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Farmer Nishi

9/25/2014: This fight is now up to date for Warlords of Draenor. For an Elekk Carry, simply use the advice for a regular carry.

Nishi was the laughingstock of the Pandaren tamers for a good long while. Most player tamers could solo her with nearly any level 25 battle pet. Located in the heartland of Pandaria’s Valley Of The Four Winds, she made an easy target even for those level 86 alts.

However, a bug fix in 5.4 gave her claws.

The abilities her pets avoided using in order to make her such a pushover were suddenly back in full force. Luckily, like most of the other tamers, as long as you know your counters, you are good to go.

The Strider has a lot of very strong aquatic offense and a weather effect. I’ve used frogs in this slot too. Either is fairly reliable as long as you make sure to switch in that weather effect. The crab is pretty much just there for cleanup. I’ve used mechanicals in that slot, because this battle pet will be facing Nishi’s beast, but if my first pet goes down early this can make for bad times because the rest of Nishi’s pets are elementals. A Flying with Lift Off or the Anubisath Idol makes for a good anchor too.

The biggest chunk of your strategy begins immediately. Nishi’s Siren has Solar Beam, which hits very hard normally, but tacks on an extra big hit if it’s in Sunny weather. So of course the first thing Siren does is cast Sunlight. You need to change the weather, now. You have an intervening turn where Siren casts a heal on itself before it’ll explode your pet’s face off. If your first battle pet is above Siren’s speed (280) you can put in your carry pet off the bat and enough time to change the weather. However it’s important to note that if your pet is at or below 280 speed you won’t, so you’ll need to start with your first ‘real’ battle pet, and then swap in the carry pet further down the line. In this case I usually switch in the carry during Toothbreaker‘s Sons Of The Root, and make sure my carry is above level 8 or so. Either way is fine, but you just need to be aware of it before you start.

After you change the weather, beating Siren ain’t no thing. The very first thing the next pet, Toothbreaker, will do is submerge and start hitting you with Sons of the Root while he’s immune. When I use the Strider, I use these turns to do things like heal (by casting my weather again) and set up Pump. You really just have to wait a handful of turns while you take a bit of damage. Just stay calm and take your turns. Then, when he surfaces, beat him up. His offense isn’t all that strong.

Last pet, Brood of Mothallus, is a Beast with Burrow and Acidic Goo. That combo together can produce some devastating results. With the crab as long as I keep up heals and that shield I’m good to go, especially since Brood’s 3rd ability, the reflexive heal, is Undead damage. If I use an Anubisath, I use Stoneskin and Deflection to counter Burrow, and that’s all she wrote. With a Flying I use Lift Off when he Burrows and boom goes the dynamite. If I use a mechanical you know what I’m kind of running out of idioms to say I win, so let’s just say I win.

Now help me figure out how I’m going to steal this melon before Nishi sees me.

Here’s the video, recorded using the Elekk.

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.

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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:

The Curious Case of the Elemental Family Ability

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Most battle pet family abilities and their implications in a fight are pretty easy to figure out by reading the mouseover tooltip in your pet journal. Most of them are relatively straightforward. Well, the Undead one is a little goofy in practice.

Your undead battle pet will resurrect for its immortal turn immediately after being killed. If you’re using a slow pet killed in the first half of a round, your pet will resurrect and carry out the action you’d queued before this round. You then get a sort-of ‘extra’ round resurrected.

But, this elemental racial.

It seems straightforward enough, but then you start figuring in all the different weather effects and exactly what the nature of ‘negative’ is, and it gets kind of complicated. The confusion I had with this ability was cleared up by WoW Dev Jonathan LeCraft on Twitter:

I guess. Mostly? Um.

So, with that arose this post. I’m going weather effect by weather effect and laying it all out on the table. This is as much for me as it is for you.

To be clear, the application ability of weather will still hit, barring accuracy issues or blocks, so eg, your elemental will take the ~450 damage from Call Darkness when Darkness is applied.

Sunny Day

Elemental Pet: health greatly increased, and heals for more.
Opponent Pet: health greatly increased, and heals for more.

This matters for percentage-based attacks, and if you or your opponent can heal you can close that gap. You’ll all lose that additional health if the Sunlight lapses though. There really isn’t a negative effect here so elemental battle pets don’t gain an edge in Sunlight.

Moonlight

Elemental: receives additional healing, magic abilities hit harder.
Opponent: receives additional healing, magic abilities hit harder.

Moonlight is a really good example to illustrate the concept. Although magic abilities hitting harder could be considered a ‘negative effect’ (the Sunflower takes additional damage), this isn’t applied on the elemental’s end. It adds a multiplier to the magic abilities of the elemental’s opponent, making this a case where the ‘negative effect’ still applies. In other words, it’s not that the magic hits the elemental harder, it’s that the non-elemental’s magic hits its target harder.

Arcane Winds

Elemental: Cannot be stunned or rooted.
Opponent: Cannot be stunned or rooted.

Arcane Storm is pretty straightforward, as stuns and roots are (generally!) detrimental. This weather effect is an excellent counter to the spider PVP team comps I’ve been seeing pretty often recently.

Sandstorm

Elemental:
Opponent: Takes (X) less damage per hit, accuracy reduced by 10%.

{EDIT} – I was incorrect here, as pointed out by Skarn in the comments. The elemental does not currently gain the damage shield effect, which appears to be a bug (twitter link: https://twitter.com/TheCrafticus/status/419169945335775232). I will be updating this section to reflect this info after more thorough playtesting. I certainly take blame, but will deflect a bit of that blame into boxed wine.

This is another of those strange cases. You’d think that the elemental’s damage would blast right through the Sandstorm. The damage shield is considered as a personal effect like though, so instead the opponent just soaks up that positive effect for itself like the Stoneskin effect. The accuracy blast still makes this a decent bit of weather to use as an elemental, as long as your elemental isn’t trying to stack DoTs on another battle pet or whatever.

Scorched Earth

Elemental:
Opponent: Takes (X) damage at the end of the round; Burning (for abilities like Conflagrate).

In this case, the weather effect is entirely nullified by the elemental. This makes for an excellent choice to avoid certain combos. You go, Sunflower.

Cleansing Rain

Elemental: Aquatic abilities deal more damage, harmful DoTs last one round fewer.
Opponent: Aquatic abilities deal more damage, harmful DoTs last one round fewer.

This is another case where the positive effect is applied at the opponents’ level. Aquatic abilities don’t hit harder on the elemental, they hit harder from the opponent.

Blizzard

Elemental:
Opponent: Chilled

This weather effect is used exclusively for synergy purposes. An Elemental is an excellent c-c-c-c-combo breaker here.

Darkness

Elemental:
Opponent: Blinded, heals reduced, accuracy reduced.

Seriously, Sunflower, I could do with you being slightly less smug in this screenshot. It’s like you don’t even care that you’re completely screwing things up for everyone else.

Mudslide

Elemental:
Opponent: Rooted for 3 rounds when swapped to the front row.

This one pops up only very infrequently, and never, thus far, in the PVE game, but it’s good to know that you can avoid it altogether by using your elemental.

Lightning Storm

Elemental: Deals 10% additional Mechanical damage, takes (X) additional damage per hit.
Opponent: Deals 10% additional Mechanical damage, takes (X) additional damage per hit.

This is the effect that I found the oddest. In light of that tweet at the top of the post, it makes a bit more sense, but I’d assume that an elemental wouldn’t take the extra damage on each hit from lightning. Unfortunately, it does. If mechanical pets didn’t measure up against elementals like undeads against a paladin, this would be an excellent use of weather to defeat an elemental. The DoTs and other strategies can still make good on it, but not so much with mechanicals.

Hopefully this post helped shed some additional light on the weirdness that is the Elemental family ability. Using a family’s ability to the utmost can really help your pet battling strategies be their absolute best. I started drinking around Moonlight so I don’t really know what’s going on but this was super fun so let’s do it again sometime.