Tag Archives: celestial tournament

Skywisp Moth

Celestial Tournament Walkthrough

The Tournament and the Timeless Isle have been such a huge topics that I’m writing this post to link everything for easy bookmarking and reference. I’m also going to put the comprehensive pets checklist for all the triads and all the Celestials below. This is almost as much for your benefit as it is for mine. I think I’m still missing a grub.

Below are also links for some videos of a few new pets you can collect in 5.4. I haven’t posted them on the blog until now! The screenshots are extras I took, mostly pet-related, from the 5.4 PTR.

Overview of the Celestial Tournament and Timeless Isle information, including a map for where the queue NPC is.

Tommy Newcomer’s Lil Oondasta

First Triad: Chen, Wrathion and Taran Zhu
Second Triad: Mari, Blingtron 4000 and Kiryn
Third Triad: Sully, Ion Goldbloom and Lorewalker Cho

The Celestials:

Yu’la
Xufu
Zao
Chichi

Universal Strategy for Single-Pet Fights

My full pet leveling checklist:

Unborn Val’kyr
Pandaren Water Spirit
Chrominius
Darkmoon Tonk
Darkmoon Zeppelin
Clockwork Gnome
Tranquil Mechanical Yeti
Gilnean Raven
Clockwork Rocket Bot
Sen’jin Fetish
Disgusting Oozeling
Enchanted Lantern
Non-Critter with Critter offense
A Cat (eg, cheetah cub, panther cub etc)
A strong flying offense pet
Emerald Whelpling or Nether Faerie Dragon
Scourged Whelpling
A Mechanical
Lesser Voidcaller
Anubisath Idol
Flayer Youngling
Hopling or Feral Vermling
Another pet with strong humanoid offense
An otter or mongoose
An elemental with a damage shield (eg, Living Sandling)
Water strider
A pet with elemental burst damage
An undead
A maggot or larva
A critter with avoidance

Here’s a preview of all 4 of the pets you can buy after you win the Tournament.

Videos of other new pets: Kovok & MoonMoon.

Universal Team for Single Pet Fights

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Straight off, I didn’t come up with this combo, but it is so useful to have in your back pocket that I absolutely have to cover it. I’ve heard it mentioned on Josh Augustine’s podcast a few times, and seen it referenced on Reddit and the official forums. The earliest mention I can find is in this thread on WarcraftPets from May. I’m making this post to discuss your options and the changes coming to this strategy in 5.4. There’s a fairly significant change (possibly a bug fix) and it seems to be undocumented.

The strategy starts with this team:

It’s probably not too obvious just by looking at the team exactly what’s going on if you’re not familiar with this strategy. Because my toddler really enjoys spaceships right now, here’s how I break it down for 5.4:

Before 5.3, when the Unborn Val’kyr casts Unholy Ascension before being killed the first time, she comes back for her last turn as a risen undead. On the 5.4 PTR that function has changed so when she dies from that, she’s dead permanently. So, I cast Curse of Doom first and then Unholy Ascension. You get more from the 25% buff and a weaker Curse of Doom than you from just the buff. Then, you cast Geyser, then Whirlpool, then the 100% damage booster Howl. All the debuffs (except Curse of Doom with 5.4) explode in one turn, but in multiple hits, so any healing ability or damage capper (eg, the Magic family racial) is pretty much negated. Even if not, the post-Blastoff turn from Surge of Power with Chrominius is ridiculously deadly, especially since you definitely just triggered the Dragonkin racial boost. On the Celestials you can run into the 35% per hit Boss Buff ceiling a bit, but still kill them with just the three hits.

With the Unholy Ascension nerf, the only pet you absolutely must have for this strategy to work is the Pandaren Water Spirit. That’s the only pet with both geyser and whirlpool, and there aren’t really any other pets with a one-off staggered delay nuke like those. You can try working in a Ghostly Skull for the Val’kyr. That’s the only other pet with Unholy Ascension, which is fairly necessary here.

Howl is a very good debuff for both PVE and PVP, so much so that it gives this strategy its alternate name: the Howl Bomb. There are other pets with Howl, but none of them have that next turn backend punch Chrominius can pack with Surge of Power. Tito or the Lil Bad Wolf are alright choices, but you can only expect to hit for a few hundred with their other abilities, because all the solo pets have additional damage absorbing buffs. Beyond Howl, there are a few other abilities that cast the Shattered Defenses 100% damage multiplier debuff, and all the rest are Swarm-type abilities. You might want to experiment with a Zandalari Kneebiter, for instance. However, if you do go this route, make sure you use your Hunting Party right off the bat. Don’t try to get cute and cast Black Claw first. The big nukes need to get that 100% debuff or you’re in trouble. The nature of Swarm abilities means if you’re going against a pet with a damage shield like Yu’la, or are making use of a Sandstorming Anubisath, you’re not going to apply the debuff so be careful of that, too. And, if you’re up against a healer like Dos Ryga, a swarm pet isn’t going to be able to burst him down for those last hits before he heals.

To be absolutely clear, if you’d like to use a Howl Bomb strategy I’d highly recommend getting all 3, yes even the Val’kyr, even though she’s a bit of a camp. With those 3, this is a very solid, easy strategy to use. Without, it can get a little dicey. I feel a little cheap using it, but I will certainly be using it during the Tournament myself.

For the Tournament, because of Yu’la and Chichi’s avoids, and Chichi’s heals, I wouldn’t recommend using this for those two. Because Zao’s heal is on a turn delay, this is a decent pick for him. Personally, because I typically only maintain one of each battle pet, my choice is likely going to be Xufu, especially on the week featuring Mari and Kiryn.

Celestial Tournament – Zao

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Zao is the last encounter I’m writing about, and as a result my witty repartee is broken. Uh, yes, it totally WAS witty. Throw me a bone here!

Zao has 2 old abilities and 1 new ability. The new ability is Charge, which is functionally similar to Deep Breath, where he charges up one round and then does huge damage the next. The old abilities are the typical beast damage ability Trample, and the pvp rage-inducing heal Wish.

The breakdown on my strategy for Zao is a lot of bursty offensive firepower. If you have stuns this is a good place to use them. Call Lightning is fantastic here too. Any kind of avoidance is good, because as seen in the screenshot below his Charge does borderline one-shot damage. He takes that down turn to power up though, so you know it’s coming, making it relatively easy to counter.

However, when I say “bursty firepower”, you need to be mindful of using abilities like Ion Cannon early on, because the “Boss” mechanic only allows you to do 35% of a boss’s health in a single hit. Those huge single hits frequently get partially absorbed, wasting that burst. I do like the Ion Cannon in my anchor slot as a last ditch Hail Mary, but not as primary offense. The Darkmoon Tonk or Menagerie Custodian are my choices for anchor, because they also have Shock and Awe, which gives a chance to stun. The boss buff is why I really like my trusty Clockwork Gnome with a Lightning Storm combo for this fight. It’s a good amount of DPS even halved, and there’s no way I’d hit that 35% per hit threshold because it’s all little hits.

In general, you want to just unload on his face. While you unload though, you need to be mindful of Wish. I like to get all set up with thunderstorms and turrets and debuffs and stuff, and then blitz him down after his first Wish. It’s on a relatively long, 5-round cooldown so it’s better to just eat the first one while you set up your offense, and then use your big damage cooldowns right after he casts it. There aren’t a whole lot of other options for damage debuffs among pets with mechanical damage, and debuff stacking is my personal favorite strategy for nearly all the single-pet fights. One pet I didn’t have available on the PTR that I’m eager to experiment with on Live is the Cogblade Raptor, with Exposed Wounds and Batter.

As always, the trickiest part of the scenario is where you need to think ahead and triage. The Gnome and Tonk are both fairly key in other strategies for the triads, but are also good here. Do you really need that Tonk to beat a pet in the early triad, or should you save it for Zao? I don’t know your stable, so I can’t give you that answer.

Here’s the video of me beating Zao on the PTR.

Celestial Tournament – Xufu

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Xufu was the most difficult boss for me to figure out a solid strategy for, and yet has the simplest solution.

The strategy for Xufu revolves around his Spirit Claws ability. It does a whole lot of damage, but it has an 80% accuracy, which then becomes 100% if the weather is moonlight. Yes, he casts Moonfire.

I mean, of course he does. Sigh. So you have to have a pet with some kind of weather effect to counter Moonlight. I like Call Lightning, because I always like Call Lightning. Call Darkness is also an effective choice, because in Darkness the accuracy of Spirit Claws plummets to 70%. I wouldn’t recommend Sandstorm, because with the Boss buff you’re not doing a ton of damage to begin with.

The other reason I’m a fan of Darkness is Xufu’s Feed ability. Darkness is one of the few ways to counter a heal, and Feed heals Xufu for the amount of damage he does, like Absorb or Consume. If you look at the difference between Absorb and Consume, Consume’s baseline hits a bit harder than Absorb, but Consume has a turn cooldown to compensate. Feed is such a big hit (with such a big heal) it’s on a 4-turn cooldown. But, because it is a 4-turn cooldown you can kind of plan around it. Generally, I did this with the Decoy ability on the Darkmoon Zeppelin or Mechanical Pandaren Dragonling. Decoy is really powerful here because each of Xufu’s attacks is a single hit, so you buy yourself several rounds of uninterrupted offense each time you use it. If Xufu should happen to miss with Spirit Claws on one of those attacks too, it’s super, super sweet.

You’ll note from the video I didn’t make good use of my typical Lightning Storm-style offense. This is almost entirely because of the new nature of Lightning Storm. It now lasts a mere 5 turns after being cast, and that first pet isn’t long for this world. With the mechanical resurrect turn, you have 2 or 3 turns of Lightning Storm at best for the 2nd pet on. Not much time to construct a solid damage over time offense, let alone stack damage debuffs and all that other nonsense. Don’t worry about the shorter duration though. Xufu won’t re-cast Moonfire until after the full duration of his first one would’ve passed, 10 turns later… unless you cast Nevermore on his Spirit Claws, and then he’ll use anything else at his disposal. Though, because we’re using mostly mechanicals, that’s an alright strategy too. The magic Moonfire doesn’t hurt nearly as much as it typically would. If you do cast Nevermore with your Raven though, make sure you take your Raven out before the next turn or he’s going to get creamed.

Ultimately, as long as I use a weather pet, and then something with Decoy, and back it up with another offensively strong mechanical in the middle, I win at least 75% of the time on PTR. That one fight when Spirit Claws never, ever misses is usually the percent where I end up crashing and burning.

I said there were two methods of doing this, and there are. But the second method is the Universal strategy, usable for nearly any single pet in World of Warcraft, so it’s getting its own post.

Celestial Tournament – Chichi

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Chi-Chi is… confounding. Yeah, let’s go with that.

He has a whole lot of avoidance, a whole lot of speed (465!), and a heal with Tranquility, so we’re behind the 8-ball before we even start. Unlike Yu’la or Zao where I could kind of pick & choose from a few strategies and arrays of pets, I had to come up with a fairly concrete strategy to beat him. This is a huge twist from my typical preferred strategies, but it involves DoT and debuff stacking.

I know, contain your surprise.

But in this case, rather than just being my preference, it’s a really solid way to go about it, because Chi-chi’s Ethereal ability (the mechanic is pretty much identical to Deflection) doesn’t dodge most DoTs. Ethereal is on such a relatively short cooldown that in trying to write a strat it was pretty central to my frustration. I tried a makeup where I use that ‘down’ turn to cast buffs or build barriers, but it wasn’t nearly as successful, in some part because I’m awful at counting.

This is the team I used:

The Fetish is kind of a weird choice, I know. Black Claw, my BFF, has a duration far too short to stack DoTs meaningfully so that was out. I had some success with raptors with Exposed Wounds, or other pets with Wild Magic, but Ethereal plus the somewhat variable nature of Chichi’s only offensive ability, the new elemental Fire Quills, made it very hard to predict when my first buff pet would die. The Fetish, as far as I can tell, is the only pet with a buff like this which is also in the undead family. Because Chichi always goes first and doesn’t have any kind of delayed nuke or DoT spells, I’ll always have 2 turns as a risen Undead, so even with that blasted Ethereal, I can ensure an almost-full duration Wild Magic for the Disgusting Oozeling to stack its DoTs. The Fetish also has a decent DoT of its own with Flame Breath.

There’s a bit of leeway with the Oozeling. You can also go with the Oily Slimeling, Toxic Wasteling, or the Jade Oozeling. The two really key abilities here are Acidic Goo, and Corrosion, both of which have an additional multiplier on top of their damage over time spells. Chichi should die by the time your Oozeling does, but sometimes there’s a tiny bit of damage left to do, which is where the lantern comes in handy. You miiiight be able to get by with Acidic Goo and another, non-multiplier DoT, but I make no promises.

The reason I chose a lantern is because it has a lot of burst, just in case Chichi decides to be a jerk on that last turn and whip out a Tranquility. You do need to continue to keep Ethereal in mind, though… there’s nothing more frustrating than having your huge nuke dodged because your long-cooldown Blind got absorbed. Most magic pets with good burst will do alright here, because you’re just trying to finish Chichi off.

Here’s a video, to see this strategy in action for yourself:

Celestial Tournament – Sully, Goldbloom and Lorewalker Cho

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Triads, triads, come and get yer triads!

Sully, the bumblingest world-class espionage agent, brings undead Socks, critter Monte and aquatic Rikki to the table. All 3 of his pets have cross-family abilities.

Socks is probably the trickiest, because while he has Infected Claw, he also has regular Claw, making him a powerhouse against the critter you probably picked to beat him. As a result, you’ll want to pick a pet in an off-family with critter offense. I had good luck with a Mei Li Sparkler with Scratch and Swarm, with Cocoon in the middle slot, and a frog using Tongue Lash and Swarm of Flies. Both are in a defending family for one of Socks’ attacks. I give the Sparkler a slight edge though, because with Cocoon, it can dodge Socks’ last attack, Unholy Ascension. Your back line will still get the debuff, but hey.

For Monte, I usually just toss in that Cat I used in the other 2 triads. Oddly, Monte has all beast attacks with Huge, Sharp Teeth!, Vicious Strength and the combo attack/evasion ability Burrow. As long as you don’t use your Prowl buffed ability while he’s underground, you should be able to all but one-shot Monte. If you don’t have a cat, another pet with strong beast offense should work just as well.

Rikki, the mongoose I’m just assuming totally beat the crap out of a family of cobras, has all beast offense. He uses Gnaw and Bloodfang, so you need to watch out for heals. He also uses Cute Face, so you should save your long cooldown big hits for when that drops off. The ideal match here would probably be a Crow or Gilnean Raven, but if you want to save yours for another fight, nearly any flier will work here. I like the Kaliri Hatchling, or the Dragonbone Hatchling, but I used the uncommon Cockatiel with no issue, too.

Hold on to your butts, because the next tamer we fight is Dr. Ion Goldbloom. His 3 pets are the flying Screamer, Beast Trike, and Magic Chaos.

He always starts off with Screamer, but Screamer won’t be killed straight away, because he uses the Feign Death ability. Both his offensive abilities are Flying, but one of those two is Lift-off, with the additional evasion component. He’ll also use Alpha Strike, and at 380 speed he’s going to be faster than your pet unless you debuff him. Because of the Flying of it all, I liked using the Emerald Whelpling with the magic abilities in the first two slots. You need a good amount of longevity with this pet. A Nether Faerie or Sprite Darter works here too, but isn’t quite as sturdy as the Emerald Whelpling.

When Screamer swaps out with Feign Death, Trike will come in, and you’ll want to swap to a mechanical. He uses all Beast offense with Bite, Adrenaline Rush and Horn Attack. Almost any mechanical works out alright, excepting pets like the Lifelike Mechanical Toad, which has nearly no Mechanical offense. Using a Son of Animus here makes the whole fight rather trivial, to the extent that I was able to pretty much duo it with the Whelpling, but again with the Celestial Tournament being about triage and choice… I like having Animus for a later fight, because he’s such a strong pet. Like I said though nearly any ‘extra’ mechanical you have kicking around works here.

Chaos can be really wonky. Neither of its 2 offensive moves are Magic, and it uses the new ability Uncertainty, which increases its crit chance by 50%, but decreases its chance to hit by 25%. His offense is the Dragonkin ability Instability, and the new Humanoid ability Logic, which is a straightforward nuke. I had an easy time with both the Nether Ray Fry (Flying), the Scourged Whelpling and the Mechanical Pandaren Dragonling, though I lean toward the Nether Ray or Scourged Whelpling, because Chaos is super fast so your Tail Sweep will hit twice.

Whenever Screamer swaps out I swap the Emerald Whelpling back in, and eventually all his pets will die. His dinosaurs had their shot, and I selected them for extinction.

The last tamer, Lorewalker Cho, uses Flying Wisdom, Magic Patience and Knowledge, a Dragon. And of course, they also use off-breed abilities.

Wisdom uses the Beast damage over time spell Rip to great effect with the debuff Wild Magic, and rounds it out with Peck. I had really good luck here using a Coilfang Stalker with Illusionary Barrier. My personal choice is probably going to be the Lesser Voidcaller, because he was fairly key in the first couple triads and we haven’t used him yet this triad, so I might as well re-use him. He’ll use his magic moves, including his own shield, Prismatic Barrier.

After Wisdom is Patience, the broom. It has a heal in Tranquility, and the magic nuke and barrier-clearing Clean-Up, with the humanoid ability Broom. So, like Chaos, we need a dragon nuker that isn’t a dragon. Since Patience is super slow, I’d recommend trying the Mechanical Dragonling, since his Breath isn’t affected by speed, but the Nether Ray and Scourged Whelp’s Tail Swipe is at a disadvantage if it goes first.

Last up is Knowledge, the dragonkin. He uses Tail Sweep, and is very slow at 244 speed, so he’s probably going to get to use both hits of that the whole time. He also has Amplify Magic and fairly crazy elemental nuke Solar Beam (especially combined with that Amplify). I had a hard time figuring out when Knowledge will use Solar Beam, which is kind of a big deal here. As a result my most foolproof strategy was to use the Anubisath and use Deflect on cooldown until he uses it, then count out every 5 rounds when it’s off cooldown and use it again then. In rounds where he didn’t cast Solar Beam, it was really easy to cream him with pretty much any humanoid.

Leveling Worksheet (italics means they’re used in a different triad, updated as strategies progress): Non-critter with Critter offense, a beast damage pet (preferably a Prowl or other combo pet), a pet with strong flying offense, Emerald Whelpling or Nether Faerie Dragon, Mechanical Pandaren Dragonling, Scourged Whelpling, a Mechanical, Lesser Voidcaller, Anubisath Idol.

Celestial Tournament – Yu’la

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Yu’la is by far the most straightforward of any of the 4 Celestial bosses. No heals, not a ton of out of control burst. Her 3 abilities are the Dragon nuke Jade Breath, the shield ability Emerald Presence, and the avoidance ability with a nuke back end, Liftoff. This post will discuss your options and the degrees of success I had with each, with the ‘most recommended’ pets toward the top. There’s also a video at the bottom if you’d like to watch the fight.

In general, just hit her and use avoids if you have them, especially on the turns when you’d get hit by the Liftoff nuke. A good rule of thumb for all the Celestials is to avoid your huge one-shot attacks because of the boss buff, and to stun and avoid whenever possible.

It seems as though Yu’la has been tuned specifically to be slower than the Hopling or Feral Vermling pets. She has 287 speed to their 289, so the Hopling is juuuust quick enough for Backflip to stun. I don’t bother with the second slot ability at all. I just use the humanoid Crush in the first slot and Backflip whenever it’s up.

The Anubisath Idol is really nice here, but don’t try to use sandstorm! The Sandstorm block plus Yu’la’s Emerald Presence means that just about anything you try will hit for double digits, if at all. He’s excellent for starting off the fight, as an anchor, everywhere. I’d definitely recommend you get on leveling one of these ASAP if you don’t have one already. It’s super, super useful in several of these fights. As such, though, I might use the Idol on an earlier fight, depending on your stable. Regardless, this is a bigtime recommend, as the Idol can also make several earlier fights, like Aki, trivial as well.

If you have a Flayer Youngling with one of its stats in Speed (H/S, for instance), you can combine the utility of both the Anubisath and the Hopling. You can use that Backflip stun when it’s on cooldown, use Deflect against Liftoff, and Blitz her face in the middle. This pet can also be really nice for PVP and starts off relatively high level, so you may want to put this one up for consideration.

Peddlefeet starts off as Uncommon, and is an alright choice. He has a stun and a charged nuke. Ordinarily this would make him a first-line choice, but because of the Boss buff you’ll have some of your big nuke deflected, and you’ll have to time it well to get it past Lift Off. The stun is still fairly helpful, and Peddlefeet is tradeable so if you’re trying to slap together a team last minute you can try and get him off the AH.

Speaking of the AH, a Gregarious Grell is an excellent choice here, if you can find one. It’s a TCG pet, which I try to avoid in general, but I was able to nab one off my friendly neighborhood auction house for around 6 thousand gold so it’s not too awful. They start off rare, so you don’t have to worry about a stone, either. He has an avoid and a heal in addition to a humanoid Punch. I liked using him as an anchor, just in case I get down to the wire.

Another stunner and all-around good choice is the Qiraji Guardling. You can cast Hawk Eye for some extra damage too. I’m not sure why, but I was less successful with her than the Vermling, which doesn’t make a ton of sense. Maybe it was just bad RNG strings on the 80% to hit Crush, or maybe it was the wrong breed for the job (an issue you won’t have with the Vermling.

I had some decent luck with the Kun-Lai Runt. No avoidance and cooldowns means you’re probably only going to get one slow -> stun -> big hit combo off, so after the first one I’d just hit her with Takedown until your pet dies. This is a decent choice for an early pet, but I wouldn’t use it as an anchor.

The Harbinger of Flame makes for an alright anchor, because it has the single-pet breaker Impale. Though, because it’s a beast ability, it usually does just a bit more than its regular humanoid Jab ability.

The Curious Oracle Hatchling has the same Backflip move as the Hopling, so it looks like it might be an alright choice, but it’s slower than Yu’la and starts off as Uncommon to boot, so I don’t recommend it.

Beyond that, your choices are fairly ho-hum. Because of Yu’la’s Emerald Presence you’re not going to get too far with non-humanoid offense. As a result, I didn’t have a ton of success using off-family to defend against her damage. Also, she has mixed damage abilities (a Flying and a Dragon), so that was kind of right up to begin with.

Here’s a video of the Anubisath Idol, Feral Vermling and Harbinger of Flame against Yu’la, to give a better idea of what you’re up against.

{update} Pet Dev Johnathan LeCraft also gave me a helpful hint on twitter: https://twitter.com/TheCrafticus/status/369914997997961216

Like I told him, I’m exploring the use of the Raven with Xufu, but it’s a pretty slick trick if you have an extra raven kicking around and few humanoids.

Celestial Tournament – Mari, Blingtron 4000 & Kiryn

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Another week, another fun-filled triad. Yes I’m being droll.

Let’s get to it.

Mari has the aquatic Carpe Diem (yukyuklulz), the magic Spirus and the elemental River.

There are 2 real keys to this fight. One is to have a pet with a weather ability and good offense to beat up Carpe Diem super fast, and the other is to beat up Spirus really quickly. Spirus heals and has Arcane Blast, so he’s basically a ticking timebomb you need to burst down before he gets out of control. River can be problematic because he likes to combine a whole lot of things into one big burst turn, but is easily countered for that exact reason.

Carpe Diem’s first move will always be Cleansing Rain, which then leads into Dreadful Breath, a several-turn AOE which hits twice as hard while the weather is rainy, meaning that he’ll try to destroy your entire team at once. I go with my Gilnean Raven (or the Crow if you’d prefer), both because I can change the weather with Darkness and because I can wreck the silly fish’s face in like 2 turns because he’s vulnerable to Flying. Just make sure that if you’re faster than the fish, you use your regular attack the first round. You don’t want to waste your weather. The carp’s third ability is Grasp, but if you go with the previously cited weather bird of doom, you’ll wreck his face before he casts it. And if you go with a different pet, it’s Grasp. Shrug.

The second pet Spirus uses primarily magic with Arcane Blast though, so your raven is going down. Make sure to cast Darkness again asap, as Spirus also has a fairly large heal. I ended up picking a Mechanical Dragonling for the second pet, because mechanicals defend strongly against magic damage, and the Mech Dragon has a dragon ability which is strong against the Magic pet. Also, Decoy helps a lot against the arcane blast onslaught. I’ve used regular dragons here too, and they’re alright, but the defense you get with the Mechanical Dragon really helps. You may want to avoid using big attacks though, both because of the Magic family damage per hit cap, and because Spirus also uses Soul Ward.

Now you’re probably saying, well then, if the last pet is elemental, the Mechanical Dragon’s gonna get wrecked too. Oddly, River has all aquatic abilities. I can usually get River down about halfway with the dragon. After that, because of River’s tendancy toward single-turn burst with Dive and Whirlpool, not to mention Pump, I like a mongoose or otter, something like that. I can dive to avoid and Survival if things get super dire. I’ve tried a snail here, but this is a little less reliable. If a snail’s Dive hits you’ll win and if not, you start over. A strider can work due to sheer burst, but I found it a lot more reliable to just use the mongoose.

But, you may want to save your strider for Blingtron 4000! The first pet you go up against, Au, is an elemental, and I had great success beating him with a water skimmer. The other 2 pets are Banks, a critter, and Lil B, a mechanical.

Au is relatively easy once you figure out his pattern. He has a new ability called Goldskin, which he can use every other round, which hits you and makes it so the damage he takes is reduced by 100. So, because you’re likely going to be faster, using the water skimmer, I use a simple nuke the first round. Then he’ll have the Goldskin, buff up, so I cast Pump for the first time on the 2nd turn while he hits me with his Gilded Fist, which is a new simple humanoid attack. Then, after his Goldskin runs out, I cast Pump again. He should die. If Pump misses, I take the next turn to heal up, and then cast the regular nuke again. You’ll likely want to follow that pattern regardless, using your damage abilities and buff or healing abilities on alternating turns. His other ability is Gold Rush, which is a renamed Stone Rush.

The next pet, Banks, is a gold piggy. He has a mechanical DoT as pretty much his only offense, so you may want to be on the lookout for a pet that has beast attacks in a non-beast pet (eg, Lil Bad Wolf). Since the Panther Cub (or another cat) was key in last week’s triad, I decided to use him again here. The DoT does hurt, but this should be another 2-shot fight. His other 2 abilities are a heal, and Uncanny Luck. I also had good luck using a crab here, especially with Shell Shield, but because of the heals this leg of the fight took a super long time with the crab.

The Panther got completely wrecked by the next pet, Lil B. The crab or a crawdad isn’t a much better pick though, because Lil B also has Blingtron Gift Package, which heals him on a relatively long cooldown. He also has Extra Plating, and an ability called SMACKTHAT.EXE, which functions similarly to Batter, only has a very different animation associated with it. Lil B is faster than almost all rare pets at 358 speed so he’ll almost always get in that extra hit.

My pick here is the Pandaren Earth Spirit, because his stun helps to extend the time between Extra Platings, allowing you to pump out more DPS. Another valid strategy is a pet like Fel Flame, with Conflag, using the Conflag the first turn Extra Plating is off cooldown. Almost any elemental with good burst will probably be able to win here. The key is to manage that Extra Plating downtime. Remember too, that he’s a mechanical, so he’s coming back after you beat him at least once!

Kiryn’s whole team is a nod to Game of Thrones. There’s the humanoid Nairn, the mechanical Stormoen, and Summer, the erstwhile direwolf.

Nairn’s 3 abilities are the slight damage AOE weather effect Call of Winter, Nairn!, which is a critter damage ability with a self-buff component, and Giant’s Blood, which damages you and heals him. Because of the critter bit in Nairn!, his main attack, I went with a Lesser Voidcaller here and just attacked him down. Once I got around that critter damage it wasn’t no thang. The Curse of Doom in particular helps, a lot.

Stormoen cracked me up, because this is the Thunderstorm PVP strat I used to really enjoy in one silly little mechanical cat. Her 3 abilities are Build Turret, Call Lightning and Batter. Because I used to play this, I know really well how to counter it. Any kind of shield and you’ll be absorbing just about all of the damage Stormoen can dish out. For PTR, the first elemental pet I saw in my list with some kind of damage shield was the Living Sandling, with Stoneskin but I believe there are others. Oddly, my elemental pets were taking the extra hits from the Lightning, so this isn’t just to make all Stormoen’s native offense moot. A self-only shield is preferable to just changing the weather, because Stormoen takes the extra damage from Lightning too, but a weather change would work too.

Summer is rather tricky. She uses Prowl, Dodge and Bite. I found a Darkmoon Zeppelin to be absolutely key here, just because it’s one of the few mechanical pets with a straightup avoid with Decoy. Otherwise, the Prowl/Bite combo can pretty much one-shot you. I’ve also noticed that she likes to use Dodge, then Prowl, so it’s difficult to even interrupt her. But, because of the way the Zeppelin’s barrier works, you can still dodge it no problem.

Leveling Worksheet (italics means they’re used in a different triad, updated as strategies progress): Gilnean Raven or Crow, Mechanical Pandaren Dragonling (or a rare dragon with avoidance), a mongoose or otter-type aquatic pet, Lesser Voidcaller, elemental with a damage shield, Darkmoon Zeppelin, water strider, a beast damage pet (preferably a Prowl or other combo pet), a pet with elemental burst.

Celestial Tournament – Chen, Wrathion and Taran Zhu

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As discussed in my previous entry on the Celestial Tournament, you have to fight a varying set of 3 tamers in order to get to the 4 Celestial bosses. One set is Chen Stormstout, Wrathion and Taran Zhu. Here’s a bit of rough strategy for this triad.

Wrathion tickled my fancy, largely because of the names of his pets.

He always starts off with Cindy, who is undead, followed by the dragonkins Alex and then Dah’da.

Generally speaking, I found Cindy the most difficult to figure out, largely because she is very fast. She starts off with 375 speed, meaning that the speed breed rabbits are on equal footing with all the other rabbits, ie not sucky, but not a total lock either. Her 3 abilities are Bite, Blistering Cold and Ice Tomb. Ironically, of the pets I had available (no bandicoons, which I think would theoretically be good) the best against Cindy were crickets. With a self-heal, cocoon (used mostly against Ice Tomb… the Blistering Cold DoTs didn’t trip it) and decent damage against Undead, the cricket usually made it well through to Alex without much issue.

Alex has Breath, Flamethrower and the healing Ancient Blessing. Dah’da has Shadowflame, Roll and the heavy damage, big stun Elemenium Bolt. The reason I’m discussing them at the same time is because both were rather summarily dispatched by my Anubisath. Deflect against Elementium Bolt was especially key. I opted for the shield rather than Sandstorm because I wanted to avoid the accuracy debuff, and the shield worked fairly well, especially against Flamethrower’s DoT. Dah’da’s Shadowflame hits fairly hard regardless, especially with the roll buff. I had to get in one last swing with a Grell once out of the three times I tried the Anubisath in the second slot, so this may be a candidate for a leveling slot. Bizarre.

Chen’s beast Tonsa is rather formidible, but I was generally able to get the critter Chirps and elemental Brewly down using just a Panther Cub.

Tonsa has Bite, Headbutt and Chew. The best mechanical for the job here seemed to be a Clockwork Rocket Bot of whatever color variation, even though the one I had at hand was only Uncommon. I used Toxic Smoke and Launch Rocket in particular. The Darkmoon Zeppelin with Block worked really well too, but I like to save that one for later.

Chirps is very interesting. He has Flank, Lullaby, which puts your current pet to sleep for 2 turns, and Locust Swarm. Locust Swarm is also a completely new ability. It’s like a cross between Swarm and Deep Breath, where you charge up a round and then the next round he deals ~700 damage across 3 hits. It’s pretty brutal, but you can kinda dodge it. However, he’ll also use Lullaby then use that next turn to charge up Locust Swarm. Luckily he has 281 speed so when I fought him, I used a panther cub to wreck him in under 3 turns. Nearly any cat with a Prowl will work here. I was even sometimes able to finish out the last pet, Brewly, but that was fairly hit or miss.

No, I mean, literally hit or miss. Brewly has a new ability called Inebriate, which decreases your accuracy by 25%, so sometimes I could wreck her no problem and sometimes she just sat back and laughed while my panther ineffectively pawed at her. I kept a strider in my pocket, and was able to finish out the fight without too much limping toward the finish. She also has the rather gross Barrel Toss and Brew Bolt, which is a relatively straightforward aquatic nuke.

To be completely up front, I wasn’t able to nail down a precise strategy for Taran Zhu. I was able to beat him, and notice some patterns, but I wasn’t yet able to replicate a win every time with a particular setup.

As you can see from the screenshot, he’s playing the part of PVP troll with 3 humanoid pandaren monks. But, only one of the monks, Yen, uses an ability player monk pets even have. It’s the stun, Blackout Kick. Yen in particular is a total jerk, also getting the critter ability Comeback, which hits hard against the Humanoid countering Undead, and Feign Death, which pulls him out just as he’s getting hit hard (and dodges any DoTs you may have up on him at the time in addition to your turn that round). Li has Triple Snap, the new heal ability Bandage, and Spin Kick, which is new, but functions very similar to Backflip, just with higher baseline damage. Bolo uses Punch, Blinding Powder, which gives you 0% chance to hit for one round, and Rampage.

To counter, my best strategy was to use Undead pets with big DoTs, namely Curse of Agony and Curse of Doom, especially against Yen. I did try to time my Curse of Doom so that, for example, Yen wouldn’t dodge it, and it would hit Bolo on the rounds I didn’t have Blinding Powder in my face. I did alright with a Stitched Puppy and a Howl/Diseased Bite combo. The thing is, typically if Yen started off with his Critter ability, I was pretty much toast before I even got started… the Gusting Grimoire, Lofty Libram or Lesser Voidcaller might be the answer, but I didn’t have those to use.

[Update 8/29/13] – Rather than the above magic pets, I ended up making liberal use of Mr. Grubbs. His Acidic Goo plus the Scourged Whelpling’s very long DoTs and the healing on Consume made this another duo fight! You do have to be careful and count turns a bit… when I timed it properly to Burrow through stuns and debuffs he really shone. If you don’t have Mr. Grubbs, any maggot or larva will work. If you don’t have the Whelpling, try a Restless Shadeling, maybe. Death & Decay was really the workhorse in this fight, oddly enough.

The big, overarching theme to keep in mind with all these fights is that once you use a pet to fight a particular tamer, you’re pretty much not going to want to use it again until after the entire scenario is complete. There are certain pets which would do well as a family counter to say, Chen’s Tonsa, but because you’re going to want huge burst against Zao (and maybe even against Xufu, but that’s another post) you need to keep a few heavy-hitting mechanicals in your back pocket… like discussed briefly above, the Darkmoon Zep can be very useful later.

Leveling Worksheet (italics means this suggestion carries to another triad): Anubisath, an undead and a maggot, a cat with prowl, a critter with some avoids, and a mechanical (specifically a Rocket Bot if you have a stone available, or can find an upgraded one).