Blizzard selling exploitable pet through cash shop

[advanta]

So the cash shop pet "Blinky" has a stupidly exploitable ability called "Mana flare" which demolishes almost anything.

This isn't the first time they've sold a pet with an obvious exploit through the cash shop. Pretty sure its not accidental.
(Not recommending any one actually buy this just thought it was interesting).

[lembas]

While the damage output of the ability seems to be higher than written in the tooltip, I don't really see this pet anywhere near being amazing for leveling nor making gold from leveling pets.
This pet is a glass cannon. Sure, the damage might be high, but it can't really oneshot majority of the pets, and it deals damage after being damaged, meaning that it will probably die after every, or every other battle.
This coupled with "revive battle pets ability" being on 8minute cooldown will force you to either visit pet trainer or use Pet bandages.
There are many strategies for pet battles for fast pet level boosting and experience, and there are many pets that will be more self sufficient in the process, that altought slightly slower per battle than using Blinky, will be easier, faster and cheaper to implement in the long run.

[advanta]

While the damage output of the ability seems to be higher than written in the tooltip, I don't really see this pet anywhere near being amazing for leveling nor making gold from leveling pets.
This pet is a glass cannon. Sure, the damage might be high, but it can't really oneshot majority of the pets, .

You use it against pets, mostly flying ones, that it can one-shot. You can prevent it taking damage in the same way you level it by using invinvcibility abilities like decoy.

[lembas]

You use it against pets, mostly flying ones, that it can one-shot. You can prevent it taking damage in the same way you level it by using invinvcibility abilities like decoy.

Yes, but it doesn't mean anything.
The only "exploit" here is the damage of the pet that is higher than mentioned in the tooltip.
You can level it using "exploits" by switching it with other pets that have decoy ability, in exactly the same way it was used to level other pets for years now, using countless strategies.
You can use it to one shot flying pets, that usually have 2 different pets accompanying them, hence you either die with single fight, or use different pets to kill them in order to win a fight and gain experience on pet and character.
None of which is any novelty, and it can be done using cheaper, non-real money pets available for peanuts on auction house, that can survive whole fights.
A quick look at wow-petguide dot com will give you strategies with easy to get pets that can survive and kill pets quickly.
Where exactly lies the exploit of extremely fast leveling, or extremely fast pets leveling to gain gold in comparison to already well developed and often used strategies is beyond my understanding, as I don't see anything better in your example, sorry.

[advanta]

The only "exploit" here is the damage of the pet that is higher than mentioned in the tooltip.

Yes, it is a damage exploit. It kills things faster than without exploits.

There are other ways to level up pets and make gold. However these will generally be slower.

I think your point is that a pet battle specialist can find some way to do this faster. They probably can, it is a fair point. There's actually a genius trick someone came up with on my patreon where you can beat an elite pet in 30 seconds or so and level super-fast with an auto-clicker so there's at least one superior method.

But that type of knowledge isn't accessible to most players. This is in fact usually the case with exploits: even when I have found quite powerful gold and experience dupes which have greatly excited players I often know that optimized speed leveling or some really good 4x4 farm gets more xp or gold. But players for various reasons don't generally want to do those things because of elements like set-up time or the need to form groups or the mental energy required or whatever.

Btw Xu-fu's guides are great. But I suspect that 90% of players would just be overwhelmed by the information on that site. It isn't quick or straightforward to work out what combination of pets that you personally possess would be optimal for leveling pets or your character-it is designed to help you with individual fights not generic approaches. It also has no information on the time cost of abilities which is crucial for optimized pet battling: Blinky's mana flare is unusually fast.

I'd love for you or someone else to come up with a super fast leveling method which could be applied simply.

[lembas]

But that type of knowledge isn't accessible to most players.

I'm sorry to say that, but you are simply being dishonest.
Do you really think, that a random, even new player, is able to fork out 10$ for a battle pet and find your exploit video, but is unable to find one of thousands of guides on fast pet leveling, and using those methods to level his character with cheap and readily available pets on ah?
Or that he will

spend (in some cases literally) hundreds of hours planning out their quest routes for optimization

instead of finding a leveling addon that will give him a route to level in dozens? Hell, even simply following the questlines will let you level faster than hundreds of hours.

It also has no information on the time cost of abilities which is crucial for optimized pet battling: Blinky's mana flare is unusually fast.

Your video also conveniently forgets to mention the fact, that the glass cannon although fast in dealing with flying pets will not only die very quickly, but will also need support of other pets to carry majority of the fight and then will require you either to go to pet npc to heal or use bandages which significantly increases the time of leveling.
Whereas using other pets, you can have 3 of them learned, which you can easily replace (or even use different ones with similar abilities), which might be slightly slower per battle, but definitely faster in the long run.

Don't get me wrong. I really appreciate what you do for wow community, your exploits are great, even this one is good as a "damage exploit". But comparing absolute best case scenario for your idea with absolute worst case scenario for the whole game screams of click-baitery and dishonesty.
Not every great exploit has to also be great leveling and moneymaking exploit, why not let it be a simple pet damage exploit instead?

[Strath]

Mana Flare is very effective against certain enemies, especially those that use a lot of mana or have high health pools. Mana Flare can be dodged, blocked, or reduced by shields or damage reduction effects. it is not clear whether Blinky is an exploitable pet or not. It may depend on the situation and the strategy of the players. Some may find it useful and fun, while others may find it unfair and annoying.

tell me youre a chatgpt bot without tell me youre a chatgpt bot.