Peddlefeet

If there is a thing out in the world that could potentially be made profitable, Goblins will be there. Even love.

peddlefeet2

Especially love. Goblins feature big in the WoW version of Valentine’s Day, the Love Is In The Air festival. All the vendors are goblins, and the premiere battle pet of the season has always been the Goblinized version of Cupid. Instead of a mischievous little cherub, we get a tiny goblin with taped-on wings, shooting arrows souped up like only a Goblin can.

peddlearrow

He used to be extremely difficult to obtain, but now he’s available for a handful of holiday currency in every major city, Horde or Alliance. The 40 tokens you’ll need to trade with yet another Goblin to obtain the Truesilver Shafted Arrow come from a variety of places, but as long as you’re queuing up for the daily boss fight you will get enough by the end of the holiday to purchase one. If not, or if you’re busy with the IRL holiday (you dog you) Peddlefeet is cageable. He starts off as Uncommon so if you’re going the AH route it’s a good idea as always to aim for an upgraded one.

peddlefeet battle pet wow moves humanoid

Peddlefeet is a pretty premiere dragonkiller battle pet in PVE. All his moves are humanoid, though they do run the gamut. The only straightforward attack is Bow Shot in the first slot, though Rapid Fire is a fairly straightforward AoE option. He does have a lot of utility with the stun Lovestruck, and the slight chance for stun Perfumed Arrow. Also in his moveset is his Love Potion heal, which seems designed to be annoying in PVP, but gives him extra staying power too.

peddlefeet

He is quite suited to killing Yu’la in the Celestial Tournament, and a bit less so for ‘team’ pve dragonkin battle pets, where his stuns will earn you a swap. Humanoids in general are pretty vulnerable in PVP just now, with the prevalence of the undead Val’kyr/beast Death Adder Hatchling combo, but this guy’s final ability makes him even more so. Shot Through The Heart, though interesting, and one of the best lyrics ever, is a charged move for a big wallop, like Deep Breath. It’s really excellent for PVE, but not so much for PVP, where you’re sure to get stunned, blinded or otherwise annihilated in the intervening turn. In general he’s fun to play, but if you come up against any of a number of really common current teams it’s pretty much game over.

Though he’s not a favorite, that last ability makes it all worthwhile, nostalgia-wise.

Even though this song itself is about as Valentine-y as, well, a Goblin.

Courageous Yon

Now that Nishi has received a bit of a buff, this tamer is the easiest to beat among the Pandaren tamers, as long as you know his one really easy counter. Seriously, the hardest thing about Yon is finding his cave. Just look for the gnome corpses near the top of Kota Peak in Kun-Lai Summit.

courageous yon wow world of warcraft pet battle tamer

Kind of a macabre marker, but whatever works.

Now, just because this tamer is stone-cold stupid easy doesn’t mean I’m going to get all pithy or anything. I mean, I still gotta do me, right?

yonteam wow world of warcraft pet battle

This isn’t the only team I use against Courageous Yon’s battle pets, but it does make for one of the faster victories. In practice, I usually just open my pet journal and pick out a couple battle pets with a shield ability. Any pet with some kind of shield ability will do. Anubisath Idol, Living Sandling, Feline Familiar, A turtle, a crab, Yu’la, whatever you’ve got. If you want to go with an Enchanted Broom with a Sandstorm that’ll work. I’ve beat him with a crab and a snail, intentionally placed off-family (Aquatic crab vs Flying Piqua; Critter snail vs Beast Bleat). Seriously, anything. Well, almost. A pet with Spiked Skin won’t work here.

shell shield wow world of warcraft pet battle

Once you put up that shield, there’s only one ability to sort of look out for with Yon’s first pet Piqua, and that’s Lift-Off. It hits fairly hard, and that’s about it. It could be far worse, as Piqua will apply Shattered Defenses with Flock, and then turn and utterly destroy your pet. If you’re able to completely absorb all the ticks of Flock, Piqua won’t apply Shattered Defenses, hence the whole shielding ability thing. Spiked Skin doesn’t absorb the whole hit and so lets Shattered Defenses go up, which is why that won’t work. Yon’s third pet, Bleat, does the same kind of thing with a Stampede/Chew combo. Bleat also has a small heal, but nothing too big.

yonblock

If you’re using battle pet with a burrow ability, or the Anubisath Idol with that impossibly overpowered Deflection move, try to avoid the big hit those 2 pets try to dish out because it’ll give you additional staying power. But that’s just icing. As long as you maintain that shield and just keep on keeping on you’ll beat this fight.

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Yon’s second pet, Lapin, follows a similar pattern. Though his Flurry won’t apply an additional debuff, it’s all small hits which can be mostly absorbed by a battle pet with a damage shield. He also uses the large hit Burrow, which should be dodged if possible. And that’s pretty much that.

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With a bit of thinking ahead, I’m frequently able to solo this battle, so it’s possible to carry more than one pet. The Anubisath Idol is suited well to this, but the Emerald Whelpling is a good pick for this too. The thing is, if you carry 2 battle pets you split the earned XP between them. Instead of just one battle pet getting ~4K XP with 2 level 25 ringers (depending on the level of the carry), you’ll have two battle pets getting ~2K XP each. To me, it’s far more worth it to just carry the one instead of doing two, but I’m putting the information out there just in case you’d like to rebel against the machine or whatever it is you whippersnappers are doing these days.

courageous yon wow pet battle warcraft tamer kun lai

For the video walkthrough, I did something a little different. Rather than use the team I picked for the guide on the blog, I went to a part of the Dread Wastes I knew was crawling with snails and crabs, tamed 3 of them, and then went to beat up Yon. I didn’t use a carry pet for the video, just to give myself an extra buffer. This is just to show you that you don’t need any special pets for this, and for real, all you need is shield abilities and you’re good to go.

Because this doesn’t show the carry, I’m going to add that it’s best to just put your carry in first thing, and use a lvl 5+ battle pet.

Warlords of Draenor Checklist

This is another post which is really more for me than for you. While my specific goals are obviously going to be unique to me, I’m sharing this because some will be fairly universal for a lot of battlers. And I’m posting it now because I’m not sure how long we have until Warlords, and I figure the sooner I start to prepare, the longer I have to procrastinate.

gooey shaling shappi wow world of warcraft pet battle

1. Get all the battle pets from LFR and Normal/Heroic raids from this expansion. The LFR ones in particular, namely the Gooey Sha-ling and Living Fluid are going to be next to impossible to snag after we move on from Mists of Pandaria. However, because of the incoming item/stat squish, it’s really hard to gauge how quickly people will be able to solo old content. I fully expect the price on, eg the Living Sandling to soar when the Dark Portal opens red, but drop when people can begin soloing Throne of Thunder. However, the price on that Gooey Sha-ling is only going to go further and further up.

raretimer addon wow world of warcraft pet battle

2. Get all the battle pets from Timeless Isle that require spawn timers. I finally got Garnia to drop the Ruby Droplet battle pet (in a b/b breed, whomp whomp) but I still have many to collect. For now, depending on your server population, there is always a fistful of people on the Isle with some kind of rare timer, sharing their information (the addon pictured is Rare Coordinator). Once Warlords drops, those people are going to evaporate like Morning Glory Dew in Tanaris, and their shared information with them. This likely also means their AH price is going to skyrocket a bit as well. Excepted here are pets dropped from alt-spawn mobs, like the Spineclaw Crab from the Monsterous Spineclaw. Even with the stat squish those are probably going to be just as easy if not easier to churn come Warlords, though I will be trying to grind these as well in the meantime (just not quite so targeted).

lvling up battle pets wow world of warcraft

3. Keep leveling! Those new raid and Timeless Isle pets are going to need to run through a lot of pet battles before they’re at cap. This is kind of low-priority though, as the level cap remains at 25 through Warlords (source). This is also a for-now goal, simply because I get the feeling this may change after beta opens and we discover the nature of Garrisons, and especially breeding… whether we need many high-level pets, many low-level pets, what the quality needs to be, etc.

stones wow world of warcraft pet battle

4. Stones, stones, stones. I still have a lot of pets to upgrade, but more importantly I have a feeling they’re going to pull some Minfernal-styles spawning shenanigans again for this expansion. This is fine, but I’m saving a few of each stone type and a couple universals as well, just in case. I’m also continuing to do the Celestial Tournament and stocking up on tokens (so I can use them on whatever), and especially the pet XP biscuits from the Beasts of Fable daily and PVP weekly.

5. Clean out banks; organize central meta-bank alt. Those stones and biscuits and bandages and tokens need a place to go. With all this pet stuff (and all those random Timeless Isle armor drops from failed pet RNG) I really need to get on having them all in one location. Altoholic helped me track things down as a stop-gap, but now that Bind on Account means you can mail things cross-server and cross-faction I can have one meta-banker for all this garbage.

garrosh wow world of warcraft mercy

6. Finish up on the alts. One thing I found extremely beneficial to battling in Mists was having a character at cap on both factions. It happens oddly frequently that there’s something only attainable on one side or the other (eg, having 2 different pets from Enchanting during Cataclysm). From the map alone it seems like there are going to be some zones which are more easily accessible to one side or the other. While I’ve been largely bifactional this expansion, my Horde toon is on a PVP server, and I’m really over open-world PVP. The rumor is that they’re not turning on flying in Draenor until 6.1, or at least for a while after launch, so I can tell already I’m going to want my level 40 undead at cap, pronto. This also includes trade skills, as it seems like a roll of the dice which profession is getting a crafted pet this time around (probably engineering). And of course, everybody needs to have fishing, because carps.

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7. Wait.

Celestial Dragon

celestialdragon2 wow world of warcraft pet battle

As you collect more & more battle pets, at specific benchmarks, you’ll get an achievement and a new pet. The first one is the Reeking Pet Carrier at 50 unique pets. This counts, for example, a brown snake and a black snake as 2 different pets even though they’re not exactly special little snowflakes. Who are you trying to fool, snakes? Up until 150 pets and the Littlest Pet Shop achievement, they’re all pretty much duplicates of other pets you can tame or purchase. With that milestone, the Celestial Dragon awarded has both a model vastly unique from any other battle pet in the game and a few unique moves as well.

starfall2 wow world of warcraft pet battle

The unique move is, well. Starfall is similar in nature to Moon Moon’s moon tears, and packs a lot of really cool graphic punch (see above), but as both offense and heal, it just isn’t all that effective, even on 2nd go-around after it’s buffed by its own Moonlight effect. It’s also on a fairly long timer, making it kind of a poor choice unless you’re just grinding wild battles and want to see some stars.

celestialdragon wow world of warcraft pet battle

She’s been the recipient of a few nerfs over time. She used to have the much stronger Dragonkin ability Breath instead of the current Elemental Burn in the first slot. Combining this with a strong heal in Ancient Blessing made even stronger with Moonlight in the third slot made for one of my go-to battling grinders. The overall effect was close to a current Spawn of Onyxia with more staying power. But now, she’s not really a first choice. Rounding out her moveset is the offense dampener Roar (though for me this is a poor choice because it deals little damage and that first slot is most of her offense) and the completely bafflingly placed Arcane Storm, which isn’t really a popular choice to begin with.

By now, most WoW players are aware that our favorite scapegoat Greg Street has moved on to Riot Games. As a result, many players were in a tailspin for a while there. Who is going to be at fault for every little aspect of the game that goes awry? Enter Celestalon.

celestalon wow world of warcraft pet battle dragon

Celestalon’s official title is Technical Games Designer. Though Celestalon’s level of snark isn’t quite what Mr. Street once used, a hashtag (#blamecelestalon) has been circulating, used in the vein of #thanksobama, to blame Celestalon for things that couldn’t possibly have been his fault. So, I’d encourage those of you battlers to #blamecelestalon for the nerf to the Fluxfire Feline, just to make him feel at home.

celestialdragon3 wow world of warcraft pet battle

Or um, because this is supposed to be trying to butter up devs for upcoming information, that’s probably not such a hot idea. Maybe you should just #leavecelestalonalone? I’m kind of bad at this.

(You can follow him on twitter @celestalon).

Dread Hatchling

I usually don’t do extremely current events news, but I honestly could not wait on this. Earlier today, a battle pet was datamined, and then shortly thereafter shared out on Twitter by a dev I surely owe cookies by now, Jonathan LeCraft.

hatchlingtweet

That pic shows a pet with so much power it makes me a little weak in the knees paired with a Gilnean Raven-style moveset in the top row. There’s also at least one new move, the one in the bottom right. It was suspected that this pet was the Warlords of Draenor Collector’s Edition reward pet, much like the Quilen Pup was for Mists of Pandaria. I’m here to tell you simply

dread hatchling wow world of warcraft collectors edition PTR

Confirmed.

Well, as confirmed as it’s going to get before I pony up $60 for the latest WoW expansion CE. The battle pet model shown there is a placeholder, and just Anzu. The real model was datamined by Adriacraft, and it is really adorable. It’s a kind of a reskin of the Ji-Kun Hatchling, but in a textured blue and yellow appearance, with a lot of really lovely blue glowing effects.

The other thing I was curious about was that mysterious bottom right icon. I did some additional poking around on the PTR just to see if I could find anything.

anzu blessing wow world of warcraft pet battle dread hatchling

I was glad I was sitting down. Anzu’s Blessing is like a 5-round Acidic Goo, but if your opponent dies that’s totally cool. Heck, if your pet dies that’s cool too because it’s on every pet of your team. The synergy potential here, in both PVE and PVP, is enormous.

Prepare yourselves. Warlords is Coming.

Nitun

It has been a while since I wrote about the Beasts of Fable. When I did initially quite frankly they were huge pushovers. Since then, they’ve received a revamp where they hit far harder and take less damage, so my old faithful strategy of just grabbing a roach and stalling doesn’t work quite as well as it did. So, time for a revisit!

nitun wow world of warcraft pet battle

I’m starting with Nitun, because I find him the most frustrating bar none. Yes, even moreso than that jerk fish guy, or that other super annoying one that you hate (I’ll get to him too, swears). Nitun is super frustrating largely due to the randomness of his abilities. Most other pets and tamers are scripted, and I’ve seen a few turn-by-turn cheat sheets for many encounters, including some of the Celestial Tournament. But Nitun’s move order is a roll of the dice. Nitun is also a part of the Beasts Of Fable Book One daily quest, so it’s almost like we’re going in order, and I have a method to my madness. Who would’ve thought.

This strategy features a very common pet I’ve never used before on the blog.

nitunteam wow world of warcraft pet battle

With the Kneebiter in there you can probably guess what our MO is with that scorpion. I chose the one I did because it was the first level 25 scorpion I saw in my pet list, so breed isn’t an issue here. A snake is also a good pick in the first slot, but has a slightly shorter duration on its poison, which is the main reason I chose the Scorpion. The flavor of the month Death Adder Hatchling has a poison effect, so you’d think he’d be an excellent pick here, but he provides a warning to those of you making subs. Just any old poison won’t work well here, because Nitun is a critter. The Death Adder Hatchling’s Poison Fang ability hits initially for beast damage, which hits Nitun strongly, but the DoT is elemental which hits Nitun weakly, so the whole ‘buff that DoT’ strategy won’t work nearly as well using the Hatchling.

Without the Kneebiter and his incredible Black Claw ability (and no I’m absolutely not overselling here) try a regular raptor with Exposed Wounds, like the Obsidian version you can buy for 50g from Breanni in Dalaran, or another pet with a per-hit additive buff in that vein. I definitely recommend putting a Zandalari Raptor (especially a Kneebiter) in your ‘to be leveled’ list, because again, this combo is just perfection. It’s like a first kiss and cotton candy and the cutest little dinosaur ever all in one. The 3rd battle pet doesn’t really matter with the sheer evanescent glory of Black Claw, but try to pick a beast with strong offense just in case. Another good choice here is a monkey, because Banana Barrage has really good synergy with those debuff moves. If you use the Expose Wounds substitute, I’d go with a snake in the 3rd slot, because he can Burrow as a stall and will add an additional DoT or two for synergy with the debuffs. Another good 3rd slot option, especially if you’re lacking a Zandalari, is a Fox or Dog with Howl, to add Shattered Defenses in place of Hunting Party, and Flurry to benefit from the now-lingering Black Claw.

nitun prowl wow warcraft pet battle beast of fable

Nitun has 3 abilities: Prowl, Rake and Ravage. The randomness I talked about before hinges entirely on Prowl, though the heal effect of Ravage contributes to make him extra annoying. Sometimes he’ll cast Prowl on the very first turn. Or second. Or third. While some evasion abilities are useable here, this makes for a hit-or-miss approach which would be really disingenuous of me to recommend. The one respite you’ll have from Prowl comes from the longer-duration 50% shield abilities. Enter the scorpion.

nitun scorpion wow world of warcraft pet battle beast of fable

Specifically, the scorpion’s Crouch ability, which allows us to get a couple more turns in before he’s toast, even against Prowl. We’re not totally sure when the scorpion is going to be toast, but we know it’s going to be soon. He’ll be brought well below 50% the first round Nitun Prowls, if not before, even using crouch. I make sure to keep up at least 3 turns on the poison, but I try to time it with Nitun’s Rake. Rake lowers the base damage of the poison DoT by at least half, but I lead with the poison turn 1 even so, just to make sure it’s up, in case Nitun leads with Prowl.

After the Scorpion goes to battle pet heaven, I bust out my Kneebiter and use Black Claw. The real coup de grace comes when I’m able to get the shattered defenses debuff from Hunting Party up there too.

nitun wow world of warcraft pet battle zandalari kneebiter

If the Kneebiter gets murdered before I get Hunting Party out, I’ll have to go to pet #3, but with that black claw debuff and that strong beast offense discussed earlier I’ll still make quick work of this particular Fabled Beast.

The one benefit you have against Prowl is that it drastically reduces Nitun’s speed, basically giving you one last hit before you’re toast. Choose that one last hit well, young skywalker, or else his entire bandicoon family is sure to come and eat your force-wielding face off, because bandicoons will pull crap like that.

nitun wow world of warcraft pet battles bandicoon

AUGH, it’s coming right for us!

Here’s the strat in action:

Lunar Festival Lantern

lantern

The Lunar Festival in WoW is loosely patterned on the celebrations that occur on the Lunar New Year in many Asian countries, with most of the customs portrayed hailing from China. Notable among these for pet battlers is the Lunar Festival Lantern. Over the course of the holiday, you must visit Elders for special tokens. You can then take those tokens and use them to purchase Lunar Festival foods, the high-necked brightly colored gowns and pantsuits, fireworks, and of course, the Lunar Festival Lantern. It’s… oh, what’s that?

lanterns

Yeah, there’s a slight issue here. The reason I personally have the one and not the other is that, since the advent of account-wide pets, I’ve mostly been playing Horde. Once a character has collected 50 coins, Valadar Starsong in Moonglade sells Horde players the Festival Lantern, and Alliance players the Lunar Lantern. I never really got around to collecting enough coins, involving quite a bit of laborious travel around the continents, on my Alliance character.

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If you’re only looking at the movesets, the two are identical. They also share moves with the Enchanted Lantern battle pet which, true to the previous gripe, is crafted by Horde-only enchanters with 525 skill, and all 3 battle pets have identical stats as well. The Alliance enchanting pet, the Magic Lamp, has a vastly different moveset, but identical stats. Luckily, all 4 are also cageable, so if you are diehard FOR THE HORDE, and refuse to even so much as roll an Alliance DK for fast flight and easy Elder NPC visits within a couple hours, you still have some options. Also luckily for the gold makers, like all pets they are account-wide and still command a pretty penny, but especially so if you sell them cross-faction. All 4 also start off as uncommon when attained, making for a really nice payday if you have some flawless Magic upgrade stones kicking around.

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These lanterns never really had a heyday as battling pets, but they do have a few tricks. They have a really cool 1-2 punch with the blinding Flash and double-hitting when blinded Light. Sharing Light’s slot is the blocking move Soul Ward. Soul Ward works really well against big single hitters, but falls flat against multi-hit opponents because it only blocks one attack. The alternate in the second slot is Illuminate, which causes the Sunny Day weather effect. The Lanterns don’t have a move which really benefits from the sun, so you may want to pair this pet with something that does.

Both first slot choices are straightforward nukes. Beam is Magic, Burn is Elemental. The former hits slightly less hard and has a slightly higher accuracy as a result. This choice is largely dependent on which pets you’re fighting. If you’re up against any Mechanical, without Burn your lantern is a sitting duck.

lantern3 wow world of warcraft pet battle

In the end, the benefit of this pet is more cosmetic than anything. Like the Elders, it is a peaceful memory of a time gone by.

Lil Bling

LEAVES

We’re getting to a weird point in time for many WoW bloggers, and the WoW community as a whole. While most people were very excited at the Warlords of Draenor reveal at Blizzcon, there’s been a dearth of official news since. The gaps have been filled almost entirely via tweetlists (oh and by the way, breeding epic pets are out for WoD, says developer Cory Stockton in this random tweet). As a result, lots of bloggers have taken to fanciful prognostication, mostly about the nature of this or that about the expansion, including a fun Warlords of Draenor release date pool hosted by Alternative Chat. The other common current blogger pastime ties into this, namely a good amount of schmoozing devs, largely on twitter, and a fairly constant stream of questions asking them what else is coming next.

Personally, I still have pages and pages of material to blog about and several videos slated. Beyond that I’ll likely do a few a la minute PVP posts, add to my ongoing leveling saga (you guys WHY did I think this was a good idea?), and I still have a staggeringly large number of battle pets left to write about. My blog is nearing its 1 year anniversary (!) and if I had written about a pet every single day up to this point I’d still have more than half of them to profile. With so much material left, I figured I might as well combine both my ongoing pet profile series and kissing some developer or CM behind for a scrap of information or two. I’m not proud.

lilbling wow world of warcraft pet battle

Lil Bling is the son of Blingtron 4000, the friendly, flashy robot who dispenses trashy romance novels, healing potions, and other miscellaneous junk in your faction’s Shrine, or outside the inn at Halfhill. Unless you’re on a PVP server, and then the Blingtron outside the inn is pretty much just a trap for sniping lowbies from the roof of the inn with your frost mage.

ganker

Look, I already said I’m not proud.

Once he’s crafted, the Blingtron 4000 can be dropped every 4 hours by an engineer. If you’re not an engineer, you’re at the mercy of someone who is. At this point in the expansion, the crafting cost isn’t terribly steep (I did have to use my farm to gather the Spirits of Harmony I needed quickly) so it’s a good option for an alt. For patch 5.4, Blingtron had a few new things added to his loot table of trash, including a Blingtron Brawler’s Guild fight and the new pet Lil Bling.

bling2 wow world of warcraft pet battle

Lil Bling’s moveset is quite unique and worth looking at. As touched on briefly in the Macabre Marionette post, he is the first Mechanical with the Shattered Defenses debuff with Inflation. Inflation is equally suited to pair with both abilities in the third slot, Launch Rocket and Make It Rain. Make It Rain will win out on fights with a damage cap, like the Celestials, or if you have an extra proc like Call Lightning, but Launch Rocket paired with this buff will all but completely wreck nearly any normal pet.

bling wow warcraft pet battle

The other choice in the first slot, SMACKTHAT.EXE, works well with on-hit synergy, but doesn’t provide it. The benefit to that skill over Inflation is you’re not locked in for multiple rounds. Rounding it all out in the middle slot is either the damage dampening Extra Plating, or the mixed bag Blingtron Gift Package, which has a 50/50 shot to either hit really hard or heal. The former choice obviously offers far more control vs the RNG-heavy latter, but I generally find the latter more fun. You can just see the person on the other side of the keyboard wondering what the heck was THAT?!

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I expect we’ll be seeing a lot of Lil Bling in strategies that arise during Warlords. As I mentioned, he is the first mechanical battle pet with the Shattered Defenses debuff, so it stands to reason (or maybe to beg the question) that we may be seeing some big, beefy Beasts we need a tiny robot to beat down in the not so distant future.

I would strongly recommend getting one soon, both because of that and because once WoD hits it’s very likely non-engineers won’t be seeing much of this glittery little guy anymore. In addition to the low drop chance from Blingtron’s daily gift, this pet is also tradable, so you may want to just try the auction house. He’s dropped as Uncommon from the box, so if you’re low on Mechanical stones you may want to keep your eyes peeled for the upgraded version.

The dev connection, as alluded to in the preamble, is that Lil Bling is the self-proclaimed son and is shown in the current twitter header of WoW senior game designer Jonathan LeCraft (follow him on twitter at @TheCrafticus). There are many items through the World of Warcraft bearing his name, like the elusive Old Crafty. This includes the pet Crafty, which was live on the 5.4 PTR for a short time, and then unceremoniously axed.

crafty

One more pet down, some 600 to go. And now I need to take a shower.

Wastewalker Shu

Update for 6.0: This strategy still works really well. If you’re going on an Awfully Big Adventure with your Elekk Plushie, this strategy will work well for that too. Just swap in your Elekk where you ordinarily would any other battle pet to be leveled.

—–

It’s a new year, and my resolution is to stop slacking and write guides for all the tamers in Pandaria, as well as the Beasts of Fable, the latter of which I haven’t even revisited since they were radically buffed in patch 5.3. Of course this means I’m going to get the guide for Wastewalker Shu finished and then give up after two weeks and eat a lot of ice cream, as that’s how my New Years’ resolutions typically roll.

shu wow world of warcraft pet battles

Wastewalker Shu is a little tricky. The moves you use to beat his pets are somewhat counterintuitive, based on the strategies we’ve used up to this point. But then, what do you expect from a Pandaren who’d just set up shop in the middle of the Dread Wastes right next to Klaxxi-Vess, and then randomly decided to take up pet battling? A whole lot of logical decision making?

The team is going to be pretty familiar if you’ve wandered around this blog before:

shu team wow world of warcraft pet battle

The Gilnean Raven can be subbed for many other Flying battle pets to great effect, and in this case can be subbed out for the Crow. It’s debatable whether the Raven or a pet with Lift-Off like the Dragonbone Hatchling is a better choice, but the Raven tends to make for a faster fight. The Crab is there, as usual, because Shell Shield helps a lot for this fight, and others with similar abilities will work here too, like the Anubisath Idol, Feline Familiar, etc. The carry pet is mid-teens because of some potentially nasty AOE.

crusher wow world of warcraft battle pet

First up is Shu’s crab, Crusher. The reason I favor the Raven is because Crusher has a heal in his moveset. The reason the Dragonbone Hatchling is also an excellent choice is because Crusher also has whirlpool, which can be a pain for the Raven. It’s also worth noting that the Raven uses Peck in its moveset, and not the usual Alpha Strike. Crusher’s main attack move is Surge, so after his first couple rounds, your pet isn’t going first for the purposes of Alpha Strike’s additional hit.

Second is Pounder, who is the oddball. He immediately leads with Sandstorm.

shu sandstorm wow world of warcraft pet battles

A weather effect, oh no! *THIS* is why we brought that Raven really, right? To change the weather? We always change the weather! Nope, after a quick Rupture, poor Pallas usually goes up to birdie heaven. If Pallas dies before that Rupture, we’ll swap to the Crab as a soak, then switch to the carry pet for a turn before putting the Crab in til the end. Pounder’s main nuke, Quake, is an AOE that hits for roughly 300 in the front row, 150 in the back, for 3 rounds. Add Sandstorm’s shield effect and that Quake hits for diddly bupkis.

sandstorm wow world of warcraft pet battle

Sandstorm’s duration is only 5 turns now though, so if you opt to choose a pet with Sandstorm over a self-shield, you may be able to go even lower with your carry pet. The sandstorm shield is also one reason why I opted for Snap instead of Surge.

You should finish Pounder with your pet at full (or nearly full) health, at which point Mutilator comes out.

mutilator wow world of warcraft pet battle

My crab is slower, especially after Mutilator starts in with Powerball, and I didn’t choose Surge for my crab so Mutilator’s Counterstrike won’t proc its extra damage. Because my crab has shell shield, I’ll absorb the reflexive damage from his Spiked Skin too. Just keep wailing away at him while you keep up your defensive abilities, and he’ll be toast in no time. If you’re having trouble the first time around, sub in a single-hitting beefy mechanical here (the clockwork gnome’s alternate moveset–NOT the one with turret–is a good pick) and you should be golden.

shu beaten wow world of warcraft pet battles

I’d end with a witty one liner but I really need to get out of here. Jeez Louise I hate bugs.

wastewalker shu bugs wow world of warcraft pet battle

The video guide:

The Curious Case of the Elemental Family Ability

Most battle pet family abilities and their implications in a fight are pretty easy to figure out by reading the mouseover tooltip in your pet journal. Most of them are relatively straightforward. Well, the Undead one is a little goofy in practice.

undeadfamily

Your undead battle pet will resurrect for its immortal turn immediately after being killed. If you’re using a slow pet killed in the first half of a round, your pet will resurrect and carry out the action you’d queued before this round. You then get a sort-of ‘extra’ round resurrected.

But, this elemental racial.

elementalfamily

It seems straightforward enough, but then you start figuring in all the different weather effects and exactly what the nature of ‘negative’ is, and it gets kind of complicated. The confusion I had with this ability was cleared up by WoW Dev Jonathan LeCraft on Twitter:

elementals

I guess. Mostly? Um.

So, with that arose this post. I’m going weather effect by weather effect and laying it all out on the table. This is as much for me as it is for you.

To be clear, the application ability of weather will still hit, barring accuracy issues or blocks, so eg, your elemental will take the ~450 damage from Call Darkness when Darkness is applied.

sunlight

Sunny Day

Elemental Pet: health greatly increased, and heals for more.
Opponent Pet: health greatly increased, and heals for more.

This matters for percentage-based attacks, and if you or your opponent can heal you can close that gap. You’ll all lose that additional health if the Sunlight lapses though. There really isn’t a negative effect here so elemental battle pets don’t gain an edge in Sunlight.

moonlight

Moonlight

Elemental: receives additional healing, magic abilities hit harder.
Opponent: receives additional healing, magic abilities hit harder.

Moonlight is a really good example to illustrate the concept. Although magic abilities hitting harder could be considered a ‘negative effect’ (the Sunflower takes additional damage), this isn’t applied on the elemental’s end. It adds a multiplier to the magic abilities of the elemental’s opponent, making this a case where the ‘negative effect’ still applies. In other words, it’s not that the magic hits the elemental harder, it’s that the non-elemental’s magic hits its target harder.

arcanewinds

Arcane Winds

Elemental: Cannot be stunned or rooted.
Opponent: Cannot be stunned or rooted.

Arcane Storm is pretty straightforward, as stuns and roots are (generally!) detrimental. This weather effect is an excellent counter to the spider PVP team comps I’ve been seeing pretty often recently.

sandstorm

Sandstorm

Elemental:
Opponent: Takes (X) less damage per hit, accuracy reduced by 10%.

{EDIT} – I was incorrect here, as pointed out by Skarn in the comments. The elemental does not currently gain the damage shield effect, which appears to be a bug (twitter link: https://twitter.com/TheCrafticus/status/419169945335775232). I will be updating this section to reflect this info after more thorough playtesting. I certainly take blame, but will deflect a bit of that blame into boxed wine.

This is another of those strange cases. You’d think that the elemental’s damage would blast right through the Sandstorm. The damage shield is considered as a personal effect like though, so instead the opponent just soaks up that positive effect for itself like the Stoneskin effect. The accuracy blast still makes this a decent bit of weather to use as an elemental, as long as your elemental isn’t trying to stack DoTs on another battle pet or whatever.

scorchedearth

Scorched Earth

Elemental:
Opponent: Takes (X) damage at the end of the round; Burning (for abilities like Conflagrate).

In this case, the weather effect is entirely nullified by the elemental. This makes for an excellent choice to avoid certain combos. You go, Sunflower.

cleansingrain

Cleansing Rain

Elemental: Aquatic abilities deal more damage, harmful DoTs last one round fewer.
Opponent: Aquatic abilities deal more damage, harmful DoTs last one round fewer.

This is another case where the positive effect is applied at the opponents’ level. Aquatic abilities don’t hit harder on the elemental, they hit harder from the opponent.

blizzard

Blizzard

Elemental:
Opponent: Chilled

This weather effect is used exclusively for synergy purposes. An Elemental is an excellent c-c-c-c-combo breaker here.

darkness2

Darkness

Elemental:
Opponent: Blinded, heals reduced, accuracy reduced.

Seriously, Sunflower, I could do with you being slightly less smug in this screenshot. It’s like you don’t even care that you’re completely screwing things up for everyone else.

mudslide

Mudslide

Elemental:
Opponent: Rooted for 3 rounds when swapped to the front row.

This one pops up only very infrequently, and never, thus far, in the PVE game, but it’s good to know that you can avoid it altogether by using your elemental.

lightningstorm2

Lightning Storm

Elemental: Deals 10% additional Mechanical damage, takes (X) additional damage per hit.
Opponent: Deals 10% additional Mechanical damage, takes (X) additional damage per hit.

This is the effect that I found the oddest. In light of that tweet at the top of the post, it makes a bit more sense, but I’d assume that an elemental wouldn’t take the extra damage on each hit from lightning. Unfortunately, it does. If mechanical pets didn’t measure up against elementals like undeads against a paladin, this would be an excellent use of weather to defeat an elemental. The DoTs and other strategies can still make good on it, but not so much with mechanicals.

sunflowerbad

Hopefully this post helped shed some additional light on the weirdness that is the Elemental family ability. Using a family’s ability to the utmost can really help your pet battling strategies be their absolute best. I started drinking around Moonlight so I don’t really know what’s going on but this was super fun so let’s do it again sometime.