FAQ

Li… li…? lioooooplur? Feel free to call me just Lio (ly-oh or lee-oh, whichever!). For both our sanity. Also, I use female pronouns.

Hey, I use X, Y & Z pet for this fight. You use A, B, C. Not really a question, but I love getting comments about other people’s strategies, so please feel free to add yours.

Why did you use pet X and not pet Y in your strategies? Frequently this is because of what I have on hand at 25 to use. I do not recommend strategies I haven’t personally playtested at length. Sometimes it’s because what I do have leveled to 25 is the incorrect breed, and if breed matters it will usually be cited. I avoid using any battle pets more expensive than 10K on average from Undermine Journal, and those that just came out in the previous patch, though I will occasionally make a note of them if applicable. I make a point of avoiding TCG & Pet Store pets as well, even if they’re tradeable in-game and generally less than 10K (eg, the Gregarious Grell).

Glossary:

Additive Buff – A buff similar to Exposed Wounds, which adds additional damage onto every hit. Contrasted with Multiplicative Buffs.

Anchor – The last pet used in a particular strategy. Comes from swimming relays, where the last person to swim on a team is called the anchor.

Backline, Back row – The pets on your active team which are currently not in use.

Battle Pet – a small companion for your character in World Of Warcraft (WoW). This pet confers no real buffs to your character’s power, and until Mists of Pandaria launched, battle pets were entirely cosmetic. Now there is an optional minigame revolving around these tiny little critters, so massive in scope it has launched at least one website (eg, this one).

Breed – a different variety of stats for the same battle pet, allocated based on one of 4 categories: Speed, Power, Health and Balanced.

Carry – when you use 2 level 25 pets against a high level battle pet, in order to speedily level a 3rd, typically far lower level battle pet.

Cascade – a specific strategy to level a first battle pet to 25 as quickly as possible. Outlined in this post.

Elekk Carry – A strategy which allows the relatively useless Elekk Plushie to be carried, in order to complete the achievement An Awfully Big Adventure.

Family – a subset of battle pets which have common defensive strengths and weaknesses.

Flavor Of The Month (FotM) – A battle pet or combination of pets that everyone recommends for PVE, or you always come up against in PVP. eg, a Howl Bomb team, Direhorn Runt, Kun-Lai Runt.

Force Swap – Any ability which makes one of your opponent’s backline battle pets enter battle, eg Death Gate.

Howl Bomb – a specific strategy including the Pandaren Water Spirit and a pet with Howl, especially Chrominius. It is a team comp which is exceptionally deadly against any single battle pet, and commonly used against the Beasts of Fable or the end bosses in the Celestial Tournament. See the post Universal Team For Single-Pet Fights for more information.

Moveset – the abilities a battle pet has. Specifically, the abilities to pick from the abilities a pet has. eg, when using a Rabbit I typically select Flurry, Dodge and Burrow for its moveset.

Multiplicative Buff – A buff similar to Shattered Defenses, which multiplies the damage dealt by a certain percentage. Contrasted with Additive Buffs.

Nerf – An all-purpose gaming term, both a verb and noun, meaning either to ‘hit with the nerf bat’ or ‘cover in nerf material, to make it safer for kids (ie, noobs).’ The end result is the decrease in power of the thing you’re talking about. eg, “The Fluxfire Feline was nerfed so bad it’s almost useless.”

OP – Overpowered. Usually insinuates that this pet, combo or ability needs to be nerfed.

Second – in a wild pet battle, the extra pets that join the wild pet in the fight. There is one Second from wild battles in levels 5-15, and two Seconds from 15-25.

Stone – a Flawless Battle Stone used to upgrade a pet to Rare (or “blue”) quality. A ‘stoned’ pet is one which has been upgraded to rare quality.

Synergy – How a pet’s abilities work in concert with a different pet’s abilities (or not).

Tamer Bag – the bag you get from completing certain tamer daily quests, which can include upgrade stones, vendor trash or other novelty frills.

Undercard – a common term for the first 3 tamer fights in the Celestial Tournament. Comes from boxing or MMA, where the Card of events for the evening is defined by the Main Event, and then all the junk you miss looking for parking beforehand is the Undercard.