Monthly Archives: August 2013

Celestial Tournament – Sully, Goldbloom and Lorewalker Cho

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.

Top Five Pets To Have For Beginners

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In very general terms, my advice for playing with your pets is the same as it’s always been: use the pets you like the best. I’ve said before that my first 25 was my Perky Pug Bertha. She’s mediocre at best for fighting, but she’s still my favorite pet, and despite her questionable utility I still use her to fight when I can. If you don’t feel any connection to your pets, you’re not going to enjoy playing nearly as much.

That said, I’ve noticed that there are a few pets I use constantly, both in PVP and PVE, and see others recommend (or complain about as being totally OP) as well. That’s the basis of this list. I’m not telling you to level these first. Some of them are pretty bad until higher levels, so I wouldn’t recommend just grabbing 3 of these pets from level 1 and making a run of it. But if the option presents itself, keep these pets in mind. Completely unironically, I’ve done pet profiles on most of these individually, too.

Anubisath Idol – Between the Humanoid racial heal, his big hits and damage avoidance, the Anubisath Idol makes a lot of fights trivial. I’ve seen a few carry guides which include the Anubisath in nearly every Pandaria tamer fight. I resisted it for a while, but come 5.4 you’re going to be glad you have one of these puppies.

Speed Breed Rabbit – I made a whole post on why Rabbits, and specifically Speed Breed Rabbits, are fantastic. They do well in both PVE and PVP, especially with undead teams being in vogue right now, and they’re one of the original pets you could have so they’re super easy to get too.

Crab – Another one that’s easy to get, crabs are fantastic tanks for PVE, and can swap and be damage dealing juggernauts in PVP. Breed is debatable. I prefer the Power breeds, but some tamers like starting out with high Health. It’s up to you and what you’re after… or, because they’re so plentiful in the wild, you can stock up on all of them.

Gilnean Raven – An excellent damage dealer with a lot of tricks up its little birdy sleeve. The Darkness weather ability makes life easy against healers. I also love the underutilized literary reference Nevermore ability. Big damage is nice, but shutting down your opponent’s offense is just sweet.

Clockwork Gnome – A teeny powerhouse with heals, damage over time, and big mech hits. This was one of the very first pets I leveled up, and he’s still a favorite to use.

Terrible Turnip – This is a little bit off the topic, so it doesn’t count toward the 5. The Terrible Turnip is kind of awful. I’ve seen it a few times in PVP as a “wait bait” pet (meaning, they turtle until you get fed up and forfeit, handing them the win). But its utility in trapping pets makes it absolutely crucial to have. I wouldn’t make this your very first 25, but when you get more than 5 you should consider it.

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).

Lashtail Hatchling

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With the news that we are likely getting an extra 350 pet slots to make an even thousand this upcoming PTR build, it’s rather obvious that there are a lot (a LOT!) of companions in-game. There are some we grow attached to for one reason or another. My two closest companions are my perky pug Bertha, who is SO getting a pirate hat next patch, and Mr. Wiggles, my former raiding companion. I think a lot of tamers have pets who have seen them through rough fights or are just plain freaking cute, and develop a sense of companionship with their little friend.

There are only a very few though, which you can become attached to as a function of quest design.

Meet Imoinda.

She’s one of several raptor pets which have a similar model, and are largely functionally identical. You can go get a replica of her from Breanni in Dalaran is you have 50g on you, though in a recolored black. Most of the others are attained either by searching for rare mobs or drops, or buying them off the AH. Raptors generally aren’t much special as fighters (standard bite abilities, a few speed modifiers), so these are easily overlooked. But the Lashtail Hatchling is different. Her story starts in the steamy jungles of Stranglethorn Vale.

But that’s just because I’m there. Yowza.

As Alliance, you start off with that same old yarn about Kurzen that’s been there since vanilla. Yeah yeah, jungle remedy. Make sure you do The Fate Of Kurzen at the same time for efficiency’s sake. Unlike those old yarns, this time as you complete the quest, something happens.

This quest is a pop-up auto accept. After you turn it in, you get a quest to feed her. You kill basilisks, she eats, no big. On your way back to the rebel camp, make sure to swing past the Kurzen compound and free a group of adventurers. They make their way to camp to open up a later step.

Right now you won’t have a quest per se, but if you visit this pile of skulls in the Balia’mah ruins, your raptor will find a souvenir. Aw. …ish.

When you return to camp, you hand the skull to the recently freed gnome, Osborn Obnoticus. He’s all, “ooh, look at the size of this skull! This guy must have been huge. And powerful. Let’s screw with voodoo magic and bring him back to life.” And of course, your character thinks this is a fantastic idea, because nothing bad ever happened by trusting a gnome to be skilled with black magic he’s never encountered before.

So it comes as a huge surprise that, after a super adorable fetch quest and a standard kill-guy-loot-body quest, the gnome’s magic works flawlessly. No, really! The thing is, the person whose skull you found and the gnome resurrected is none other than Bloodlord Mandokir, the raptor boss from Zul’Gurub. Whomp whomp.

He tells you that you’d better hand over your new little friend, or the gnome gets it. Even though I’m sure we’d all prefer it if the gnome gets it, your only choice is to hand over your new little friend. Bloodlord Mandokir then runs back to ZG, leaving you emptyhanded and emptyhearted.

But hope is not lost. You get a breadcrumb to the next quest hub, where the eccentric Priestess Thaalia has you collect feathers from other raptors to do some magic. You are able to see your raptor friend. She’s still alive! But Thaalia needs more powerful reagents in order to do something about it.

She sends you on another standard kill quest, and then…

oh BOY and then. You now inhabit the body of your raptor friend, and attempt a daring escape, while avoiding all the trolls. It’s like Metal Gear Solid meets a basket of kittens in a way that doesn’t use kittens as a hastily constructed disguise that shouldn’t fool anyone.

And apparently, it doesn’t.

So, what’s a worgen to do? First, talk to the guy also in the camp about what you’ve seen, then go bust into the level 85 heroic version of Zul’Gurub to crack some skulls and get your raptor back!

The Bloodlord fight is soloable for most classes now, as the Decapitate mechanic isn’t activated with just one player. I found the trash to be much more difficult than the fight. Maybe it was because Bloodlord kept my baby raptor chained up that whipped my worgen into a fury of hair and DPS.

At any rate, we were happily reunited.

And now we go on adventures together. No, really. Whenever there are dead bodies around, friendly or not, Imoinda is sure to bring me a bone to play fetch.

Clever girl.

Celestial Tournament

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I was hyped for the Celestial Tournament before it was even fleshed out. I knew that there was no way for my excitement, which is on par with my daughter’s enthusiasm for “ice cweem CONE!” to be matched. I prepared to be disappointed because, come on.

I was wrong. Pleasantly, at times frustratingly, wrong.

The Tournament is well executed and a real challenge for advanced pet hunters. I really, really stress advanced here… the requirement for entry has been lowered to 15 level 25 pets, and honestly after playing it through, 15 seems really low. If you make it through all 7 encounters you’ll likely have a minimum of 21 dead or almost dead pets on your hands.

But, let’s not get ahead of ourselves.

To get to the Tournament, you can either pick up the breadcrumb quest (I believe it’s an autograb while you’re in the Vale like the previous patches) and do all that Timewalkers malarkey. You could also just fly/swim your happy little self over to the Timeless Isle off the coast of the Jade Forest to the Southeast (it’s faster for Alliance to port in to Paw’Don from Stormwind and fly straight there, ime, but because of the Horde’s portal location in Honeydew it’s roughly even).

Once you pick up your faction’s flight point and the next breadcrumb, you’ll be referred to the Tournament Grounds. As you come in on the road from the West, there’s a whole lot of non-pet related things to explore. Noodle vendors! Booze vendors! Old NPC friends from across the entirety of Pandaria! Wrathion and Anduin! Psh, this is a blog about pets, y’all need to keep up. The Pet Tournament NPCS are just to the South.

The Tournament itself pits you against 3 NPCs with full, 3-pet teams, and then you fight each of the Celestials in single combat, inside a solo scenario. The current requirement for entry has no quest prerequisite, only a threshhold of a number of pets you need to have at level 25, so if you’re stuck flailing against Major Payne but still leveling up your stable, you can participate.

The reason for this 15 pet threshhold is because you may not heal or revive your pets at any time inside the scenario. Even if you screw up and forget to heal before you enter the scenario, not that I have firsthand experience with that or anything. If you leave the instance and rejoin it, your progress is reset to the very beginning and Emperor Shaohao is right there to rub it in your apparently gender-ambiguous face.

Emperor Shaohao acts as the MC for the whole event, and lays out the rules and parameters as you go, in addition to taunting you about being a noob who had to heal her pets.

The 3 teams of trainers are varied, but you face the same ones each time you restart the scenario, so you can gradually plot out a strategy against the 3 tamers you’re facing for the week. In this first week I attempted it, I got to go against the Alliance dwarf with a penchant for pets, Sully, and his erstwhile companion Socks the Bandicoon, who had apparently been resurrected to undeath after being shot by Amber Kearnen. In terms of story and Horde Bias and all that Sully is kind of a silly cartoon character, but he’s a dwarf after my own heart, and I really enjoyed seeing that he leveled his pets (and dragged Socks’ dead body through the whole of Pandaria, apparently, creeeepyyyyy).

I also fought Lorewalker Cho, who had virtue-named pets, including presumably the broom you use to sweep up while doing chores for him.

The third NPC I faced was Dr. Ion Goldbloom, who had a flying dinosaur, a beast dinosaur and a magic pet I really want, called Chaos.

For these guys I was able to mow them down fairly quickly using the old pet family weakness thing, eg a Magic – Mechanical – Dragonkin against Goldbloom’s Flying – Beast – Magic pets. Strategies will be forthcoming I’m sure. This WoWhead post has a few of the other trainer team makeups. But in any case, when you’re done with that, Shaohao has some more words for you.

The first time I tried to play through, right now is when I realized I had a bit of a problem. There are 4 celestials. There’s a Flying, a Dragonkin and 2 Beasts. I’d kept a couple of each pet I’d gotten on the PTR via the random system. I didn’t really need, say, 3 Lil XTs clogging up my journal, so I’d been selling them so other tamers could grab their favorites off the AH. So, facing 2 beasts with one of the less populated families, most of which start off as Uncommon anyway? Just a little rough. Juuuuust a little. I think I ran through 30, 40, 50 level 25 pets in trying this scenario the first time before giving up.

The Celestials are tagged as Boss pets, which not only reduces the damage they take by half, but makes it so they can’t be dealt more than 35% of their health in any one turn. Chi-chi took one look at my roach’s Apocalypse and laughed.

At this point it’s too new for me to give out any concrete strategies, and they’re still doing tweaking on the encounters so the particulars aren’t too solid yet anyway. I will say though, that I had a lot more success when I made sure to make a *team*, rather than an unconnected jumble of 3 pets. Against Chi-chi, I used a Wild Magic azure whelp, a Disgusting Oozling with 25% damage debuff DoTs and mopped up with a heavy hitter Lunar Lantern, even though it was an Uncommon. With that team, I beat him fairly decisively. Previously I’d just grabbed 3 pets with magic damage (I think there was a Coilfang Stalker in there or something) and it didn’t go nearly as well.

For me, Xufu was the roughest to beat. Zao and his Wish was rather frustrating, but I countered that by just gradually beating him down and using a huge nuke when I knew he was relatively low. Chi-chi’s constant healing was awful, but he got a tweak so that he’s not always casting Tranquility. For Yu’la I used a lot of Backflip stuns and just beat her down best as I could.

With Xufu, he was pumping out such ridiculous damage against my Mechanicals, I decided to swap to my Flyings. I chose pets with some kind of avoidance too, because he also has a moonfire which can decimate a magic-vulnerable Flying. And that swap (especially the avoidance stuff!) did the trick.

Overall, you really need to look ahead with your pets choices. I had a lot more success overall when I saved my Mechanical pets to go after the later bosses than I did when I was burning my favorite pets first.

You have to exit the scenario to get your reward, from the same place as above.

The Celestial Coin is currency you can use to buy new pets, marked upgrade stones, and other nonsense.

You get 2 additional coins immediately, so you can buy one of the new Celestial pets the first week. After that, it’s one per week in a slow, slow grind. Personally I’m buying the deliciously bitey Xu-fu first, but hey.

I’m going to stress that you need to be ready for this to be difficult. It is (as of this writing, of course) a serious challenge. As always, keep trying and take deep breaths. And then, QUEUE UP!

Spider

6 Replies

I don’t talk a lot about personal stuff on the blog. It’s usually all pet battles all the time over here. But guys. I hate spiders.

No, you guys. like. I HATE spiders. HATE. haaaate.

When I did Maexxna as a healer in Vanilla, I turned my character to the wall so I didn’t have to see her. When I did her in Wrath as a hunter, luckily the rotation had grown so easy I could spam my steady shot macro and close my eyes for most of the fight. I am not even kidding, either about how much I hate spiders or how easy hunters were.

I honestly don’t even know why. I’m cool with bugs and caterpillars. Snakes and lizards, sure. Even scorpions are fine. I’ve always had some kind of garden as far back as I can remember, because my parents were hippies and liked growing their own food, so I know spiders are good for nature and all that jazz. Something about that extra set of legs maybe? The way they move? The webs? I don’t know and I’d prefer not to think it over too hard just now thankyouverymuch.

But there are a couple of reasons for me to explore their creepy little leggy crawly beady eyed oh god this sentence has to be over now. First of all, many of these guys are low-texture, and you know how that tickles my fancy. They were one of the first to be made over, into both a spindly-legged model and a fuzzier tarantula model, and now there are even more varied models to choose from. The low-texture version is also reused for Pandaria with the bizarrely pink Amethyst Spiderling and thus have spanned across expansion packs, so they kinda fill that same role as the frog.

They’re also a fairly decent pet battler across the level gamut, which tends to be rare. They get the Leech Life ability at level 5 to heal themselves, and as a result they’re a hardy choice for grinding. Unlike the Frogs, spiders can have varied movesets. For example, the crystal spider has a stun instead of the DoT poison ability.

My interest in spiders was piqued when I was dueling with Elepheagle one day. He completely wrecked my Black Claw DoT team with his spider. Rather than demand the answer, “WHYYYY” on my knees from an unanswering sky, I asked wowhead instead.

Brittle Webbing typically inhabits the same slot as the regular old web, only gives quite a bit of reflexive damage on each attack. The damage can be countered by Sandstorm (WHAT CAN’T BE COUNTERED BY SANDSTORM argh) or the Shell Shield-type abilities. I haven’t quite fought enough to recommend it whole hog, but I’m trying out a new team, pairing the spider with a pet with Wild Magic and a third, heavy-hitting tank pet (but not a direhorn… the nerf for 5.4 is pretty bad). If you find yourself coming up against DoT teams I definitely recommend trying out a spider.