Tag Archives: 5.2

Zandalari Raptors

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.

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.

Jurassic Park Wait I Mean

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The Isle of Giants is now live, which means there are 5 new pets out there just waiting for a good home. So, I got suited up for a new adventure.

The shoulders are to help me blend in with my surroundings. This is some big game hunting we’re about to do, and we really need the camouflage. You’ll see. I mounted up, fired up some tunes, and headed for parts unknown.

Well, slightly unknown. To get to the Isle of Giants the first time, go to Zouchin Village in Kun-Lai and start flying north. You’ll start to get fatigued, don’t panic. Because you aren’t allowed to use your flying mount on the Isle, once you cross over into its waters, you will be dismounted, but that’s cool, just turn into a whale if you can and keep swimming. Oh, YOU can’t turn into a whale? Well, keep swimming anyway. You’ll make it. Probably.

Once you get there, make sure to pick up your faction’s flight path on either side of the beach that greets you as you swim up: Alliance in the West, Horde in the East. Aw, they’re slant-wise named after one of my favorite dinosaur video games of all time, Bubble Bobble. I wonder why. Hmm.

Oh man wait, there are dinosaurs here! In fact, therAAAAAIIIEEEEEEE!

Besides exploring and getting smashed to bits by enormous dinosaurs, there are 2 things for pet collectors to do. You can kill dinomancers for the adorable pets they drop. There are 4 tiny baby raptors wearing helmets. They will soulbind to you as items, but you can cage them and sell on the AH if you get too many of one type while waiting for the one you don’t have yet to drop. As of now they’re ranging ~300g, but that should drop shortly, as hunters also need to kill the dinomancers for the very rare book that allows them to tame the direhorns on the island.

For me as a moonkin, the dinomancers can be tricky. They have an ability which heals them to full, but they only cast it when they’re above 50% health. It’s a relatively short cast, and if I screw up my interrupt with a minute-long cooldown (seriously, a minute? siiiigh) I basically have to wait that minute. However, once they go down below 50% health, they stop casting. Why?

Let’s just say it’s kind of difficult to cast a heal when you’re a triceratops.

So, why even kill these guys, if it’s difficult and you can buy those silly raptors off the AH anyway? Well, look up 2 screenshots. See that bone? Yes, I said bone. Stop giggling. That bone is currency. You go here, in this cave on the map, to do so.

You can trade in 1 bone for like 2g, 10 for a mote of harmony, or 999 for a spectral porcupette. Once you get all your baby raptors though, I’d consider switching over to killing direhorns, as they drop far more bones per kill and also have a chance to drop an egg. The eggs haven’t been fully datamined yet, but from the anecdotal commentary on wowhead, it seems like they’ll contain mounts and other goodies.

There are many other goodies and places to see on the island. I recommend seeing the boat (with a full group and a tank), as well as just general exploration. Unfortunately there aren’t any pet battles to do on the island, but the ambiance is jus–

Clever girl.

Update – The very first thing I got out of my primal egg was a sweetass black raptor mount.

Elite Pet Battles

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Maybe I should say, quote-unquote ‘elite’ pet battles. I was very excited for this feature, but as I noted, couldn’t find much information about the nitty-gritty of the battles. So, with a 45 minute queue behind me and a graphics card that could not be less happy with me, I set off!

I picked up the quest Beasts of Fable from Sara Finkleswitch as I logged on.

From what I understand, this quest opens up alongside the Pandaren Spirit Tamers after you beat Aki.

This round of battles, it is one legendary pet vs your entire group. You can screw around with making up the perfect lineup if you’d like. There’s an excellent, very thorough post on WoWInsider you can use as a guide, in addition to all the locations. The thing is, it isn’t needed. At all. I was able to solo almost all these pets with one pet. Here’s my lineup:

The first thing you probably noticed was an unnamed level 23 resilient roach. He’s just there for insurance. I cast Apocalypse, then immediately send him to the back row. If my other pets don’t manage to kill the fabled beast in 15 turns, I win anyway. This goes through dive, and none of the Beasts are beetles or roaches, so you just… win. I chose the level 23 because it was the highest one I had at the time. Insurance is also why I have my trusty non-critter tank crab Ishmael in the lineup. He’s basically there as a meat shield just in case my nether faerie dragon Spenser doesn’t get the job done.

So, what makes this dragon so OP? In a word (well, 2) Life Exchange.

Basically, the Elite pets are supposed to be 3 pets in one. And that’s the thing, they’re in *one*, meaning they have a huge health pool. Life Exchange as it’s coded now ignores the HP cap of the dragon, which means it looks like this:

I chose the Nether Faerie Dragon as the vehicle for this, but it honestly doesn’t matter which pet with this ability you pick. With one fell swoop, you will deal at least half of any of these fabled pets’ health.

I expect both these strategies to get fixed somehow, because at this point it is too easy. Though, you do have to kill a whopping 10 beasts at all ends of Pandaria to finish the quest for your reward, the red panda.

You should note that when you turn it in you can re-do it immediately as a daily if you’d like. The bag reward has a chance to contain a non-red red panda, and apparently has a much higher drop rate on upgrade stones, so it’s worth redoing. Also, as seen in the below screenshot, you have a really decent chance of getting Lesser Charms with each fight you do. Because people might run low on those, I guess.

One additional thing to add. Remember that level 23 resilient roach? Well, he’s not getting much XP out of the deal, even with my Safari Hat on.

So, this isn’t really a good time to try powerleveling your level 1 undercity roach.

It’s Patch Day, Patch Day, Gotta Get Down On Patch Day

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5.2 goes live today, hooray! There is a new, very exciting feature coming for pet battlers. In addition to the new pets available in the new zones, Elite Pet Battles are live!

Unfortunately, I didn’t play the PTR this round, so I don’t have any firsthand information for you. And even sadder, no screenshots. Well, okay, here’s one.

I haven’t been able to find much of any information on the new Elite Pet Battles, so expect a full writeup from me in a week or two. This forum post is the only info I’ve found, and though it’s rather cursory, it does reveal some helpful information for those of you venturing out get your red pandas. Don’t get distracted by that red pandas thing. HEY! HEEEY! OVER HERE! Worse than my toddler, I swear.

According to that post, all the new pets are either a beast, a critter or an aquatic. This means we can form a few teams that’ll have a shot at winning before we know much else. My personal choices will likely include the clockwork gnome for his heavy beast damage and my emperor crab for his staying power. It looks like a couple of these will need something like the rapana whelk’s avoidance ability Dive too, but since whelks are critters, they’ll be a poor choice against the beast type.

But, back to the red pandas. RED PANDAS! After you beat Aki and unlock the Pandaren Spirit Tamers quests, you will now also unlock the quest Beasts of Fable, which seems to require you to beat all the elite battle pets. After you do, you get your red panda, and it also turns Beasts of Fable into a daily quest, which gives you yet another bag of random pet crap. That bag of crap sometimes contains an alternate colored red panda! Also, it apparently has a higher drop rate on upgrade stones, so it may be worth doing daily.

According to the forum post linked above, these elite pets are as easy as Tamer Nishi, and considering how awful Nishi is this is a little hard to believe. The comments on the Red Panda wowhead link above seems to indicate that these battles are very difficult, on the order of Major Payne or Aki. I can’t vouch one way or the other, so exercise extreme caution when at first you engage these elite pets.

There is a lot of information circulating on the new battle and pets obtained from bosses on the Isle of Thunder though. WarcraftPets has a list of all the new pets obtainable in-game. wowhead has a more comprehensive list with locations and abilities, though this list is a bit out of date as, sadly, Pierre is no longer on the table for 5.2. Also somewhat sadly, the Fluxfire Feline has seen significant nerfs, and the Reflection ability has been replaced with the less powerful Deflection. This will likely make pet pvp more enjoyable for some and less enjoyable for others. El’s Anglin has an excellent guide to catching the new fishing pets, too. Yes, fishing. Ugh.