Monthly Archives: September 2013

Pet Battles 101 – Starting Out

I’ve devoted a lot of time recently to hashing out strategies for the end-game of pet battling. While I was doing so, it occurred to me that I’ve barely touched the topic of starting out, leveling from scratch, and how to build your teams. So, I’m doing this brass-tacks set of strategies for pet battling.

To start at the beginning, we’ll go to any pet battle trainer. There are some in most lowbie zones and capital cities, but the 2 most notable, depending on your faction, is either

Audrey Burnhep in Stormwind,

or Varzok in Orgrimmar. Varzok is on the upper level, near the flight master and the zeppelin towers.

Your initial cost can vary a bit depending on your reputation. The trainers will also sell you a pet that varies depending on your race. If you’re a Worgen, for instance, you’ll get a Gilnean Raven from Audrey (or any other pet trainer), while if you play a Blood Elf you get a Golden Dragonhawk Hatchling from Varzok. It’s fairly likely that you’ll have a pet or two from a holiday or something kicking around in your pet log, and you can use those as well. You’ll only get one pet from your trainer per character, so you can’t endlessly purchase and then flip those Ravens onto the AH for a tidy profit.

All your pets are shared across your account, so if you’re on a fresh character or bank alt you’ll keep all the pets you already collected and leveled. This can make for some quick cash if you’re rerolling to a new server.

To view your pets and set up your team, open your pet tab (either shift – p for the non-pet classes or click the pony in your minibar and then click on the Pets tab). Yours will be slightly different, because I have a bazillion battling addons. You’ll see all your pets over to the left, with your team pane in the middle, and a selected pet up above. There’s also a search box above the pet list (I was looking for squirrels).

To put your pet on a team, drag the picture of the pet over on the left to the battle slot you want. To start, you’ll only have one, but will add more as you level up. You can swap to a different pet by dragging a different pet’s picture over the icon of the first.

In PVE, the pet in your first slot will always join the battle first, and you’ll have to burn a turn to move that first pet out. In PVP, you get to choose who enters the battle first after you start.

You can sell many pets by right clicking their name on the list to the left and hitting ‘Put in Cage’. You’ll get a cage item in your bags and can then AH or trade at your leisure. When you do so, you can’t use that pet anymore. You can re-learn it if you’d like, though. It will retain its breed and level. If you choose to buy a pet off the AH, you can only learn it if it’s your current highest pet’s level or lower… if you just buy a level 25 right this second, you won’t be able to learn it. You cannot cage any wild pets, and there are a few outlier pets which can’t be caged either (eg, the Creepy Crate).

So, now for the actual fights! To find wild pets to fight, look at your minimap. The battling display should be on by default, but to make sure, right click your map and make sure the ticky box next to ‘Track Pets’ is checked.

Should you see a green paw print on your map, it will correspond to a wild pet with a green paw print hovering over its head.

Any pet with a paw print like this is ready for a fight. If you walk up to one and right click it, you should be drawn into your first pet battle! You do need to be out of combat (if you right click while in combat you’ll just auto attack and kill it, and if somebody PVPs you, even with a non-damaging ability, you’ll immediately drop the fight), and you need to be standing on level ground with enough space around you for battling. If you’re swimming or flying, or in a weird place, such as standing on the edge of a cottage (a completely hypothetical example apropos of nothing), you’ll get an error message.

If you walk around a little bit you should be able to find a place to battle. The battle is seeded from your position, not the pet’s.

At first, you’ll only have one ability for your pet to use. The other slots will unlock as your pet levels up. You will also have a few other player-side options. You can trap the pet once it gets low enough, swap your pets around, forfeit the match, (doing this for non-tamer battles will cause your pets to take 10% damage), or pass your turn. For most of these, you can use hotkeys. Your pets’ abilities are 1-3, swap is 4 and trap is 5. Pass and Forfeit don’t have default hotkeys, so you have to click those buttons. You can see these hotkeys at the upper right of each ability box on the toolbar.

The actual fighting is fairly intuitive when you’re starting out. Just use your pet’s available abilities. You should be able to decimate most pets in starting zones. Generally, if your pet happens to have a ‘strong’ ability, use it. Avoid using ‘weak’ abilities. You’ll be able to tell by the green up arrow (strong) or red down arrow (weak) displayed on the button (eg, the first ability in the screenshot above is strong). If you’d like to capture that pet, use your trap. The catch to trapping is that you can only use the trap when the wild pet’s health is below a certain percent. You may get an unlucky crit and kill the pet, or your trap may miss enough that your pet dies.

After a fight, your pet will likely be hurt or dead. Don’t worry! As a beginner you can either use the free ‘revive pets’ ability, which is right beneath the X close button on your pet tab, or go find a Stable Master and pay 10 silver. You can’t use the free heal within 3 minutes of logging in a character, because it has a 10 minute cooldown, and they don’t want you to just log on an alt, heal & log out to circumvent the cooldown.

If your pet isn’t hurt too badly, you may want to continue fighting. If your pet levels, they refill their HP completely, and after each win they’ll heal a little bit.

And now, you can go out and fight more pets! HOORAY! When your pet hits level 3, your second pet slot will unlock. You can either add a different vendor pet, or a pet you’ve trapped, to your team. The next post in this 101 series will focus on the basics of team building.

Wolpertinger

Clefthoof Runt

Tommy Newcomer

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I thought all my walkthroughs on the Timeless Isle were complete. I kicked back with a well-earned chocolate chip cookie and waited for the patch. I was excited to get my mini Xuen, run around in the Shrine of Seven Stars for a while showing it off, and make a small fortune on new glyphs. Then, I see this jerk.

Look at that smug little face. I’m guessing that the trigger to seeing his daily is something along the lines of defeating Aki, but I’m really not sure. I’d heard occasional discussion about him during PTR, but never saw that he had anything for me, so I kind of ignored him. I’m kicking myself over this now, trust.

Tommy Newcomer only has one pet. So we should totally take pity on him, right?

WRONG.

Lil Oondasta is the pet equivalent of, well, boss Oondasta. With a very strong AOE and a force swap, she is a brutal fight. Luckily, she’s only one mob, and you can heal and re-try as many times as you need to get her down. For 500 Timeless Coins and 20g. Ugh.

Here’s the team I ended up using:

Oondasta has 3 abilities, and her 2 most deadly are Magic: Frill Blast (force swap) and Spiritfire Beam (the AoE). She backs that up with Crush, which is a big hit in itself. Because of the humanoid nature of Crush, trying to use my Golden Hatchling in concert with the Clockwork Gnome was met with a hearty ‘lol u mad’ from Oondasta.

The reason I like the Zeppelin and the Mechanical Dragonling should be fairly obvious. Decoy is an amazing ability this fight, and I want to abuse it as much as possible. I definitely screwed up a bit on the Dragonling’s moveset though… Frill Blast will always swap in the Zeppelin for me, because of the higher health, so unless I manually swap for a Fly By, I’m not going to use it to buff others, and the Dragonling doesn’t really have other moves to buff itself. Though there’s not a ton of damage we have to do, the breath ability will probably make for a cleaner fight.

The reason I go with the Tonk is that, because of the force swap if I use Ion Cannon off the bat, Oondasta will then immediately swap him to the back row for the recharge turn and the vast majority of the cooldown I have before I can cast it again. If I return to the front row on my pre-res turn, I can also get in a Shock and Awe for a hopeful-maybe stun. Oondasta is slower than all my pets and only has single hits, so once she kills my mechanicals the first time, they’re guaranteed at least one extra hit. As long as they don’t die in the back row, anyway.

I really liked using two Decoys. I don’t think that both are entirely necessary, especially given the relatively paltry firepower on the Dragonling. Explode as a mechanic is a really excellent tool for single fights, so I would definitely recommend using at least one of these pets.

The Tonk is a little more debatable. You can definitely try subbing in either the Menagerie Custodian or the Tranquil Mechanical Yeti, both of which use Ion Cannon. They’re a bit less sturdy, but it’s still an option. If you go with the Yeti, you may want to opt for Thunderstorm instead, and pair it with a Clockwork Gnome’s turret. In general, as long as you have a good amount of mechanical offense and aren’t caught off-guard by the force swap, you’re going to be in good shape.

A final note: I don’t like writing strategies with pets which are prohibitively expensive or difficult to get without at least offering a solid alternative (eg, Emerald Proto-Drake can be substituted for the Emerald Whelpling in most settings). With that in mind, the Son of Animus, specifically Interrupting Jolt, really shines this fight in place of the Tonk. I want to stress that this investment isn’t necessary, but I can generally keep that last pet alive entirely (well, minus an AoE or two) if I use Animus here.

Celestial Tournament Walkthrough

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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: