Tag Archives: strategy

Cascading (a pet leveling technique)

I know there are a lot of people out there just dipping their toes in the pet battle water for the first time since 5.3’s launch. This is a technique I personally used on the PTR to get a level 25 pet ASAP. I’ve seen a lot of people discuss and debate how to most quickly grind a single pet to lvl 25 (if you accidentally found this post looking for that information, try elepheagle’s tiered walkthroughs), but not many talk about the quickest way for a newbie to get their first. Once you do get that first one and can start beating tamers which award bags, the whole minigame suddenly gets far easier.

And then sometimes you get junk.

This technique is for people who are higher level, specifically those players who have fast flying. Otherwise this is just as much a huge, time-consuming drag as grinding your pets to level normally. You need to be able to access the stable masters quickly in case you bite off more than you can chew, and fly between zones quickly. I am fudging this a little bit here, because there’s really no way to just randomly start from 0. If you really are starting from nothing this will be a bit more time-consuming just because my trap works more quickly.

To start, you need to grab a pet. Any pet at all! I’m going to start in Dun Morogh, but it doesn’t really matter which starting zone you choose. You’ll also want to set your hearth to your faction’s shrine in the Vale.

So, we start with a level 1 bunny I just bought, and we’re pretending I don’t have my other slots open. Let’s go fight another level 1.

After 1 fight, your pet will now be level 2, yay! Now, fight a couple more pets. If these pets are green or blue, try to trap them. Once you have a green, just kill them (always trap blue pets if at all possible as a rule of thumb). After a couple more fights, you’ll have a level 3 pet, and you’ll be able to unlock your second pet slot. Put the green or blue pet you collected into that slot. If you haven’t found a green or blue, fight one last level 2 and trap it even if it’s gray like mine was, then equip it.

Now, we’ll move from Dun Morogh into Loch Modan (or whichever secondary area is the closest to your starting zone of choice). Here, we’ll fight level 3s and 4s. The fights are a little tougher. You’ll want to trap a level 3 or 4 as soon as you can, even if you get a gray.

Avoid level 5+ if they’re in your area. When you trap that 3 or 4, ditch that level 2 pet you trapped. You don’t have to hit ‘release’ if you don’t want to or anything, just swap in the new pet. Keep in mind though that you can only have 3 of any specific pet at a time, and we’ll be grabbing a bunch of duplicate squirrels and rats and stuff as we go. Keep that bunny (or whatever) for now.

If your first pet from this zone is a 3, use it to grab a 4. If your 4 is worse quality than green, grind until you find a green. Keep that second 4 in reserve. At this point, you need to grind til your first pet hits level 5 to open up that last slot. You can also level up that level 4 you tamed, but by the time I get 2 green level 4s, I’m usually well on my way to level 5 on that first bunny.

You may be able to trap a level 5 before that first pet hits level 5, but it’s very risky to try.

When that last slot is open, drop that 4 you grabbed into that slot, then turn to fight your first level 5. This first fight will be rough, since the lvl 5 comes with a friend. After I get that 5, I try a 6. If I fail, I grab an extra 5. I trap a 6, then make my way to the next zone, because its level range overlaps to 6.

You may see at this point why I’m dubbing this the Cascade Strat. In the next zone, I grab a 7, see if I can take on 8s, grab a couple 8s, next zone.

You can also be less cautious and make larger jumps if you’d like. I was able to go from a full group of 8s in Arathi to tame a full group of 11s in Hinterlands, but if you do it this way you may waste more time than it’s worth on flying to go heal. Part of the reason I pick this particular path is that I can make my way to the Eastern Plaguelands and load a full team of 12s.

Then, I hearth to Vale and port back to Stormwind (Horde players can go to any city, then use the Dark Portal port). Next, I go to Deadwind Pass. That’s the only place, as far as I know, where there are pets above level 15 that show up without friends.

The leap you can take in level makes it totally worth it even if you screw up a couple times. The first one is a bit difficult to nab, so you may need to go back & forth to either Duskwood or Stonard to heal up. If there are no Arcane Eyes or Restless Shadelings up (the latter being generally super rare, so keep one if you cage it!) go straight to Swamp of Sorrows. You’ll find both 14s and 15s there. Be sure to avoid the 15s until you have a full team of 14s. It’s not nearly the pushover as if you had the arcane eyes though.

I load up 2 arcane eyes regardless of quality, then backtrack to my first triple match in Swamp of Sorrows. My Eyes will dispatch the pets easily even with that level 12 anchor (replace that one ASAP, obviously). If you have 14s it might be hard-fought.

One big issue starting now is that from here on out whenever we tame something it’s going to lose a level. When we hit level 20s, they’ll lose 2 levels. I’ll tame a 15 in Swamp of Sorrows just to ditch that one level 12 (and it’ll become a 14) and make sure 15s are doable with my current team, then move on to the Blasted Lands for a tame or two. After that, we cross the Dark Portal. From here, my path is Hellfire to Blade’s Edge to Netherstorm. I start off with taming pets on the lowest side of the level range and move to the highest in each zone.

After you have a team of 19s and 18s, go to Dalaran, tame in Crystalsong and Dragonblight then use the portal again to hit up Pandaria. I would stay in Crystalsong, but there never seem to be pets up there. Again, I’m being a bit reckless so you can take it slower and try less disparate matchups and tames if you’d like. If you’re having trouble try going to Deepholm. The portal there makes it a quick stop.

If all goes according to plan you’ll make it up to Pandaria and level 23 without much trouble.

Well, close enough.

When you do, you have 2 options.

One is to grab your favorite ‘real’ pets, like a cinder kitten or perky pug and start leveling it using the swap method I outlined in this post. You can throw in the lower quests too, to get bags and begin to open dailies for yourself.

The other is to finish the grind with these temporary pets. There are 2 issues with doing so. One is that, unless you tame a blue, you’ll want to stone any pet you’re going to keep. Above level 15, all pets lose 2 levels when you use a stone on them so that puts you at level 21 at best to start, or you have to repeat that last couple of levels when you use the stone. 21 to 23 isn’t a horribly long grind, but at those levels it adds at least 20 minutes onto your time. The other issue is that, unless you stone or get rares, you likely won’t have the offensive oomph to do very many tamers after you hit the Outland ones. Several Northrend tamers in particular are very difficult unless you have the right matchup to beat them. You’ll be able to beat Lydia Accoste and Stone Cold Trixxy easily with 23s though, which means you get bags, bandages and all that fantastic stuff. It’s up to you!

Personally, I would do the Eastern Kingdoms and Kalimdor tamer things ASAP, because those bags are really invaluable.

Doing this on live servers took me roughly 3 and a half hours, so it’s far faster than grinding up the same baby pets. The disadvantage is that this feels almost a bit mercenary. You don’t get a chance to develop favorites or figure out matchups. You’ll also have to go back and collect the pets you want, where if you do it normally you’ll organically get a large bulk of them as a matter of course.

A few final words. Believe it or not there is more to say! Alright whatever.

Try to make sure you’re using at least 2 different families of pets in any team. There are a lot of critters out there, but if you have an all-critter team and suddenly find yourself facing a critter whose backups are both beasts, you’re probably in trouble. I generally found it easiest to just look for water when I first enter a zone, then tame a frog or crab. Aquatics usually have a heal or other defensive ability which gives them a lot of extra longevity against a higher level, especially if it’s being stubborn about getting in the trap. Also, because of the change to accuracy, you’ll want to use 100% chance to hit abilities whenever possible. When you fight higher level pets, your pets have a 2% additional chance to miss per level, so every little bit counts.

Good luck, baby tamer. Pandaria awaits you!

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.

Thundering Pandaren Spirit Tamer

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For many tamers, this is the hardest fight in the game right now. The most bandied around piece of advice I’ve heard thus far with the Thundering tamer is to make super extra sure you grab the mini Thundering when you finish that first quest, because hoo boy, you do NOT want to even try to do THAT one again.

Well, I have to say I agree. I mean, I have this sucker down pretty well. The thing is, the nature of this particular fight can make it wildly unpredictable. I’ve blown all 3 of my pets against the first guy before, even after I had half a clue what was going on and wasn’t just sending whatever at him to see what sticks. I’ve also had kills where I used one pet and barely even had to touch a second.

My best advice here is to just keep trying. You’ll get him, I promise.

Here’s my lineup:

The order is a little screwed up… my pug Bertha should be first. She combines burrow and a decent heal with well, being a critter. The mechanical Zeppelin has some good defensive abilities, but most notably, Explode. The crab is there as a filler/tank. His most important role is to gap fill if I get a bad or weird string on Bertha, and to be alive at the end of the fight. For all three there are other options, but I’ll discuss them as I outline the fight.

First up is the Pandaren Earth Spirit. He combines stuns with big damage. His stuns are frustrating and deadly against any other kind of pet (even with the new Resilient buff, so you can no longer be completely stunlocked) those same stuns are pretty much cute against a critter’s crowd control breaking ability. His big, fairly constant damage is problematic, but my pug Bertha uses burrow to try to avoid the larger nuke on Rupture. Since the Spirit’s damage is weak against critters anyway, I get through this part of the fight pretty easily.

I like Bertha’s heal, but many tamers prefer a rabbit here for the extra speed. The critter stun breaker only kicks in at the end of the round. Since she’s slower than the elemental she ‘misses’ a round here & there because the elemental gets a stun off, and then she’s stunned the rest of the round through her turn. You really want to stick with a critter, because of the whole stunlock deal I mentioned earlier, and as shown in the screenshot above, most of the damage the spirit deals is weak against critters (the third ability being a stun with no damage). Snails are also a decent critter pick here, and hit super hard with aquatic Dive.

Another reason I choose Bertha is because her main damage ability can be Beast, which makes her able to damage the second pet, critter Sludgy, pretty well.

Sludgy’s damage is very streaky, due both to his moderate miss ability Expunge, and the way he uses (or doesn’t use) his other two abilities. One is the hard-hitting magic Ooze Touch, and the other is a fairly cruddy DoT spell, Creeping Ooze. It’s relatively random which one he uses, whether it hits or not, etc. Some fights I can plow straight through the whole way with Bertha, and others I get two shot. Hence the above pic illustrating Bertha hitting him hard with her beast damage where there’s a crab in place of poor little dead Bertha.

This is the place where you’d swap in a pet for leveling, but keep them high level for sure. Think either beast damage, to kill critter Sludgy faster, or mechanical pets, to defend against his oddly magic attacks and use Failsafe as a swap backup if he hits you too hard. I’d also pick a pet with some defensive capability if possible. I went with the crab just to get it done, and would suggest you start off with your favorite level 25 tank in the #2 spot until you get a better feel for the fight.

If it starts looking dicey and your pet is about to eat dirt, take it out. You have to have at least one pet still alive in the back row when Darnak comes out with this strategy or you’ll lose. Obviously if you’re trying to level a pet, you want that pet alive or else why even bother, right?

And now use your Zeppelin’s decoy to defend and his missile which is strong against Darnak’s Beastly self to take him to just a bit below 50% and then… boom.

Explode kills your Zep and the other guy, but you cannot use the mechanical Failsafe to res, hence why you must have one other pet alive in the back row. This is kind of gimmicky, but man is it fun, and it’s also kind of lazy. Lazy is kind of my jam. Make sure you use it when Darnak’s burrow is on cooldown though. Otherwise, I’ll have no choice but to laugh at your expense, sorry.

As another option, the Mechanical Pandaren Hatchling is very similar to the Zep and slightly more readily available, but needs a stone upgrade to rare. Clockwork Gnome would be a good choice here, but Darnak has a stoneskin ability which would negate his turret so using him is kind of futile. Stoneskin is also why you need to take him a bit lower than you may think if you go with Explode. Some tamers like to use critters instead to reduce the elemental damage from stone rush.

In closing… just… good luck.

Please feel free to ask any questions or woodshed this fight here or on Twitter. Even if you have a solid strategy, it’s still kind of a doozy.

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!

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!

Pet Powerleveling And You

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I’ve made reference in the past to powerleveling strategy. I’m making this post to outline exactly what that is, because it’s a handy skill to have. This technique is commonly known as a Carry.

Our victim for this post will be Grand Master Tamer Trixxy.

Aw, don’t look so sad, Trixxy.

This strategy is applicable for pretty much any tamer or even for wild pet battles. The lineup will vary, and a lot for some of the later tamers in Pandaria, which need specific combinations in order for this to work. But for right now, I’m going with this lineup:

Stella the Celestial Dragon is a good pick for this basic fight because of her group heal, and because she matches the whole blue vibe Trixxy’s got going. Ishmael is just there in case I get into bigtime trouble, and is also blue. These choices don’t really matter, as nearly any team of 2 level 25 battle pets will be able to dispatch Trixxy fairly handily. And I chose the unnamed Tonk because I just bought him at the Faire like 5 minutes ago. Yes, really. That tonk really screws the whole color trend though. For shame, tonk.

Basically, Blizzard made it so that level 25 battle pets don’t soak any XP. As long as your pet to be carried survives through 1 round of pummelling in the front row, you can send it to the back row, and as long as there aren’t any aoe abilities to wreck its face your carried pet will get as much XP as if it miraculously killed all 3 of the other pets by itself. All you need is 2 level 25 pets who can kill the other pets without a third. This also works for higher pets.

This can get very sketchy in the later battles, but with Trixxy once you have any level 25, even an off-breed, you’ll be able to solo her. And then you wear a handy Safari Hat, your level 1 pet will gain

1898XP and 8 levels. In one fight. Yeah.

Even if your pet isn’t level 1, as long as it’s more than 2 or 3 levels lower than Trixxy’s level 19s, you’ll gain boatloads of XP without much effort at all. This may be more valuable than the contents of the bag you get from doing her daily. I make a point of doing her, Lydia Accoste in Deadwind Pass, Bloodknight Antari in Shadowmoon Valley and Farmer Nishi in Valley Of The Four Winds every day for just this reason. I do others too but these 4 are sure things with nearly any level 25 pet, and very quick fights. They also grant far more XP than if I were to battle a wild pet of the same level… Farmer Nishi is especially notable, since she’s worth a whopping 2-4000 XP depending on the level of your pet, though you may need to go slightly higher level than 1 for your soak pet, since one of her pets will use an AOE on occasion.

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.

—–

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.

Elite Pet Battles

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Maybe I should say, quote-unquote ‘elite’ pet battles. I was very excited for this feature, but as I noted, couldn’t find much information about the nitty-gritty of the battles. So, with a 45 minute queue behind me and a graphics card that could not be less happy with me, I set off!

I picked up the quest Beasts of Fable from Sara Finkleswitch as I logged on.

From what I understand, this quest opens up alongside the Pandaren Spirit Tamers after you beat Aki.

This round of battles, it is one legendary pet vs your entire group. You can screw around with making up the perfect lineup if you’d like. There’s an excellent, very thorough post on WoWInsider you can use as a guide, in addition to all the locations. The thing is, it isn’t needed. At all. I was able to solo almost all these pets with one pet. Here’s my lineup:

The first thing you probably noticed was an unnamed level 23 resilient roach. He’s just there for insurance. I cast Apocalypse, then immediately send him to the back row. If my other pets don’t manage to kill the fabled beast in 15 turns, I win anyway. This goes through dive, and none of the Beasts are beetles or roaches, so you just… win. I chose the level 23 because it was the highest one I had at the time. Insurance is also why I have my trusty non-critter tank crab Ishmael in the lineup. He’s basically there as a meat shield just in case my nether faerie dragon Spenser doesn’t get the job done.

So, what makes this dragon so OP? In a word (well, 2) Life Exchange.

Basically, the Elite pets are supposed to be 3 pets in one. And that’s the thing, they’re in *one*, meaning they have a huge health pool. Life Exchange as it’s coded now ignores the HP cap of the dragon, which means it looks like this:

I chose the Nether Faerie Dragon as the vehicle for this, but it honestly doesn’t matter which pet with this ability you pick. With one fell swoop, you will deal at least half of any of these fabled pets’ health.

I expect both these strategies to get fixed somehow, because at this point it is too easy. Though, you do have to kill a whopping 10 beasts at all ends of Pandaria to finish the quest for your reward, the red panda.

You should note that when you turn it in you can re-do it immediately as a daily if you’d like. The bag reward has a chance to contain a non-red red panda, and apparently has a much higher drop rate on upgrade stones, so it’s worth redoing. Also, as seen in the below screenshot, you have a really decent chance of getting Lesser Charms with each fight you do. Because people might run low on those, I guess.

One additional thing to add. Remember that level 23 resilient roach? Well, he’s not getting much XP out of the deal, even with my Safari Hat on.

So, this isn’t really a good time to try powerleveling your level 1 undercity roach.

Major Payne

5 Replies

This guy, right here. UGH.

Look at that mustache. What is he, an old-timey strongman hipster?

He was the second fight I had to sort of ‘gear up’ for, and is one of the few for which I don’t yet have a 2-pet powerlevel strategy. However, out of sheer spite, because I hate his STUPID FACE and want as many people as possible to fart in it, here are some strategies I’ve used to beat him.

His 3 pets are the mechanical Beakmaster, beast Grizzle, and elemental Bloom. The elemental is always last in his lineup, but whether Grizzle or Beakmaster goes first can vary. There are two ways you can go about beating him. The first is to pick pets which defend against his pet’s attacks, like this:

Flying defends against beastly Grizzle, elemental defends against mechanical Beakmaster, and critter defends against elemental Bloom. In my experience this is a slightly less reliable setup. In particular, my Nether Ray Icarus has trouble burning down Grizzle quickly enough. Grizzle deals a lot of damage, and also has a really big multi-round heal ability so he can be very difficult to counter. Fel Flame Dante really shines as a glass cannon here, and can pick up some slack. Between her heal and burrow ability to counter Bloom’s multi-round abilities, Perky Pug Bertha had no trouble holding her own.

There are 2 real issues with this strat. Against his pet lineup you need to burn down his pets very quickly, and picking based on defense doesn’t really help that cause. The other is that abilities within pet families can vary pretty widely. This strat gets a lot less doable if you replace the Fel Flame with an elemental with off-class abilities, like the Ashstone Core, for instance.

The other strategy is one I call the glass cannon: Pick pets which have abilities that are strong against beast, mechanical and elemental.

The point of this strategy is to kill them before they kill you. My Clockwork Gnome typically kills Grizzle before he’s any trouble, and then it’s smooth sailing through the rest. A Fluxfire Feline might be a better pick here, because of their burst DPS, but I haven’t found a mechanical upgrade stone or a rare yet so I can’t personally vouch for that. You’ll notice that Dante shows up again to pummel Beakmaster… he is particularly suited for this battle. A Phoenix Hatchling or Dark Phoenix Hatchling are also good choices. My beloved little crab is very hearty, so he’s usually my pick when I need to deal aquatic damage.

A combination of these strategies would have first up against Grizzle a pet in the Flying family with mechanical abilities. I haven’t found any of these thus far. As implied above, the elemental family is both a strong attacker and defender against mechanical pets, so many elemental pets are excellent choices. For Bloom, a critter with some Aquatic abilities would be a good alternative. Namely, a snail or the Rapana Whelk. The dive ability is a good counter to Bloom’s roots too.

Good luck, and please make this jerk eat dirt. For me.