Midsummer Festival

Mo’ruk

Update for 6.0: This strategy still works. However, due to a few other changes, in the interest of a strategy that’s not prohibitively rare, I definitely recommend the crab over the crawdad. If you’re here with your Elekk Plushie on your Awfully Big Adventure, this strategy will work swimmingly.

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moruk

This guy was one of my toughest opponents as I was working my way through the tamers in Pandaria. However, he’s one of the more conveniently located tamers, right next to the Anglers Village in Krasarang if you’re into that kind of thing, so I try to stomp on him on a regular basis.

This fight is very gimmicky and your success or failure depends really heavily on how often you get stunned, or slept, or whatever else. Both Mo’ruk’s final 2 pets use these abilities. This strategy gives you a very high chance of success, but I’d say once a week or so I have to heal everybody and try again.

The crawdad is particularly healing-motivated, and the emerald whelpling is particularly geared toward magic DPS and a bit of healing. This fight is quite RNG dependent, but these 2 pets mitigate the R in RNG quite a lot. I’d suggest trying a Spawn of Onyxia or another high dps dragon in Emilia’s slot. I’ve used an Infinite Whelpling with decent success too. I frequently have decent luck with my Emperor Crab tank in the Crawdad slot. Your leveling pet has to be able to take roughly 400 damage at minimum.

The leveling pet goes in first, as a soak. Moruk’s Woodcarver is a Beast and the first ability, Acidic Goo, is a DoT which increases your damage taken.

Since Woodcarver’s 2nd ability is always the hard-hitting Burrow, it’s a good idea for your first pet to grab that buff before you swap in your Crawdad. This is a fairly straightforward fight. He’ll use Burrow, and Acidic Goo when he can. He also uses the Consume ability to occasionally heal himself.

If at all possible, try to make it so that you’re at high health and have your Renewing Mists rolling when you kill Woodcarver. When he dies, you have to IMMEDIATELY swap to your dragon. Don’t even try to get cute and cast Wish. This is where the RNG battle begins.

Lightstalker‘s first hit is fairly hard, even with the Dragon’s strong defense against Flying abilities. It also has a 25% chance to sleep you. This is why we swapped out the Crawdad ASAP… he’s aquatic, so he takes so much damage just from that first hit, plus the fact that you’re going to be slower, so you may just get stunned for the effort. Lightstalker also has the Moth Balls ability, which will slow you, and he combines that with Alpha Strike, which does more damage if he’s faster than you. He’s a bit of a glass cannon, is what I’m saying.

The goal here is to burn the moth down as quickly as you possibly, possibly can. This is why I went with the Emerald Whelpling with that specific moveset. Magic damage ahoy. If the moth manages to kill your Dragonkin with RNG, you’re quite likely screwed.

The last pet, Needleback, has a few interesting moves. He has the speed increasing small nuke Powerball, which means after a turn or two you aren’t going first anymore. He also has Grasp, which does minimal damage but prevents swaps. And then there’s Headbutt, which does a lot of damage and has a chance to stun you. Yeeeah.

This is why my #1 choice to finish it out is the crawdad. Needleback inevitably uses the Headbutt ability when it’s off cooldown, so the turn before it comes up I can use Wish if I need to, to make sure I don’t die if I get stunned. The crab is a solid choice too, but he doesn’t have that extra failsafe the (expensive, hard to get) Crawdad does.

Most of the time with this team and strategy, I win. Every so often the RNG stars align to hand me a loss. If this is your first time going after this tamer, try sticking the crawdad or a crab in the first slot to soak that first Acidic Goo, then swap in a mechanical to kill the beast.

I’d feel worse about calling Mo’ruk a fight-cheesing jerk, but it’s hard to feel bad for someone who lives on a freaking beach, okay?

Upcoming 5.4 in progress

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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!

Gilnean Raven

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This bird is in vogue bigtime, and it’s not just because it looks really good.

But enough about me.

Lots of people suggest the Gilnean Raven for PVE and PVP both, because of a really slick 1 – 2 punch it packs.

Darkness is generally an annoying ability to come up against in PVP, because it both makes it more difficult to hit you with key abilities, but makes you heal half as well. But, the Gilnean Raven has an ability, Nocturnal Strike, which relies on it (otherwise, the hit rate is super low). Nocturnal Strike hits very hard, especially against Aquatics, which makes this girl an excellent pick to go up against the Aquatic type Beasts of Fable. There are a good number of fliers with Nocturnal Strike, but not many of them pair it up with a Darkness ability as well. The only other pet with both is the Crow. The two of them make kind of a pair, so I named my Raven Pallas and my Crow Athena.

Darkness makes for some deadly synergy with some other pets too, namely the Pandaren Monk. It’ll also be good to pair with the upcoming Aspect pets from the Celestial Tournament since (as of this post, subject to change etc) they all have the Spectral Strike ability.

But you can do that if you just have a Crow. In a reference to the Raven’s tooltip, the Raven is the only pet with the ability Nevermore. Nevermore is a very cool ability that can be used to shut down a few specific PVP strategies as well. As an example, Death Grip is on a 3 round cooldown. Death Grip or other force swap abilities are the most popular strategy I’ve seen other PVPers adopt right now. In general, you can count out those 3 rounds and use Nevermore, and lock down their force swap, for a glorious 8 rounds without having to deal with the ability… as long as your pet is faster than theirs.

I’ve seen several tamers who use Nevermore pair it with Darkflame instead of Darkness. Darkflame doesn’t give you the extra miss debuff, and it works against Elementals. Since Darkness is a weather effect, elementals can still heal & hit you to their little hearts’ content.

You get the Gilnean Raven by being a Worgen and buying her off any pet battle trainer. You can only purchase them once per account, however. They can be purchased off the auction house as well, but expect to pay a pretty penny. They start off Uncommon from the vendor, so you have to either stone them, or buy an upgraded one.

In terms of breed, the only one you can buy now is B/B, so if you can find a different one on the AH, you may want to snap it up regardless, as the off-breeds will likely sell for crazy cash in a year or two.

I have a soft spot for her… well, let’s be real, I have a soft spot for almost all the pets I use on a frequent basis. But there’s something special about this wily bird from Gilneas.

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Postscript: I mentioned in passing that The Gilnean Raven would be an amazing name for a superhero, and Akabeko from Red Cow Rise took that observation and ran with it. I completely love this. https://twitter.com/redcowrise/status/345170593676673024/photo/1

Zandalari Raptors

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These little guys first entered the game when 5.2 was released.

There are 4 of them in different colors, and each has multiple breeds. I tend to favor the speed breed, but it’s really personal preference. They all randomly drop from the Zandalari Dinomancers, though at this point you may have better luck farming them off your friendly local auction house. Blizzard decreased the drop rate on them after a couple weeks, and they tend to go for 2-3K each.

Each color has a slightly different moveset, and one of them is entirely missing the ability which made me fall in love, but only these mini-Oondastas have it.

Black Claw.

I really can’t adequately express how fun and amazing this ability is in photos, so I made my very first vlog! I hate myself for using the word vlog, I honestly do. And it’s a long one, but it’s also a video walkthrough for the Nitun and Dos-Ryga Beasts Of Fable fights post-5.3. I may or may not need an editor.

As noted in the video, I love this in PVP and it also makes the revamped Beasts of Fable fairly trivial. He’s just all-around fantastic.

I chose the Kneebiter, because every so often I can use Bloodfang to try & heal him. The downside of these pets (all of them!) is that they might as well be made of slightly damp paper towel. If you look at them wrong they keel over and die. Bloodfang also does crazy, crazy damage with the various debuffs you can lay down.

The Anklerender is a good option for PVP as well, but the similar healing ability Devour shares a slot with Black Claw. Dudes, we are taking Black Claw on these pets if the other option in the slot is literally any other pet ability available in the game right now. The reason the Anklerender might be a better choice for PVP is because he has the Primal Cry full team speed debuff ability available in the 2nd slot, and speed is quickly becoming the decider in PVP.

The third baby Oondasta with Black Claw is the Toenibbler. He has a similar setup to the Anklerender only instead of Hunting Party, which adds that additional damage multiplier, he has Flank. It hits a few times and all, but this makes him kind of an underwhelming choice.

A quick mention for the 4th pet of this type, the yellow-toned Footslasher. He has the Exposed Wounds ability instead of Black Claw. The debuff does a similar thing, but to a smaller magnitude, for a longer duration. So, it might be easier to manage, but it won’t have nearly the burst.

The glorious, glorious burst.

Scourged Whelpling

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I know I’ve often waxed lyrical on my love affair with my crab Ishmael, but I may be cheating on him just a little with my Scourged Whelpling, Radley. Come on, who wouldn’t want to rub up on this?

Couldn’t you just kiss that little toothy, rotting, plague-infested… um, forget I asked.

Right now, the Scourged Whelpling might be my very favorite pet of all pets. The only thing he kinda stinks at is taming… he has mostly damage over time abilities, and his single nukes all hit really hard, so he’s reserved for straightup killing, and whoa boy does he deliver. He’s been one of my favorites for PVE stuff for a while. Radley has been featured in my Aki strat and my Burning Pandaren Spirit Tamer strat already. He’s so hardy he can decimate any wild pet he runs across, even the critters he’s vulnerable to.

PVP is where he is suddenly scintillating for me. Mostly because, yanno, I only just started to PVP. He’s key in nearly any damage over time team. He was featured in the clockwork gnome/wild golden hatchling synergy combo I started PVPing with (discussed briefly in my post about the clockwork gnome). My current team, making heavy use of Black Claw (which I’ll be discussing in a future post, really soon!) also uses the Whelpling.

Really, nearly any team which is heavy on the DoTs will benefit greatly from using him, because of his high health, undead type (which helps to beat up those damnable Kun-Lai Runts) but mostly because of his Plagued Blood ability. This ability has no cooldown and debuffs the current pet. It heals you each time you strike the pet with the debuff, for roughly 50. This means that each time a DoT ticks or turret fires or death & decay ticks, you get a heal.

This can end up being tricky to manage, since all they have to do is swap out and you have to reapply the Plagued Blood for the new pet. With a heavy swap team, or going against a force swap team, this can be a huge pain. It can also be problematic with the turret, because unlike something like a Shrine Fly‘s DoTs directly on the opponent pet, when your opponent swaps, you lose that healing until you re-apply Plagued Blood.

So, how do you find one of these elusive little guys? Honestly, this is a really tough tame, even now. Your best bet is to just park an alt the area in Icecrown where they spawn, and check every so often, especially just after a cross-realm server restart. This is one of the pets I see people saying they created a DK on one of the rp-pvp servers for less competition, too.

I know I’m kind of a jerk for spotlighting such a difficult tame, and it probably reads more like ‘haha look what I got suckaaaa.’ A Restless Shadeling is an alright substitute in some DoT teams, but is kind of a pain to tame too. Luckily, you only have to do it once, and this guy will be yours for long walks on the beach, or glamour shots in the sun.

Just dreamy.

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!

Beyond 5.3

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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.

And just a tiny bit insulting.

level 15

2 Replies

I was going to skip this post altogether and move forward, because let’s be real. Leveling is leveling. Nobody cares until you’re 90, and the previous post on the topic was me griping about how bone-dull boring it is so this is clearly a terrible move in terms of keeping an audience. I have a couple observations which may be important going forward, though.

First of all, I found the breakpoint. Well, numerically speaking anyway.

The huge jump in XP between level 4 & 5 is because the wild team gains a pet at level 5. So, you gain extra XP with each additional pet, which means the breakpoint where pet battling suddenly gets a whole lot better for player XP is probably around level 40-ish, when you can start battling level 15+ teams with 3 pets.

I knew this, and was thinking to myself the best places to try & get around player level restriction to battle 15+ pets, when a devil appeared on my shoulder on Twitter. Specifically, it was a Devil Who Wears Transmog, and she said, “Have you tried level 25 pvp?”

No, I hadn’t. I’m really rubbish at pet PVP you guys. Really, really rubbish. I didn’t know that pet PVP gave you any kind of XP either. But that new green baby direhorn for winning 250 battles is coming in just a few days, so I figured I might as well give it a shot. And after some battling (SO MANY RUNTS) I finally won one. Contrasting the XP I got against that level 6 team, this happened.

Oh. OH goodness. Now that’s a breakpoint. I also gained 150 XP for ‘discovering’ Darkshire, booya.

The thing is, you only get XP if you win. All those times runts and brooms rubbed their butts all on my pets’ cold dead bodies I got bupkis, so this is only as time efficient as your queue and your pvp skill (and how trolly the teams you go against are… but Triple Turkey has been sort of quashed) allows. All it takes is 12 wins to level at this point.

So, come 5.3 and its achieve for winning max level PVP battles, I will definitely be adding level 25 pet pvp battles into the mix. I still have a few lowbie rares to collect and there will be a post with me griping about that, trust. I’ll continue to do mostly wild battles for statistical purposes. The provisional nature of pvp XP, that you have to win to get XP, makes it so I don’t feel like it’s cheating the challenge (too much). I expect that once I’m high enough level to get to triple pet wild teams this huge spike will even itself out and it’ll be more efficient to battle wild again, just from the time wasted due to losses.

For now, I’m going to move on to the southern part of the continent to do some more rare tames, and wait til Tuesday, when I’ll unleash my PVP prowess onto the world at large.

Current level – 15

Current /played – 1 day 8 minutes

Number of ginvites – 102 (31 since last update)

Kun-Lai Runt

8 Replies

With 5.3 coming, I figured it was a good idea to start profiling some of the better PVP pets. Max level pet PVP is going to see a lot of action very soon, so you can tame this guy to help you succeed.

The preferred breed for the Kun-Lai Runt is 4, or P/P. Right now, but getting fixed with 5.3, his stun Deep Freeze is broken in your favor. It ignores the resilience buff and stuns anyway. Even without benefit of a bug, that stun plus his humanoid ability Takedown, which hits for over 300 damage, and twice if a pet is stunned, are crazy, crazy deadly.

Before 5.2 you had to team him with a pet with a chill like Blizzard, because the runt’s Frost Shock was broken and didn’t apply a chill effect. This can still be a beneficial synergy, as you can then sub out Mangle for the low-ish damage Frost Shock and not have to worry about your opponent swapping pets in the round after you frost shock. Watch out though, because if your opponent has a Runt in their lineup as well (and they will) Blizzard also buffs theirs.

My Blizzarding pet of choice to pair with my runt, Hyde, was a Winter’s Little Helper named Jekyll (I mean, obviously). This is still also good synergy because she has her own delayed stun in the form of Ice Tomb. Double stuns to complement an awesome ability which hits twice when your opponent is stunned? I don’t think I need to spell this out here.

Another good, possibly better, choice for Blizzard synergy is the Tiny Snowman, which has an AOE attack and is elemental. This gives you protection against counters, since both Jekyll and Hyde are humanoids. Better than that, because Elementals aren’t affected by weather effects, opposing Runts won’t be able to use your own Blizzard as a chill effect against you.

If you come up against the Runt in PVP, and you’re going to come up against the Runt in PVP, your best counter is to use a pet with a lot of Undead attacks and hopefully some healing over time spells (so you get heals while you’re stunned, or in the back row). A Restless Shadeling, Ghostly Skull or Giant Bone Spider are popular picks. The Scourged Whelpling is another choice I’ve seen a bit of, but I haven’t had much success with him as a counter.

In PVE he can also pack quite a punch. He’s a good pick to beat that jerk in the Dragonblight, Okrut Dragonwaste.

He’s not all killing machine, though. Sometimes, he just wants to quietly sit and contemplate the fleeting beauty of the wildflower.