a standard attack, at the price of being stunned and unable to act for the next two rounds. so under normal conditions it actually does less damage than just firing off a basic times three times. it pays off though when either it's enough damage to suddenly kill the enemy (especially if it's your opponent's last pet) or when you're close to dying and won't live long enough to get off three more attacks. under the right circumstances, it can be a game changer, and earn you the right to prance about and point and shout "in your face!" at your computer monitor. these things are important.

the darkmoon tonk isn't the only pet with this ability, but it's the only one that is both "rare" quality and fairly easy to obtain. the tranquil mechanical yeti also has an ion cannon, but it's only 'uncommon". the azure whelpling and lil' tarecgosa both have the magical equivalent surge of power, but the one is an extremely rare drop (or costs approximately one metric crapton of gold on the auction house), and the other requires you to be in a guild that's completed the legendary staff questline in firelands (which mine ain't. edit: well, that ain't really true, 'cause I've got at least two alts in guilds that have, as has been pointed out to me. but still, it's a hard pet to get for a lot of folks.). finally, the orphan's week reward legs also has surge of power, but he's also only an uncommon. so that's a bummer.

but we're getting new pets today, with the arrival of 5.1! and when i was reviewing this preview page over at wowhead news, i saw that just like his mechanical cousin, the stunted yeti of feralas would be packing an ion cannon. booya! a capturable pet packing the biggest nuke in the game? farm that bitch 'til you find a rare, baby! now, okay, i realize that the idea of a primitive woodlands ape packing space age weaponry is a little far-fetched (although, you gotta admit, it would make the show "finding bigfoot" a lot more exciting). but who cares if it makes sense? this! is! pet battles!

if only i had some poor shmuck i could kick into a pit of oblivion. woulda made that last bit a lot more dramatic. oh well.

sadly, it is not to be. checking the entry for stunted yeti on wowhead's ptr site this morning, i saw a perfectly sensible set of humanoid and beast abilities. no ion cannon, no light saber, no buck rogers. i has a disappointed.

i figure blizzard initially copied the tranquil mechanical yeti abilities as a place holder, and that got datamined. then they went back and made it what they really wanted. or maybe wowhead just made a mistake. or something. doesn't really matter. but if i get the right stone to upgrade legs to a rare, i'm gonna use it. and some poor bugger's gonna get a heckuva surprise one day.

what happens when lady rng gets shnockered?

she rolls the same result, every time. you should lay off the hard stuff, lady rng.

last night i was leveling my warlock up in the kun-lai summit and picking fights with the local beasties in between quests. without fail, every time the third pet on the local team was a rare plains monitor. now, this was kinda cool at first, since it allowed me to toss the one poor quality one i started with, and replace it with a full stable of three rares. these are gonna come in handy when i begin to seriously push toward pro pet mob. but after the first three? it got a little depressing, having to deliberately kill rares. not to mention the fact that they took more work to down than their poor siblings.

i know the game wasn't doing this the last time i went through kun-lai. i'm curious to see how long it keeps up. a day? until the next server restart?