It’s rare that a WoW NPC is named absolutely perfectly for its role. My personal favorite is Malfurion Stormrage, whose name literally means Badangry Angryangry. But Gorespine comes pretty close.

Gorespine is a Beast of Fable in Book 3, along with Ti’un and No-No. He’s located on the extreme West of the Dread Wastes, on a cliff overlooking the Briny Muck. Gorespine has 2 relatively straightforward attack abilities, plus the slightly complicated Spined Skin. It adds a per-hit shield component and a reflexive damage component if you can manage to punch through the shield. Gorespine’s regular damage does either 600 a hit, or 400 a hit with a DoT. So, he has spines, and he’s going to gore you. Get it?

The first 2 battle pets selected, the Darkmoon Tonk and Darkmoon Zeppelin, have a straightforward single-hit damage dealer, plus a huge hitting single nuke blaze of glory move. The anchor battle pet, the Sunreaver Micro-Sentry, has a few relatively straightforward moves, but more importantly the Extra Plating move, which gives that last pet far more longevity to hopefully finish off Gorespine.

The strategy is a bit similar to what we used for Kafi. Basically, we single-target nuke Gorespine until we’re fairly sure our pet will die next turn, and then we use our last Pyrrhic move. Explode on the Zeppelin means your pet just up & dies after delivering a massive hit. Ion Cannon on the Tonk means that after its hit, it has to recover for several rounds before you can perform any other actions (including swapping pets). Both mean you need to use them when you’re done with that pet.

Saving the Sunreaver Micro-Sentry for last means that we can use Extra Plating to get in extra damage on Gorespine if necessary, but I’ve rarely had to use my anchor pet at all, unless I duff one of the 2 take no prisoners moves. Every hit all your battle pets deal will receive a ~130 reflexive damage in return, so just using a whole bunch of pets with Extra Plating generally doesn’t have the firepower to win the match.

In place of the first 2 battle pets, the Tranquil Mechanical Yeti or Menagerie Custodian are good choices, as are the Pet Bombling and Blackfuse Bombling, because they all have those big match-ending moves. Just keep in mind that you need to select non-DoT, single-hitting damage moves in your other slots. A pet with Launch Rocket, like the Clockwork Gnome, might be an alright backup choice. Launch Rocket’s 2-turn nature makes it a bit less easy to use, but may lend to more dps throughput depending on how many turns your pet can survive. The Mechanical Pandaren Dragonling is further down the list for me here, because while it does have the Explode button, it has no other meaningful offense to use here. To be completely honest, in place of the Micro-Sentry I actually prefer Son of Animus, but he’s still super rare and the Micro-Sentry gets the job done really well anyway. Nearly any pet with Extra Plating is an OK choice here.

Howl Bomb strategy works really well here, too.

Look at the ickle widdle faaaace this little guy has just wooook at his…

Ahem. Well. Look, I have a thing for otters, okay? They hold hands in the wild. How can anyone not like that? Anyway, we have a job to do. No mercy.

I said no mercy.

No-No is in book 3 of the Beasts of Fable daily along with Ti’un. He is located in the Vale of Eternal Blossoms, next to the Serpent Spine, just a bit north of the Setting Sun Garrison. No-No’s main offense with Tail Slap is straightforward, though with a bit of an accuracy wrinkle. He also uses Dive. No-No’s unique move is a huge dodge with his Beaver Dam ability. So, we’re going to have a lot of counting to do, because Dam.

I try to keep this site kid-friendly, so let me have my moment.

I’ve found that just about any team of 3 flying battle pets will work for this fight. I like the Moth in particular because of Cocoon and Moth Dust’s chance to sleep, and the Pterrordax Hatchling’s heal is really handy, but if all you’ve got is 3 chickens that’ll work pretty well too. Really.

The thing about No-No’s Beaver Dam ability is that the 2 charges on it are absorbed both by your attacks and by his, making this the perfect time to use any abilities you’re going to need to charge up, self-buff abilities or heals, as well as make pet swaps. This also means that non-turret DoT strategies are going to shine, because they’ll continue to tick, and you can just pass turns. Lastly, possibly the most important part, because his hits destroy his own shield, anytime the shield is up, you need to pass until he destroys it for you.

I know, it’s weird and unintuitive and kind of unsportsmanlike, but letting No-No hoist himself on his own petard is the path of least resistance. Beyond being aware of the dam, if the flying battle pet you’re using has an avoidance ability like Cocoon or Lift-Off, you’ll want to avoid the damage component of Dive for longevity’s sake, but it’s not really necessary.

One small final note: If one of your 3 chosen pets is a Firefly-type battle pet, do not use Glowing Toxin. For some reason, it consumes a charge of No-No’s Beaver Dam.

And then he’ll go back to sleep by a fishing chair, or whatever. You don’t know what otters do in their spare time either, don’t judge.

Because of the nature of Beaver Dam, this is one of the few fights where the Howl Bomb strategy is a bit sketchy. For alternate options, I’d recommend the strategy laid out for Dos-Ryga, because although it obliterates No-No’s dam, it also obliterates No-No.

Ti’un is an exception. I mean, they’re all exceptions at this point, right?

Ti’un The Wanderer is an Aquatic Beast of Fable in Book 3 of the Beasts of Fable Daily quests. He’s located in the Townlong Steppes, just west of the Gao-Ran Battlefront. Ti’un packs a strong defense, strong offense, and his one terribly, awfully unique thing among Beasts of Fable: an AOE.

Our first step to deal with AOE is usually to break out our Sandstorm pets, but not so fast. Ti’un has the ability Shell Shield, which adds an extra amount of flat damage we’ll have to burst through to even make a scratch. Add a Sandstorm, and we won’t be able to get anything at all past him. His other main offense is Pump, which does a ridiculous amount of damage after being activated, then re-activated for a big hit. He, like Nitun way back in Book One, uses a variable moveset, so he could conceivably just murder all your pets in 4 turns a pop, or he may kill all 3 at once with his AoE. Very, very tricky. This particular strategy hasn’t failed me yet, though.

Yeah, I know, the Raven again. The Nocturnal Strike combo is so deadly it’s really hard to pass up in general, but especially here, because it’s one of very few abilities which is a single hit and powerful all on its own, without a ton of synergistic buffing malarkey. Many of the buffs I’d use in this situation require being able to punch through that shell shield in order to activate, and almost none can. A Chrominius or Fox with Howl would help a bit, but because of the shield both bring relatively negligible damage otherwise in this case. I chose the moth for a couple reasons. The first is that moths are generally really readily available at high levels so everyone has a couple kicking around to help fill out a Flying pet-heavy team. The other is to illustrate just how hearty Ti’un is. Alpha Strike is able to push through that shell shield mentioned earlier, but the added damage for being faster is tacked on as an extra hit, making it, well.

lol.

For this reason, Peck is the preferred move in slot one for all my pets here, including the real star of the show here: the Kaliri. If you can muster up a few Owl-type battle pets like the Kaliri (including Miniwing, the Night Elf vendor pets, etc), that would be fairly ideal. Though their damage-reducing debuff does need to get through the shield, Ti’un is occasionally very lax in applying the shield, and because your birds will almost always be faster as soon as the shield drops you can apply it. The other reason you really want to bring some Owls to the party is Predatory Strike.

Predatory Strike is on a relatively long cooldown and deals a good amount of damage to start, but once your opponent is below 25% health, it deals double damage. For Ti’un, that magic number is 566 health. Predatory Strike is especially appealing here, because the extra damage is tacked on to the first hit, not split into a separate hit like Alpha Strike. This means that after the first hit punches through the shield, the added damage is entirely applied to your opponent. If you can get Ti’un to 25% and have an Owl as your anchor, you pretty much win.

This is why I start off the fight with the Gilnean Raven instead of using it as the anchor. I also lead with the Raven because with my speed and the two-turn nature of Ti’un’s Pump, I can 1-2 punch Darkness and Nocturnal Strike for sure at least once before my Raven is toast. I use the Moth second because I can stall out the rest of Darkness’s hit-lowering Blindness aspect by using Cocoon. I wait for Darkness to run out before trying Moth Dust because of its long cooldown. We don’t want Moth Dust to miss. Stuns are nearly always fantastic for single-pet fights, and even if not it deals a ton of damage. And we definitely want to stall out the rest of Darkness for that Predatory Strike.

An alternate strategy I’ve used is a team of just moths. Heck, if I get lucky with the timing of my Cocoon to absorb a Pump or two and hit Moth Dust’s sleep effect I can all but solo him with just one. But that requires a lot of RNG on your side, so I’m not going to recommend it as my A-line strategy here. It’s just nice to note if you’d like to try this guy and have a few moths kicking around. The Howl Bomb strategy works nicely here, too.

This walkthrough will be mostly about how to do a cool thing with a cool thing and… well, let’s just get started.

Greyhoof is located in the Valley of the Four Winds, near Stormstout Brewery. He is in book 2 of the Beasts of Fable daily with Lucky Yi and Skitterer Xia. Greyhoof’s offense is mostly tied up around Roar. Meaning, after he Roars, your pet is going to go down quick with his buffed Hoof and Trample. He has no defense or healing to worry about. You just have to kill him before he kills you.

The Wild Golden Hatchling is there entirely for Call Lightning. Any other pet with Call Lightning will work here. A Tranquil Mechanical Yeti is probably the best pick overall, but it doesn’t really matter. The Clockwork Gnome and Lil Bling are relatively key, but we’ll get to that in a minute. The Gnome’s Build Turret and Lil Bling’s Inflation and Make It Rain abilities come into play here, and all of those are unique (relatively) to each pet.

To start off the fight, we’ll cast Lightning Storm with the Wild Golden Hatchling, then swap to the Clockwork Gnome for a turret. Here’s what happens next.

Each tick of the gnome’s turret effectively hits twice, because Lightning Storm buffs each hit with an extra hit of its own. It’s nice. Kinda cute. But we can do better. We’ll swap to Lil Bling, then go right into Inflation. Inflation is a series of small hits, buffed with the Lightning Storm, which is nice too. Then, the Shattered Defenses debuff kicks in for the Turret fire.

That damage ticks 3x per round, so with the turret and Lightning Storm synergy alone it’ll take just 4 turns to complete this fight, but you’re also getting the 3x ticks from Inflation. If Inflation runs out, a quick Make It Rain will finish this fight.

The damage from Lightning Storm obeys all debuffs on each pet, so any additive or multiplicative debuffs have amazing synergy with it. A Lightning Storm strategy was one of my favorites in PVP before the duration on Lightning Storm was halved a few patches back for this exact reason. If you don’t have a Lil Bling to use, you can use a similar strategy with a Wild Magic or Exposed Wounds pet, though without the finisher Lil Bling brings with Make It Rain. This is definitely a glass cannon strategy more than a control strategy, but since Greyhoof has no real defense to speak of, this is a good place to use it.

I’ve also had success here with the strategy I used for Kafi, though it’s a bit harder to predict exactly when Greyhoof is going to kill each battle pet, making this a hit or miss proposition.

Lucky Yi is an unassuming little cricket in the second book of the Beasts of Fable dailies. He’s a stone’s throw away from Farmer Nishi in The Valley Of The Four Winds.

Lucky Yi has 3 abilities. One is an enormous heal with a component that increases his maximum health. He also has Uncanny Luck, which increases his chance to hit by half and his chance to crit by a quarter, and the straightforward Quick Attack, which always goes first, and either hits for 300 or over 500, depending on whether he crits.

So, this is a fun one.

In this particular strategy, the Hatchling’s main role is to provide Exposed Wounds. There are many other pets that can do the same, or use Wild Magic. Either works well here, but the extra Beast damage provided by the Hatchling’s Bite is a really nice perk to using the tiny raptor. The Summit Kid can be swapped for a different Lamb, but there aren’t a ton of choices here. This is the key pet for this strategy, with Chew and Stampede. The Zooey Snake is a beast pet with a lot of good synergy with the other two because of its poison, but just about any 3rd beast will work out really well here. I’d recommend a monkey with Banana Barrage here too.

The first thing you’re going to do is throw that additive debuff up on Yi, then swap to your goat. This is where the combo comes in. We’ll use Chew, and then use Stampede to apply the Shattered Defenses debuff. That next round, Chew will also hit, now doubled by the huge buff from Shattered Defenses.

Stampede itself also gets a really hefty bonus from that Exposed Wounds buff, but don’t get too comfortable, because the fight isn’t over yet.

Lucky Yi’s heal, with his incredible 549 power, heals for over 700 damage. Even halved, that’s a significant amount of healing to overcome, which is why I go for burst over a heal debuff team. Most heal debuff pets don’t have good utility against a single critter, and those that do tend to be hampered a lot by the Darkness accuracy debuff. Lucky Yi’s Uncanny Luck means that he is not, so I find I have a really dicey time due to RNG when I try going that route.

After Stampede runs its course, I Chew, which hits from the back row, then swap back to the Lashtail, both for a big Bite buffed with Shattered Defenses, and to refresh Exposed Wounds. I then swap back to the Goat to Chew and Stampede again, then (if necessary) swap to the Snake.

In general, Chew when it’s ready, keep up that Exposed Wounds buff, and Stampede as a filler and you’ll be in really good shape.

For more options, the strategy for Nitun works excellently here, as does the Howl Bomb team.

It would be wildly inappropriate to begin a walkthrough with cursing, but I am sorely tempted.

Dos-Ryga is one of the Beasts of Fable in Book 1, along with Nitun, Kafi and Ka’wi. He is also one of the more confounding battle pets in the entire series. Dos-Ryga is an Aquatic battle pet, so his simple counters are Flying damage offense and Magic family defense, right? So then we start the battle with a Magic pet to counter and

not so fast. While Dos-Ryga has an aquatic nuke with Whirlpool, that is on a relatively long cooldown, but his main nuke Frost Breath is, bizarrely, a Dragonkin move, meaning that Undead pets defend strongly against him. There’s also quite the wrinkle in his third move, a massive heal. Luckily it’s on a cooldown as well, meaning that this is a good place for a burst synergy team.

The Shrine Fly adds 2 DoTs, one Flying, which really packs a punch. The Sen’jin Fetish adds Wild Magic, and has a bit of an extra defensive boost because it’s Undead. The Chicken is there because of Flock. Nearly any substitution involving these 3 abilities, or proxies to these three abilities (eg, Expose Wounds vs Wild Magic) will work swimmingly here.

Get it? I said swimmingly, and he’s a fish?

Everybody’s a critic.

We’ll start off the fight with that Shrine Fly and its two DoTs. There is one oddity here though.

The Shrine Fly’s Glowing Toxin will always deal 6% of the target’s health per tick. The only thing you can use to buff this move’s damage is something like Sunlight, which buffs max health. It’s still a really good move to keep in your pocket for single-pet fights like the Beasts of Fable, because it’s unaffected by the halfed-damage Boss buff these pets have. But, it’s also not going to be buffed by the rest of the moves we’re about to set up, while the other is. This isn’t a bug. It’s intended. Don’t panic. Have your towel? Moving on.

After we hit Dos-Ryga with the first couple DoTs, the fight starts to get a little hairy. Dos-Ryga’s moves are dynamic, like Nitun’s, so I can’t tell you for sure exactly how it’s going to go down. After your Fly goes in, the clock on Whirlpool is ticking, which does big damage and roots your active pet. When this happens, I just sit back and nuke a bit with the pet I’m currently using, being sure to keep up my applicable buffs (the DoT, Wild Magic, etc). Even if the stars don’t align and your DoTs from the Fly wear off before you can bust out your Chicken, you’ll still be fine as long as you keep up the duration on Wild Magic. I do advocate making your swaps ASAP and not wait until each pet in the chain dies, because dawdling will only prolong the fight.

At some point, you’ll be able to put in your chicken, and that’s when the magic happens. Flock away, and try not to get fish scales on your boots.

The real benefit of using Flock over Howl is that, not only do you get the big buff, but each individual hit of Flock is also buffed by Wild Magic’s damage. This makes Flock’s damage component go from feeble to fearsome.

Alternately, you could just grab a team full of Crows and Gilnean Ravens with Darkness to half the healing and lots of frontloaded Flying damage, but where’s the fun in that? Especially since crows eat fish, and this is one fish you’re going to want all to yourself.

Somebody pass the tartar sauce.

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!

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

AUGH, it’s coming right for us!

Here’s the strat in action: