Thundering Pandaren Spirit Tamer

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For many tamers, this is the hardest fight in the game right now. The most bandied around piece of advice I’ve heard thus far with the Thundering tamer is to make super extra sure you grab the mini Thundering when you finish that first quest, because hoo boy, you do NOT want to even try to do THAT one again.

Well, I have to say I agree. I mean, I have this sucker down pretty well. The thing is, the nature of this particular fight can make it wildly unpredictable. I’ve blown all 3 of my pets against the first guy before, even after I had half a clue what was going on and wasn’t just sending whatever at him to see what sticks. I’ve also had kills where I used one pet and barely even had to touch a second.

My best advice here is to just keep trying. You’ll get him, I promise.

Here’s my lineup:

The order is a little screwed up… my pug Bertha should be first. She combines burrow and a decent heal with well, being a critter. The mechanical Zeppelin has some good defensive abilities, but most notably, Explode. The crab is there as a filler/tank. His most important role is to gap fill if I get a bad or weird string on Bertha, and to be alive at the end of the fight. For all three there are other options, but I’ll discuss them as I outline the fight.

First up is the Pandaren Earth Spirit. He combines stuns with big damage. His stuns are frustrating and deadly against any other kind of pet (even with the new Resilient buff, so you can no longer be completely stunlocked) those same stuns are pretty much cute against a critter’s crowd control breaking ability. His big, fairly constant damage is problematic, but my pug Bertha uses burrow to try to avoid the larger nuke on Rupture. Since the Spirit’s damage is weak against critters anyway, I get through this part of the fight pretty easily.

I like Bertha’s heal, but many tamers prefer a rabbit here for the extra speed. The critter stun breaker only kicks in at the end of the round. Since she’s slower than the elemental she ‘misses’ a round here & there because the elemental gets a stun off, and then she’s stunned the rest of the round through her turn. You really want to stick with a critter, because of the whole stunlock deal I mentioned earlier, and as shown in the screenshot above, most of the damage the spirit deals is weak against critters (the third ability being a stun with no damage). Snails are also a decent critter pick here, and hit super hard with aquatic Dive.

Another reason I choose Bertha is because her main damage ability can be Beast, which makes her able to damage the second pet, critter Sludgy, pretty well.

Sludgy’s damage is very streaky, due both to his moderate miss ability Expunge, and the way he uses (or doesn’t use) his other two abilities. One is the hard-hitting magic Ooze Touch, and the other is a fairly cruddy DoT spell, Creeping Ooze. It’s relatively random which one he uses, whether it hits or not, etc. Some fights I can plow straight through the whole way with Bertha, and others I get two shot. Hence the above pic illustrating Bertha hitting him hard with her beast damage where there’s a crab in place of poor little dead Bertha.

This is the place where you’d swap in a pet for leveling, but keep them high level for sure. Think either beast damage, to kill critter Sludgy faster, or mechanical pets, to defend against his oddly magic attacks and use Failsafe as a swap backup if he hits you too hard. I’d also pick a pet with some defensive capability if possible. I went with the crab just to get it done, and would suggest you start off with your favorite level 25 tank in the #2 spot until you get a better feel for the fight.

If it starts looking dicey and your pet is about to eat dirt, take it out. You have to have at least one pet still alive in the back row when Darnak comes out with this strategy or you’ll lose. Obviously if you’re trying to level a pet, you want that pet alive or else why even bother, right?

And now use your Zeppelin’s decoy to defend and his missile which is strong against Darnak’s Beastly self to take him to just a bit below 50% and then… boom.

Explode kills your Zep and the other guy, but you cannot use the mechanical Failsafe to res, hence why you must have one other pet alive in the back row. This is kind of gimmicky, but man is it fun, and it’s also kind of lazy. Lazy is kind of my jam. Make sure you use it when Darnak’s burrow is on cooldown though. Otherwise, I’ll have no choice but to laugh at your expense, sorry.

As another option, the Mechanical Pandaren Hatchling is very similar to the Zep and slightly more readily available, but needs a stone upgrade to rare. Clockwork Gnome would be a good choice here, but Darnak has a stoneskin ability which would negate his turret so using him is kind of futile. Stoneskin is also why you need to take him a bit lower than you may think if you go with Explode. Some tamers like to use critters instead to reduce the elemental damage from stone rush.

In closing… just… good luck.

Please feel free to ask any questions or woodshed this fight here or on Twitter. Even if you have a solid strategy, it’s still kind of a doozy.

Magical Crawdad

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This pet is magic indeed. He has always been a vanishingly rare pet too. Why is he so rare? The answer to that question is typically always either ‘fishing’ or ‘TCG’, and in this case, it’s fishing. And whoa boy, is it fishing.

This guy went live in Burning Crusade. Like almost everything that went live in Burning Crusade, there are several steps to this process, and they’re all a massive pain.

Step 1 – As you can make catches from pools at any level of fishing, it is no longer necessary to grind your fishing to max and find a bunch of upgrade gear and lures and crap. You must still have a flying mount though, with the exception of some bonkers ways you can get to the location via engineering. But just, no. Flying mount.

Step 2 – Go to Terokkar Forest. Go to any water accessible only via a flying mount. Find a Highland Mixed School. Fish in it.

Step 3 – Fish in it until the pool runs out. Go find a new pool.

Step 4 – Repeat step 3 until you wear your fishing keybind to a nub.

Step 5 – Miracle of miracles, the RNG Gods smiled on you and you caught a Mr. Pinchy! I’m obviously being hyperbolic here, but not totally. At his launch during BC, Mr. Pinchy had roughly half the chance to drop from any cast in a pool as a Sea Pony does, I believe his drop rate is now increased, but that doesn’t take away that feeling of ‘OH THANK GOD FINALLY.’

Step 6 – Make sure you have at least 1 bag slot open to catch your crawdad, and use one of your wishes to Mr. Pinchy.

Step 7 – Be annoyed because he gives you a crummy level 70 buff. Be even more annoyed because now he has a 24 hour cooldown. That cooldown is internal by the way, so if you catch 2 today, you won’t run out of wishes until almost a week from today. Hooray! ish.

Step 8 – Use all 3 of your wishes. Mr. Pinchy disappears. OH FOR THE LOVE OF LITTLE GREEN APPLES.

Step 9 – repeat all that crap until you finally get a Magical Crawdad!

Why would you want him? Uh, the prestige? Filling out your stable?

A better answer would be that he makes an excellent tank. You can choose between the typical tank abilities Shell Shield & Renewing Mists, and he’s one of two pets with the very interesting heal ability Wish. The latter is very powerful, and makes him not only a good tank but an excellent support healer, since you can swap pets between when he casts it and it hits. Nearly any time I rave on about my fantastic crab you can use the flashier Crawdad instead.

So, why did I choose a crab? Look, did you even read the rest of this post? Sigh. Besides all that, the reason I go with the crab even though I have a crawdad is because I find the combo of shield + mists easier to manage (ie, I barely have to pay attention) in pve than Wish, even though Wish is a better heal, especially for higher health pets. If you want a tank pet for PVP though, consider a Crawdad.

Stoned

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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 Mini Jouster, 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.

Your Leveling And Pets

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Before we get this blog post a-startedddd, let’s get this out of the way. This particular part of the game has been re-tuned roughly a dozen times since it’s hit the servers, and it’s only been live for 3 weeks. I’m going to discuss in general terms so hopefully it stays relatively accurate for a while, but don’t be surprised if it’s the exact opposite from what I say here if you’re reading this from far in the future. Also, don’t get all pissy because I got 70 XP and you got 75 XP for the same freaking THING Liopleurodon, you SCREECHING NOOB, GOD. Clear?

Alright.

When 5.2 dropped, among other fantastic pet developments, Blizzard also added the ability to get player XP through pet battles. Like everything else in the game, this can be very quirky.

There are a few rules of thumb which have stayed consistent thus far.

1 – *ALL* the pets on your team must be within 3 levels of the pet you’re killing in order to get XP. Yes, even if you just have your level 25 terrible turnip in the back row just in case and never ever use him, your character will not get XP.

2 – You must win the fight or you don’t gain any XP, even if you kill or trap a couple pets before you lose. This also applies in PVP.

3 – The amount of XP is dependent both on your level and the level of the pets you’re fighting. This post has been a wall of text with no pictures, so here’s a level 2, 15, and 85 characters fighting the same level (ie, lvl 2) pets:

So, the XP you get is dependent on your character’s level. But, it’s also dependent on the level of the pets you’re fighting, AND the level of your pets vs the pets you’re fighting. From here on out, we’ll use the level 85, because flying mounts are a thing.

I got 5.9K xp using my level 3s against level 2s. In the next screenshot, I used level 25s and a level 24 against a level 23, and in the following one, I kept them all at or below the level of the pets I was fighting.

The interesting part here though, is that it seems like there’s only so high you can go with XP. For level 85s, you will get a maximum of 87,149. The range of pet levels you’re capped out seems fairly wide.

Yes, you do get XP from tamer battles too.

To contrast Major Payne’s 25s, I was fighting 18s in Hellfire Peninsula, which is a couple dozen levels beyond gray mobs for a level 85. The gap may be even larger though. I didn’t get a chance to do further testing, as in the process of pet fighting, a fel reaver sneaked up on my poor little unplayed alt.

You may want to send flowers.

Burning Pandaren Spirit Tamer

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

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

—–

For now, this guy is my white whale.

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

ugh.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Maybe.

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

Perky Pug

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The Perky Pug was my very first must-have pet in the battle system. He was my mage’s puppy familiar before pet battles hit, so it made sense that he, along with my old-school raiding mascot Mr. Wiggles (“let’s do this, Wiggles.”), and the novel Terrible Turnip, made up my very first battle team.

There were 2 big issues with using the pug, though. The first, largely cosmetic one, was that WoW wouldn’t let me give him his original proper name, Mr. Rochester. Even removing the honorific, Rochester just wasn’t allowed. I’m guessing because of the ‘chest’ in the middle. So, he became she. Bertha, the sublimated passionate side of the dichotomy of the nature of Victorian women. What? Oh come on, pick up a book once in a while dude.

The second issue was that Bertha, like her namesake, was both ferocious and yet impotent. All perky pugs start off as Uncommon quality. So, although she was really good at fighting pretty much anything out in the world with a choice between 2 strong self-heals and an avoidance ability, she didn’t do so hot in tamer battles once I got past the initial string of quests.

At this point I started building my second team, featuring the Clockwork Gnome, Celestial Dragon and Chuck. I didn’t give up on Bertha because she was still awesome in world battles, but I needed the extra oomph to get past the tamers. it’s smart while you’re starting off to have a stable of 5-6 varied pets & pet types anyway, because there’s always that one ‘up yours buddy’ battle where you have to all but start from scratch.

At long last I found a Critter Upgrade stone, and of course, Bertha was the very first critter on my list to upgrade. She was my first level 25 too, and now she’s very key in my strategy for beating the Thundering Pandaren trainer. Being a critter, she shakes off the stuns no problem, and then she uses her burrow ability and heal to avoid pretty much everything else. She’s still very strong for taming and a favorite to bring out while adventuring in the world.

This is also one of the easier pets to obtain. Right now, it ranks #2 on Guildox on the list of most popular pets. Most people get it almost by mistake. You run LFD, and then after you’ve grouped with 100 people found through LFD, you get an achievement and a pug in the mail. Unfortunately you’re only allowed 1 pug per account, so you can’t have a Bertha and a St. John Rivers and a Grace Poole. Oh come on, it’s classic literature. God. The achievement only counts random people, so if you queue with your tank buddy that run only counts as 3/100.

The only pet which shares the pug’s moveset is the MoP CE pet, the Lucky Quilen Cub. That pet also starts out rare, so if you have one and don’t necessarily want the cutest pet ever, you may want to go with the Cub instead.

But uh, if you should decide to go with the pug, you may want to set aside the cash you’d spend on a CE. Just in case you need your carpets steamed, or something. Just sayin.

Cloud Serpents

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In a beautiful ceremony, today at long last, I officially became a member of the Order of the Cloud Serpent!

Why should you care? Well, first of all, thanks so much for being so supportive. It’s not like I had a wicked sweet mount I really wanted to use that I couldn’t without Cloud Serpent Flying. Because druids use mounts, ever.

Alright alright, this isn’t just a post to talk about how awesome I am. If you really closely, in the bottom right corner, you’ll be able to see why I undertook this thoroughly annoying grind.

There are 3 different colors of wild cloud serpent hatchlings, and they only appear as battle pets after you have exalted reputation with Order Of The Cloud Serpent. If you go over there otherwise, it’s just a bunch of frogs and moths. You have to repeat this rep grind for each character you’d like to fight the cloud serpents on, which should be completely shocking for those of us who have played through Pandaria up to this point.

The Golden and the Jade Hatchlings are pretty much identical in function. As discussed before in the entry about my clockwork gnome, they make good buff pets with mechanicals and pets with a lot of DoT and multi-attack spells because of their Call Lightning ability. If you’ve fought Grand Master Tamer Aki or the Burning Pandaren Spirit Tamer, you’ve seen all 6 of these guys’ abilities in action already with Stormlash and Crimson respectively.

The Crimson Hatchling is different from the previous two, but has a move set identical to the Spawn of Onyxia wild pet. Most notably the heal and huge nuke, which makes this a rather annoying pet to tame.

If you’d like to tame these, there are a couple things to watch out for. First of all, with Cloud Serpent rep, make sure to go make a few passes around Windward Isle, especially if you’re in the area around server restart time. You can net a ton of rep just from looting onyx eggs. Since we’re so deep into the expansion, there is frequently at least one spawned when I go look. I barely even needed to do dailies with a pass a day.

As mentioned above, the Crimson Hatchling in particular is kind of a pain to tame. For these guys I brought out my turnip, my tanky crab, and a level 20-ish pet to grind XP. I didn’t go higher just in case I zoned out and did foolish things, because that never happens. There must be some other reason. But if I did, hypothetically, the 20-ish pet should be able to finish out the last battle pet in the trio after a couple turns.

All the battle pets in this area share spawns, and they have that thing going on where you can only have so many pets in one area, so if you’re looking for a specific rare you should summarily dispatch the moths and frogs in the middle first, then fight the hatchlings while you’re waiting on repops.

Fel Flame

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I figured that since I already wrote up posts on two members of my core team, Ishmael and Prufrock, it was time to highlight Dante as well.

The Fel Flame is a glass cannon at its best. He has 1 strong nuke, 2 strong nukes with DoTs (one of which is a Dragon spell, so you can kill both mechanicals and magic battle pets really easily), a weather effect with a DoT which doesn’t affect him because he’s an elemental, a self-buff DoT which persists even if you send him to the back row (making him a very strong partner with a pet Plagued Blood, like the Restless Shadeling). And lastly, he has Conflagrate, one of the stronger nukes in the pet battle game even though it was nerfed significantly in 5.2. Even though he is generally weak against critters, he still finds time to menace them in his spare time.

I use Dante against pets (especially mechanicals) that I need to burn down ASAP, like Jeremy Feasel‘s tonk or Major Payne‘s mechabird. I typically equip him with flame breath, immolate and conflagrate. I use one of the two DoTs to make the victim burn, and then use Conflagrate immediately (depending on the other pet’s mitigation abilities, like Burrow). Conflagrate is on a 4 turn cooldown, so the sooner I use it the better the chances I’ll be able to use it again.

The trade-off is that his glass cannon has an emphasis on the glass. Dante is as fragile as my parents’ hopes I’d make something of myself. You need to make use of his explosive DPS with the expectation that he’s not long for this world, or else team him with pets that make use of AOE heals, with a bunch of swapping in between.

Fel Flame is a catch from a wild pet battle in Shadowmoon Valley. As such, there’s not a ton of leveling you need to do before he’s a killing machine, which is good, because it’s kind of a pain to level elementals.

There’s some debate over how to incite them to spawn which isn’t surprising, since they are supposed to be kind of rare. I can say fairly confidently that the current rumor that you must have completed the Shadowmoon Valley quest line Cipher Of Damnation is false. Here’s Liopleurodon’s quest count in the zone so you can see where I’m coming from here.

So, not wanting to invest the 45+ minutes to do that quest line, I killed the elementals in the area. After 10-15 minutes, a couple of the wild Fel Flames spawned, ready to battle. I haven’t done this enough to say for certain that this isn’t just coincidence and I showed up at the right time, but what else are you going to do while you wait, crochet a poncho?

Grand Master Tamer Aki

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9/25/2014: This fight is now up to date for Warlords of Draenor. For an elekk carry, use your elekk the same way you would for a level 1 carry.

Another frustrating fight, but Aki The Chosen can be a candidate for powerleveling your pets if you have the right strategy.

I was impressed by how well-balanced this fight is for tamers working their way up the ranks. Unlike some of the other tamers at lower levels, there are several different choices you can make for this Tamer. I’ve used a couple different group makeups, but this is the one I’ve settled on for now as the most reliable for me.

The first pet I chose for this screenshot was kind of a fluke, because I was trying to finish off my leveling achievements at this time. In your first slot, you can choose a level 1, as long as it isn’t Undead. My emperor crab Ishmael is my choice for lead battler, yet again. This time, make sure he picks Snap, since one of Aki’s pets is a critter. Your main requirement for a tank in this fight is that they must have some kind of blocking effect, like Shell Shield. This is one of the two keys for success in this fight. Snails are a decent choice too, but Whiskers can get a little bit dicey because the whelk’s undead absorb ability is so crummy against the aquatic otter. The Scourged Whelp is a very sturdy multi-hitter, and can be replaced by a number of other multi-hitters.

Aki’s first pet is critter cricket Chirrup with 2 heals and the critter ability Swarm, which does several tiny hits in one turn. Because those hits *are* tiny, most level 1 pets can live through one round of it, but it’s a little bit close, and the Undead family weaknesses against Critter damage make them right out. I like to err toward the side of level 3+ personally, but if your pet dies you can just forfeit and re-try with a different level 1 immediately, as all your other battle pets are at full health. After the first round carry swaps out, Ishmael puts up Shell Shield and makes quick work of Chirrup. Make sure to keep that up though, because if you get anything other than a block, miss, dodge, etc, you’ll get hit with a debuff that increases your damage taken by 100%. I don’t think Spiked Skin‘s mitigation is quite enough to reliably avoid getting that debuff. This debuff is very bad for the next pet in Aki’s arsenal.

I leave Ishmael up front with his shell until Aki’s next pet Stormlash the dragonkin casts Call Lightning to absorb the initial hit. This hit is ~400 without the previously mentioned modifier, but upwards of 800 with it, so that extra hit really needs to be avoided. Then, when the weather changes to Lightning Storm, things. get. real.

Lightning Storm increases the damage done by mechanical pets, and also adds 40-50 damage to every separate hit. Sometimes I choose my clockwork gnome because of the boost to mechanical abilities, but I frequently get so excited by the complete annihilation he visits on Stormlash’s head that I forget to heal in a timely fashion. My Scourged Whelpling Radley has better survivability, because I can cast his plagued blood ability, which allows you to heal on each hit (but doesn’t work for the additional hit, FYI). I also choose death and decay because it’s a DoT and tail sweep because Radley is slower than Stormlash so I always get the second hit. Now, I do 150 additional damage because of the storm, and heal for 150 per turn because of plagued blood. It is pure carnage. Simply delightful.

Because Stormlash is a dragonkin, he takes less damage from flying attacks so you should stay away from pets like Shrine Flies. An elemental pet with dots is a good pick too, since they aren’t affected by weather. As a result they don’t take the extra damage, but they do deal it. There are a lot room for preference and experimentation here.

Once I finish Stormlash, I continue with Radley while Lightning Storm persists, and then switch back to Ishmael to finish up. Keep up with your healing and mitigation abilities, though… Whiskers has several mitigation abilities, so he can slowly whittle you down with Surge while casting Survival and Dive.

On a different day, I did this with a level 15 pet, Safari Hat on, and this was my result:

Because she’s a short jaunt from both home cities in Pandaria, she’s really worth beating every day. If you have a different preferred lineup, feel free to discuss it in the comments!

Terrible Turnip

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The Terrible Turnip is frankly, kind of terrible. How could a reanimated root vegetable be any good at murdering a bunny anyway? They EAT root vegetables. There’s an entire zone in Pandaria devoted to how bunnies eat vegetables, and that’s where you get him, so how could he possibly be a good choice for battling?

He’s an Elemental type, with mostly Elemental type attacks. This means that he defends poorly against Aquatic, of which there are many in the world, and his attacks do poorly against critters, of which there are many in the world. He defends really well and attacks very hard against mechanicals though, which aren’t much of anywhere.

So, why even bother writing about this baddie, Liopleurodon? Well, hold your horses and I’ll explain.

Weakening Blow. It brings any pet to 1 HP, and will not go any lower, like the screenshot says. This makes for quick, stress-free taming of wild pets of any level, and as of now Terrible Turnips are the only pets that have it. Need to find that rare Black Sheep? Use Weakening Blow once, and now you can tame it. You can use him on minfernals without worrying that you’ll kill him, too. For higher level pets, you can also use his sunlight ability early on. This increases the max HP of all the pets, so the point where you can use your trap comes much sooner.

The novelty of beating up pets with a turnip made him one of the very first pets I tried to level. It was so difficult to keep him alive to get XP, and because of the critters & aquatics I faced very frequently in the world he couldn’t really do anything. I ended up swapping him out for Chuck around level 8. This is pretty much why I’m writing this post. Lots of tamers talk up how incredible Turnips are, and they really are, but if you’re just starting out he is a rather poor choice. Don’t mistake useful for powerful! I ended up making him my 9th level 25 pet.

To get this incredible utility, you have 2 options. One, you could use Farmer Yoon’s/your farm and finally make friends with the RNG. You can get him as a rare drop when you dig up a fully grown crop. Or, you can make your way to the AH and buy him off someone else who got lucky and doesn’t know how incredibly useful this pet is.