Tag Archives: daily

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Nitun

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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:

Wastewalker Shu

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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.

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:

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.

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.

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’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.

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.

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

The video guide:

Hyuna Of The Shrines

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6.0 Update: This strategy is still fully functional for level 1 carries against Hyuna. It’s also now functional for an Elekk Carry as a step in the achievement An Awfully Big Adventure.

Depending on your journey through Pandaria, this is either one of the most idyllic pet battles around, or one of the most depressing, making it an absolute must to complete before we continue on to unbroken Draenor.

Well, some of the ‘must do’ status is also because you can carry a level 1 pet here, but that’s so much less poetic.

The Feline Familiar is, as addressed on the blog before, a very unique battle pet. I like using mine here because of the magic damage against Hyuna’s first battle pet Skyshaper, a Flyer. As long as you use a pet with Stoneskin or something like it (even Sandstorm) you’re good to go. I really like using my Emerald Whelpling with Emerald Presence here, and that may be a better choice, but it’s a bit less attainable than the Feline so I chose to highlight the latter. I’ve even used my Emperor Crab in this carry strategy successfully, even though he takes extra damage from everything Skyshaper dishes out. I’d recommend staying away from the aquatics in general though.

The Gilnean Raven can be swapped with many different flying pets too, but the anti-healing effect of Darkness combined with the Raven’s strong offense makes her my #1 pick here. Lastly, the placement of the pets is important, as we’ll be sending in that level 1 Marionette late in the match.

The reason for the shield ability is clear fairly quickly. All of Skyshaper’s abilities are small hits, and it’s also packing DoTs. As long as you keep that shield up you’ll make it through no problem.

Fangor is a fairly standard snake, and you should make it through at least half of his life with your first pet. He’ll Burrow early on though. If you’re having trouble and just want the bag, I’d recommend a mechanical here, with a but. You’ll be able to summarily mow down this snake with say, a Clockwork Gnome, but the fight really starts once you get to Dor the Wall so you need to choose your moves carefully.

Dor has a big heal and uses a Shell Shield of his own. The very first time I did this fight, I blasted through the first two pets in under 10 turns, but the entire fight lasted over 150. I was using my usual anchor, the Emperor Crab, with his own heals and Shell Shield.

The heal is why the Gilnean Raven, with its Call Darkness heal counter, shines here. Because of the shield, you’ll want to stay away from multi-hits, like Moth Balls, in favor of large ones, like Moth Dust.

Dor’s 3rd ability, his only offensive one, is Headbutt, which is where that level 1 carry comes in. Headbutt is on a 4-round cooldown, so once he performs it the first time, you have 3 rounds to swap in that level 1 pet with no risk. With a Safari hat, he’ll be level 11 after you win.

Hopefully in far fewer than 150 rounds.

Flowing Pandaren Spirit Tamer

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Update for 6.0: This strategy still works really well as a two-pet leveling strategy. If you’re here for an Awfully Big Adventure with your Elekk Plushie, this works perfectly well for that, too.

It is about good freaking time I wrote this, but I’ve been putting it off.

This Spirit Tamer uses a gimmick I’ve seen parroted a few times in PVP. It combines huge damage with stuns, but it’s relatively quite easy to counter if you know what’s coming.

Here’s the lineup I use:

There are a few other ways you can go. The Tamer’s first pet is aquatic, so I use my dragonbone hatchling Legree to counter. I would definitely recommend something that does a lot of Flying damage with some kind of avoidance, namely Lift-Off. A moth with Cocoon also works, but not *quite* as well. My speedy rabbit Dill is there for the dodge/burrow combo. We’ll get into why in a bit, because I use it a little bit differently here. I’d recommend keeping with a critter, because the last guy is elemental, and you definitely want at least a Burrow or Dodge or something. A Core Hound Pup might be an alright choice if you have one. I initially did this fight with my Perky Pug, so just the one avoid can work, too. The pet to be leveled is fairly high level and not Mechanical because there is a lot of AoE flying around.

The first pet is an aquatic fish named Marley. He has Dive, Whirlpool, which pops up a lot on Emperor Crabs in PVP, plus Pump, which makes all those abilities hit harder when it’s active and then gets unleashed for big damage.

Whirlpool is particularly devastating in PVP, because it restricts swapping, but here it’s just a lot of damage. He’ll also pair this with Dive, so that if you don’t avoid it somehow, it’s a huge amount of damage all at once. We’ll use Liftoff the turn before it blows up to avoid it, easy peasy. I prefer a bird with Lift Off to Cocoon, because Cocoon will only avoid one hit so you’ll take lots of damage from Whirlpool or Dive (because as a flyer you’re going to be faster), but my experience is that a moth can rip through here fairly easily regardless.

Next up is the critter Tiptoe. He has an AoE with Tidal Wave, a straightforward nuke, and a heal. You want to kill him ASAP because of the AoE. I just keep attacking/avoiding with my Flying pet until it dies, and then swap to my rabbit. Tiptoe doesn’t have a lot of burst damage, but if he heals a lot you’ll find yourself with a dead back row.

(NOTE – As of 5.4, Tiptoe the strider is now properly classed as an Aquatic battle pet. However, I still use the strategy as performed, and really, we’re a bit better off because the Flying pet we used for Marley continues to have strong attacks.)

Kill him ASAP. I use Burrow to try to get big damage, but other than that, don’t worry about defense with your main pet. You’d just be wasting the turns you have until his heal comes off cooldown.

And now, Ladies and Gents, the gimmick.

The Flowing Pandaren Spirit casts whirlpool like the fish, but pairs it with Geyser for enormous damage, at the end of a round no less. Luckily, with your rabbit, you can just use your Dodge or Burrow abilities to avoid it.

I don’t use the typical rabbit ‘pattern’, because after the first set where both Whirlpool and Geyser hits at once, the two abilities are out of sync. I use Dodge to counter one and Burrow to counter the other. If the pet you chose is working off just one avoidance ability, avoid the geyser. You should make it past the first one no problem as they’re sort of synced up, and you’ll likely make it past the second series at the very least.

I’ve been seeing the geyser/whirlpool combo in PVP a few times recently. The only pet with this combo is the mini Flowing Pandaren Spirit, so if you see that coming, you know what you’re in for, but you can try using whirlpool or geyser with Dive for another decent combo.

In the end, you’ll be able to beat this spirit rather handily, even if he doesn’t make for a good choice to level lowbie pets.

The reason I was waiting on giving him his own walkthrough is because of the central conflict of Mists of Pandaria. It makes me deeply sad to think of this Spirit Tamer, being here for time immemorial, training his pets and enjoying the natural beauty of southern Krasarang Wilds. Long before Garrosh took to destroying the beauty of the Vale, he also ruined the serenity and beauty of this Tamer’s far-flung locale.

We’ll get him little guy, though it’s cold comfort now.

I also made a quick & dirty video of this fight if you’d like to watch for more help.

Whispering Pandaren Spirit Tamer

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The Whispering tamer is in a very picturesque spot of Pandaria. She overlooks the area shrouded in fog where Nazgrel, Windsor and Chen Stormstout fought in the Mists of Pandaria trailer, and it’s just breathtaking, even if it does make her hard to find. All those stupid pillars in the Jade Forest look exactly the same to me. I usually look for the fog because it has an absurdly long draw distance, and then look immediately west, and there she is.

Oh, hi there. I’m here to hopefully make you cry real tears. But if you can’t, since you’re made of wind and all, maybe you could like, pretend for my benefit. That would be fantastic.

The thing is, Whispering has a really big weakness, which makes her a total walkover if you exploit it. Let’s see if you can pick it out after I link the team:

One pet to be leveled, and 2 dragons.

Funny story. All the attacks of all her pets are Flying. Every last one. Seriously. So as long as you pick a couple dragons, you win. My Emerald Whelpling Emilia is a really good choice as a tank, with her Emerald Presence shield ability, and her heal Tranquility, which I as a druid especially enjoy. It’s a very similar setup to my crab. Stella the Celestial Dragon also has a lot of staying power with a self heal, and a unique combo group heal/group nuke on a long timer.

The celestial dragon may not be available to a newer collector, but don’t worry. Almost any team of 2 dragons will work. I’d definitely consider switching her out for someone with a bit more firepower like a Spawn of Onyxia.

This particular setup is a sure thing, but takes a while to win. There are no backrow abilities either, but for these tamers I like to start a bit higher, because that first attack almost kills them even at level 8. Regardless, this is a relatively easy fight and a great place to start your spirit taming journey. Even though I’m writing this walkthrough third. Whatever.

The leadoff pet is Dusty, a moth which is somehow a critter. (NOTE – After 5.4, Dusty is now properly a Flying battle pet, not a critter. However, the strategy as follows is still otherwise accurate).

Against Stella, Dusty’s name is

weak, weak, weak.

If you do opt to use an Onyxian Whelpling or some other dragon with a big nuke on a timer, be mindful of the timer on Cocoon Strike, which can absorb that nuke. Otherwise, meh.

The second pet is Whispertail the dragon. Whispertail has 3 abilities. Guess what they are.

weak, weak and weak. He does have an armor shatter ability, but it just makes his damage go from yawn to yawners. Meh. He doesn’t have any dodges or blocks like Dusty, so just beat him down until he’s on the floor.

It’s kind of weird. Neither Whispertail nor Dusty have an analogous pet a player is able to have, as far as I know. Dusty closely mirrors the abilities of all moths, but is a critter. Not that either would be a huge asset to our stables, I’m just saying. It’s odd compared to what we’ve seen before.

The last in the lineup is the Air Spirit. Like the others, all her attacks are

weak, weak.

The difference here is that the Air Spirit also has a rather annoying heal, which is why she only rates 2 out of 3 weaks. I switch to Emilia (even if Stella hasn’t gone to the Great Gold Hoard In The Sky) and make sure to use her Emerald Presence ability, because all the Spirit’s attacks are bundles of smaller attacks. I only use Tranquility when I get below 800 HP or so because otherwise I’ll spend every 3rd turn refreshing it, and dude I have other things to do today.

The Whispering Spirit Tamer’s proximity as the crow flies (druid pun) to the Vale and Black Market Auction House make her a good target to hit while you go about your day. I find beating her quite relaxing before going off and killing orcs or biting virmen in the face. Because after all, look at that view.

If you’re here to go on an Awfully Big Adventure with your Elekk Plushie, this strategy is completely valid. Just swap in your Plushie where you would your carry pet.

The video below shows a carry using my Elekk Plushie.

Burning Pandaren Spirit Tamer

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

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

—–

For now, this guy is my white whale.

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

ugh.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Maybe.

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

Cloud Serpents

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Grand Master Tamer Aki

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Jeremy Feasel

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Update for 6.0: This strategy still works really well for a two-pet carry strategy. To complete this leg of the quest An Awfully Big Adventure, this same strategy can be employed, though it may be a good idea to try & absorb a few more of Fezwick’s hits with your Elekk Plushie to ensure a victory.

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Jeremy Feasel at the Darkmoon Faire is a difficult fight to be sure. But how can someone so cordial be so annoying?

Look, he’s even waving. How nice of him. Well, his annoying nature is in no small part because of his damnable monkey Fezwick.

Annoying little Beast. His mechanical tonk, Honky-Tonk can be problematic too, but the tonk doesn’t wear a hat like he’s people. The third in his team, a magical darkmoon eye named Judgement, is the reason we come to the Faire to demolish some pets… the eye is only obtainable from the bag Feasel gives as a daily reward for beating him, and that’s really the only thing in those bags worth obtaining. But, you know, thanks for the grooming kit, Jeremy.

This is the lineup I typically use:

Eagle-eyed observers will note that this is virtually identical to the Major Payne lineup. Well, that’s because it’s the same screenshot and I’m reusing it. For Jeremy though, I usually lead off with my Fel Flame. Dante can typically lay out the first two pets Payne sends at him, as long as he leads with his most damaging DoT (Dragonkin for the Eye and Elemental for the Tonk) and the immediately uses Conflagrate.

Conflagrate typically eats up at least half of Judgement’s health pool and more than that for the elemental-vulnerable Honky-Tonk as long as they’re burning while I use it (hence, dotting up first). Because it’s 2 hits, it doesn’t trigger the magic pet type bonus, where they can’t be dealt more than 40% of their health in one hit, either. After that, I do the less effective DoT, then continue using the strong one until the pet dies. By then, conflag is usually off cooldowns and can be used again once I make sure the new pet is burning.

Feasel will always lead with these 2 pets and then use Fezwick as the anchor. Usually, Dante can take out both these pets on his own no problem, but if he dies before the second one is down, my clockwork gnome Prufrock can step in to finish things off before he has to take on Fezwick.

Prufrock’s mechanical attacks are strong against Fezwick. The real enemy with Fezwick is RNG. If you get stunned a lot, you may be screwed, which is why I keep Ishmael as my strong defense anchor. Sometimes all I can muster with Prufrock is a turret before Fezwick uses a combo of his quicker speed, stuns (which can break the gnome’s Repair ability) and high damage strikes to burn him down. As a result, if you’d like to use this strategy to powerlevel I’d definitely recommend you use something a bit higher level with a bit of defensive power, or just be prepared to burn some tokens.