Category Archives: strategy

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.

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).

Flowing Pandaren Spirit Tamer

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Update for 6.0: This strategy still works really well as a two-pet leveling strategy. If you’re here for an Awfully Big Adventure with your Elekk Plushie, this works perfectly well for that, too.

It is about good freaking time I wrote this, but I’ve been putting it off.

This Spirit Tamer uses a gimmick I’ve seen parroted a few times in PVP. It combines huge damage with stuns, but it’s relatively quite easy to counter if you know what’s coming.

Here’s the lineup I use:

There are a few other ways you can go. The Tamer’s first pet is aquatic, so I use my dragonbone hatchling Legree to counter. I would definitely recommend something that does a lot of Flying damage with some kind of avoidance, namely Lift-Off. A moth with Cocoon also works, but not *quite* as well. My speedy rabbit Dill is there for the dodge/burrow combo. We’ll get into why in a bit, because I use it a little bit differently here. I’d recommend keeping with a critter, because the last guy is elemental, and you definitely want at least a Burrow or Dodge or something. A Core Hound Pup might be an alright choice if you have one. I initially did this fight with my Perky Pug, so just the one avoid can work, too. The pet to be leveled is fairly high level and not Mechanical because there is a lot of AoE flying around.

The first pet is an aquatic fish named Marley. He has Dive, Whirlpool, which pops up a lot on Emperor Crabs in PVP, plus Pump, which makes all those abilities hit harder when it’s active and then gets unleashed for big damage.

Whirlpool is particularly devastating in PVP, because it restricts swapping, but here it’s just a lot of damage. He’ll also pair this with Dive, so that if you don’t avoid it somehow, it’s a huge amount of damage all at once. We’ll use Liftoff the turn before it blows up to avoid it, easy peasy. I prefer a bird with Lift Off to Cocoon, because Cocoon will only avoid one hit so you’ll take lots of damage from Whirlpool or Dive (because as a flyer you’re going to be faster), but my experience is that a moth can rip through here fairly easily regardless.

Next up is the critter Tiptoe. He has an AoE with Tidal Wave, a straightforward nuke, and a heal. You want to kill him ASAP because of the AoE. I just keep attacking/avoiding with my Flying pet until it dies, and then swap to my rabbit. Tiptoe doesn’t have a lot of burst damage, but if he heals a lot you’ll find yourself with a dead back row.

(NOTE – As of 5.4, Tiptoe the strider is now properly classed as an Aquatic battle pet. However, I still use the strategy as performed, and really, we’re a bit better off because the Flying pet we used for Marley continues to have strong attacks.)

Kill him ASAP. I use Burrow to try to get big damage, but other than that, don’t worry about defense with your main pet. You’d just be wasting the turns you have until his heal comes off cooldown.

And now, Ladies and Gents, the gimmick.

The Flowing Pandaren Spirit casts whirlpool like the fish, but pairs it with Geyser for enormous damage, at the end of a round no less. Luckily, with your rabbit, you can just use your Dodge or Burrow abilities to avoid it.

I don’t use the typical rabbit ‘pattern’, because after the first set where both Whirlpool and Geyser hits at once, the two abilities are out of sync. I use Dodge to counter one and Burrow to counter the other. If the pet you chose is working off just one avoidance ability, avoid the geyser. You should make it past the first one no problem as they’re sort of synced up, and you’ll likely make it past the second series at the very least.

I’ve been seeing the geyser/whirlpool combo in PVP a few times recently. The only pet with this combo is the mini Flowing Pandaren Spirit, so if you see that coming, you know what you’re in for, but you can try using whirlpool or geyser with Dive for another decent combo.

In the end, you’ll be able to beat this spirit rather handily, even if he doesn’t make for a good choice to level lowbie pets.

The reason I was waiting on giving him his own walkthrough is because of the central conflict of Mists of Pandaria. It makes me deeply sad to think of this Spirit Tamer, being here for time immemorial, training his pets and enjoying the natural beauty of southern Krasarang Wilds. Long before Garrosh took to destroying the beauty of the Vale, he also ruined the serenity and beauty of this Tamer’s far-flung locale.

We’ll get him little guy, though it’s cold comfort now.

I also made a quick & dirty video of this fight if you’d like to watch for more help.

Cascading (a pet leveling technique)

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I know there are a lot of people out there just dipping their toes in the pet battle water for the first time since 5.3’s launch. This is a technique I personally used on the PTR to get a level 25 pet ASAP. I’ve seen a lot of people discuss and debate how to most quickly grind a single pet to lvl 25 (if you accidentally found this post looking for that information, try elepheagle’s tiered walkthroughs), but not many talk about the quickest way for a newbie to get their first. Once you do get that first one and can start beating tamers which award bags, the whole minigame suddenly gets far easier.

And then sometimes you get junk.

This technique is for people who are higher level, specifically those players who have fast flying. Otherwise this is just as much a huge, time-consuming drag as grinding your pets to level normally. You need to be able to access the stable masters quickly in case you bite off more than you can chew, and fly between zones quickly. I am fudging this a little bit here, because there’s really no way to just randomly start from 0. If you really are starting from nothing this will be a bit more time-consuming just because my trap works more quickly.

To start, you need to grab a pet. Any pet at all! I’m going to start in Dun Morogh, but it doesn’t really matter which starting zone you choose. You’ll also want to set your hearth to your faction’s shrine in the Vale.

So, we start with a level 1 bunny I just bought, and we’re pretending I don’t have my other slots open. Let’s go fight another level 1.

After 1 fight, your pet will now be level 2, yay! Now, fight a couple more pets. If these pets are green or blue, try to trap them. Once you have a green, just kill them (always trap blue pets if at all possible as a rule of thumb). After a couple more fights, you’ll have a level 3 pet, and you’ll be able to unlock your second pet slot. Put the green or blue pet you collected into that slot. If you haven’t found a green or blue, fight one last level 2 and trap it even if it’s gray like mine was, then equip it.

Now, we’ll move from Dun Morogh into Loch Modan (or whichever secondary area is the closest to your starting zone of choice). Here, we’ll fight level 3s and 4s. The fights are a little tougher. You’ll want to trap a level 3 or 4 as soon as you can, even if you get a gray.

Avoid level 5+ if they’re in your area. When you trap that 3 or 4, ditch that level 2 pet you trapped. You don’t have to hit ‘release’ if you don’t want to or anything, just swap in the new pet. Keep in mind though that you can only have 3 of any specific pet at a time, and we’ll be grabbing a bunch of duplicate squirrels and rats and stuff as we go. Keep that bunny (or whatever) for now.

If your first pet from this zone is a 3, use it to grab a 4. If your 4 is worse quality than green, grind until you find a green. Keep that second 4 in reserve. At this point, you need to grind til your first pet hits level 5 to open up that last slot. You can also level up that level 4 you tamed, but by the time I get 2 green level 4s, I’m usually well on my way to level 5 on that first bunny.

You may be able to trap a level 5 before that first pet hits level 5, but it’s very risky to try.

When that last slot is open, drop that 4 you grabbed into that slot, then turn to fight your first level 5. This first fight will be rough, since the lvl 5 comes with a friend. After I get that 5, I try a 6. If I fail, I grab an extra 5. I trap a 6, then make my way to the next zone, because its level range overlaps to 6.

You may see at this point why I’m dubbing this the Cascade Strat. In the next zone, I grab a 7, see if I can take on 8s, grab a couple 8s, next zone.

You can also be less cautious and make larger jumps if you’d like. I was able to go from a full group of 8s in Arathi to tame a full group of 11s in Hinterlands, but if you do it this way you may waste more time than it’s worth on flying to go heal. Part of the reason I pick this particular path is that I can make my way to the Eastern Plaguelands and load a full team of 12s.

Then, I hearth to Vale and port back to Stormwind (Horde players can go to any city, then use the Dark Portal port). Next, I go to Deadwind Pass. That’s the only place, as far as I know, where there are pets above level 15 that show up without friends.

The leap you can take in level makes it totally worth it even if you screw up a couple times. The first one is a bit difficult to nab, so you may need to go back & forth to either Duskwood or Stonard to heal up. If there are no Arcane Eyes or Restless Shadelings up (the latter being generally super rare, so keep one if you cage it!) go straight to Swamp of Sorrows. You’ll find both 14s and 15s there. Be sure to avoid the 15s until you have a full team of 14s. It’s not nearly the pushover as if you had the arcane eyes though.

I load up 2 arcane eyes regardless of quality, then backtrack to my first triple match in Swamp of Sorrows. My Eyes will dispatch the pets easily even with that level 12 anchor (replace that one ASAP, obviously). If you have 14s it might be hard-fought.

One big issue starting now is that from here on out whenever we tame something it’s going to lose a level. When we hit level 20s, they’ll lose 2 levels. I’ll tame a 15 in Swamp of Sorrows just to ditch that one level 12 (and it’ll become a 14) and make sure 15s are doable with my current team, then move on to the Blasted Lands for a tame or two. After that, we cross the Dark Portal. From here, my path is Hellfire to Blade’s Edge to Netherstorm. I start off with taming pets on the lowest side of the level range and move to the highest in each zone.

After you have a team of 19s and 18s, go to Dalaran, tame in Crystalsong and Dragonblight then use the portal again to hit up Pandaria. I would stay in Crystalsong, but there never seem to be pets up there. Again, I’m being a bit reckless so you can take it slower and try less disparate matchups and tames if you’d like. If you’re having trouble try going to Deepholm. The portal there makes it a quick stop.

If all goes according to plan you’ll make it up to Pandaria and level 23 without much trouble.

Well, close enough.

When you do, you have 2 options.

One is to grab your favorite ‘real’ pets, like a cinder kitten or perky pug and start leveling it using the swap method I outlined in this post. You can throw in the lower quests too, to get bags and begin to open dailies for yourself.

The other is to finish the grind with these temporary pets. There are 2 issues with doing so. One is that, unless you tame a blue, you’ll want to stone any pet you’re going to keep. Above level 15, all pets lose 2 levels when you use a stone on them so that puts you at level 21 at best to start, or you have to repeat that last couple of levels when you use the stone. 21 to 23 isn’t a horribly long grind, but at those levels it adds at least 20 minutes onto your time. The other issue is that, unless you stone or get rares, you likely won’t have the offensive oomph to do very many tamers after you hit the Outland ones. Several Northrend tamers in particular are very difficult unless you have the right matchup to beat them. You’ll be able to beat Lydia Accoste and Stone Cold Trixxy easily with 23s though, which means you get bags, bandages and all that fantastic stuff. It’s up to you!

Personally, I would do the Eastern Kingdoms and Kalimdor tamer things ASAP, because those bags are really invaluable.

Doing this on live servers took me roughly 3 and a half hours, so it’s far faster than grinding up the same baby pets. The disadvantage is that this feels almost a bit mercenary. You don’t get a chance to develop favorites or figure out matchups. You’ll also have to go back and collect the pets you want, where if you do it normally you’ll organically get a large bulk of them as a matter of course.

A few final words. Believe it or not there is more to say! Alright whatever.

Try to make sure you’re using at least 2 different families of pets in any team. There are a lot of critters out there, but if you have an all-critter team and suddenly find yourself facing a critter whose backups are both beasts, you’re probably in trouble. I generally found it easiest to just look for water when I first enter a zone, then tame a frog or crab. Aquatics usually have a heal or other defensive ability which gives them a lot of extra longevity against a higher level, especially if it’s being stubborn about getting in the trap. Also, because of the change to accuracy, you’ll want to use 100% chance to hit abilities whenever possible. When you fight higher level pets, your pets have a 2% additional chance to miss per level, so every little bit counts.

Good luck, baby tamer. Pandaria awaits you!

Whispering Pandaren Spirit Tamer

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The Whispering tamer is in a very picturesque spot of Pandaria. She overlooks the area shrouded in fog where Nazgrel, Windsor and Chen Stormstout fought in the Mists of Pandaria trailer, and it’s just breathtaking, even if it does make her hard to find. All those stupid pillars in the Jade Forest look exactly the same to me. I usually look for the fog because it has an absurdly long draw distance, and then look immediately west, and there she is.

Oh, hi there. I’m here to hopefully make you cry real tears. But if you can’t, since you’re made of wind and all, maybe you could like, pretend for my benefit. That would be fantastic.

The thing is, Whispering has a really big weakness, which makes her a total walkover if you exploit it. Let’s see if you can pick it out after I link the team:

One pet to be leveled, and 2 dragons.

Funny story. All the attacks of all her pets are Flying. Every last one. Seriously. So as long as you pick a couple dragons, you win. My Emerald Whelpling Emilia is a really good choice as a tank, with her Emerald Presence shield ability, and her heal Tranquility, which I as a druid especially enjoy. It’s a very similar setup to my crab. Stella the Celestial Dragon also has a lot of staying power with a self heal, and a unique combo group heal/group nuke on a long timer.

The celestial dragon may not be available to a newer collector, but don’t worry. Almost any team of 2 dragons will work. I’d definitely consider switching her out for someone with a bit more firepower like a Spawn of Onyxia.

This particular setup is a sure thing, but takes a while to win. There are no backrow abilities either, but for these tamers I like to start a bit higher, because that first attack almost kills them even at level 8. Regardless, this is a relatively easy fight and a great place to start your spirit taming journey. Even though I’m writing this walkthrough third. Whatever.

The leadoff pet is Dusty, a moth which is somehow a critter. (NOTE – After 5.4, Dusty is now properly a Flying battle pet, not a critter. However, the strategy as follows is still otherwise accurate).

Against Stella, Dusty’s name is

weak, weak, weak.

If you do opt to use an Onyxian Whelpling or some other dragon with a big nuke on a timer, be mindful of the timer on Cocoon Strike, which can absorb that nuke. Otherwise, meh.

The second pet is Whispertail the dragon. Whispertail has 3 abilities. Guess what they are.

weak, weak and weak. He does have an armor shatter ability, but it just makes his damage go from yawn to yawners. Meh. He doesn’t have any dodges or blocks like Dusty, so just beat him down until he’s on the floor.

It’s kind of weird. Neither Whispertail nor Dusty have an analogous pet a player is able to have, as far as I know. Dusty closely mirrors the abilities of all moths, but is a critter. Not that either would be a huge asset to our stables, I’m just saying. It’s odd compared to what we’ve seen before.

The last in the lineup is the Air Spirit. Like the others, all her attacks are

weak, weak.

The difference here is that the Air Spirit also has a rather annoying heal, which is why she only rates 2 out of 3 weaks. I switch to Emilia (even if Stella hasn’t gone to the Great Gold Hoard In The Sky) and make sure to use her Emerald Presence ability, because all the Spirit’s attacks are bundles of smaller attacks. I only use Tranquility when I get below 800 HP or so because otherwise I’ll spend every 3rd turn refreshing it, and dude I have other things to do today.

The Whispering Spirit Tamer’s proximity as the crow flies (druid pun) to the Vale and Black Market Auction House make her a good target to hit while you go about your day. I find beating her quite relaxing before going off and killing orcs or biting virmen in the face. Because after all, look at that view.

If you’re here to go on an Awfully Big Adventure with your Elekk Plushie, this strategy is completely valid. Just swap in your Plushie where you would your carry pet.

The video below shows a carry using my Elekk Plushie.

Burning Pandaren Spirit Tamer

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Update for 6.0: This strategy is up to date. If you’re here on your Awfully Big Adventure with your Elekk Plushie, just follow the advice given below for a normal leveling carry.

Also, I did finally get my Burning pet. Thanks for asking!

—–

For now, this guy is my white whale.

Oh, I can beat his face in no problem. In fact, this is a powerlevel guide, after a fashion. But I would like to have his tiny doppelganger for my own, and he simply will not drop from his bag. It’s a real love-hate thing, because he does kind of have a cute face, but good lord am I sick of seeing it.

ugh.

And yes, I know that I can just buy one for myself off the AH if I so choose, but now? Now, it’s the principle of the thing.

He has 3 battle pets: Crimson the Dragon, the Pandaren Fire Spirit, and the firefly Glowy. Oddly, the 2 non-elementals don’t have wowhead links. The real obstacle in this fight other than missing links is the dragon, for a few reasons. Here’s my lineup:

The most obvious thing here is that the pet to be leveled is rather high, at level 22. This is because the first pet out of the gate, Crimson, has the ability Cyclone, which has a chance to inflict 150+ damage to any of the pets on your team every turn for 5 turns. If this debuff isn’t present, Crimson will almost always use it, and with Liftoff for mitigation he usually gets a chance to cast it twice, so this debuff typically lasts at least 10 rounds for me. As a result, though RNG plays a factor, I don’t use any leveling pet below level 20 on this fight, and I avoid aquatics (which are vulnerable to the flying damage) altogether.

Crimson’s last ability and main dps ability, Breath, is of the dragon school, which is why I choose Radley the Scourged Whelpling. He’s undead, so dragon abilities ain’t no thang. With his Plagued Blood ability, Radley usually destroys Crimson, and gets through at least part of the Burning Fire Spirit.

Many people use the Rapana Whelk and other snails as their tank of choice, but I’m obviously rather attached to my crab Ishmael. This is one instance though, where the crab just will not do the job. Being aquatic, crabs are very vulnerable to that back row damage from Cyclone I talked about before. Snails are classed as critters, so they don’t have that same problem. Because the whelk is a critter, all of the Fire Spirit’s offensive abilities are weaker against him too, making him really ideal for the second leg of the fight.

One thing you should try to do though, is to use your whelk’s Dive ability to avoid Conflagrate. The spirit usually casts it whenever it’s off cooldown. If you miss it you can still win, but even with the mitigation it can be a big hit.

The third battle pet Glowy has 1 flying DoT ability, a combo DoT and reflexive damage ability and the critter ability Swarm, which increases damage taken by 100%. If it can hit. Luckily, it’s a series of small hits, so any pet with Shell Shield or the like will be able to avoid it. Like oh, I don’t know, maybe a snail.

After the Fire Spirit is dead, cast your shield immediately and keep it up. You pretty much just win eventually, because Glowy can’t hit you. It does take a while though.

And then maybe one day, you’ll get a mini Burning Pandaren Spirit Tamer of your own.

Maybe.

——7/10/2013: added a walkthrough video!

Pet Powerleveling And You

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I’ve made reference in the past to powerleveling strategy. I’m making this post to outline exactly what that is, because it’s a handy skill to have. This technique is commonly known as a Carry.

Our victim for this post will be Grand Master Tamer Trixxy.

Aw, don’t look so sad, Trixxy.

This strategy is applicable for pretty much any tamer or even for wild pet battles. The lineup will vary, and a lot for some of the later tamers in Pandaria, which need specific combinations in order for this to work. But for right now, I’m going with this lineup:

Stella the Celestial Dragon is a good pick for this basic fight because of her group heal, and because she matches the whole blue vibe Trixxy’s got going. Ishmael is just there in case I get into bigtime trouble, and is also blue. These choices don’t really matter, as nearly any team of 2 level 25 battle pets will be able to dispatch Trixxy fairly handily. And I chose the unnamed Tonk because I just bought him at the Faire like 5 minutes ago. Yes, really. That tonk really screws the whole color trend though. For shame, tonk.

Basically, Blizzard made it so that level 25 battle pets don’t soak any XP. As long as your pet to be carried survives through 1 round of pummelling in the front row, you can send it to the back row, and as long as there aren’t any aoe abilities to wreck its face your carried pet will get as much XP as if it miraculously killed all 3 of the other pets by itself. All you need is 2 level 25 pets who can kill the other pets without a third. This also works for higher pets.

This can get very sketchy in the later battles, but with Trixxy once you have any level 25, even an off-breed, you’ll be able to solo her. And then you wear a handy Safari Hat, your level 1 pet will gain

1898XP and 8 levels. In one fight. Yeah.

Even if your pet isn’t level 1, as long as it’s more than 2 or 3 levels lower than Trixxy’s level 19s, you’ll gain boatloads of XP without much effort at all. This may be more valuable than the contents of the bag you get from doing her daily. I make a point of doing her, Lydia Accoste in Deadwind Pass, Bloodknight Antari in Shadowmoon Valley and Farmer Nishi in Valley Of The Four Winds every day for just this reason. I do others too but these 4 are sure things with nearly any level 25 pet, and very quick fights. They also grant far more XP than if I were to battle a wild pet of the same level… Farmer Nishi is especially notable, since she’s worth a whopping 2-4000 XP depending on the level of your pet, though you may need to go slightly higher level than 1 for your soak pet, since one of her pets will use an AOE on occasion.