Tag Archives: auctionable

Wolpertinger

Rabbit

Yeah, I know. I already highlighted the frogs and now I’m going for Rabbits, which are just as low texture, though at least these ones have eyes.

The reason I have to highlight these is that they’re fairly key in a lot of both PVE and PVP strategy. They are better at turtling than Turtles. The combination of Dodge and Burrow means that, if conditions are right, your pet will only be hit a couple times after several turns of evasion. Those conditions include your rabbit being a Speed breed, or your opponent being super slow. As discussed in my Breeds post, this can make quite a bit of difference. If you have a Speed breed rabbit, it is one of the fastest pets in the game. If you have a different breed of rabbit, it is still going to be quite fast, but it’s not a lock for evasion the speed breeds are.

And now it’s time for another video, yay! This one pits my S/S rabbit Dill and my H/B rabbit Lennie against the first pet in the Thundering Pandaren Tamer fight. I continue on with the fight with Dill, just in case my acclaimed writeup on the topic wasn’t enough to help you beat him. I get it, different people learn in different ways.

The only rabbit with no available speed breed is the Elfin Rabbit. The Spring Rabbit from the Noblegarden holiday is the Speed breed by default, but you have to burn a Critter token to get them up to Rare quality. They also have, by far, the most amusing idle animation.

Beyond just rabbits, speed is incredibly valuable in PVP. If you get a very speedy pet and your opponent chooses to swap pets, you can frequently make them ‘skip’ turns while swapping. For Rabbits, this not only increases your avoidance right then, but makes you one turn closer to your next Dodge.

Sometimes in pvp, you can practically hear the frustrated shrieks through the monitor at your adorable little ball of fluff and evasion.

Midsummer Festival

Gilnean Raven

10 Replies

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.

Frog

3 Replies

After 8 years of World of Warcraft, there is a certain amount of nostalgia people have for the game. Now that we’ve returned from Outland, now that we’ve crushed the Lich King, now that we’ve lived through the Cataclysm and Deathwing’s fall, there are very few things which have remained constant through the years and continue on as a touchstone of what the game once was.

For some people, that constant is their character. This is not the case for me. I started off as a priest, then made my way to a badass pvp hunter, turned over a new leaf as a mage, and then rerolled as a druid, with lots of alts peppered in between. Even now Blizzard is making a concerted effort even to change these characters with upgraded models and graphics. It is definitely time for an upgrade to these graphics, but it just adds to the growing feeling of impermanence.

For some people, the constant is their guild. I’m in a guild right now which actually is several iterations removed from my very first guild in vanilla. There were so many stops, schisms and gquits the guild today is barely recognizable as the one I joined in November of 2004. There are very, very few guilds left today with a charter that old.

Even the world we knew has changed with the Cataclysm. Mankrik’s Wife has received a loving, proper burial, and the bridge in Redridge has reached its completion. NPCs have moved, rep grinds have changed, items have been removed. I still have the tea with sugar given to me by poor little Pamela Redpath. Though she remains trapped in the same long, tragic unlife as when I first visited her in early 2005, my tea with sugar has changed to sweet tea. I haven’t lived in the American South for terribly long but dude, those are not even close to the same thing.

But, there is one thing that has remained the same. One thing that binds us all, regardless of faction. One constant through the turmoil that has been our lives, in-game and out.

Low texture frogs.

Low texture frogs accompanied us to the alien landscape of Outland and frozen tundra of Northrend.

Low texture frogs survived the Cataclysm. Even now low texture frogs live in our very cities.

When we landed on Pandaria’s rocky, inhospitable shores, low texture frogs were there to greet us, and low texture frogs entered the Vale of Eternal Summer before we did too.

There are currently 18 pets in-game that use the low texture frog model. Some are hard to get, like Mojo. Some aren’t tradeable or trappable, like the Jubling. The Lifelike Toad is a mechanical. They all share a moveset, so I have to also mention the Horny Toad, which has the same moves but looks like a lizard and isn’t really low texture. The tooltip reflects this too.

Low texture frogs have a unique move called Frog Kiss, which has a chance on hit to turn your victim into a frog, taking them out of action for a turn. It also increases your damage done with each hit, much like Arcane Blast, and can ramp up into a powerful nuke. Frogs also have the option for a good single-turn self heal, or a weak AOE heal with a weather component. Their abilities are rounded out with a DoT that persists through pet swaps and the no-frills aquatic ability Water Jet.

The one variant is that the Lifelike Toad replaces the DoT with the mechanical heal Repair, giving him a whole lot of healing power.

I’ve really enjoyed using them in low-level pvp. The large heal plus Frog Kiss makes them a force to be reckoned with, even up against one of those teams where they try to cheese the level gap to win. They don’t really translate well into higher-level PVP though. I’ve also been using one as a workhorse while I tame new pets and level old ones (I really like AOE heals for that).

But more than that, low texture frogs are a touchstone. Low texture frogs are a reminder of what once was. In this time of faster, smarter, brighter, prettier, low texture frogs remain as Blizzard’s embodiment of the Pandaren mantra, “slow down.” They continue to be–

OH FOR THE LOVE OF—

Scooter

1 Reply

This guy and his snaily brethren are some of the better PVE tanks, depending on the rock, paper, scissors of it all.

Or, rock, paper, scissors, slime as the case may be.

So, what makes snails so appealing? They generally can’t die. Not only do they have a shell shield ability, they also have Dive and the damage with return heals ability Absorb. Scooter is only available in the H/H or 6 breed, which means that his health pool at level 25 with a rare upgrade is a whopping 1960, making him one of the very few pets available with over 1900 health.

The only other snail available with the H/H breed is the Shimmershell Snail. The other breeds or other snails are also amazing tanks for sure… ‘get a snail’ is largely interchangeable in the pet community for ‘get a Rapana Whelk’ after all. But health that high even as a novelty is pretty sick in a tank.

An additional strategy would be to combine his Acidic Goo ability, which has a 25% additional damage taken debuff, with his Dive. It’s also possibly a synergy buff to a glass cannon pet like a Fel Flame. This obviously sacrifices a good amount of the snail’s survivability, though. To round out his abilities there’s the 25% chance to stun beast ability Headbutt and Ooze Touch, a no-frills magic nuke.

I personally am not as in lurve with him as some other tamers are. The Undead absorb move he uses to deal damage plus his Critter type makes him take forever to kill Critters and vulnerable to Beasts. That absorb move also deals minimal damage period, so fights with him take forever regardless. But there are certain fights where snails are integral, like my thrilling strategy for the Burning Spirit Tamer. As long as you’re not fighting beasts he’s a pretty good pick.

Some tamers doodle their name with the snail’s the same way I doodle “Ms. Liopleurodon Crab.” I prefer a tank that can’t be felled by an ill-placed salt shaker in favor of one that goes well with butter, I guess. Different strokes!

You get Scooter The Snail from the original Childrens’ Week quest, from either Orphan Matron Nightingale in the Cathedral District of Stormwind or Orphan Matron Battlewail in the Drag (lower level, beneath the inscription trainers) in Orgrimmar. He was added to the original complement of pets in 2011.

Legs

1 Reply

Legs is one of the newest kids on the Childrens’ Week block, so he’s likely the one you’re missing, if you’re missing any. He was added to the Shattrath orphan roundup in 2011.

He’s quite unique, in that he’s a Magic pet with a mix of Magic and Aquatic abilities. The very new Tiny Blue Carp from fishing (mandatory uuuugh) is the only other pet I’ve run across which has a mix of magic and aquatic. The Carp is aquatic though, so it’s vulnerable to the flying pets which would be hurt more by the magic damage.

The aquatic abilities used by Legs are the very strong nuke Pump and the CC ability Whirlpool. He has a similar magic CC ability in Gravity. Surge of Power is a huge magic nuke, but a risky one as you have to ‘recharge’ after using it. Laser and Focused Beams are his bread & butter damage abilities. He doesn’t have avoidance abilities, so he’s pretty much a glass cannon.

Even though he was the last to be added, to me he’s the one that makes me reminisce the most about the Burning Crusade expansion. Sure, Peanut kinda looks like an elekk, and there were those beholder mobs in that one Tempest Keep dungeon. Zangarmarsh was one of the most unique environments Blizzard has designed thus far though, and Legs looks like he was directly lifted out of the swamp.

WTB 4 Fertile Spores PST. Ah, memories.

Legs is obtained by doing the Outland Childrens’ Week quest given by Orphan Matron Mercy in Shattrath City.

Peanut

1 Reply

Peanut is a cute, unassuming little fellow from Outland. He’ll occasionally stand on his hind legs and let out a little elephant tootle. In function, he’s similar to his Beast type Clefthoof Runt brethren, only just to make things interesting, he’s a critter. Even though he’s just clearly an elephant, the biggest currently living land animal on Earth.

Kay, critter.

Survival is all he has in the way of mitigation, though he does have a stun move. He has a couple buffs moves as well. Combining one of these with the percent damage ability Trample makes him a decent choice against the critter-type Beasts of Fable. A 10% health strike does a proportionally larger amount of damage to their huge health pools (you know, if you don’t want to cheese it like I do with a Nether Faerie Dragon or Cockroach).

Peanut is obtained by doing the Outland Childrens’ Week quest given by Orphan Matron Mercy in Shattrath City.

Curious Oracle Hatchling

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Much like the Wolvar hatchling, only much more tongue & teeth in the bargain.

urgh.

He has the same Humanoid benefits as the Wolvar pup, but his abilities are quite a bit different. A couple of his abilities go back to the Wrath rep he’s associated with, namely the really gross Aged Yolk. Between the teeth and the yolk, this apparently gives him Dreadful Breath.

urrrrrrgh.

The dreadful breath ability is a fun one to mess around with, especially when paired with a frog or strider who can make it rain (not in the way that involves strippers). Backflip can be strong in PVP depending on how fast the other pet is. Super Sticky Goo is a decent choice for pvp too, though in general this isn’t a very strong pet in pvp. He doesn’t pack a strong enough punch before he’s completely annihilated, depending of course on the rock paper scissors of it all. There’s always the gross out factor, I guess.