The Saint Patrick’s Day holiday, not celebrated in WoW, has always been one of my favorites. Mostly for obvious reasons. I figured it would be fun to profile one of my favorite pets as well, even though I’m kind of breaking one of my own rules by doing so.
I’m blaming green beer.
The Emerald Whelpling is a pricey pet, with a rough average around 7000g. If you’re particularly enterprising, you can farm one up yourself. Their spawn point has moved from the Swamp of Sorrows to Feralas, from the corrupted whelplings near the portal to the Emerald Dream, but the drop rate continues to be vanishingly small.
This particular profile is mostly for seasonal flavor and sentimentality, but the Emerald Whelpling’s battling prowess can’t be denied either.
Though it doesn’t do too much in PVP, in PVE it’s a workhorse with 2 strong heals (Emerald Dream and Tranquility) to choose between, a couple of magic moves, one of which is the synergistic weather effect Moonfire and the other the straightforward Emerald Bite. She also has a Dragonkin nuke with Breath. Her moveset is rounded out with the utility shield Emerald Presence.
In a lot of situations, a far less expensive but still somewhat rare Emerald Proto-Whelp can fill a similar role. Especially in PVE the two are fairly similar. The big difference is that the Emerald Whelpling’s moveset can be swapped, so she can turn from a defensive tank with Emerald Presence into a damage-dealing phenom with Moonfire and Emerald Bite. There are many other Dragonkin battle pets available to fill the damaging role too, like the Nether Faerie Dragon which is tamed in Feralas, it’s just somewhat rare for a pet to be able to fill both roles all on its own.
Ka’wi The Gorger is one of the Beasts of Fable in Book 1, along with Kafi, Dos-Ryga and Nitun. He’s quite a bit more predictable than either, and relatively easy to beat. The strategy I put forward for Nitun also works here, but I’m going to discuss some other, different tactics for Ka’wi. Because Ka’wi is easier to beat, this is more of a team building post than a specific breakdown of one strategy.
Before we discuss the actual pet battle, let’s talk about how to get there. For some reason, I am perpetually getting lost trying to find Ka’wi. If I do though, all I have to do is find the Jade Serpent Statue in the Jade Forest and look directly South. Between the road and the river is where you’ll find Ka’wi.
In fighting Ka’wi, you have a couple options. His offense is a mix of Critter moves with Chew and Flying moves with Moth Balls, so my first inclination in team building was to use a Humanoid team, because they defend against Critter moves. Most humanoid battle pets have really strong offense when paired with stuns and unfortunately, because Ka’wi is a Critter, he’s going to be immune to all of these. Chew is on a relatively short cooldown, but has a ramp up, so my personal prerogative is to go with something to just avoid this when possible. The Anubisath Idol, Bonkers, the Flayer Youngling and Lil Bad Wolf are all humanoids with either Dodge or Deflection. The latter 3 also have Beast moves, which hit the critter Ka’wi extra hard, making them the better choices if possible.
Because the other half of his offense is Flying another simple counter is to use a Dragonkin. Fortuitously, many of these dragons also have avoidance in the form of Lift-Off, which is easy to employ, because Chew’s damage hits at the end of the round, when DoTs do. Many Dragonkin battle pets also use Beast attacks, which is fantastic for Ka’wi. Of particular interest are those that combine both the avoidance and beast damage, namely the Phoenix Hawk Hatchling and Proto-Drake Whelp. There are a couple others that do as well, but by using Roar, which isn’t really effective in the ‘beast damage’ conversation. The Untamed Hatchling and Chrominius combine beast damage with heals, which is also fairly effective. Chrominius’ Howl option makes for a much stronger offense, which is able to rip through Ka’wi like a hot knife through Fudgie The Whale.
Here’s my preferred team for Ka’wi.
I lead with Chrominius because of the previously mentioned Howl offense. I usually like to frontload my offense, because it makes it easier to tell how the fight is going to go. The Phoenix Hatchling and Flayer Youngling both have good defense. I like mixing up the families just because it’s a good habit to foster.
The reason why it’s generally better to go piecemeal here rather than develop a specific strategy is because of Ka’wi’s one ability we haven’t discussed yet. He’ll cast Super Sticky Goo fairly frequently, which restricts swaps. This puts a bit of a damper on a lot of different synergies, so it makes more sense to just evaluate on a per-pet basis.
Ironically, I occasionally explore parts of the game which don’t involve either battle pets or my druid. In fact, sometimes I just want to get out some aggression and punch some dudes in the head. And though that’s kinda what twitter is for, there are places to get my kicks in WoW, too. You just have to know where to go.
The Brawler’s Guild is something I just recently started playing through, and I’ve been having a lot of fun with it. It’s oddly similar to pet battles, in that there’s a puzzle element, but it’s way less, “Death Adder Hatchling I choose you!” and more “THERE IS A CAT EATING MY FACE RUUUUN.”
One (literally) small incentive kept me going (though I ought to be careful slinging around that ‘small’ stuff while playing a gnome). When you hit rank 4 in the Brawler’s Guild, meaning you’ve done the first 12 fights successfully, you can buy a Clock Em battle pet of your own for 20-30 silver (the price varies slightly based on reputation discounts). This is the only way to obtain a Clock’em of your own, so if you want a tiny robot with enormous spiked fists of fury, better get sharpening your daggers and make your way to either the Deeprun Tram or the Brawlgar Arena. Clock’em starts off Rare and you buy up to 3 as soon as you hit rank 4, but they are uncageable and BoP, so if you want one have to fistfight your way to the top of a pile of corpses.
Clock ‘Em is unique in that he has a full complement of humanoid abilities, but is a mechanical battle pet, so he gets extra utility in the guise of the resurrection mechanical family ability. A few other mechanicals have a couple humanoid abilities, but Clock Em is all but entirely humanoid. Overtune is the one exception, and it’s used primarily to buff Clock Em’s speed, not really as a damage move. That speed buff has a lot of excellent synergy with his Kick move, which stuns if Clock Em goes first. However, Kick shares a slot with the utility move Dodge, which is frequently the better choice. Sharing a slot with Overtune is Counterstrike, which makes sense because Counterstrike has the best functionality if your pet is slower than its opponent. Rounding out his moves in the first slot is either the straightforward humanoid attack Jab, or the slightly odd Haymaker, which has a 50/50 chance to either deal damage and stun your opponent, or miss and stun the caster.
One big thing to be aware of using this battle pet, even in PVE, is cooldowns. Aside from Jab and Overtune, every ability in Clock Em’s moveset has a relatively lengthy cooldown. You need to choose carefully and use your abilities in an order so you’re not cooling your heels for a few turns. Clock Em’s Humanoid damage and Mechanical family make him relatively ideal for killing dragonkin that use a good bit of Magic damage. Unfortunately, Trixxy in Winterspring is the highest level tamer using a setup like this. He fights pretty well against most dragonkin though, as long as they’re not using Elemental damage.
Now, who do I have to garrote to get a cup of coffee in this stinking place?
Oh, don’t bother answering. I’ll figure it out. Trial and error.
I have to be honest with you guys. I’ve been seeing someone else. It’s a little bit serious.
I’m co-writing a monthly feature on the Warcraft Pets site called Pet Of The Month with one of their admins, Quintessence. The feature is a bit similar to my pet profiles, but I’m going much further in-depth on some points of strategy you might find really useful.
I’ll be giving you a heads up over here every month when it goes live. This month, we’re featuring the Anubisath Idol. It’s a solid pet whether you’re a newbie or a veteran. There’s also an associated forum post, so you can argue with me too, which is always nice.
This is a very occasional feature, so it won’t really affect my posting here. I mean, other than a slump at the beginning of the month because I’ve bitten off more than I can chew but what else is new. So, click the link and get battling!
There are a great number of Tamers in Pandaria you can fight with your battle pets every day. They all provide a really excellent training ground for your low level pets, as well as a way to hone your skills to take on your next pet battling challenge. Here’s list of the strategies I used to easily beat these tamers. Level 1 carry strategies are noted with an asterisk.
*Hyuna Of The Shrines – The Jade Forest, at an overlook above Yu’lon’s Jade Statue, is where this Pandaren makes her stand.
Farmer Nishi – Buffed relatively recently, Nishi’s battle pets are all references to the pastoral nature of the Valley Of The Four Winds.
Mo’ruk – The only Tamer in Pandaria without a florid title, his view on the beach in the extreme south of the Krasarang Wilds makes up for it.
Courageous Yon – A bit of a hike to the top of Kota Peak in Kun-Lai Summit brings you face to face with this elusive tamer.
*Seeker Zusshi – Near the Temple of Niuzao in the Townlong Steppes, you can visit this tamer on your way to get some super sweet, not at all outdated, Valor gear.
Wastewalker Shu – Beside the heart of the Mantid Empire in Klaxxi’vess is where Shu (absolutely perplexingly) insists on testing your mettle.
*Aki The Chosen – The ultimate challenge for your battle pets when we first came to Pandaria. With the destruction wrought by Garrosh in patch 5.4, Aki now resides in Mistfall Village.
The Pandaren Spirit Tamers were first added to World of Warcraft as a new challenge for pet battlers in patch 5.1. Each lives in a far-flung part of Pandaria. Each is a representation of an element, and each has its own separate guide, featuring a video.
This last tamer in Pandaria is a unique one, and not just because he’s the only Jinyu tamer. He’s also quite useful for carries, because of one really specific trick & combo. I’ll also give you tips on beating him with other teams, but you can carry a level one on this fight with a specific team. Here it is:
The Anubisath Idol is fairly indispensable here because of his Sandstorm/Deflection combo. To carry a level 1 Sandstorm is really key, but if you’re going for level 10 or higher carries, or just beating the encounter the first time around, most pets with a decent heal will work pretty well in the first slot. My trusty crab Ishmael is of course a good pick, but I’ve also used frogs and my Perky Pug Bertha for this too. The carry pet is in the middle slot, and the anchor is a Flying battle pet, preferably with some kind of avoidance move. Moths with Cocoon and fliers with Lift-Off work really well, but another option is to go glass cannon, with something like a Gilnean Raven.
First up is Diamond, and he’s the reason we’re packing the Anubisath. He uses Howling Blast, which does an AOE on all your pets as long as your front battle pet is Chilled. This is why Sandstorm is key if you’re trying to carry a level 1 battle pet. Occasionally my back row will take 10-20 damage if there’s an elemental-weak Mechanical, but other than that Sandstorm will block all damage from that AoE. After you’ve sorted that, Diamond just needs to be burned down.
Mollus is a Rapana Whelk with the Acidic Goo/Dive combo we’ve seen before, and Absorb. The thing here is that Absorb’s reflexive heal will make the battle drag on a bit while Dive makes for big damage, which is why I highly recommended either a pet with a heal or a big dodge in this slot. To be clear, because of the mechanics of Dive, an ability with a similar mechanic will only result in your battle pet taking damage. Avoid that Dive when you can and get those hits in otherwise and you’ll dispatch Mollus handily.
Skimmer always leads off with the same combo, and this is why you can carry a level 1 pet. He’ll self-heal and apply weather, then use Soothe, and then charge his Pump before releasing it on his fourth turn. Because Pump is the only offense he has, and he dawdles before actually unleashing it, this makes his offense both easy to counter and easy to use for a level 1 carry. I usually swap my leveling pet in as soon as Mollus dies, regardless of whether my first pet is healthy, active, whatever, to take advantage of this first downtime, because after the first go around it gets a bit less predictable with the various ability cooldowns. From there, just try to avoid Pump when you can and burn Skimmer down.
It has been quite a journey, through all the daily Tamer pet battles in Pandaria, so it’s fitting we end in the ever-glowing twilight of the Townlong Steppes. From here, it’s almost possible to forget that we, the players, in our travels through Pandaria, ruined Hyuna’s view, that we had a hand in polluting Moruk’s water, and that the vegetables surrounding Nishi will no longer grow enough to feed the Heartland so all the farmers will starve.
Just don’t tell Zusshi he’s one of a handful of Jinyu left. It’s extremely likely that all his friends & family are dead.
Um, to Draenor?
(edit) – This strategy works perfectly well as an Elekk Carry for your Awfully Big Adventure too.
9/25/2014: This fight is now up to date for Warlords of Draenor. For an Elekk Carry, simply use the advice for a regular carry.
Nishi was the laughingstock of the Pandaren tamers for a good long while. Most player tamers could solo her with nearly any level 25 battle pet. Located in the heartland of Pandaria’s Valley Of The Four Winds, she made an easy target even for those level 86 alts.
However, a bug fix in 5.4 gave her claws.
The abilities her pets avoided using in order to make her such a pushover were suddenly back in full force. Luckily, like most of the other tamers, as long as you know your counters, you are good to go.
The Strider has a lot of very strong aquatic offense and a weather effect. I’ve used frogs in this slot too. Either is fairly reliable as long as you make sure to switch in that weather effect. The crab is pretty much just there for cleanup. I’ve used mechanicals in that slot, because this battle pet will be facing Nishi’s beast, but if my first pet goes down early this can make for bad times because the rest of Nishi’s pets are elementals. A Flying with Lift Off or the Anubisath Idol makes for a good anchor too.
The biggest chunk of your strategy begins immediately. Nishi’s Siren has Solar Beam, which hits very hard normally, but tacks on an extra big hit if it’s in Sunny weather. So of course the first thing Siren does is cast Sunlight. You need to change the weather, now. You have an intervening turn where Siren casts a heal on itself before it’ll explode your pet’s face off. If your first battle pet is above Siren’s speed (280) you can put in your carry pet off the bat and enough time to change the weather. However it’s important to note that if your pet is at or below 280 speed you won’t, so you’ll need to start with your first ‘real’ battle pet, and then swap in the carry pet further down the line. In this case I usually switch in the carry during Toothbreaker‘s Sons Of The Root, and make sure my carry is above level 8 or so. Either way is fine, but you just need to be aware of it before you start.
After you change the weather, beating Siren ain’t no thing. The very first thing the next pet, Toothbreaker, will do is submerge and start hitting you with Sons of the Root while he’s immune. When I use the Strider, I use these turns to do things like heal (by casting my weather again) and set up Pump. You really just have to wait a handful of turns while you take a bit of damage. Just stay calm and take your turns. Then, when he surfaces, beat him up. His offense isn’t all that strong.
Last pet, Brood of Mothallus, is a Beast with Burrow and Acidic Goo. That combo together can produce some devastating results. With the crab as long as I keep up heals and that shield I’m good to go, especially since Brood’s 3rd ability, the reflexive heal, is Undead damage. If I use an Anubisath, I use Stoneskin and Deflection to counter Burrow, and that’s all she wrote. With a Flying I use Lift Off when he Burrows and boom goes the dynamite. If I use a mechanical you know what I’m kind of running out of idioms to say I win, so let’s just say I win.
Now help me figure out how I’m going to steal this melon before Nishi sees me.
If there is a thing out in the world that could potentially be made profitable, Goblins will be there. Even love.
Especially love. Goblins feature big in the WoW version of Valentine’s Day, the Love Is In The Air festival. All the vendors are goblins, and the premiere battle pet of the season has always been the Goblinized version of Cupid. Instead of a mischievous little cherub, we get a tiny goblin with taped-on wings, shooting arrows souped up like only a Goblin can.
He used to be extremely difficult to obtain, but now he’s available for a handful of holiday currency in every major city, Horde or Alliance. The 40 tokens you’ll need to trade with yet another Goblin to obtain the Truesilver Shafted Arrow come from a variety of places, but as long as you’re queuing up for the daily boss fight you will get enough by the end of the holiday to purchase one. If not, or if you’re busy with the IRL holiday (you dog you) Peddlefeet is cageable. He starts off as Uncommon so if you’re going the AH route it’s a good idea as always to aim for an upgraded one.
Peddlefeet is a pretty premiere dragonkiller battle pet in PVE. All his moves are humanoid, though they do run the gamut. The only straightforward attack is Bow Shot in the first slot, though Rapid Fire is a fairly straightforward AoE option. He does have a lot of utility with the stun Lovestruck, and the slight chance for stun Perfumed Arrow. Also in his moveset is his Love Potion heal, which seems designed to be annoying in PVP, but gives him extra staying power too.
He is quite suited to killing Yu’la in the Celestial Tournament, and a bit less so for ‘team’ pve dragonkin battle pets, where his stuns will earn you a swap. Humanoids in general are pretty vulnerable in PVP just now, with the prevalence of the undead Val’kyr/beast Death Adder Hatchling combo, but this guy’s final ability makes him even more so. Shot Through The Heart, though interesting, and one of the best lyrics ever, is a charged move for a big wallop, like Deep Breath. It’s really excellent for PVE, but not so much for PVP, where you’re sure to get stunned, blinded or otherwise annihilated in the intervening turn. In general he’s fun to play, but if you come up against any of a number of really common current teams it’s pretty much game over.
Though he’s not a favorite, that last ability makes it all worthwhile, nostalgia-wise.
Even though this song itself is about as Valentine-y as, well, a Goblin.
Now that Nishi has received a bit of a buff, this tamer is the easiest to beat among the Pandaren tamers, as long as you know his one really easy counter. Seriously, the hardest thing about Yon is finding his cave. Just look for the gnome corpses near the top of Kota Peak in Kun-Lai Summit.
Kind of a macabre marker, but whatever works.
Now, just because this tamer is stone-cold stupid easy doesn’t mean I’m going to get all pithy or anything. I mean, I still gotta do me, right?
This isn’t the only team I use against Courageous Yon’s battle pets, but it does make for one of the faster victories. In practice, I usually just open my pet journal and pick out a couple battle pets with ashieldability. Any pet with some kind of shield ability will do. Anubisath Idol, Living Sandling, Feline Familiar, A turtle, a crab, Yu’la, whatever you’ve got. If you want to go with an Enchanted Broom with a Sandstorm that’ll work. I’ve beat him with a crab and a snail, intentionally placed off-family (Aquatic crab vs Flying Piqua; Critter snail vs Beast Bleat). Seriously, anything. Well, almost. A pet with Spiked Skin won’t work here.
Once you put up that shield, there’s only one ability to sort of look out for with Yon’s first pet Piqua, and that’s Lift-Off. It hits fairly hard, and that’s about it. It could be far worse, as Piqua will apply Shattered Defenses with Flock, and then turn and utterly destroy your pet. If you’re able to completely absorb all the ticks of Flock, Piqua won’t apply Shattered Defenses, hence the whole shielding ability thing. Spiked Skin doesn’t absorb the whole hit and so lets Shattered Defenses go up, which is why that won’t work. Yon’s third pet, Bleat, does the same kind of thing with a Stampede/Chew combo. Bleat also has a small heal, but nothing too big.
If you’re using battle pet with a burrow ability, or the Anubisath Idol with that impossibly overpowered Deflection move, try to avoid the big hit those 2 pets try to dish out because it’ll give you additional staying power. But that’s just icing. As long as you maintain that shield and just keep on keeping on you’ll beat this fight.
Yon’s second pet, Lapin, follows a similar pattern. Though his Flurry won’t apply an additional debuff, it’s all small hits which can be mostly absorbed by a battle pet with a damage shield. He also uses the large hit Burrow, which should be dodged if possible. And that’s pretty much that.
With a bit of thinking ahead, I’m frequently able to solo this battle, so it’s possible to carry more than one pet. The Anubisath Idol is suited well to this, but the Emerald Whelpling is a good pick for this too. The thing is, if you carry 2 battle pets you split the earned XP between them. Instead of just one battle pet getting ~4K XP with 2 level 25 ringers (depending on the level of the carry), you’ll have two battle pets getting ~2K XP each. To me, it’s far more worth it to just carry the one instead of doing two, but I’m putting the information out there just in case you’d like to rebel against the machine or whatever it is you whippersnappers are doing these days.
For the video walkthrough, I did something a little different. Rather than use the team I picked for the guide on the blog, I went to a part of the Dread Wastes I knew was crawling with snails and crabs, tamed 3 of them, and then went to beat up Yon. I didn’t use a carry pet for the video, just to give myself an extra buffer. This is just to show you that you don’t need any special pets for this, and for real, all you need is shield abilities and you’re good to go.
Because this doesn’t show the carry, I’m going to add that it’s best to just put your carry in first thing, and use a lvl 5+ battle pet.
This is another post which is really more for me than for you. While my specific goals are obviously going to be unique to me, I’m sharing this because some will be fairly universal for a lot of battlers. And I’m posting it now because I’m not sure how long we have until Warlords, and I figure the sooner I start to prepare, the longer I have to procrastinate.
1. Get all the battle pets from LFR and Normal/Heroic raids from this expansion. The LFR ones in particular, namely the Gooey Sha-ling and Living Fluid are going to be next to impossible to snag after we move on from Mists of Pandaria. However, because of the incoming item/stat squish, it’s really hard to gauge how quickly people will be able to solo old content. I fully expect the price on, eg the Living Sandling to soar when the Dark Portal opens red, but drop when people can begin soloing Throne of Thunder. However, the price on that Gooey Sha-ling is only going to go further and further up.
2. Get all the battle pets from Timeless Isle that require spawn timers. I finally got Garnia to drop the Ruby Droplet battle pet (in a b/b breed, whomp whomp) but I still have many to collect. For now, depending on your server population, there is always a fistful of people on the Isle with some kind of rare timer, sharing their information (the addon pictured is Rare Coordinator). Once Warlords drops, those people are going to evaporate like Morning Glory Dew in Tanaris, and their shared information with them. This likely also means their AH price is going to skyrocket a bit as well. Excepted here are pets dropped from alt-spawn mobs, like the Spineclaw Crab from the Monsterous Spineclaw. Even with the stat squish those are probably going to be just as easy if not easier to churn come Warlords, though I will be trying to grind these as well in the meantime (just not quite so targeted).
3. Keep leveling! Those new raid and Timeless Isle pets are going to need to run through a lot of pet battles before they’re at cap. This is kind of low-priority though, as the level cap remains at 25 through Warlords (source). This is also a for-now goal, simply because I get the feeling this may change after beta opens and we discover the nature of Garrisons, and especially breeding… whether we need many high-level pets, many low-level pets, what the quality needs to be, etc.
4. Stones, stones, stones. I still have a lot of pets to upgrade, but more importantly I have a feeling they’re going to pull some Minfernal-styles spawning shenanigans again for this expansion. This is fine, but I’m saving a few of each stone type and a couple universals as well, just in case. I’m also continuing to do the Celestial Tournament and stocking up on tokens (so I can use them on whatever), and especially the pet XP biscuits from the Beasts of Fable daily and PVP weekly.
5. Clean out banks; organize central meta-bank alt. Those stones and biscuits and bandages and tokens need a place to go. With all this pet stuff (and all those random Timeless Isle armor drops from failed pet RNG) I really need to get on having them all in one location. Altoholic helped me track things down as a stop-gap, but now that Bind on Account means you can mail things cross-server and cross-faction I can have one meta-banker for all this garbage.
6. Finish up on the alts. One thing I found extremely beneficial to battling in Mists was having a character at cap on both factions. It happens oddly frequently that there’s something only attainable on one side or the other (eg, having 2 different pets from Enchanting during Cataclysm). From the map alone it seems like there are going to be some zones which are more easily accessible to one side or the other. While I’ve been largely bifactional this expansion, my Horde toon is on a PVP server, and I’m really over open-world PVP. The rumor is that they’re not turning on flying in Draenor until 6.1, or at least for a while after launch, so I can tell already I’m going to want my level 40 undead at cap, pronto. This also includes trade skills, as it seems like a roll of the dice which profession is getting a crafted pet this time around (probably engineering). And of course, everybody needs to have fishing, because carps.
BattlePetRoundup.com 