Last Minute Prep for the Celestial Tournament!

Recently I ticked off a few achievements that I've been stupidly close to finishing but never bothered with or forgot all about. This included the achievement Pro Pet Crew. Now I have twice the minimum number of level 25 pets needed to take part in The Celestial Tournament. Which is excellent news as there's no healing or reviving pets in the instance.

But... do I have the right pet families leveled? Could I do with some more pets from a certain family? What pets should I level next to make things easier? Not to mention wanting the achievement Pro Pet Mob!

This post is going to explore what pets we can expect to face as part of the Celestial Tournament and how we can use this information to prepare our own pet rosters (even if it is last minute!!). I will be showing you how I have worked out what pet families will benefit me the most when it comes to competing at the Celestial Tournament.

The Celestial Pet Tournament will see battlers face 7 challenges which will require a total of 21 pets. The Wowhead 5.4 PTR: Celestial Pet Tournament and New Battle Pets guide give additional details on how it will work etc. But essentially battlers face two rounds; in Round 1 we face one of two different teams of three tamers (each with three pets) and Round 2 when we face four legendary elite pets.

Round 1 - Team A
Shademaster Kiryn - Nairn, Stormoen and Summer
Wise Mari - Carpe Diem, River and Spirus
Blingtron 4000 - Au, Banks and Lil' B

Round 1 - Team B
Taran Zhu - Bolo, Li and Yen
Wrathion - Alex, Cindy and Dah'da
Chen Stormstout - Brewly, Chirps and Tonsa

Round 2
Xu-Fu
Zao
Chi-Chi
Yu'La

For details on each opponents abilities see the aforementioned guide found here.

This means that in any single instance we could face the following maximum* line up:

1 x Aquatic
7 x Beast
1 x Critter
5 x Dragonkin
2 x Elemental
3 x Flying
3 x Humanoid
1 x Magic
2 x Mechanical
1 x Undead

*maximum depending on which Round 1 team you face.

How did I get these numbers? These numbers are based on the opposition teams pets and relates to Table 1, with the legendary pets being equivalent to 3 (as we'll need 3 to defeat them!). The maximum number is on the two orange columns with the highest value being given.

Why is this information useful? If you're considering taking part in the Celestial Tournament I'm sure you're familiar with the battle pet system and how it works. But incase you aren't or have forgotten snippets of information - there's 10 families, each deals extra damage to one, deals reduced damaged to one, takes extra damage from one and take reduced damaged from one. Knowing this we can work out what pet families will do extra damage against the opponents - increasing our chances of winning. It's a no-brainer tactic really!



 Drahken's Matrix.

Drahkens Guide (found on Wowhead) has this handy diagram (see above) for helping you to understand how the pet family damage matrix works. More importantly it can help us plan what pet families are most beneficial to us and in what quantities!

  

Table 2

Table 2 is the essential end-product of the workings out detailed in the post. The Table has four colums; columns 1 and 2 rare fairly self-explanatory and detail the opposition pet family and the maximum number of pets from that family we can expect to face in any single instance (respectively). Column 3 details the the pet family that will do extra damage agains the opposition family - ie. the family we ideally want to use to battle!

 

But what if you're facing a total of 3 flying pets and you only have 2 magic pets!?! Well in this case we can bring in the fourth and final column - the 'Last Resort' family. Pets from these families take less damage from the opposition pet family, thus increasing your chance of winning by reducing the damage taken.

 

How did I work this out? I used Drahkens matrix (see above). In the case of Column 3 I made the opponent pet the defender and worked down until I found the family that did increased damage, denoted by "O". With Column 4 I put the opponents pet as the attacker and worked across the matrix to find which family it did less damage against, denoted by "X".

 



The long and the short of it...

Ideally, to stand the best chance of being victorious (purely based on pet family advantages) you will need...

1 x Flying
7 x Mechanical
1 x Beast
5 x Humanoid
2 x Aquatic
3 x Magic
3 x Undead
1 x Dragonkin
2 x Elemental
1 x Critter

all at level 25!

To round up some key facts about the tournament...

• We can expect to see face 7 oppositon teams; the equivalent of 21 of our own pets.
• In Round 1 we will face 1 of 2 teams; each team contains three trainers (3 pets each).
• In Round 2 we will facve 4 legendary pets (each equivalent to 3 of our pets).

I hope you find this to be useful when planning what level 25 pets you'll need to have the best chances of winning the tournament. However, this is only guidance & I am in no way suggesting that following this will guarantee you win!!