10 Days of Pet Battles: Day 10

I've finally made it to the last component part of the 10 Days of Pet Battles challenge. It's been really fun and has got me thinking about all of my experiences pet battling. It also re-kindled my love for pet battles after I had a blip in my enthusiasm. Kudos to Navimie for thinking up the questions and promoting the challenge.

Day 10: Design a pet! What model would your pet have, where would it come from and what abilities would it have?

I think that todays question / task is in two parts really 1) designing the pet and 2) about the pet (abilities etc.). In yesterdays post, Day 9 of the challenge, I spoke in great depth about my favourite abilities and the 6 I would give to the ultimate balanced pet (based on personal opinion of course). Meaning that today my main objective is to address my pets model and origins.

Now there's a couple of different battle pet models that I'd love to see added to the game. A baby Orca would be pretty sweet but I'm not sure how it would work out size-wise... unless it was a pygmy.

A more realistic model would be based on the standard big cat cub but with a new skin to those currently availble. As much as I do like the cub models none of them have models that really stand out and grab my attention. I would like to see the addition of bolder colours and in particular a cub based on Winna's Kitten. If you've seen pictures of my hunter you'll no doubt have realised that my hunters main pet is this model. I absolutely love the green and orange and can't see myself replacing Kitty anytime soon(!) so a matching cub would be epic.



Not the best 'artists impression' that you'll ever see but this is what I managed to create using the wonder that is paint!

You may have noticed from yesterdays ability blog that I spoke about using the mechanical repair in conjunction with the mechincal passive failsafe and the advantages that can be gained if timed correctly. I guess I would like my pet to be mechanical to take full advantage of this and so we get Robo-Kitty-Cub!

10 Days of Pet Battles: Day 9

Hey there! It's been a long time since I posted the other earlier components of the 10 Days of Pet Battles. I had this post atleast 75% complete before I went on holiday last week but I wanted the post to be 110% complete before posting. So here it [finally] is...

Day 9: What is your favourite pet ability? If you could have a pet with your favourite abilities, what would they be?

There's a few pet abilities in-game that I really like and so I've decided on the six that I would have built into my ultimate pet design (& tomorrow [hopefully] you will get to see said pet). I've tried to pick a well range of abilities with the aim of making the pet well rouded although that obviously would never happen. As a result I have six categories of ability - one for each of the six slots.

Self Heal
I really like the mechanical ability Repair as a self repair. At higher levels it can be really powerful in my opinion. It takes two rounds to hela yourself but there's a pretty neat way of using this to your advantage. Provided you time it correctly! In-game this ability is exclusive to mechanical pets which have the mechanical passive Failsafe. Now with perfect timing you can initiate Repair, die, come back to life (via Failsafe), complete Repair and stay alive with a fairly good amount of health. I have usd this little loophole and it works for me (when timed right).

Team Heal
Self repairs are brilliant for doing exactly that - a self repair. But there's times in game when you want to repair your whole team. For example, when an opposing pet has used an ability such as Arcane Explosion that causes damage to all of your team members before they've even entered the battle.
Renewing Mists is a pretty good heal over time (lasting three rounds) however it only heals the active pet (i.e. the one battling). An alternative is Bleat which heals all pets but has a 4-turn cooldown. Personally, I'd go with Bleat as I think it's slightly more useful. For instance, in my example above, if my super pet was active I'd use Bleat asap and hope to survive long enough to use Bleat again (as many times as possile) and hope to Bleat one last time before dying to heal the rest of the team. If my pet wasn't active I would way up the effectiveness of swapping the super pet in, Bleat, battle and again Bleat some more.

Bleat in action.

Damage
So, as is the nature of pet battles, there are a lot of damage dealing abilities. As a result I guess the ability I choose to put in this slot is really based on personal preference. Even so it's quite a tricky decision to make due to the vast number of damage dealing abilities. I've decided to talk about a number of damage dealing abilities that I like:

• Slicing Wind is quite a cool ability to watch and it can be found in a number of the flying (and other) pet families.
• Claw is another cool ability but this time found mostly in the beast family.
• Whilst Leap is again pretty neat to watch, it also has an accompanying buff that increases speed by 100% for 1 round - a little extra bonus if you ask me.

Slicing Wind.

Claw.

Leap.

Damage over Time (DOT)
I've chosen to add a Damage-over-Time (DOT) to my pets skill set. I think DOTs are extremely useful both generally in-game and in pet battles. In case you're unaware DOTs are normally applied early on during a battle and slowly over time cause damage to be inflicted on the enemy.
Whirlpool is probably my favourite DOT pet ability. Since the first time I saw it I loved it. It's an awesome ability both in terms of the damage it deals, it's relatively short cooldown (3 turns) and how it looks. There are other DOTs, such as Apocalypse, but I don't like them anywhere as much as Whirlpool.

Whirlpool.

Speed Up / Reduction
As with most turn-based games speed can often be a brilliant advantage to have on your side. Despite this it isn't always possible to guarantee that your pet will have the edge. Abilities such as Powerball that increase your speed, in this case by 20% each turn, are really useful for giving your pet this particular advantage.
Alternatively, there are speed reducing moves such as Screech.

Damage Reduction
What can I really say other than that any ability to reduce the amount of damage taken either partially or completely is a useful one! Personally, I haven't leveled my Anubisath Idol (or any of the other four pets) that are lucky enough to posess the ability Deflection but my boyfriend has and I've read all about it. You may have heard all about the Idol's super ability 'Reflection' but that's now been replaced with Deflection. Even so, it's easy to see how and why Deflection, which "avoids enemy attacks..." is useful.

10 Days of Pet Battling: Day 8

Day 8: What is the stupidest thing(s) you have ever done in a pet battle?

 

Well, here it is, Day 8 - the day where you all get to hear about two (out of numerous) blonde moments in-game that relate to Pet Battles. Having said that, it's safe to say that most of my less-impressive moments and thoughts normally relate to other aspects of the game.

 

Who needs a team of three pets?

I hope that I'm not the only person who commits this school-boy error. Going into a pet battle with pets below full health or even a pet (sometimes multiple) dead. I have done this countless times. It's manageable if your pets are just missing a little health or you're taking on a lower level opponent. But when it comes to top-end pets and tamers it's a bit of an issue. Needless to say I now check most of the time before starting a battle.

 

Mechanicals do 50% extra damage to Elementals, right?

Wrong! Now this happened very recently - within the last couple of weeks. I had decided that it was time to face Major Payne again and I was going to beat him! Now, Mr and Mrs WoW had given me a helpful hint - an elemental, mechanical and aquatic is a great team for kicking the Majors derriere. I'd made sure I had a level 25 of each and headed to face my opponent. I decided to ask the boyf for some advice - he defeated Major Payne a while back and had very little issue. Major Payne has a beast, mechanical and elemental pet so I was working out which pet I ideally wanted to battle against each of his (with the help of the pet journal).

 

So, there I am talking my stategy through with the boyf...

The mechanical passive *hovers over symbol in pet journal* does 50% extra damage to elementals - so I want my mechanical to take on the ele. Elemental passive does 50% extra damage to aquatic. Well Payne doesn't have an aquatic *frowns*. Aquatic does 50% extra damage to flying... Hmm and this team works!?!

Now, my boyfriend put me straight about where I was going wrong! In case you haven't picked up on it I was reading the "damage taken increased by 50%" as "damaged dealt increased by 50%". It really was a facepalm moment. And then... it all made sense - elemental pet vs Paynes mechanical, aquatic pet vs Paynes elemental and mechanical vs Paynes beast.

I like to think this was a one-off but I honestly have no idea how many times I may have based my team on this wrong information. I certainly won't be doing it again though.

10 Days of Pet Battles: Day 7

Day 7: Do you use mods? If you could only have one pet mod, what would it be and why?

 

I'm not much of an add-on person - I find that in most cases they add extra confussion and distraction. My poor little brain can't cope with the chaos that multple flashing add-ons results in. This doesn't mean that I don't use any add-ons. For my add-ons I use Curse, just so you know.

 

When MoP first went live I was so excited that I could actually pet battle. But, after a while I was starting to get foregetful of what pets I had captured and their quality. I found myself in a situation where I would be battling a wild pet and capture it thinking I didn't have it yet to find I did and now had a duplicate - which was fine if it was rare quality but that wasn't often.

 

Showing pet 'Quality'

As a result I decided to get an add-on that would tell me about what pets I had in my journal. I ended up going with Battle Pet - Quality Notifier. It tells you the quality of the pets you're battling, if you already own one of this pet or not and if the quality is an upgrade. All-in-all very handy.

 

The second, and final, pet battle related add-on that I use is Pet Tracker. My boyfriend got me into using this add-on to track which dailies I had done and which I hadn't. Aside from this it has a multitude of other uses such as showing the location(s) of pets you don't yet have.

 

Some examples of the pet locations displayed on the map.

If I had to only have one of these two it would definately be the first - Battle Pet Quality Notifier. I think it's more beneficial to me in-game whereas if I want to know where a specific pet spawns I could just use the internet.

10 Days of Pet Battles: Day 6

Day 6: What pets have you got in your favourite team(s)?

As you may know, creating Battle Pet Theme Teams is a little hobby of mine! So far I've only created a few but there will be more! If you haven't seen my Theme Teams already or want to check them out again you can find them by clicking the 'Theme Team' label *looks right*.

Anyway, what pets do I actually use in my everyday team(s)?

Generally I tend to use my Cinder Kitten (aka Xsinthis), Jungle Grub (Georgiee) and my Malayan Quillrat (Quilly). I have a small army of level 25 pets, which includes atleast one of most pet family, which I use intermittently to give my 'core' team a bit of a boost when fighting particluarly hard opponents.

For example, if I'm intending to capture a pet I will use my Terrible Turnip - it's just a no brainer! And if I predict a particluarly hard/long battle ahead I tend to put my Strand Crab (Sandy) for the healing.

I realise this post isn't very long or in-depth but I've now been writing it for over 2 hours - I've been very distracted by YouTube and video's of the dance and costume contests at BlizzCon. So, to make up for it here's the videos for both 2011 contests. Enjoy!

 

10 Days of Pet Battles: Day 5

Day 5: What pet do you want more than any other pet? What would you do to get it?

I currently have 417 unique pets in my collection (which you can view here) out of the 560 pets that are available (I think). So yeah I'm not doing amazingly but I'm not doing too bad.

But which pet do I really, really want? Well I can think of several so I'm going to do a run down of the top 5 (in no particular order)...

Pictures from warcraftpets.

Purple Puffer

I just think these guys are awesome. I really like the Sea Pony and worked hard to get it. Then when I saw the puffer I just wanted it! I've been quite lazy and never got around to purchasing one - they're trading card loot you see.

Panda Cub

The Panda Cub came with the World of Warcraft Collectors Edition and is incredibly cute. However, as much as I like this pet I don't think I'd ever be prepared to pay the price for the Collector's Edition. Plus, there are now new panda pets in game... Panda's with tails :)

Golden Pig

The Golden Pig is another promotional pet to celebrate Chinese new year and so I'll never be able to get one. I guess if it were available for caging in-game I would consider paying for it.

Gryphon Hatchling / Wind Rider Cub

These pets are purchaseable from the Blizzard store and come as part of purchasing the plush cuddly toys. I love how they look and the toys! If I had to choose just one it would be the Wind Rider Cub for two reasons - 1) I prefer it and 2) there's now a gryphon hatchling in-game (Wildhammer Gryphon Hatchling).

Spawn of G'nathus

Now, I only saw this pet in the pet journal as I was skimming through to jog my mind about pets that I really want. I think it's new (I'm fairly sure I'd have noticed it before now!). It drops from an elite, G'nathus, who can be found in Townlong Steppes. I know where I'm going in a minute...

10 Days of Pet Battles: Day 4 (Major Payne's Demise)

It's been a while since I've done an installment of the 10 Days of Pet Battles - been very busy in real life and I wanted to wait until I had accomplished something before making this post!

Day 4: What was the most epic pet battle/capture you ever had?

I clearly remember the day I captured my own Minfernal and it was truly epic! However, I blogged about that at the time (full story here) so thought I'd talk about something else.

The Enemy!!

Major Payne!

Now I'm sure we've all read about Major Payne and the frustrations he has caused many a pet-battler. And I'm no exception. I honestly gave up counting the number of times he absolutely destroyed my various pet battle teams. It got to the point that I actually gave up and forgot all about completing Taming Northrend.


Team Payne!!

Recently, several months after giving up, my desire to defeat the Major has been re-awoken. In part by this series of questions. Also, Mr and Mrs WoW (well one of them atleast) defeated the Major quite recently and gave me a helpful hint - elemental, aquatic and mechanical. So, I set about leveling my half-leveled mechanical those last few levels.

Earlier this evening I decided it was time to take Major Payne on. I was hoping that defeating him would make for a good answer to today's question.


Well, I defeated him using a Tiny Harvester (level 25, uncommon), Strand Crab (level 25, rare) and Cinder Kitten (level 25, rare) - "Team Payne". I was most worried about his cuddly-looking killing machine of a polar bear but it seems my harvester dealt with him pretty well. I just about managed to get a repair in time so that when he died and was brought back to life the heal bumped him up to a reasonable amount of health. After that it was fairly easy.

 

So, this battle wasn't exactly the most epic but it was quite an achievement for me and finally means I can move on to the other 'defeat the tamers' quests.

10 Days of Pet Battles: Day 3

It's been a while since I posted as part of Navimie's 10 Days of Pet Battles - I've been spending to much time getting eaten by dino's!

Day 3: Who is your favourite pet? If you could bring it out into the real world, tell me what you imagine you would be doing.

When I met Navi back in January she asked me about my favourite pet and it seems that it's one of her top questions to ask those she Navispams. Back then I told her that Xsinthis, my cinder kitten, was certainly one of my favourite pets. I received Xsinthis from Eric Dekker (author of the Golden Crusade) as part of Blog Azeroths Furtive Father Winter and you can read my post about my gift here.

I love the animations of the cinder kitten and it's also a good pet for battling. Just incase you don't have a cinder kitten of your own and haven't seen the animations here's a video I found on youtube:

Aside from Xsinthis I'm also a big fan of my Moonkin Hatchling(s) which the boyf got for me. The hatchling can be purchased from the Blizzard store but it's a bit of a bargain as you get two different skins - one for Alliance and one for Horde.

As for the second part of the question - if I had my own cinder kitten I'd envision it playing about in a field of long grass, chasing birds etc. If the Moonkin Hatchling was real I'd love to walk down the street with it fluttering along beside me (again, they have cool animations).

10 Days of Pet Battles: Day 2

Day 2: What pets don't you like and why?

When I was thinking about my answer to this question I ended up with two sub-sections - pets I don't like based on how they look and those I don't like based on their abilities. Obviously, some may fit into both categories and these are no doubt pets that will never be battled! I don't think I've found any pets that I dislike (well at least significantly) based on abilities and so I'm going to talk about aesthetics.

Navimie (who thought of the 10 Days of Pet Battling) touched on how pet models look in her answer. She mentions the blocky appearance of the various frogs and I couldn't agree more! They just look terrible.

Aside from the frogs, some other pet models that I really dislike are (images taken from warcraftpets.com):

Marmot / Prairie Dog Model

 

 

The marmot / prairie dog model is one of the worst and blockiest models if you ask me!

 

Chipmunk / Squirrel Model

 

The chipmunk / squirrel model is again blocky but not the worst - it could just do with a little smoothing over.

 

Eye of the Legion 

Now, the Eye of the Legion is a bit of an odd-ball - I don't dislike it as such but I'm disappointed with it. I'll set the scene - I knew what they looked like but had never seen one as such. I often looked for them on the AH and at WoW TCG Loot but never found a bargain. Then I saw my first one in-game. It happened to be Kaitz' and boy was I disappointed! Theyre soooo small!!! If you haven't seen one imagine that the Arcane Eye and Darkmoon Eye's are footballs (soccer) then the Eye of the Legion is a tennis ball!

 

I won't rant about Blizz not bothering to update the models as I'm sure they spent/spend their time more wisely but I really hope in the future they work on some of the older pet models. It doesn't bother me if, for example, there's only two different skins (i.e black and white) but the model shape, look etc. really does.

10 Days of Pet Battles: Day 1

If you haven't seen it already, Navi has recently posted her own series - 10 Days of Pet Battles and I couldn't resist.

Day 1: Your first day pet battling.

I thought that I had blogged about the launch of MoP and my first pet battles but after a little investigation it seems that I started blogging on 26th October 2012 after MoP's launch (25th September 2012). In my first blog I do talk a little about the launch of MoP but not in any great detail so I'll recap it.

When MoP launched I had just finished my masters, was jobless and had no money. I prepared myself for not playing MoP at it's launch and in all honesty this didn't bother me. I had never played any WoW content when it was current. The one thing that I was really keen on was the pet battles. I had experienced pet battles on the beta and found them to be really enjoyable, addictive and definately something I wanted to continue to do.

Audrey Burnhep.

Skip forward to the launch of MoP. I remember the server was ridiculously busy as was my guild. People were chatting away about various things relating to the launch of MoP. I was in Stormwind and as the clock to launch was counting down I made my way to Audrey Burnhep - the pet battle trainer. To my surprise I could pet battle even without MoP. I was so excited and flew into Elwynn Forest as quick as I could. It was reasonably quiet with maybe half a dozen people pet battling - the majority of people were attempting to get to Pandaria.

I love the cows in Elwynn Forest!

There was one other guy in my guild who didn't have MoP and he joined me pet battling. We progressed quite well and made it do Duskwood. Here things started to lull. A lot of people were finding reaching Pandaria to be quite laggy and that the shear number of people in the zones questing made things difficult. As a result the number of people turning to pet battling increased. It was annoying but I persevered and I think I made it as far as Stranglethorn Vale before giving in and going to bed.

I really like the Black Lambs...

... I'm still looking for a 'rare' quality one.