My blog is still relatively new, so I figured that, since last PTR cycle I just stored everything up until right before patch dropped, I’d try to publish stuff as I explored it. This way I’ll figure out which way I like better. SO!
I’m not going to say much about the Big Stuff happening in the Vale, other than I have visited Grand Master Tamer Aki, and she is safe. You may have trouble reaching her if you’re a lowbie, and higher level characters may need to kill a mob or two on occasion to get out clean. I’d also recommend taming your Eternal Strider, Dancing Water Strider and Yellow-Bellied Bullfrog if you haven’t already… they’re not entirely gone, but there are very few spawn points left. And if you haven’t fished up your tiny carp yet, you may want to get cracking.
The big thing I’m excited about, but isn’t up yet, is the Tournament. If takes place on the Timeless Isle southeast of the Jade Forest, but the island is relatively locked down for now (you get ported out almost immediately).
We know virtually nothing about it, except that there’s an achievement for it, and you can get 4 new pets for participation. On PTR, you get random new level 25 pets when you battle on occasion, so I’ve ‘obtained’ 2 of these guys so far.
They all seem to share identical movesets, but each one has slightly different stats. Niuzao and Xuen are both beasts, Yu’lon is a Dragonkin and Chi’ji is Flying. Niuzao and Yu’lon both have cool trails, so I think the others likely will be too.
I also got the new pet called Crafty. I don’t really know what to make of it. The graphic is clearly a placeholder, as it’s a transparent little kid. But the method for obtaining it at this point is listed as…
Developers? Yeaaah. This seems like a troll on dataminers to me, but his aquatic type makes me think he’s somehow related to Old Crafty (Org raid drop pet?), and maybe he just isn’t drawn yet. He’s fairly hilarious to fight with, as he just runs up and stands there with no attack or death animations.
Moon Moon and Pierre are also in, but I don’t have any new info about either just yet.
I did find the battlestone vendor. Audrey Burnhep in Stormwind will let you trade those duplicate stones at your leisure.
So, for now, I’m pretty much just battling a bunch and biding my time until that fantastic looking tournament opens up!
First of all, pet PVP isn’t that bad. I’m not sure why I was hesitant to get into it from a ‘I’m gonna lose so muchhh’ perspective. Even though, let’s be real, I started off losing pretty frequently. Now I’ve leveled off to winning roughly 4 out of 5.
The issue now is that there isn’t a ton of reward for it. Yeah, cute little direhorn. And right now I’m getting exactly 1K XP per battle I win at level 17, so that’s additional incentive. But other than watching my win totals go up (which right now that’s bugged and I’m not properly being awarded achievements or wins for my weekly quest, so that may have something to do with my disenchantment here), and that weekly quest, there isn’t any way to progress. I keep getting these cruddy green upgrade stones and that’s about it. Because of how long the battles take, dozens and dozens of turns, that 1K XP is just barely beating out grinding lowbie squirrels. Throw a loss or two into the mix, a longer queue time, and it completely tanks my XP per hour.
If this is your first time PVPing, I’d encourage you to just keep at it. I know I still have a lot to learn. I mean, if you’re raiding you don’t say “well, Kel’Thuzad did this thing I haven’t seen up to this point, I guess I should just give up.” Same goes for lil KT. Don’t give up! Pretty much the whole time I’m doing pvp, I like to keep this song in mind (no really).
If your team combo doesn’t seem to be working, try a new one. My composition right now is my Wild Golden Hatchling with Call Lightning and Cyclone, my Clockwork Gnome with his turret, and my Scourged Whelpling with Plagued Blood.
I make a lot of swaps, and if I come up against another heavy DoT team or a team with a pet that has a shell shield ability I could be in trouble. But for now, it’s working out pretty well for me. PVP has a steep learning curve, because you need to know your pets’ abilities to the utmost, but you also need to learn everyone else’s pets’ abilities, frequently on the fly. I’m pretty sure part of the reason I’m having success here is because the Wild Golden Hatchling isn’t common for pvp, so people aren’t too familiar with what it can do.
I feel sad for some of the people I’ve been fighting, too. That isn’t meant to be a brag or elitist comment. I’ve beaten people with green quality pets, clearly just standing on their wobbly pet battle legs for the first time like baby fawns. It makes me almost wish I could find these people afterward, to tell them they’re just not going to win with a team made up of an un-upgraded Wolvar Pup, a snake and a breed 13 rabbit. And of course, there are also the maddening tri-teams of triple speed rabbits, or triple Kun-Lai Runts, all named in such a way that make it obvious the player is just there to troll for lulz, so clearly being able to contact opponents isn’t a good idea in general. I just want to give some of those poor little tamers a hug and tell them to not give up.
But those are both few & far between, and it’s mostly the close wins, or even if I lose by a huge bit, learning a new pet, that makes it fun. I’ll definitely continue to do this for the leveling challenge, because it makes it a lot more tolerable to alternate grinding & pvp. Were it not for this silly leveling challenge I’d get my 10 wins on the week and go do PVE until next week. I’m not asking for a currency-like mechanic like player PVP, though that’s how PVP avoids the same feeling of character stagnation. I’m not sure how you’d fix it, honestly. But, it’s so time-consuming I need a carrot other than ‘fun’.
Speaking of carrots and wasting time, no I haven’t gotten a Val’kyr yet. I tried for about an hour in Grizzly Hills, then went to go poke around in Zul’Drak for a minute. When I came back, it was obvious that I was no longer in the same CRZed Grizzly Hills as before. With the small number of spawn points, until we know more about how taming changes the spawn I can’t see devoting more time to this in the short term.
I’m 1/10 for Raiding With Leashes 2 pets (got the waveling). Later today I plan to farm some bones and maybe a baby direhorn, plus LFR for maybe pets.
The Beasts of Fable are a lot harder, which is fun, and no I’m not being sarcastic for once. I felt since 5.2 that they were too easy to be the ‘epic challenge’ they were presented to be. As epic as flying around for an hour is, lol no. Apocalypse still functions properly, and Life Exchange does the correct amount of damage, though overall this is less damage, because the Beasts Of Fable’s life pool is relatively smaller. However, the Beasts hit much, much harder, and roaches and faerie dragons seem to be made out of wet paper, so using both is a no-go now. I’ve been using the Roach, plus 2 others based on the pet’s family type (eg, for Gorespine I used my Pandaren Dragonling and Darkmoon Zeppelin). For the pets that heal, I’ve been using my Gilnean Raven equipped with Darkness, though there are better choices. You have to have something to cut that healing though, because otherwise it’s just silly.
As to the Barrens stuff and story, I was really hoping that Alliance would get the kickass, “no sleep til Orgrimmar!” moment. I’d actually avoided the spoilers about it, because as soon as I read that line, I knew we were in for something really epic. Instead I got to tool around in a mechanical cat. I haven’t done anything in the Barrens since handing in my initial 15 resources, even though Gahz’rooki is on the line, because I’m really annoyed with this. I know that at this point this is the Horde’s story, but this feels slapped together.
Since the PTR is finally (FINALLY) on a release build, I figured it was time to finally put out my 5.3 pets guide.
Fun fact: On the PTR, you have no pets or account-wide achievements. Blizzard helpfully supplies you a couple super rare pets you’ll likely never get in-game though, so that’s cool, but it’s a crapshoot as to whether you get any pets you actually use on a regular basis. I got 2 poor quality Tolai Hares. So useful. As fun as it would be to re-form and re-tame and re-level my entire team, and then do all the tamer quests to try everything out? No. If you’re super interested in that, here’s a generic training montage.
Close Enough. But there are still plenty of observations to be made just by looking through achievements, the pet journal, etc. The first I noticed was that all abilities now display a percent chance to hit, which is nice.
By the way, Burrow has an 80% chance to hit. Spoiler alert. They’ve also removed the base 5% chance to miss for all abilities, but they also built in a % chance to miss on some abilities which formerly only had that base chance to miss. Each family has an ability which has a base guarantee to hit, too. The ‘base’ throughout here is to note that things like Blind still cause you an increased chance to miss where applicable. There is a longass list of all the ability changes in the full patch notes.
This is also why, if you’ve noticed, I’ve stopped putting up guides for the past month or so. I have a couple ready to go, but I need to make sure they’re still valid before I put them up. Would be kind of silly to edit them less than a week after I posted them (I’ve been expecting 5.3 to launch ‘next Tuesday’ since I first started this post on April 5th, so).
In other fantastic quality of life news, according to the patch notes, “All Pet Battle daily quests on Pandaria, Beasts of Fable and Spirit Tamer quests will now award experience, valor, and Lesser Charms of Good Fortune.”
This may make them my new favorite way to earn… well, everything. They’ve also boosted the Beasts of Fable quest, making the Beasts more difficult (though by what measure I can’t be sure) but the rewards are better. The quest itself is broken up into 3 sections, so you don’t have to spend upwards of a half an hour travelling to do the entire thing every day. ANDPLUSALSO, the bag now has a chance to reward a new item which boosts your XP gain, which is pretty fantastic too (and my main gripe with the BoF quest, whee). ANDDOUBLEPLUSALSO, the Spirit Tamer bags now have a chance to drop upgrade stones, AAAAAND, there’s a new ‘luck’ mechanic where, if you don’t get a stone you get an unseen stacking ‘unlucky’ buff which increases your chance to get one, from both bags and battles.
That’s a lot of alsos.
In 5.3 they start very helpfully marking the tamers on the map now. The paw prints persist even after you complete that particular quest or daily for the day, so you still need your ‘did I do that one yet?’ addon. They also added a new achievement, “The Longest Day” for fighting all the tamers involved in dailies in a single day. All.
I didn’t even begin to attempt this on PTR. The marked stone reward is nice (and BOA!), but it seems like you’re really going to need to have all your strats down for all the tamers beforehand or this is going to take freaking hours, travel time aside. Also note that this is faction-specific… I didn’t have to go fight the Durotar Tamer, though I was in the area.
This time there’s only one new pet to be tamed, the much-anticipated Unborn Valkyr. When I looked at the pet journal, I saw something… disturbing.
“Northrend,” really? I can understand why they wouldn’t want to get more specific on PTR. but it’s like they want me to squander a couple Saturday nights flying around with the windows rolled down drunkenly yelling. But then, that’s nothing new.
Like the psycho I am, I did exactly that. I started by going to the place @mumper took the infamous unborn valkyr teaser shot. I did a whole bunch of random stuff to try and trigger a spawn… jumping off cliffs, getting naked, moonfiring roaches and the like. Then, @mumper was all, HAHA MADE YOU LOOK it’s not even in the game yet! And then I blacked out and when I woke up got on an FBI watchlist somehow. Immediately afterward, the random PTR pet system gave me one.
That’s right. The computer was RUBBING IT IN MY FACE. And this pet is really gorgeous and well-done. Check those transparent wings!
Right now, we know they have a ‘unique’ spawning mechanic. According to Mumper on Twitter, this mechanic is server-side, so you’re not going to find one by killing a bunch of vrykul or something. They are confirmed to spawn in the area around Icecrown Citadel. The current operating theory is that they spawn in the same places as rare mobs (confirmed sightings at Loque’nahak’s spawn point, as per wowhead comments).
There’s a super cute mini-direhorn farmed from mobs on the Isle of Giants, so if you’ve been putting off your spectral porcupette, now’s the time. There’s also a new pet from the Isle of Thunder, farmed from the living piles of filth in the Saurok area. It looks like the piles of living filth. Ugh.
There are also 3 new pets from encounters in Throne of Thunder, so to prepare I’ve been farming the auction house. One is from only LFR Primordius and one is from only normal or heroic Primordius. So, the likelihood that I’ll get both (or really even one) is roughly the same as my character spontaneously becoming an Unborn Valkyr. The 3rd is another baby direhorn which drops from Horridon, because obviously. That one doesn’t specify difficulty level, and has the same look as the others, only more blue/aqua.
There are a few new pets obtained via farming BC-era instances cheekily dubbed ‘Attunement Addition’.
Thanks for the memories, Heroic Slave Pens. I guess.
Karazhan, Tempest Keep and Serpentshrine Cavern are included, not the more grueling to attune to Black Temple or Mount Hyjal. If you collect all 10, it will net you the achievement Raiding With Leashes II and a cute Tito all your own.
I soloed Kara a couple times and didn’t get a single one. It’s worth noting that Lil Bad Wolf’s note says he drops from Big Bad specifically, and I got the Romolo encounter both times. May be coincidence, as a sample size of two is hardly telling, especially combined with the murkiness of whether these pets were even live when I tried farming them.
The other new pet of note comes from aiding Vol’Jin’s rebellion. You complete a couple scenarios and then *events transpire* (wiggly fingers!), and the quartermaster is eventually unlocked. You have to do dailies and turnins for currency, then turn in that currency for pets. It’s kind of like every mid-expansion content we’ve seen thus far, now that I think about it. Huh.
Unlike any content we’ve seen before, Spectator Mode for all pet battles is now live. Sorry, Arena pvpers who’ve been asking for a Spectator Mode since Burning Crusade! Spectator Mode means whenever anyone battles pets out in the world other players can monitor your progress and see whether you’re battling or just standing there like an idiot. This includes cross-faction players on PVP realms, so get ready for the ganking to commence. This also breaks pet battling in stealth, after a fashion… the battle is still played out for all to see, but your character is replaced by a placeholder. They have to hunt around a little to find & gank the ‘real’ you.
Lastly, the one I’m dreading most! There are new pvp achievements.
That’s not the part I’m dreading, but bleh anyway. This is an achievement with several ‘steps’. There is a really adorable new baby dino pet awarded for winning a certain, huge number of specifically level 25 Battle Finder battles.
Yeah, of course the PTR awarded me this one, too. Jerk computer. Additionally there’s a new weekly quest you can complete by winning a lvl 25 pvp battle, too, but I haven’t familiarized myself with that at all.
This is the bit I personally have been prepping for the most in-game. I have a few kun-lai runts, a few dragons and my trusty clockwork gnome ready to go. I get the feeling that these battles are going to be the easiest to do after a week or so of 5.3’s launch, so getting prepped for PVP now is the way to go.
Most of the coolest stuff in this patch is about regular character play. I’d add ‘unfortunately’, but I have a revolution to go foment.
I’ve been seeing breeds mentioned more & more right now, mostly with the addendum, “what are you even talking about? Did you eat a mushroom from outside?”
Um, maybe. Look, I’m a druid. I’m a Worgen. Things happen.
That doesn’t mean that you need poison control on call to understand battle pet breeds, and the benefits of knowing yours. In fact, as you get into the later Pandaren tamers it can be the edge you need to succeed if you know your pets’ breed. After that rhyme I may need poison control after all.
Here’s a bit of pet knowledge you may find surprising. With certain pets, each individual pet with the same rarity has identical stats. All Lofty Librams, all Emerald Whelplings, all Dark Phoenix Hatchlings are identical at level 25. If you level a Celestial Dragon to 25, this is what its stats will be, with no alteration.
You will never find a Celestial Dragon at level 25 with 1648 health, or 239 speed. However, some pets have variations on which set of stats an individual pet will have, and this variation is called a breed.
There are 13 different breeds. Yeah, it’s a lot. But really it’s just combinations of 4 different types of stats–(H)ealth, (P)ower, (S)peed, and (B)alanced–in 2 slots. The first three stat names are rather self-explanatory; balanced means the stat weight is spread across all 3. This is why I tend to go with the X/X notation rather than the numerical. It’s easier that way to tell at a glance exactly what you’re working with. Lord knows there are enough random numbers to remember in the game as it is.
As an example, we’ll contrast my beloved crab Ishmael with another lvl 25 crab I have kicking around.
It’s really obvious to see the differences here. The red crab has over 1800 health while Ishmael has just under 1500. Ishmael has over 350 attack power, and the red crab has just over 250. The difference, besides that garish red color, is that Ishmael is breed 4, or P/P, while Red is breed 6, or H/H.
That bit of jargon means that Ishmael’s stats are assigned to Power (hence the P) twice, as reflected by his radically higher P stat, while Red’s are assigned to Health twice. If you look up Emperor Crabs, you’ll see that they’re also available in the high health version, and that version ends up being identical to Red’s. All H/H Spirebound crabs have the same exact stats as Red, and all P/P Emperor Crabs have the same stats as Ishmael. The reason the pets I cited above all have identical stats is because those pets only have one available breed to choose from.
This is good information to know for a tank. As much as it pains me to say it out loud, the Spirebound crab is probably going to be a better tank than Ishmael because of that increased health pool.
But that’s somewhat relative, and a bit debatable. Crabs are going to be good tanks regardless, and Ishmael’s power stat boosts the amount of healing he does, too, so over a longer fight he may be a better choice anyway. Here, breed just gives you a scale of good to also good. Let’s look at another case where breed can make or break your pet’s functionality:
The big difference here is the speed. The Alpine Hare is S/S, and the Rabbit is B/B. It doesn’t look like an enormous difference, and again, for most purposes the B/B will do just fine. The reason the S/S breed is incredibly popular right now is because with a speed of 357, it is one of the 4 fastest pets in the game.
The critter family perk is to break CC, but this only kicks in at the end of a round after both pets have done their actions. This means that, though they’re not out of commission for very long, a critter which is slower than its opponent will still ‘lose’ the current turn. With the rabbit’s ultra-quick speed, there is only very rarely a scenario where this will occur, making it by default a better pick than a myriad of other critters out there. In general, speed is a very good stat to keep an eye on in PVP because of how it affects swapping, but with rabbits it’s the difference between a win and a loss even in PVE on occasion.
This can also affect which pet you pick as well. Right now you’re probably thinking to yourself that you’d best go farm up a high-level bunny ASAP. The thing is, not all pets have the same available variants. If you want a speedy rabbit, don’t try to run to Hyjal and get an Elfin Rabbit, because you’re going to be sorely disappointed.
There are breed gaps like this throughout the minigame… as noted in my Scooter writeup, there is only one other snail that has the same H/H breed available, while there are 6 or 7 different kinds of snails.
An additional note is that the split of abilities can increase or decrease the total number of stats a particular pet gets. Pure breeds (S/S, P/P and H/H, not B/B) will get full stats. Straight hybrids (eg, H/S) will get slightly fewer stats. Where it gets really messy is when B gets into the act. B/B gets the fewest stats of all, and is generally thought of as the cruddiest breed in any situation. Pure/Balanced hybrids get more stats than B/B, but fewer than the other hybrids. This is explained far better, and with graphs, over at petsear.ch.
So now that we know about breed, how can you figure out what you’ve got in your stable? The easiest way by far is to download an addon. As discussed in my thrilling Addons post, I use Battle Pet BreedID in-game to sort mine out. This is the addon you see displaying the available and current breed throughout the post. If you’re averse to addons, you can also do it on a case-by-case basis using warcraftpets.com or wowhead.com. Each individual pet has sliders for level and rarity, and you can cross-check your pets manually against their database. Additionally, if you sign up for an account with Warcraft Pets and load in your pets via the WoW Armory, the breed, level and rarity of the pet you have in your possession will be pre-set when you look up a pet, removing some of the guesswork.
It’s kind of a complicated idea, but I hope I did an okay job of communicating it. It gets much easier to understand as you use your newfound knowledge to stomp on some pets. Now that you got through all that, I owe you a drink.
Hold your horses John Wayne, five of those bad boys are for me.
Yeah, yeah, I know. This holiday has been around since 2006 or something, and the achievements have been identical since 2008. Everyone knows what’s going to happen. But, this is the pettingest holiday of the year, and I don’t mean the 8th grade disappointing movie date variety.
There are 10 pets up for grabs, and they’re only available for this one week! Speedy, Mr. Wiggles, Whiskers the Rat, Scooter, Peanut, Willy, Egbert, Legs, Curious Wolvar Pup and Curious Oracle Hatchling are all ready and waiting to go to any psychopath willing to drag a parentless child around a dangerous, hostile landscape for kicks.
The catch is that you can get 3 at most with any given character, since it’s not a repeatable quest. Personally, right now I have 3 pets left to collect (Scooter, Legs and Egbert) so I’ll have to do the Shattrath quest on at least 2 characters.
I’ll be live streaming my quests to my twitch.tv channel on Monday April 29th at 12:30 EDT (that’s 4:30pm GMT for my EU peeps) and another at 9pm EDT. The latter may include PVP, if I feel like it. I’ve already done the School of Hard Knocks achievement, but this is for posterity. Also, I figure there’s nothing funnier than watching a noob PVP. Entertainment!
If you still need to do the School of Hard Knocks achievement, there is an excellent walkthrough done by Cynwise in his blog, Cynwise’s Warcraft Manual. You can try to play along with me, too, but I suspect mine will be less helpful walkthrough and more drinking and bitter tears.
There doesn’t seem to be any additions to the holiday from past years, but I’ll update this space if there is, or follow me on twitter for up to the minute flailing of arms. For a general walkthrough, see wowhead’s very good offering. WoWInsider has an in-depth guide to the associated achievements.
I’ve recently been working on taming all rare versions of various pets, which means a lot of farming. This post may end up being more alcohol-fueled rant than actual useful information.
There are many strategies and spawning eccentricities for the rarer pets out there in the world, and they can vary pretty wildly. There are the ‘kill all the non-battle spawns in this area’ strategies like the Lofty Libram, the ‘tied to this other mob’ strategies like the Tiny Twister, and ‘just hang out for a couple hours until one spawns’ strategies like the Minfernal.
The thing most of these strategies ignores is that there is a max number of battle pets which can be in any given zone at any time. What does this mean? Well, here’s a screenshot of the area where the Minfernal spawns in Felwood on my cross-realm:
The orange arrows mark different players just freaking sitting there until one spawns. There were no fewer than 5 people just hanging out in the area when I went through on my way to find a rare Tainted Moth.
Now, hanging out on a mount and watching videos until you see something spawn is a somewhat solid strategy. The Minfernal is on a long timer and is very rare. However, in this deceptively large zone, there are many potential spawns for battle pets in semi-out of the way places. Once those spawns are populated by a battle pet and not a critter, they use up a slot that could be open for a rarer pet type, or just a rare spawn of that type. Less than 30 seconds away via flying mount, this is the scene:
3 separate camps of 3 roaches, all filled with battle pets. There are a few more in this area too. All along the edges of the map, there are roaches and rats galore, just waiting to be curbstomped by some lucky tamer.
In general, this happens when there are a bunch of grouped quest mobs, as here. Lowbies with AOE come through and kill critter-type roaches, and tamers kill other random pets in the zone. People generally see the paw prints and steer clear, because despite what trade chat would have you believe, most players aren’t just waiting to snack on a trio of billy goats.
The thing is, this strategy (and really, all other taming strategies) only work if there’s somebody else in the zone killing the other random trash battle pets. If they’re not, you’re just going to be moonfiring rats like a chump all day long with no payoff.
So, what’s a tamer to do? Before you sit down to farm your desired pet, take a minute and fly around the zone. Does your minimap look like this?
If so, you need to take a few minutes out and free up those spawns, either by fighting them or by giving them a moonfire to the face. And yes, specifically target them and use a single-target ability rather than the flashier, easier AOE. If you kill other, non-battle critters as well, that gives those critters a chance to steal the battle slot you just freed from your desired target. Then, go do whatever magic trigger wowhead suggests. If a half an hour or so elapses and you still don’t have any, or very few spawns, go to the areas which were the most densely populated before, like the above pictured Timbermaw camps, rinse & repeat.
Yes, yes, I know. All the minfernals in the world will totally respawn in those 30 seconds, and everyone else will get them all and you’re going to get none and nobody likes you and you’ll die alone. That’s really a personal problem I can’t help with. I’m just laying it out there… you’ll get better results farming pretty much any rare pet you’re looking for by killing other pets first.
The thing that’s tricky about pet battling addons (really, any addons) is that there are certain things that Blizzard eventually subsumes into their own default UI. This is definitely noticeable if you swap between your regular install, with its huge folder of addons, and the PTR, which is fresh and new with only the default UI. For instance, one of my favorite battling addons for a long time displayed a pet’s quality without a spreadsheet of numbers and a bit of guessing. This is a part of the standard battle UI now, though.
My first must-have addon is like this in part. PetBattle Teams can currently be used to maintain the abilities you prefer through swaps if you set those pets in a ‘team.’ Here’s a screenshot of my UI:
You can see here that I’ve selected the Aki team. You know from my fantastic Aki walkthrough that I use Radley, Ishmael and a leveling pet, so the team should come as no surprise. This addon saves the 2nd tier abilities Radley uses so I don’t even have to futz around with that. I just click in the right panel, and it equips the team of my choice. The question mark is an intentional blank spot for that pet I level. You can also see the health bars of the pets… if they’re dead, it puts a nice big red X over them (but you can still click on the team to equip it). At the very bottom, it also has buttons to press for the healing ability and the bandages in your inventory. This saves me so much time. I really recommend it.
This is one I expect to get added into the Blizz default UI sooner or later:
Battle Pet BreedID may sound like Sanskrit. Basically, there are a few different ways stats can be allocated in the same pet… some are faster, some are stronger. This is useful information because there are certain abilities which work far better if a particular pet is very fast or slow. Some pets need high HP because you’d like them to be tanks. It’s not something to worry super hard about until you get really deep into endgame, but it’s good to know regardless. If you look at the screenshot, you can see the difference between the stats at level 25… it’s not a huge difference, but it can help you eke out a win.
This addon shows you the breed of the pet on mouseover, either in battle or your journal. (either in numbers or H/P/S/B format) It also shows which breeds are available, so if you tame say, a Lofty Libram, you can know that the H/B breed you got (which is generally kind of a crappy breed) is the only available breed. I opt to switch to the H/P/S/B version of the data rather than the breed number, because come on, that’s just gibberish.
This last one is a small one, but it’s really invaluable to me. It’s called Daily Tamer Check:
And that’s all there is to it. Mouse over that little moonkin icon, either on your taskbar, in Titanpanel or what have you, and it tells you which dailies you’ve done that day on that character. It isn’t an advanced addon, since it can’t tell which alts you’ve done them on as well, but for my purposes it’s very cool. It’ll also tell you which non-bag dailies you’ve done in a sub-menu, and during the Darkmoon Faire it also displays Jeremy Feasel.
I have a toddler, so I hear this question like eighty thousand times a day. But one day, I started thinking about it in terms of pet battles.
Up until now, I’ve been pretty much assuming that you’re here because you’re a Tamer in some capacity, whether you’re just looking for your first basic tips, or looking for help with end-game PVE. I know that there are many World of Warcraft players out there who could not give less of a damn about my beloved battles though, no matter how hard the Singing Sunflower tries to hypnotize them into it.
Even if you’re not all that into the whole pets thing of it all, I’d like to hopefully supply Why You (yes you) non-Tamer, should try out the minigame.
I’ll skip the two most common arguments I see: Pets Are Cute! They Give You Achievements! If you thought pets were cute enough to be worth collecting you’d already be doing it. If you’re an achievement hunter at all, you know they give you achievements. They have their own tab in the achievements window.
So, duh. And yeah, that was me skipping them. Ahem. Moving on.
The most notable reason to start pet battling is probably lesser charms. You have a chance to get Lesser Charms from virtually any pet fight as long as you’re level capped. I’ve gotten from 2-6 at the end of any particular battle. This means even if you’re just in queue for LFR or whatever, and you pull out the cat you just bought from Donni Anthania to kill rats in Stormwind, you could get several lesser charms in the meantime. I got 3 of them from the very first pet battle I did on the 5.3 PTR. Yeah, you could just do dailies to get these instead. But look, if I ever see Anji Autumnlight again it’ll be too soon.
I still need to accumulate Lessers to trade for Mogu Runes so I can repeatedly get a second shot at a Ji-Kun Hatchling or whatever. I’m sure there are other uses for the Runes as well, like gear or something. Psh. The chance to get a charm increases based on the level of the pets you fight, but you get them regardless of whether you fight them with all like level pets or with level 25 ringers. When I was doing the Beasts of Fable battles, I averaged 20 per day just from doing that, which means there are 20 meaningless tasks you have to do for these bozos.
Even if you’re not max level, now that pet battles grant XP, that’s a good reason to start battling. As I noted in this post, the XP starts off kind of crappy at low pet levels. I don’t know about you though, I’d rather level an entire team from scratch again than go through Hyjal or Vashj’ir again. Especially Hyjal. But ESPECIALLY Vashjir.
I don’t know about you, but I just started twitching a little. As noted above too, you can queue for LFD and pet battle instead of questing for an extra XP boost in between.
The last reason I’m going to mention is financial. There is a lot of coin to be made buying and selling rarer pets in general. The thing is, if you level up those pets your margin suddenly drastically increases.
It takes literally an hour to level a pet like that from 1-25 if you have a few trainers left up in Pandaria for the day, but even if not it doesn’t take terribly long. It’s also more effort so you’re less likely to get into undercut wars with other players. Most of that hour is travel time too, so combine that with a gathering profession and you’re really in business.
You can also get upgrade stones, which will make you a ton of coin if you trade in pets like the Argent Tourney or Childrens’ Week uncommons. Even just the BOE stones (which are admittedly exceedingly rare) can go for upwards of 5K a pop.
I really hope I convinced you to give pet battling a shot. Even if you weren’t convinced, at least I’m comforted by the fact that I don’t have to do Vashjir again. So, win win, right?
The Easter Bunny came to our house today and left a bunch of candy for baby girl. Here’s a short post with a few Easter-themed pets you can buy in-game to celebrate the holiday. In a roundabout way, it brings real life in-game. You’ll pay for pets, and I get to pay for Stanley Steamer after a toddler smears chocolate all over the couch.
Elwynn Lamb – Purchased with tokens from the Argent Tournament. His group heal Bleat and sleep ability Soothe make him a decent support pet. Also, Jesus symbolism, so.
Egbert – An egg that hides itself the night before Easter would be fantastic. He’s kind of crappy as a battler, but look at him go!
Crimson Lasher – A pretty pink flower that seems to enjoy lighting things on fire.
Pterrordax Hatchling – How amazing would it be if waylaid eggs during the egg hunt turned into a bitchin dinosaur instead of disgusting?
Mr. Wiggles – After the austerity of the Lenten season and fasting since Good Friday (because that totally happened), what’s better for Easter dinner than a nice fat ham?
Snowshoe Rabbit – Purchased from either Yarlyn Amberstill at Amberstill Ranch in Dun Morogh, or a Pet Battle trainer if you’re a dwarf. Bunnies are kind of THE thing at Easter.
Sprite Darter Hatchling – Baby dragons aren’t all that festive on their own, but this guy is all manner of Easter pastels. He would totally be at home perched on a church lady’s easter bonnet.
Spring Rabbit – The Noblegarden-centric favorite. Obtained either during Noblegarden (which starts tomorrow!) or off the AH. Has several interesting idle actions. Will make a leap to you if you get too far away. If you find another person with their rabbit out, they make lots of tiny baby rabbits. Nothing says Happy Easter like bow chicka wow wow.
Let’s get this out of the way: No, Dave’s not here, and yes, Dark Side Of The Moon is the best ever. Hilarious.
“Which pet should I use my upgrade stone on?” is one of the most frequent questions I’ve seen asked on the forums, on twitter and on WoWInsider. Hell, I’ve asked it myself. I’m going to explain my rationale for burning upgrade stones in general terms, and discuss which pets I personally decided to upgrade.
You get these stones either in daily quest bags (NOT the pandaren spirit bags or the Darkmoon bags though), or very rarely by fighting battles in the world. There are uncommon stones not associated with a family, rare stones not associated with a family (these are tradeable outright), and rare stones with a family. There’s also a very sneaky stack of Spirits of Harmony in that particular screenshot.
In general, the very first pets I upgrade are ones which are tamed, have unique moves and are next to impossible to find in the world at all let alone farm for a rare. Examples of this are the Minfernal or Scourged Whelpling. Then comes the ones which are semi-difficult to tame but are good fighters with unique moves, like Spawn of Onyxia or Lofty Libram. Then the ones which aren’t available for trade, like the Creepy Crate or Perky Pug. Then, the difficult to tame but kinda meh or share moves, like the Crow. After that, I pick tradeables, mostly vendor pets which start off as Uncommon, first the pricey ones (Argent Tourney pets, Plump Turkey), then the ones with more unique moves on down to the dozen cats which are all identical. Freaking cats. These are toward the bottom because you can buy them from the AH upgraded, though you’ll have to pay a pretty penny. At the bottom of the heap are those which are easy to farm and also share moves, like roaches, rabbits or toads.
Not at all complicated, right?
Here are the choices I made in upgrading, and some other options and further opinions. Let me say right now, yeah I made some silly ones. In alphabetical order, because what’s up with them being not alphabetical in the Blizz UI?
Aquatic – I’ve held on to all of these stones, for now. The screenshot is just because I don’t like so much text with no pictures. I’m a weirdo, I know.
Jubling and Mr. Chilly are the only 2 aquatic pets which aren’t tradeable or tamed. They share moves with others of the same sort, though, so they’re kind of a wash for upgrading. You’ll likely want to save a stone for a Wanderer’s Festival Hatchling, which I personally have never been able to tame, as the time window for taming is *really* short, and there’s one, maybe two spawns a week. Speedy or a Sea Pony may be good choices too, since they seem to be quite pricy on the AH without any upgrade. Regardless, the better fighting Aquatic pets are easily tamed & farmed, and generally have several different pets sharing identical moves (eg, crabs, frogs, turtles).
Beast – I haven’t upgraded any of these yet, either. But look at that monkey! A good choice would be the Baby Blizzard Bear if you have one, or maybe the Dun Morogh Cub if not. I’m also hanging on to one to use on a Sumprush Rodent, just in case I don’t get a rare after farming 2000 freaking insignias. Because this is one of the most populated family classes, there are both a lot of rares out there up for grabs that replicate movesets, like the Darkmoon Monkey vs Baby Ape. There are a *lot* of rare, annoying tames up for grabs too, that sometimes you just don’t want to deal with later on down the line. Examples of this are the mentioned Baby Ape, Giraffe Calf or Larva.
Critter – The first one I upgraded was my Perky Pug. I use her frequently, and this is an achievement pet so you can’t buy one or get a better one unless you stone it, but you can get some of her utility from other random critters. Like Beasts, there are really annoying tames peppered in through the dozens and dozens of Critters so you may just want to save up until you’re ready to make the leap to all rares, and you just can’t even with this one pet. Not that I’ve been experiencing anything like that. Special mention to the Armadillo, which isn’t tradeable, and the Children’s Week and Argent Tourney pets, which are generally really expensive on the AH even without a stone. This really just depends on personal preference. There aren’t a ton of wrong answers.
Dragonkin – First I upgraded was the Spawn of Onyxia. Second was the Infinite Whelpling. There are very few dragons up for grabs and nearly all of them are both excellent fighters and spotty tames with the exception of the Nether Faerie Dragon. Nether Faerie is super useful, but has a very quick spawn rate so getting a rare is relatively easy, and it shares moves with Sprite Darter Hatchlings, which are tradeable and start off rare. Another exception are the Wild Cloud Serpent Hatchlings. In general, there are typically lots of these up at any given time, because people finish the grind, tame their dragons and leave forever. I wouldn’t stone anything you can buy from a vendor, just because there are so many dead useful rare tames.
Elemental – I got super lucky and got a rare Fel Flame my 2nd or 3rd tame, or that would’ve been my answer here. Spirit of Summer has the same moves, so you may want to go with that one instead. Tiny Twisters are a good choice because of their rarity. Withers will get a stone from me pretty soon here, because he’s not tradeable.
Flying – Gilnean Raven. I would’ve chosen a Crow, but the Crow I tamed has a cruddy breed, and I got the best possible breed with my Raven, so I’m trying again with the Crow next month. This was also slightly motivated by more superficial things… My worgen is a druid, so I clearly needed a baby me in flight form, and from Gilneas. Yeah, I know, this sounds so stupid when it’s in type, but just look at that screenshot. LOOK AT IT! The Raven has a really good moveset with a Blind ability and Nocturnal Strike, and it’s very pricey on the AH so it’s not a bad choice. Other good picks include Tiny Flamefly, either MiniJouster, Miniwing (all untradeable), and the Wildhammer Gryphon Hatchling (rare tame).
Humanoid – The first I chose was Winter’s Little Helper. Before 5.2, Kun-Lai Runt‘s frost shock incorrectly didn’t apply a Chilled effect, so its Deep Freeze wouldn’t hit without a little help… er! See what I did there? Yes. Well. The combo of Little Helper with Blizzard and Runt with his stuns was devastating. It continues to be, too, just now it isn’t as required for the Runt to shine. This pet is identical to the Father Winter’s Helper, it’s just the one I chose is red & female and the other is green & male. Different strokes. Other good choices here are the Flayer Youngling, Peddlefeet and the forementioned Runt, though the latter are much less rare now so you may want to try your hand at taming one.
Magic – Minfernal. I mean come on, it’s a Minfernal! He’s kind of a cruddy battler though, so you may want to go with something more like the Enchanted Broom and yes I realize how ridiculous that sentence sounds, but I swear it’s a really good fighter. The Lofty Libram and Nordrassil Wisp are also good choices because their back row AOE makes them nice for pvp fights and they’re relatively rare to tame. So, a broom or a book. The magic family is super odd.
Mechanical – The first I upgraded was the Mechanical Pandaren Dragonling. This was very foolish of me, because at the time Fluxfire Feline was arguably the only pet, at all. The Dragonling is fairly decent, but the Fluxfire Felines… MY GOD. A lot of people also profess to love their Tranquil Mechanical Yeti well. With a few exceptions most of the tamed mechanical pets are fairly common, especially as seconds so it’s really based on your luck, tolerance, AH & preference.
Undead – My first was the Scourged Whelpling. Mega rare, check. Untradeable, check. Unique moves, check. Amazing fight utility, check. This is one of the most frequent pets I use to beat any tamer with a dragon, and this is probably the only family where there is a ‘right’ answer to the question. This is what you should use your undead stone on first if at all possible. Other good choices for subsequent stones are the Restless Shadeling (though I’m given to understand they’re less outrageously rare as of 5.2) or a Creepy Crate (untradeable).
This was such a long post I don’t have it in me to write a witty ending. You don’t have to go home but you can’t stay here, unless you have something to add in the comments. And maybe if you have Funyuns.
BattlePetRoundup.com 