Tag Archives: pet profile

Celestial Dragon

As you collect more & more battle pets, at specific benchmarks, you’ll get an achievement and a new pet. The first one is the Reeking Pet Carrier at 50 unique pets. This counts, for example, a brown snake and a black snake as 2 different pets even though they’re not exactly special little snowflakes. Who are you trying to fool, snakes? Up until 150 pets and the Littlest Pet Shop achievement, they’re all pretty much duplicates of other pets you can tame or purchase. With that milestone, the Celestial Dragon awarded has both a model vastly unique from any other battle pet in the game and a few unique moves as well.

The unique move is, well. Starfall is similar in nature to Moon Moon’s moon tears, and packs a lot of really cool graphic punch (see above), but as both offense and heal, it just isn’t all that effective, even on 2nd go-around after it’s buffed by its own Moonlight effect. It’s also on a fairly long timer, making it kind of a poor choice unless you’re just grinding wild battles and want to see some stars.

She’s been the recipient of a few nerfs over time. She used to have the much stronger Dragonkin ability Breath instead of the current Elemental Burn in the first slot. Combining this with a strong heal in Ancient Blessing made even stronger with Moonlight in the third slot made for one of my go-to battling grinders. The overall effect was close to a current Spawn of Onyxia with more staying power. But now, she’s not really a first choice. Rounding out her moveset is the offense dampener Roar (though for me this is a poor choice because it deals little damage and that first slot is most of her offense) and the completely bafflingly placed Arcane Storm, which isn’t really a popular choice to begin with.

By now, most WoW players are aware that our favorite scapegoat Greg Street has moved on to Riot Games. As a result, many players were in a tailspin for a while there. Who is going to be at fault for every little aspect of the game that goes awry? Enter Celestalon.

Celestalon’s official title is Technical Games Designer. Though Celestalon’s level of snark isn’t quite what Mr. Street once used, a hashtag (#blamecelestalon) has been circulating, used in the vein of #thanksobama, to blame Celestalon for things that couldn’t possibly have been his fault. So, I’d encourage those of you battlers to #blamecelestalon for the nerf to the Fluxfire Feline, just to make him feel at home.

Or um, because this is supposed to be trying to butter up devs for upcoming information, that’s probably not such a hot idea. Maybe you should just #leavecelestalonalone? I’m kind of bad at this.

(You can follow him on twitter @celestalon).

Lil Bling

Leave a reply

We’re getting to a weird point in time for many WoW bloggers, and the WoW community as a whole. While most people were very excited at the Warlords of Draenor reveal at Blizzcon, there’s been a dearth of official news since. The gaps have been filled almost entirely via tweetlists (oh and by the way, breeding epic pets are out for WoD, says developer Cory Stockton in this random tweet). As a result, lots of bloggers have taken to fanciful prognostication, mostly about the nature of this or that about the expansion, including a fun Warlords of Draenor release date pool hosted by Alternative Chat. The other common current blogger pastime ties into this, namely a good amount of schmoozing devs, largely on twitter, and a fairly constant stream of questions asking them what else is coming next.

Personally, I still have pages and pages of material to blog about and several videos slated. Beyond that I’ll likely do a few a la minute PVP posts, add to my ongoing leveling saga (you guys WHY did I think this was a good idea?), and I still have a staggeringly large number of battle pets left to write about. My blog is nearing its 1 year anniversary (!) and if I had written about a pet every single day up to this point I’d still have more than half of them to profile. With so much material left, I figured I might as well combine both my ongoing pet profile series and kissing some developer or CM behind for a scrap of information or two. I’m not proud.

Lil Bling is the son of Blingtron 4000, the friendly, flashy robot who dispenses trashy romance novels, healing potions, and other miscellaneous junk in your faction’s Shrine, or outside the inn at Halfhill. Unless you’re on a PVP server, and then the Blingtron outside the inn is pretty much just a trap for sniping lowbies from the roof of the inn with your frost mage.

Look, I already said I’m not proud.

Once he’s crafted, the Blingtron 4000 can be dropped every 4 hours by an engineer. If you’re not an engineer, you’re at the mercy of someone who is. At this point in the expansion, the crafting cost isn’t terribly steep (I did have to use my farm to gather the Spirits of Harmony I needed quickly) so it’s a good option for an alt. For patch 5.4, Blingtron had a few new things added to his loot table of trash, including a Blingtron Brawler’s Guild fight and the new pet Lil Bling.

Lil Bling’s moveset is quite unique and worth looking at. As touched on briefly in the Macabre Marionette post, he is the first Mechanical with the Shattered Defenses debuff with Inflation. Inflation is equally suited to pair with both abilities in the third slot, Launch Rocket and Make It Rain. Make It Rain will win out on fights with a damage cap, like the Celestials, or if you have an extra proc like Call Lightning, but Launch Rocket paired with this buff will all but completely wreck nearly any normal pet.

The other choice in the first slot, SMACKTHAT.EXE, works well with on-hit synergy, but doesn’t provide it. The benefit to that skill over Inflation is you’re not locked in for multiple rounds. Rounding it all out in the middle slot is either the damage dampening Extra Plating, or the mixed bag Blingtron Gift Package, which has a 50/50 shot to either hit really hard or heal. The former choice obviously offers far more control vs the RNG-heavy latter, but I generally find the latter more fun. You can just see the person on the other side of the keyboard wondering what the heck was THAT?!

I expect we’ll be seeing a lot of Lil Bling in strategies that arise during Warlords. As I mentioned, he is the first mechanical battle pet with the Shattered Defenses debuff, so it stands to reason (or maybe to beg the question) that we may be seeing some big, beefy Beasts we need a tiny robot to beat down in the not so distant future.

I would strongly recommend getting one soon, both because of that and because once WoD hits it’s very likely non-engineers won’t be seeing much of this glittery little guy anymore. In addition to the low drop chance from Blingtron’s daily gift, this pet is also tradable, so you may want to just try the auction house. He’s dropped as Uncommon from the box, so if you’re low on Mechanical stones you may want to keep your eyes peeled for the upgraded version.

The dev connection, as alluded to in the preamble, is that Lil Bling is the self-proclaimed son and is shown in the current twitter header of WoW senior game designer Jonathan LeCraft (follow him on twitter at @TheCrafticus). There are many items through the World of Warcraft bearing his name, like the elusive Old Crafty. This includes the pet Crafty, which was live on the 5.4 PTR for a short time, and then unceremoniously axed.

One more pet down, some 600 to go. And now I need to take a shower.

Anubisath Idol

4 Replies

Let’s talk about this OP jerk.

I’m sorry, was that overly prejudicial and just a tiny bit bitter? The reason, as a dedicated pet battle blogger, I kind of hate this pet is because its moveset gives it a bunch of utility unparalleled in nearly any other pet. If I write a walkthrough somebody frequently chimes in with, ‘I just use the Idol.’ Well, unless it’s an encounter better served by using the Pandaren Water Spirit which–don’t even get me started.

If you’ve read through the archives here and are familiar with the blog a bit, you’ll know that my style of guide is somewhat wordy. I usually describe a fight, my tactics, and make suggestions of types of moves across a number of pets to counter a tamer’s strategy. My aim is that you’ll be able to find a solution to a tamer’s puzzle with what you have in your stable already, even if you need to level it a bit. As such, you’ll frequently see phrases like, “a damage shield” or “avoidance move” or “a pet with some kind of weather.” The reason I engaged in that bit of baldfaced bias earlier is because this pet? This pet has all three of those.

The Anubisath Idol has Stoneskin (damage shield), it has Sandstorm (weather, and ersatz damage shield to boot), and it has Deflection (avoid). There really isn’t another pet with this kind of utility. A snail may come close, but the function of the more difficult to time Dive makes it so that you’re still somewhat vulnerable to certain counters and definitely to most DoTs, while Deflection is a straightup dodge everything move. Also, the Humanoid Anubisath has very few weakness in the current tamer battles while Critters generally get eaten alive on the regular. As a result, the Anubisath Idol can stand in on nearly any of the Pandaria tamer battles without blinking an eye. I’ve seen a few walkthroughs floating around claiming that you can carry a pet on all of the Pandaria tamers with him and one other battle pet.

His one Achilles heel is that his offensive accuracy is a bit low. His highest accuracy offensive move, Crush, is a base 80% hit chance. If you happen to choose Sandstorm, its accuracy hit means this plummets further to 70%. His other main offensive move Demolish shares that slot, and hits ludicrously hard but has an extremely low base 50% chance to hit, making it generally a poor choice prone to RNG woes. To round out the moveset, also RNG-heavy, is Rupture, with a 25% chance to stun. This shares a slot with Deflection, generally making Rupture not worth it.

His model is a fun, unique one, straight out of AQ40, which is where he drops. You can also buy him off your friendly neighborhood AH, but he tends to be on the pricier side because he is so invaluable as a fighter. He is also a part of the Raiding With Leashes achievement, making him one of many necessary to obtain in order to get Mr. Bigglesworth. Bigglesworth has a lot of good utility himself, with some avoids and a stun or two, but it’s not the near-universal utility the Anubisath has.

Guys, I’d tell you to go nab this pet ASAP but really, this guy’s utility is so good that he’s kinda putting me out of a job here. So if you love me and want to keep reading, please make like Nancy Reagan and say no to this teeny juggernaut.

…Please?

Skywisp Moth

Leave a reply

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

Leave a reply

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!

Feline Familiar

3 Replies

I know I’m not the only one out there with a mage alt.

If I’m not playing Frost, with my gigantic sonorous bff Blubs by my side, I feel like I’m missing something. A mage needs a familiar. My mage’s typical chosen familiar is a little offbeat, but if you’ve been hanging around this blog for awhile you’ll probably guess that it’s my Perky Pug. But dogs aren’t the iconic companion of a mage. At the point I rolled my mage, cats were the property of Donni Anthania in Elwynn Forest, and my blood elf is far too fabulous to go paying cross-faction prices. Then, another option arose.

If you play a mage, you will want to add the Feline Familiar battle pet to your arsenal. If you don’t, you should probably start. You’ll still want to add this pet to your arsenal in any case, because it is a fantastic battler, with a unique range of abilities.

It’s one of 3 Beast pets with Magic abilities in Onyx Bite, making it nice against Flying pets but super vulnerable to Mechanicals.

It also has Stoneskin, making it a strong defensive choice as well. Prowl almost always makes for an excellent combo. Also, oddly, this pet uses Call Darkness, which is coming into vogue as a heal breaker. If you choose that move though, you need to be careful to time it and your Devour ability, depending on which moveset you use. It rounds out its moveset with Pounce, which is good offense but really contingent on your opponent.

This battle pet is only available during Hallow’s End, which is starting up on October 18th for North America realms. You purchase it with Tricky Treats, the Hallow’s End-only edible candy currency. You can get those from the treat buckets scattered in the inns across Azeroth (with associated achievements for grabbing them all), or various daily quests as well. I really enjoyed the one where you ride over Stormwind and plant stinkbombs everywhere.

This cat is one of the few companion pets to follow you while you’re on a flying mount. This seems a little goofy, because it’s a cat and all. What it lacks in wings, it makes up for on a teeny tiny flying broom.

A cat after any mage’s heart, good or wicked.

Clefthoof Runt

Leave a reply

The quarantine colony baked in hot sun, cooled by sentient winds in the lush wilds of Nagrand, was once home to a sick child.

Garadar was always home to sick children, to sick grown orcs. This young orc’s strong ancestry set him apart from the others. Even with the benefit of blood on his side he couldn’t even raise an axe in his own defense, the essence of being Orcish. Axes were not the only essence orcs possessed after his father urged them all, warrior and shaman alike, to drink the blood of a demon. Garrosh remained untouched by that corruption, remained unpossessing of that strength, wasting away among the clefthoof and the elementals in Nagrand.

To this day, the elements remain outside Hellscream’s reach. Eventually and with determination, he grew strong and his path was one of the warrior. Despite being among the wonders of the elements, of nature, of the shaman, those things were useless for him.

The formidable, unthinking clefthoof remained Garrosh’s model of strength and health. And so with their unwitting aid, he learned to Smash, to Trample those who opposed him, and trample half of those who were once his allies. His Orcs were as a Stampede over all life on Kalimdor, and were threatening the world in their rage.

Over time, he grew so opposed to the elements, he allowed his Dark Shaman to continue their rituals in a way which rivaled the betrayal of the elements by Gul’dan and his warlocks. Over time, the Orcs and Garrosh found their own, treacherous way to Survive.

So, when a worgen druid comes to your keep with her Clefthoof Runt, she hopes you feel despair deep in your heart for the only true home you knew. That you, for one moment, smell the honey-sweet winds of Nagrand before you remember that she is here to kill you. That moment of weakness is all she’ll need.

What would Greatmother Geyah say if she could see you now, Garrosh? Thrall’s disappointment pales in comparison.

No rest til Orgrimmar.

Top Five Pets To Have For Beginners

9 Replies

In very general terms, my advice for playing with your pets is the same as it’s always been: use the pets you like the best. I’ve said before that my first 25 was my Perky Pug Bertha. She’s mediocre at best for fighting, but she’s still my favorite pet, and despite her questionable utility I still use her to fight when I can. If you don’t feel any connection to your pets, you’re not going to enjoy playing nearly as much.

That said, I’ve noticed that there are a few pets I use constantly, both in PVP and PVE, and see others recommend (or complain about as being totally OP) as well. That’s the basis of this list. I’m not telling you to level these first. Some of them are pretty bad until higher levels, so I wouldn’t recommend just grabbing 3 of these pets from level 1 and making a run of it. But if the option presents itself, keep these pets in mind. Completely unironically, I’ve done pet profiles on most of these individually, too.

Anubisath Idol – Between the Humanoid racial heal, his big hits and damage avoidance, the Anubisath Idol makes a lot of fights trivial. I’ve seen a few carry guides which include the Anubisath in nearly every Pandaria tamer fight. I resisted it for a while, but come 5.4 you’re going to be glad you have one of these puppies.

Speed Breed Rabbit – I made a whole post on why Rabbits, and specifically Speed Breed Rabbits, are fantastic. They do well in both PVE and PVP, especially with undead teams being in vogue right now, and they’re one of the original pets you could have so they’re super easy to get too.

Crab – Another one that’s easy to get, crabs are fantastic tanks for PVE, and can swap and be damage dealing juggernauts in PVP. Breed is debatable. I prefer the Power breeds, but some tamers like starting out with high Health. It’s up to you and what you’re after… or, because they’re so plentiful in the wild, you can stock up on all of them.

Gilnean Raven – An excellent damage dealer with a lot of tricks up its little birdy sleeve. The Darkness weather ability makes life easy against healers. I also love the underutilized literary reference Nevermore ability. Big damage is nice, but shutting down your opponent’s offense is just sweet.

Clockwork Gnome – A teeny powerhouse with heals, damage over time, and big mech hits. This was one of the very first pets I leveled up, and he’s still a favorite to use.

Terrible Turnip – This is a little bit off the topic, so it doesn’t count toward the 5. The Terrible Turnip is kind of awful. I’ve seen it a few times in PVP as a “wait bait” pet (meaning, they turtle until you get fed up and forfeit, handing them the win). But its utility in trapping pets makes it absolutely crucial to have. I wouldn’t make this your very first 25, but when you get more than 5 you should consider it.

Lashtail Hatchling

8 Replies

With the news that we are likely getting an extra 350 pet slots to make an even thousand this upcoming PTR build, it’s rather obvious that there are a lot (a LOT!) of companions in-game. There are some we grow attached to for one reason or another. My two closest companions are my perky pug Bertha, who is SO getting a pirate hat next patch, and Mr. Wiggles, my former raiding companion. I think a lot of tamers have pets who have seen them through rough fights or are just plain freaking cute, and develop a sense of companionship with their little friend.

There are only a very few though, which you can become attached to as a function of quest design.

Meet Imoinda.

She’s one of several raptor pets which have a similar model, and are largely functionally identical. You can go get a replica of her from Breanni in Dalaran is you have 50g on you, though in a recolored black. Most of the others are attained either by searching for rare mobs or drops, or buying them off the AH. Raptors generally aren’t much special as fighters (standard bite abilities, a few speed modifiers), so these are easily overlooked. But the Lashtail Hatchling is different. Her story starts in the steamy jungles of Stranglethorn Vale.

But that’s just because I’m there. Yowza.

As Alliance, you start off with that same old yarn about Kurzen that’s been there since vanilla. Yeah yeah, jungle remedy. Make sure you do The Fate Of Kurzen at the same time for efficiency’s sake. Unlike those old yarns, this time as you complete the quest, something happens.

This quest is a pop-up auto accept. After you turn it in, you get a quest to feed her. You kill basilisks, she eats, no big. On your way back to the rebel camp, make sure to swing past the Kurzen compound and free a group of adventurers. They make their way to camp to open up a later step.

Right now you won’t have a quest per se, but if you visit this pile of skulls in the Balia’mah ruins, your raptor will find a souvenir. Aw. …ish.

When you return to camp, you hand the skull to the recently freed gnome, Osborn Obnoticus. He’s all, “ooh, look at the size of this skull! This guy must have been huge. And powerful. Let’s screw with voodoo magic and bring him back to life.” And of course, your character thinks this is a fantastic idea, because nothing bad ever happened by trusting a gnome to be skilled with black magic he’s never encountered before.

So it comes as a huge surprise that, after a super adorable fetch quest and a standard kill-guy-loot-body quest, the gnome’s magic works flawlessly. No, really! The thing is, the person whose skull you found and the gnome resurrected is none other than Bloodlord Mandokir, the raptor boss from Zul’Gurub. Whomp whomp.

He tells you that you’d better hand over your new little friend, or the gnome gets it. Even though I’m sure we’d all prefer it if the gnome gets it, your only choice is to hand over your new little friend. Bloodlord Mandokir then runs back to ZG, leaving you emptyhanded and emptyhearted.

But hope is not lost. You get a breadcrumb to the next quest hub, where the eccentric Priestess Thaalia has you collect feathers from other raptors to do some magic. You are able to see your raptor friend. She’s still alive! But Thaalia needs more powerful reagents in order to do something about it.

She sends you on another standard kill quest, and then…

oh BOY and then. You now inhabit the body of your raptor friend, and attempt a daring escape, while avoiding all the trolls. It’s like Metal Gear Solid meets a basket of kittens in a way that doesn’t use kittens as a hastily constructed disguise that shouldn’t fool anyone.

And apparently, it doesn’t.

So, what’s a worgen to do? First, talk to the guy also in the camp about what you’ve seen, then go bust into the level 85 heroic version of Zul’Gurub to crack some skulls and get your raptor back!

The Bloodlord fight is soloable for most classes now, as the Decapitate mechanic isn’t activated with just one player. I found the trash to be much more difficult than the fight. Maybe it was because Bloodlord kept my baby raptor chained up that whipped my worgen into a fury of hair and DPS.

At any rate, we were happily reunited.

And now we go on adventures together. No, really. Whenever there are dead bodies around, friendly or not, Imoinda is sure to bring me a bone to play fetch.

Clever girl.

Zandalari Raptors

12 Replies

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.