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Post-Blizzcon Pet Information

There was oddly very little information imparted at Blizzcon about pets. I’m pretty sure yak mounts were mentioned more on the livestream than my favorite niche minigame. There was one question in the Open Q&A, whether there’s going to be pet battling anytime soon for mobile devices. The response was largely positive, but in the Blizzard “Soon(tm)” vein.

Beyond that, there was one very small tidbit of information, enclosed in the official spiel about Garrisons. Apparently one of the buildings in the Garrison, the new, upgradeable player housing, will be a Pet Stable. There seems to be a few listed iterations of this, including a Barn, a regular Stable and a Pet Stable, but that’s unsurprising since part of the stated Garrisons mechanics involves upgrading your buildings. It took a bit of digging, and some begging friends at the con to maul Cory Stockton’s face (with questions) to find out exactly what this pet shed out back entails.

Firstly, it looks like it serves as a place to sort of display your fuzzy (or scaly, or gooey) friends in-game.

However, the real headline here is–hang on to your butts:

PET BREEDING. TO GET EPIC PETS.

That is WoW Forum MVP Alona, who had a discussion with Cory Stockton, a lead game dev also known as @mumper on Twitter. Of course, they both could’ve been, let’s say, enjoying the Blizzcon Spirits at that point.

Tweets are relatively unofficial, but I’d say this is good enough to confirm Pet Breeding as a function of Garrisons.

We know that this is how we get new, epic pets. Alona also contributed from this conversation that the pet level cap will not be increasing, leaving us free to level our new epic pets. What we don’t know yet is pretty much everything else. How often we can breed them. What it will do to skills. What kind of screwed up abomination skins the final product will have (I’m totally breeding a Valkyr and a Scourged Whelpling just to see what pops out). However, we also don’t know how this will affect our current pets, and if Radley gets destroyed in order to ‘merge’, forget that idea.

Alona also says that Corgis are a ways off, which I know lots of collectors (especially her) are sad about. However, I’m thrilled to say that the peacock Elepheagle and I have been hounding Mr. Stockton about is in the offing for 6.0. I do not have a better source for this than twitter hearsay, but the #arWAAARRRK and #mumperpromisedmeapeacock hashtags have been a long-running inside joke between the two of us, so I’m pretty excited for this even if it ends up as just a rumor.

There were a couple slides from the art panel which looked intriguing as possible future pets (especially this little enraged flowerperson) but at this point that’s speculation on my part. I don’t think I’ve made much of a secret of my disappointment in how little pet information came from Blizzcon, but I do think that breeding has potential to be really cool. We’ll see as we move into beta and get more first person accounts of garrisons.

2013 Battle Pet Gift Guide

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This post might seem super early, but I wanted to get it out before Hanukkah shopping is over, and Hanukkah arrives obscenely early this year. It definitely isn’t just a thinly veiled excuse to write a post that outlines a bunch of stuff I want before my birthday, which is right before Hanukkah. No you guys, it’s all about cultural inclusiveness. I’m also super early for Chinese New Year, but late for Diwali.

I’m also accepting cupcakes.

Jokes aside, I’m writing this guide largely in the hope that non-WoW players, and really non-gamers in general, have some kind of touchstone for what to get their loved ones. It’s kind of a difficult nut to crack. There’s a lot of general World of Warcraft merchandise out there, so finding something for a loved one who’s a battling enthusiast can be a really daunting task. Though I personally would love, for instance, a mug emblazoned with the tooltip for the in-game item Black Coffee, I’m going to be focusing on pet-related gifts.

For the most part, physical WoW merchandise is on the smaller side. In terms of pets, the most notable is TCG pet loot cards, which are excellent when a smaller gift is appropriate. In general, the most reliable place to get unscratched loot cards is ebay. As a result, all prices discussed here are estimates subject to change. They start off at roughly $3 US for a Sand Scarab. Most are hovering around $8-15 US now, including the extremely unique Purple Puffer and the super useful battler Gregarious Grell. Many sellers offer several different cards in a ‘pet pack,’ which can be a nice deal if you have several battlers to buy for. Try wowtcgloot.com for a more comprehensive list of all pet loot cards. Be sure the read the card description though, as certain cards are listed in the pet category, but aren’t really pets, like Fool’s Gold or Papa Hummel’s Biscuits.

The holy grail for many pet collectors is Murky, but at $3,000 US that’s Neiman Marcus Christmas Book out of control. A more affordable splurge is the Vanilla WoW Collector’s Edition with 3 pets coming along for the big pricetag. The CE itself also comes in a box the size of most computer games, making for a larger physical package than a loot card. But all the Collector’s Editions seem particularly subject to shady seller behavior.

As always with this kind of thing, caveat emptor. Words like ‘Used’ are frequently watchwords, as once the CD key is used you get no pets. You’ll still get a lovely art book and the soundtrack but that’s kind of beside the point. For the cards try to find ‘unscratched’ somewhere on the description, and try to pick sellers with a lot of good feedback. There’s no guarantee that you’re not going to get burned, but at least with the right words in the description you have a better chance of disputing charges with Ebay.

To be sure your recipient doesn’t have that pet before you buy, if you know their character’s name, you can check their pets list. After finding their character, just scroll down until you see their pet team, as shown above. If you click on it, you can see the full current list of their pets. Click on the ‘not collected’ tab and see which options are available. This is also a good way to find in-game only holiday gifts for guildmates.

If you’re looking for something a bit more substantial to hand to a loved one than a single playing card, a really good option is the plushies. The Gryphon Hatchling is currently available in the Blizzard Store, and includes a code for an in-game pet. There are others which were formerly available in the store, notably the opposite faction Wind Rider Cub, you may be able to find for sale online.

Another option is Etsy. There are a few pet-related options, like this pawprint pendant, which mirrors the pet battling graphic I use as my site icon. I’m also rather partial to this amigurumi moonkin hatchling. The really good thing about Etsy is that even if a product isn’t quite what you’re looking for, like if you’d prefer your moonkin in Horde colors, you can contact the seller and ask to set up a commission.

With Etsy a big stumbling point is frequently the authenticity of what crafters offer. Sometimes, less scrupulous individuals will just scattershot keywords hoping to get a bite. It’s always a good idea to cross-check with google against the actual item being represented before you pull the trigger.

Be careful of Etsy though, just in general. That place will lead you down a rabbit hole which convinces you that you have to hav–oh man did you guys see this needlepoint?

Pandaren Spirit Tamer Guides

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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.

Flowing Pandaren Spirit Tamer – Near water, using aquatic battle pets, is where this tamer lurks.

Whispering Pandaren Spirit Tamer – This tamer is high above the clouds and uses a lot of native Flying battle pets.

Burning Pandaren Spirit Tamer – Replenished by a steady supply of Yaungol Oil, this tamer combines Dragonkin fire and wind to burn bright.

Thundering Pandaren Spirit Tamer – Near the seat of the Mogu, this tamer uses earth and magic to great effect.

Clefthoof Runt

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The quarantine colony baked in hot sun, cooled by sentient winds in the lush wilds of Nagrand, was once home to a sick child.

Garadar was always home to sick children, to sick grown orcs. This young orc’s strong ancestry set him apart from the others. Even with the benefit of blood on his side he couldn’t even raise an axe in his own defense, the essence of being Orcish. Axes were not the only essence orcs possessed after his father urged them all, warrior and shaman alike, to drink the blood of a demon. Garrosh remained untouched by that corruption, remained unpossessing of that strength, wasting away among the clefthoof and the elementals in Nagrand.

To this day, the elements remain outside Hellscream’s reach. Eventually and with determination, he grew strong and his path was one of the warrior. Despite being among the wonders of the elements, of nature, of the shaman, those things were useless for him.

The formidable, unthinking clefthoof remained Garrosh’s model of strength and health. And so with their unwitting aid, he learned to Smash, to Trample those who opposed him, and trample half of those who were once his allies. His Orcs were as a Stampede over all life on Kalimdor, and were threatening the world in their rage.

Over time, he grew so opposed to the elements, he allowed his Dark Shaman to continue their rituals in a way which rivaled the betrayal of the elements by Gul’dan and his warlocks. Over time, the Orcs and Garrosh found their own, treacherous way to Survive.

So, when a worgen druid comes to your keep with her Clefthoof Runt, she hopes you feel despair deep in your heart for the only true home you knew. That you, for one moment, smell the honey-sweet winds of Nagrand before you remember that she is here to kill you. That moment of weakness is all she’ll need.

What would Greatmother Geyah say if she could see you now, Garrosh? Thrall’s disappointment pales in comparison.

No rest til Orgrimmar.

Celestial Tournament

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

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

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

But, let’s not get ahead of ourselves.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

More 5.4 PTR Shenanigans

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On the PTR you’re randomly awarded level 25 pets as you churn battles. I started getting them after I had a level 6+ pet, and I’d already beaten the little girl in Redridge. The next time I logged on, boom, 25s. Beyond that I’m not too sure, but this was on a copy of my Live toon. No intact achievements or pets, but I was able to pick up the Tamer quests all the way down, even though I hadn’t technically been able to beat them yet. It’s a little weird. If you’re trying to see for yourself, just buy a cat and start cascading your way on up.

Anyway. As of last post I’d been awarded Niuzao and Yu’lon, but it was pretty clear that they were still being worked on, as their moves were all identical, and they were scaled to be ridiculously huge. Now, all 4 have unique, individual moves, and the pets themselves are much smaller.

First, we’ll look at Yu’la, Broodling of Yulon, who is the pet I’m suddenly most excited for.

The Celestial Blessing ability looks to be a soft counter for Force Swap. I’m not sure about her other abilities in terms of actual PVP viability though… she seems very one note, but what a note.

Zao, Calfling of Niuzao looks like a lot of fun to play.

As noted in the video, in addition to being relentlessly cool, Zao also has a bunch of really useful abilities. He has Wish, which automatically makes him an excellent pick in PVP or PVE. You could cast Wish, and then back it up with your Niuzao’s Charge and reduce a lot of the risk from your down time. He honestly seems a little overpowered right now, but this is PTR after all, so we’ll see how things shake out. We still don’t have even the slightest idea of how these pets will be earned, so his OP-ness might be a reflection of how hard he is to get. We’ll see.

I still don’t have either of the last 2 pets, so I can’t show them in action, but they also have new & improved ability movesets.

Chi-Chi shares a name with the worst Mexican franchise I’ve ever eaten at. The pet looks to be far less terrible, with a mix of bird-style abilities. He has an elemental variation on the typical flying Quill. He gets a regular old Alpha Strike, and Wild Winds on the Flying side. He has Feign Death and Tranquility, and an ability like the the Anubisath Idol’s Deflection.

I’m not sure where he’s going to fit in just yet. The defensive stuff is intriguing, but this seems to be a really odd, scattershot set of abilities to me just now.

Xu-fu, Cub of Xuen, looks like he’s going to be a tiny ball of teeth and biting teeth with teeth and blue fur. It looks like there are 2 ways you can go with him. Either you can pair the new Spirit Claws, which hits relatively hard but has low accuracy, with Moonfire (yes, the cat can moonfire. you know, somehow), which increases Spirit Claws’ accuracy to 100%. Or, you can pick the not quite so hard hitting Bite, and pair that with the Absorb-like Feed, which heals you for your damage done.

The third slot features either Prowl, which may give the first choice a big edge, or Vengeance, which is very new, and hits your opponent for the last damage you took. This may be a good pick as a counter pet to those buffed hard hitters like, oh, I don’t know, the upcoming Zao!

Can you tell I’m really, really excited for the tournament to get here already?

edit – of course, right after publishing this post, I got both xufu and chichi.

Rabbit

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Yeah, I know. I already highlighted the frogs and now I’m going for Rabbits, which are just as low texture, though at least these ones have eyes.

The reason I have to highlight these is that they’re fairly key in a lot of both PVE and PVP strategy. They are better at turtling than Turtles. The combination of Dodge and Burrow means that, if conditions are right, your pet will only be hit a couple times after several turns of evasion. Those conditions include your rabbit being a Speed breed, or your opponent being super slow. As discussed in my Breeds post, this can make quite a bit of difference. If you have a Speed breed rabbit, it is one of the fastest pets in the game. If you have a different breed of rabbit, it is still going to be quite fast, but it’s not a lock for evasion the speed breeds are.

And now it’s time for another video, yay! This one pits my S/S rabbit Dill and my H/B rabbit Lennie against the first pet in the Thundering Pandaren Tamer fight. I continue on with the fight with Dill, just in case my acclaimed writeup on the topic wasn’t enough to help you beat him. I get it, different people learn in different ways.

The only rabbit with no available speed breed is the Elfin Rabbit. The Spring Rabbit from the Noblegarden holiday is the Speed breed by default, but you have to burn a Critter token to get them up to Rare quality. They also have, by far, the most amusing idle animation.

Beyond just rabbits, speed is incredibly valuable in PVP. If you get a very speedy pet and your opponent chooses to swap pets, you can frequently make them ‘skip’ turns while swapping. For Rabbits, this not only increases your avoidance right then, but makes you one turn closer to your next Dodge.

Sometimes in pvp, you can practically hear the frustrated shrieks through the monitor at your adorable little ball of fluff and evasion.

Pet PVP 101

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Not to get all behind the scenes-y on you, but I look at my wordpress analytics stuff on occasion to see what people are looking for help with. Though really I ought to write more about Unknown Search.

So, so helpful. Right now, the thing I keep seeing searches for, and twitter questions about, is pet pvp. It runs the gamut from queries about advanced tactics to just the simple, almost desperate, “pet pvp help”. Though I have been mentioning how fun it is for a month or two now, I haven’t really written much to ease somebody into PVP. Since I just got a relatively glowing plug from that one guy on Eviscerated who does pet battles on this week’s (NSFW) podcast, coupled with ongoing PVP queries from my analytics, I figured it was time to do a beginner’s guide to pvp.

Let me preface with a reassurance that there’s nothing to be afraid of. At worst, you’re going to be out 10 minutes with nothing to show for it.

Let’s be real. We’ve all spent more time than that sitting in far-flung nowheres while we’ve waited on rare tames. Lots and LOTS more time than that. Let’s also say this right now: you are going to lose. Like, a LOT a lot, to begin. I still lose a third to a quarter of the matches I fight, which is an alright win percentage from what I understand. The thing is though, the more you do it, the more you learn, the better you get, the more you win.

My experience is that you should pick 2, maybe 3 teams and use them until you know them in your sleep. This can be a flavor of the month team, like a force swap or a Kun-Lai Runt team, or build one on your own with one of your favorites. I’d recommend starting off with at least one team you know can be successful rather than try to build all your own, but if it doesn’t feel fun to play to you, try a different one. You can’t force a playstyle you hate to feel fun.

I’d recommend listening to the WoW Pet Battle Crew podcast or occasionally Res from the Eviscerated podcast for ideas here (though I need to stress for my younger readers that this is an adult podcast), or this thread on the official forums for ideas on a team you might enjoy. Or, you know, read my site too, or whatever.

That said, unfortunately for my analytics, there is no best pet pvp team. There are good ones to be sure, even overpowered ones, but nearly all of them can be countered once you get a bit more experience. The funny bit is, as you PVP more, you’ll see these team comps constantly, so you’ll know exactly what’s coming as soon as you enter into the match, and you’ll learn how to play your team to beat them.

One of the more overpowered pets, the 3 baby Direhorns, are all mowed down really quickly by my gnome, moreso if I combo it with a debuff. In my experience, buffs and debuffs play a much larger role in PVP than PVE. Though you got a taste of them in first doing so in the Aki fight, players are far more savvy at combining big damage abilities with vulnerability debuffs than NPCs. In general, speed plays an enormous role in PVP, and thus so do speed debuffs, but there are a myriad to watch out for… if you have a debuff up, pay attention to what comes next!

You don’t have an actual physical location when you pet PVP, so you don’t have to worry about the other kind of PVP. Also, your opponent is a placeholder graphic (why I can’t say) so you’re not actually fighting some jerk priest who managed to nab tier 3.

Very unlike PVE, your setup before you queue up doesn’t matter, as you and your opponent both get to choose your first pet after you zone in. This gives you about 30 seconds to look at their team and decide what you want to do. For my teams, I almost always pick a tank pet to lead off, like the Scourged Whelpling, the Crawdad or a Direhorn (though the Direhorn makes a good closer, too). I can take a move or two to figure out what the other team’s gimmick is going to be.

shown: gimmicks.

Swapping your pets in PVP is far more beneficial than it is in PVE. You only very rarely ‘lose’ a turn the same way as you always do in PVE. In fact, your decisions in which pet to play in what order can seriously affect your chances to win. In my Black Claw team, I almost always let my Kneebiter die first, because both my Gnome and Whelpling have failsafes after they die, but I try to make sure to leave the Whelp for last if there’s a pet with heavy elemental damage, because it’ll chew the gnome to bits. Reverse that for critter damage and the Whelpling. Having an Undead pet for your second to last pet is a really excellent idea, because if you win the match on your resurrect round, with no pets left, the fight ends in a draw. In that case, I do forfeit.

People have very different ideas on etiquette here. Personally, with the one exception I mentioned above, I like to play out every match as hard-fought as I can, to see what the other pets can do, to see what their weaknesses are. Some people think this is rude, and think you should forfeit as soon as you ‘know’ you’ve lost. We’re learning, and they can just forfeit if they don’t like it. Besides, you never know what you might be able to pull off at the very end.

If you (yes *you*) would like to, you can contact me on twitter or add my battletag Liopleurodon#1882 to duel for some practice. Or, if you feel I’m a know-nothing noobie noob and want to smash my pets and make me cry IRL, I’ll duel you too. Believe it or not, after you get into pet PVP is fun even when you’re losing.

You just get better stuff when you’re winning and paying attention to your analytics Kardashian baby Amanda Bynes (I think this is how it works).

Qiraji Guardling

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They increased the drop rate in a hotfix yesterday, so I got one this morning.

But between the behavior of others and the general drama and rolling back and forth through whine-tinged vacillation associated with this one last lousy pet, it doesn’t feel like the culmination of a nearly year-long grind, like the capping accomplishment of pet battling it should be. I expected to unveil this with a flourish, to let you see what my effort of nearly a year has won me, but I find that I don’t care so much, anymore.

This isn’t an informative post so much as a traditional musing, navel-gazing blogger-style post, so you may want to skip it.

I’ve often said that the Pet Battle game is like the entire game in miniature. The PVP/PVE divide in particular is kind of amusing to me. The thing is, through this, while there have been some trolls (eg, Triple Turkey, round wait trolling) and the cries to buff or nerf as usual, the pet battle community has been almost entirely helpful and encouraging. I’ve tried to foster the same, because this makes it a fun and fantastic place to be.

I’ve been blogging solely about pet battles since February. Right now, roughly 70% of my time in game is spent battling or running around like an idiot taking screenshots (25% is doing archaeology to get a crawling claw, 5% is standing around looking at how bad my transmog is). And even so, looking at my rankings at WarcraftPets or WoWProgress, I’m barely in the top 50 of my server right now, let alone my entire CRZ group. If one guardling was awarded every 6 hours to the person ranked at the top who hadn’t yet received one, to the people who arguably did the work to “deserve” it more, I would still have weeks to go.

On top of that stat, I gained the 2nd-to-last achievement for this in December of last year, 7 months ago. Of course people are going to be upset that, on the day this goes live, these pets are exceedingly rare. They came here to get a pet, and having to leave empty-handed sucks whether it’s a Guardling or a Minfernal or a Snow Cub. That suckiness is added to a unique pet with a unique moveset and this ultimate-style achievement, and of course people are disappointed. It sucks whether it’s a pet, a playstation or if they just ran out of your favorite kind of doughnut at your local doughnut place. It’s human nature to be disappointed by this. And it’s OK to say, “I am disappointed this pet is so rare,” or even, “I wish this spawned more rapidly,” without being instantly pointed to as a whiny baby boohoo crier or having some deep-seeded personality flaw.

I have a hardcore raiding past and I have a few elitist jerk tendencies I’ve tried to quash. Oh hey did you just say you wanted to see a screenshot of me on the Time-Lost Protodrake I nabbed in November of 2008 for my birthday after getting server first hunter and dwarf, using my Obsidian Slayer title?

As such, I’m not going to lie you guys, the spawn rate on this pet has really brought out some of the worst in me. I’ve talked civilly with some of my fellow campers, most of them from some other server, commiserating about how crappy this whole thing is. But internally, and maybe out loud at my screen a little bit, I’ve been saying, GET OUT OF HERE YOU NOOOOOB most times a random person catches one. I am torn between saying, ‘that’s a hard one to get, congrats’ to the person who says, ‘yay, now I just need to get the Minfernal!’ or ‘haha, now I’m just waiting until winter for an owl now!’ and allowing myself to become one with fury, to open wide the first of my seven maws of death, let loose the swarm of locusts and sing the ancient song of destruction.

But the side of myself Mr. Rogers would be proud of has won out, in my case. Congrats, grats, good luck getting that Whelpling you rapscallion, grats, etc, whatever. “When you wait / you can play, sing / or imagine anything,” so I was using the time to draft a few posts out in longhand (I don’t dare tab out) and seething privately. It’s pretty much the opposite of the haggard, hard-won victory this achievement should be. It definitely wasn’t fun by any definition. Other tamers have been… not so kind, between hurling insults, killing pets to ensure their rarity (or whatever), flagging for PVP and standing on spawns, and just general jerkface behavior.

This outlandishly awful behavior, plus the newly hotfixed buff to the spawn rate of the Guardlings, makes things seem problematic. There is a lot of speculation that Blizzard somehow caved to this behavior, to the whining, to the jerkiness the pet battling community has suddenly devolved to. I doubt this, just on the fact that they did it via a hotfix instead of waiting for maintenance. At least, I hope this isn’t the case, because I like my little community the way it is and if Blizzard begins granting wishes like some kind of big blue genie it’s going to get even worse. They typically don’t have a habit of doing so unless something is really egregiously awful to do, like the A Mask For All Occasions achievement, which used to be required for the Long Strange Trip meta-achievement. Removal of that achievement from the meta didn’t lead to societal anarchy (beyond the typical anarchy, of course), and I doubt this really will, either.

Happily, with the buff, the community’s willingness to be considerate seems to have righted itself, and my experience is that people are generally being more helpful around the spawns. But we’ve been shown what the dark side of pet collecting is, and it continues in that mirroring of the full game… we’re just as vulnerable to elitism over who should be allowed to get the good stuff, whether it’s ilvls or a last dumb pet, as raiders are. Unlike ilvls, if some other (less-worthy by who knows what internalized metric) player tames a specific pet spawn, that means I cannot tame it, so there is then an active incentive to troll, grief and otherwise wreck another player’s day… regardless of whether it might make Blizzard change their mind WRT rarity.

I know that I personally have done a sort of penance, hanging around and cheering people on. Besides which, this whole blog is kind of dedicated to helping people with pet battles, so I’ll be building my karma back up with helpfulness accordingly. I still feel guilty about it, and if you’re on my cross-realm I apologize for my thinking you were a noobface jerkwad who SHOULDN’T BE THERE GRAWWWRG.

For the record, I’d advocate that nearly all rare spawns should be made less rare, not just this one, and not even necessarily just the pets. In pet battling the effort expended in collecting them all, and especially when you throw in rare quality (ie, blue) pets, is enough to make any pet feel special. For me, one of my hardest won pets is still my rare quality, crappy breed Grasslands Cottontail. I still break out my Perky Pug Bertha both for battling and as a companion, and she is literally the most common pet in the game. There are rare pets in battling that feel far less rare than some which are regarded as common anyway. An Unborn Val’kyr? Ho hum. Like every 3rd team uses a Val’kyr now. They’re OP but everyone uses them the same way so when I see one it’s kind of a snooze. But if somebody comes at me with an Elder Python or a Moth, I sit up and take notice.

Beyond all the sturm und drang of this whole mess, the Qiraji Guardling is a fairly solid pet. It uses a combination of humanoid and flying attacks which is unique to this pet, unlike its Winter counterpart the Snowy Owl, which is identical to the other owls, Miniwing and the Brilliant Kaliri. The Guardling has the AOE ability Whirlwind, which doesn’t play too well with the very strong PVP ability Sandstorm. There’s also the Pyrrhic strong hitter Reckless Strike, and a stunner Blackout Kick. It looks to be strong both for PVE and PVP, so now that the spawn rate is buffed, make sure you go grab one ASAP, before the summer is out.

I’m not going to say whether I would’ve written that last sentence if the spawn rate wasn’t buffed (hint: ashamedly, I wouldn’t).

Midsummer Festival

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While everyone else is busy burning things down or whatever, I figured I’d put up a short post with the pets available for this holiday.

There are 2 pets you can get, both elementals. The Spirit of Summer has a moveset identical to the Fel Flame I love so dearly. The Spirit’s stat allocation is slightly different, and it is only available in Breed 13, B/B. It starts off Uncommon quality by default, but they’re tradeable so you may be able to snag a pre-stoned one off the auction house.

To get one you need to do a whole lot of holiday stuff to get a whole bunch of flowers, which are apparently currency, somehow. Even though they’re like, on fire. Whatever, Warcraft. Each spirit costs 350 flowers.

The other comes from doing the holiday boss, Ahune. The first time you kill him each day, you are awarded Satchel of Chilled Goods, which has a chance to contain a Frigid Frostling. The Frostling will throw a snowball at you which makes it snow, but he’s otherwise fairly unremarkable. His moves include the accuracy diminishing Slippery Ice and the ever-popular stunner Ice Tomb, plus the aquatic Surge.