Tag Archives: flying

Guardian Cub

With this little guy retiring from the Battle.net shop in just a few short weeks, I figured I’d give him a quick feature, if you’re debating whether to spend your hard-earned real life cash on him before he goes away.

I usually don’t focus on the visuals of pets too closely, but this guy has one of the cutest idle animations I’ve seen, where he paws at a gold fly that spawns near him occasionally. All his animations are adorable, but that one in particular makes me want to pet him. He’ll also fly behind you, and until Gloria’s Glorious Gliding Goodies are realized in WoD that’s a pretty unique commodity.

The Guardian Cub has a pretty standard cluster of usual flying moves: Cyclone, Wild Winds & Slicing Wind. He’s also one of a very few Flying battle pets with Magic offensive abilities, with Onyx Bite in his moveset. Nether Rays are the only others. Rounding out his moveset are the Pyrrhic Reckless Strike and the damage-boosting Beast ability Roar.

The issue with this pet is that, although his moves are solid, his stats aren’t the best. Even with that unique Magic ability, Nether Rays are more versatile, and have better available stat allocation, so this pet is hardly a must-have for battling.

The really unique thing about this pet is that, to my knowledge, he’s the only battle pet which is both available for purchase with real cash and also able to be caged in-game. People cottoned on to this scheme real quick, so the value plummeted soon after they first appeared in the shop. I bought mine ages ago for under 2000 gold. However, since the announcement that this battle pet is being retired, the gold value has skyrocketed again, and there are very few available for trade. It’s hard to say what’s going to happen to the gold value after it’s retired, but if you’re looking to legally swap some real life cash for some in-game gold this may be your ticket, even if your gratification is a wee bit delayed.

Until he’s retired, possibly as soon as June 18th, the Guardian Cub is still available for purchase here at the Battle.net store: (link removed)

edit – As of this later date, the Guardian Cub is no longer available for purchase from the battle.net store. You may still be able to find one on your local auction house.

Dread Hatchling

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

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

Confirmed.

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

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

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

Prepare yourselves. Warlords is Coming.

Skywisp Moth

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Recently, I’ve launched onto an impromptu project, working out a way to do the Celestial Tournament with only tamed battle pets. It’s rather hit or miss thus far. This little moth, added in 5.4, is fairly instrumental in my strategy for that.

Don’t let its cute, glowing particle effect fool you. It has a very unique combination of abilities which turns him into a veritable beast killer.

Taming one is a bit of a challenge. In order to get to the spawns, you have to be able to access the Timeless Isle. I’d also suggest going on a character with a bit of offensive firepower and some kind of slowfall or a Goblin Glider. A mage is really excellent.

In order to access these guys you’ll need to hitch a ride on an albatross.

It’s not a very, let’s say, pleasant proposition for your character, especially since those albatrosses like to take their sweet time sauntering their feathery behinds around, but doing so is fairly key for accessing several different things on the Isle. Once I get past the areas with a lot of player foot traffic I usually try to get the albatross down so that just a couple of hits will kill it, because if you overshoot your target it’s quite the pain in the behind. You may need to do this several times to get the breed or rarity you’d like too.

The reason for the slowfall is that there are only 2 ways down. Either hitch another long, circuitous ride with another albatross, or jump.

The reward is worth it. This is one of the best pets to kill Beasts, bar none. Aside from the largely unattainable Dragon Kite ($80 USD or so on ebay at the time of this post) this is the only Flying pet with a mechanical ability, making it both offensively and defensively strong against beasts. This guy is particularly suited to go up against Xufu because his Cocoon Strike ability can be timed to intercept either Xufu’s Feed or the enormous first hit of Moonlight. Many moths have Cocoon, but lack the offensive firepower to beat Xufu down before his next Feed. Call Lightning is a game changer.

For Xufu and this tamed-pets-only project specifically I’m pairing him up with the very few mechanical tames that are out there. So very, very few tames. A fast Cogblade Raptor with Exposed Wounds and Batter in particular makes for a really nice combo. Were I not limited to only tames I’d also strongly suggest the Clockwork Gnome, a long-time favorite here at the Roundup to pair with Call Lightning.

If you’re using the Call Lightning ability I highly recommend using the Moth’s multi-hit Slicing Wind over Reckless Strike. Call Lightning shares a slot with Moth Dust, which has a chance to stun. It’s a decent ability, and it’s also key in many strategies which use other moths, making this particular moth kind of a 2-for-1 battle pet.

A fun ability which isn’t quite as functional in the situation I’m planning for here is Counterspell. Because it doesn’t ‘silence’ the ability along the lines of Nevermore, or even put it on cooldown, Xufu will just Moonfire or Feed on his next turn. Sometimes this delay is excellent strategy but here it’s far better to just absorb it.

Beyond the battle mechanics, for me personally this little guy will be an excellent companion as I make my way into Warlords of Draenor. With the ban on flight until 6.1, he will be an excellent reminder of the times I took to the sky and flew among the stars.

Well, in the mouth of an albatross but lets not get too picky here because I’d rather not remember that part.

Plump Turkey

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Between Hallow’s Eve and Winter Veil, there is a less flashy holiday known as Pilgrim’s Bounty.

Well, I guess the flash may depend on where you choose to celebrate.

There are several activities and achievements surrounding Pilgrim’s Bounty. The achievements are the goal here, because in order to gain the Plump Turkey battle pet (also the Pilgrim title) you have to complete the Pilgrim meta-achievement. This means you have to complete the following achievements:

Food Fight! – Sitting at a harvest table outside one of your major cities, target a person sitting at the same table and use your ‘pass food’ button (usually hotkeyed to #1 in your seat-cum-vehicle). This is easiest to do day 1, or with friend dragged along for the occasion. Here’s a map of the sites you’ll need to visit.

You can do this at the same time as…

Sharing Is Caring – Use your vehicle to pass out some food, then leave your seat and get in another and pass out that food. Pass one out to each seat before moving on, because you’ll get a stacking series of buffs. This becomes a meta buff if you cycle through all the chairs. You’re now on your way to…

Pilgrim’s Paunch – Get that meta buff from each of your capital cities (Horde Version). If you have a friend who plays a mage, now is the time to promise that she’s totally getting a ton of pets from you for your birthday, just as long as she ports your lazy butt around from city to city for this. You’ll also really want those ports to do…

Now We’re Cooking – The cooking recipes are relatively low level, and even more attainable as one of the main ingredients in one of the recipes is the 1 skill point cooking recipe Spice Bread. The catch you need that mage friend for is that each capital city has a unique ingredient on sale, as well as a few common ones. This means you ought to buy up a job lot of them when you port around, because you need a lot of the cooked foods to complete…

Pilgrim’s Progress – (Alliance Version) Complete each seasonal cooking daily. Each capital city has a unique ingredient on sale, as well as a few common ones. Of course the lady in Thunder Bluff wants pumpkin pie, when the pumpkins are for sale in Undercity, etc. The one catch is that nobody sells turkey. But there are wild ones in Elwynn Forest and Tirisfal Glades…

The Turkinator – You may want to wait to complete this until quite late in the holiday, at off-hours, because with CRZ you’re going to have a hell of a time shooting enough turkeys with this very short buff. I would definitely recommend doing this on a druid or hunter, as both classes have an instant cast spell or two and speed boosts. Try to do it at off hours if at all possible.

On completing each of the daily quests, you can pick one of several items. The first ones I’d go for is the Turkey Shooter.

Turkey Lurkey – Like every other holiday, the achievement where you have to perform an action on a specific member of the opposite faction is an enormous pain, and easier to complete the earlier you start. You use that Turkey Shooter on every race of rogue. I ended up finishing this one last year on the very last day of the holiday by creating a level 1 of the opposite faction and running /who Worgen Rogue. There were 2 of them, and I guessed that the guy who was level 87 and in Townlong had just started the zone. He had, and I got my pet, after a good amount of emoting that I wasn’t going to kill him. The Dwarf, Troll and Worgen seem to be the most difficult to find.

Turkey Shooters are single-use, so you’ll need at minimum 8 of them to get all the rogues. Your shooters disappear when the holiday is over. The other reward from the daily quests, the Pilgrim’s Attire, does not. One achievement involving the attire is time sensitive, but the other can be completed as your leisure.

Pilgrim’s Peril (Horde Version)– Wear your pilgrim gear, and then go to all the cross-faction capital city and sit at the table. You are going to be ganked, by both guards and players, and wearing the Pilgrim stuff makes you an easy kill. If you can res at a table, you can get your achievement the second you res, and then run away. Use the maps above as a guide. If you have an Alliance character I highly recommend doing these achievements on that character. The Horde sites are far more straightforward to access than the Alliance ones for opposite factions, mostly because of the boat travel involved in getting to both Darnassus and The Exodar. This can also be quite a frustrating achievement if you’re trying during peak hours.

Terokkar Turkey Time – The last of the bunch. Wear your quest reward Pilgrim stuff and kill the final boss in Sethekk Halls. If you’re fed up after the PVP and all that, you can put this one on the back burner. You can do this in March or something as long as you kept your Pilgrim clothes.

When you complete them all, you gain that stunning title but more importantly, the Plump Turkey battle pet is now yours!

The Plump Turkey is similar to other battle pets, namely the Highlands Turkey and Turkey. The latter 2 have far better breeds, as the Plump Turkey is only available in H/P, but those are both tamed so will require a bit of legwork. Here speed is important, as one of the main points of strategy to using a Turkey is in the unique stun ability Food Coma. It’s unique in that, not only is a delicious pun (additional pun also intended), but it lasts 2 rounds. In days of yore, people used to go with 3 turkeys and stunlock their pvp opponents until they ragequit. In fact, this is a large part of why the Resilience buff is now a part of the pet battle game. Also punny, Gobble Strike deals small damage but increases your speed by half for several turns.

Sharing a slot with Food Coma is the super popular for PVE debuffer, Flock. It’s quite the gamble in PVP, but the Shattered Defenses debuff is a really important one. Squawk shares a slot with Gobble Strike, dealing small damage and decreasing your opponent’s damage by 25% for several turns. The first slot is a choice between direct damage spells, either Peck or Slicing Wind. Between the decent damage and stun utility it’s an all-around really solid choice as a starter flying pet. It does start off with Uncommon rarity, so eventually you will want to use an upgrade stone on it.

One of the best reasons to nab one of your own is because it’s always nice to have a snack close at hand.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

Gilnean Raven

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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