Pet Battles

[Jabari]

Firstly, I have no clue why Nintendo never put out something like this - it would have been a huge moneymaker for them I think...

Messing around with this some the last couple days - some observations and questions to start the discussion. (un?)Fortunately, I'm going on vacation for a couple weeks.

The mechanics are VERY similar to Pokemon, with some exceptions.
- 3 Pets in group.
- Each pet can use 3 skills (once they hit level 4). Note that you'll get 6 total by level 20, but can't just choose "any 3" - you have to take one of the (1 or 10), (2 or 15), and (4 or 20) skills.
- Each pet also has a "quality", from Gray to Blue (just like items).
- Each pet family has a passive effect (Beasts do more damage below 50% HP, etc)
- "Super Effective" attacks are 150% damage, "Weak" ones are 66%.

First: Use Rare pets only. The difference in stats between the Rares and everything else is significant. The general list of "rare stats" pets at the start are:
- Archaeology
- Fishing (dailies and things like Giant Sewer Rat)
- Achievements (Stinker, etc)
- Darkmoon Faire tickets (Cub, Monkey, Tonk, etc)
- Molten Front (Lasher, Cub, Scorchling)
- Most rare drops (Whelplings, Tiny Shale Spider, etc)
- "Paid" stuff (Blizzard store or Collector's edition stuff)
- Misc: Pebble, Panther Cub, Dark Phoenix Hatchling, Elem. Geode, etc

Not sure if the "starter" one you buy from the Pet Trainer is rare or not...

You can also catch Rares out in the wild. It's probably easiest to just catch the first one of everything you don't have (at the level of the zone you're in), and then compare stats for subsequent battles - if the new one has higher stats grab that one and release the worse one. Not sure what percentage are rare - didn't see (or perhaps recognize) any for quite a while but have gotten 4 in rapid succession recently (Southern Barrens/Dustwallow Marsh).

There are a couple of "intro" quests from the capital-city trainer, and then he'll send you out to defeat the Master Tamer in the starting zone. If you win that, you'll get "chained" to the next Master Tamer, and so on. These quests are Account-shared - if you switch toons you'll stay in the same place on this quest chain.

(I'm Horde, and the Tamers so far have been Durotar, Northern Barrens, Ashenvale, Desolace, and Southern Barrens. Not sure if there's a quest line I can pick up for the other continent - the tamers are there for the achievement but I don't know how to find them. Looked around Undercity a bit but didn't see anything obvious...)

You can also challenge other players, either when you run across them (right-click portrait -> Pet Battle), or from the "Find Battle" button on the Pet screen. That button puts you into a LFG-type queue, and the battle is in a random location with a weather effect.

[Jabari]

My group at the moment - level 10/11:
- Clockwork Gnome: Turrets are amazing - they're the highest DPT attack I've seen, plus they hit things that are flying/underground as part of a 2-turn attack. They can also carry a repair through dying (and the Mechanical-Ankh).
- Dark Whelpling: Slow but hits really hard.
- Small Frog: A caught Rare that's the most annoying thing in the world. Frog Kiss is SO good - 25% chance to polymorph for a round, plus the Frog is quite fast and usually attacks first. If the Poly hits it's basically a 2-turn stun as it negates the current attack and prevents the next round's attack. It has a strong self-heal, too.

I was using a Strand Crawler before I got the Small Frog - it was about as close to a Tank as is possible. (Tons of HP, a Shield, and a HoT).

Need to level an Undead and an Elemental, can't decide which ones though.
UD: Fossilized Hatchling (BONESTORM!), but the other Archeology one with Death Grip might be better.
Elem: I have the Tiny Shale Spider, Crimson Lasher, and Elem Geode - all three have their good points. Leaning toward the Geode at the moment but not sure at all.
Need a Humanoid-type (or something with Humanoid-type attacks), no idea where to get one though.

1-1 in PvP "LFG" battles. Lost with 9s vs 10s (but it was close, had his last one down to half), and won with 10s vs 10s. The win was funny - the person ran away after I got his first pet down - the Frog had hit on poly like 4 times already at that point and I think that ticked him off.

(I know it ticked me off when I lost a rare Spider catch to the dumb Frog killing my whole team basically by itself! I've been "grinding XP" about 2 levels higher than my Pet's level, so Dustwallow Marsh (12s) for my 10s - they can handle that fairly well and the XP bonuses are nice. I use the Pet-Doctor basically on cooldown though!)

[halabar]

So how much do you think I can sell caged Tiny Shale Spiders for? I have 30ish of them in my bags, been farming for a month..

[Nooska]

well just from levelling I've earned 5k going from JF, V4W, KW and somewhere in Kun-Lai right now, so I'd say minimum price would probabl be around 5-10k

[Passionario]

Need a Humanoid-type (or something with Humanoid-type attacks), no idea where to get one though.

Mini Tyrael is a good choice.

[Sabindeus]

Need a Humanoid-type (or something with Humanoid-type attacks), no idea where to get one though.

Mini Tyrael is a good choice. 8)

maaaaan I want to have Tyrael fight for me :( i r jealous!

[Jabari]

Hmm, 5-10k seems really high for a guaranteed drop. I've hardly any Goblin-blood in me, but I'm going to guess probably about 1k each?

(I do have a single extra one of those I can sell, as well as a pair of extra Strand Crawlers.)

For comparasion, Elementium Geodes were going for about 600 (probably too low), and Dark Whelplings for about 10k. Whelplings have a stupid-low drop rate though. Haven't checked the drop rate of the Geode.

As a side note, both people I LFG-PvPed had a dragonling of some sort (one Dark, one Azure), and one of them had a Magical Crawdad. The rare pets should certainly sell well...

[Skye1013]

Need a Humanoid-type (or something with Humanoid-type attacks), no idea where to get one though.

Father Winter's Helper is Humanoid. With mostly elemental attacks...

Alternately, Pandaren Monk and Peddlefeet are Humanoid with actual Humanoid attacks.

[Skye1013]

Decided to level up the rarest "can't be obtained" pets I could think of (that I own.) Currently sitting at a lvl 7 Spirit of Competition, lvl 7 Vampire Bat and lvl 7 Windrider Cub (ok, so that one's not particularly rare, but it's too damn cute not to level first.)

[Invisusira]

I am in the process of catching em all

this is pretty much the main reason to play wow right now

[Skye1013]

I managed to defeat the EK grand master, so now have pet battle dailies available.

I am saddened that I missed out on catching the Wanderer's Festival Turtle because the listed time frame was incorrect. Everything I've read said it's supposed to be 9-11pm server time on Sundays. I was there for the opening (got the achievement) then ran off to level my pets some more to be able to catch the thing (my lvl 15-16 pets weren't really up for a 3x lvl 23 match.) By the time I got back around 10:30pm, the festival was over (and there was supposed to be 30 minutes of it.)

Guess I'll be good to go for next week at least, but it just kind of annoys me that I missed out.

[Flex]

Went through and collected all the pets from the zones (except the baby ape, damn you non-raining island) in the EK that are sub level 12 pets. I think the best unique pet from those catches is the infected bear cub with the creepy spider eggs on its back.

[Invisusira]

I made a strengths/weaknesses chart for myself because all the other charts SUCK for at-a-glace readability, may as well post it here

[Invisusira]

also, is there a way to disable power auras while a pet battle is going on? shit's driving me nuts

[Fenris]

/sarcasm

I love how the queue for pvp pet battles works

Keep a high level pet and 2 lower ones,enjoy winning because you get placed against someone with a similar average "team-level" but your higher leveled pet just dodges/outlast everything on the opposing team (or,when he goes down,he has left the other team almost dead)

/sarcasm

I usually end as the "opposing team" in the above scenario....