Community Blog Topic: WoW Resolutions

This weeks WoW Insider Community Blog Topic from Robin Torres asks "What are your World of Warcraft resolutions?"

 

I'm not really a big fan of real-life new year resolutions mainly because I like to think that I don't need a new year to do something. Having said that when it comes to WoW there are a few things that I would like to focus on in the coming months (it just so happens were at the start of 2014). If amything these are pre-Warlords of Draenor resolutions.

I Was Not Prepared!

Patch 5.4 is the first time that I've been up to date enough with content that I was able to experience it from the off. I'd checked it out on the PTR, leveled my engineering, completed all of the LFRs available, and thought about what pets I'd need for the Celestial Tournament  - but... I wasn't prepared for the excitement, wonder and simultaneous panic I'd feel!

My Personal Pet Battle Strategy

About a month ago Mr and Mrs WoW commented on a post of mine asking whether I have a strategy when it comes to pet battles. Then this week I got asked a similar question by Trolling Azeroth:

So, I've decided to put my strategy down in writing. It most definately isn't the most efficient method but it may be useful for someone.

I'd like to point out that there's a whole sub-community of WoW blogs out there that deal specifically with pets, battles, strategy etc. I like to read the work of Liopleurodon, Quintessence, Kaitz, Ross and Ratshag amongst others. Ross has even got leveling from 1-25 down to four fights but it does require you to have some specific items and pets.

Breakfast Topic Thoughts: Zookeeping

Last night I managed to complete the World Safari achievement and it happens to be the subject of todays WoW Insider Breakfast Topic - so brilliant timing all round!

BPTT: Children's Week

It's been a while since I did a Pet Battle Theme Team and what better an occasion to return with than Children's Week! For those of you that are taking part in this year's Children's Week world event Perculia's guide can be found here.

During Children's Week it's possible to get 10 companion/battle pets! Last night I managed to get my final one the Curious Wolvar Pup. This BPTT, unlike previous ones, I will not be using images of pets from warcraftpets.com as I possess all of the pets I'm talking about (for once). Plus after my recent discovery that my gnomeee can look super small beside enlarged pets I thought I'd have some more fun with Magical Pet Biscuits!

Egbert's Egg

 

Egbert is a Bird from the Critter family of pets. He has a mostly Beast abilities (4/6) with a single Flying and Critter ability. A notable ability that Egbert has (and only shares with three other pets) is Feign Death which acts much like the hunter ability of the same name.

 

 

Elekk Training Collar

 

Peanut is from the Critter family and has a selection of Critter (2/6) and Beast abilities (4/6). Peanut has an enrage, Trumpet Strike, among his abilities which I think could be a really useful way of upping his damage. Note: the Wowhead tooltip says that damaged is increased by 0% which I think it an error - warcraftpets says 25% increase.

 

Random achievements, new transmog, a must-have mount and a GIANT moonkin hatchling!

Hey!

I got back from my cousins wedding yesterday afternoon. I had a really nice time and it was a lot of fun - there was a whole table of sweets (giant strawberrys, fried eggs etc.) which was amazing!

Last night I logged into WoW and had a pretty laid back evening. As usual I logged my hunter, checked out the BMAH and queued for my daily random heroic and scenario. Following my scenario I got the achievement Got My Mind On My Money for looting 10,000 gold. I then went into my dungeon and got Mystically Superior.

 

I've gradually been getting new gear and my Dragonstalker transmog has slowly been getting less and less as I haven't been transmogging my new stuff to match. So, I decided it was about time I re-mogged my gear. I collected the Wind-Reaver gear (part of the Stormscale Set) from the quests in the Dread Wastes and decided to try it out as a transmog. I really like how it all looks together and to make things even better it looks great with my favourite bow - Black Bow of the Betrayer! I've hidden the helm and cloak because I don't like the helm and my current cloak doesn't match. I've also equiped the Tabard of the Wildhammer Clan as that matches it nicely.

 

I then logged onto my mage to do some pet battling. I'm taking a break from questing on her now that she's reached level 89 and am just poodling along pet battling. During one battle I saw a Player X has got [Turtles All the Way Down] message/alert pop up and once out of the battle I congratulated them. We had a good old chat about various things - from achievements to pet battles and they showed me their new Sea Turtle mount. It looks amazingly cute and even hides in it's shell. It really is a must have mount, in my opinion, but takes a lot of time, patience and luck to get. There is however a similar TCG loot model (Riding Turtle) which will set you back around $100!

My last bit of quirky news is that I got my Moonkin Hatchling to level 25 and the boyf asked if it would be bigger than me (on my mage) if I fed it Magical Pet Biscuits. The answer is Yes!

Perky Pug!

I've literally just got the Perky Pug pet which is a reward for the achievement Looking for Multitudes which you get for grouping with 100 random people in heroics. I'd totally forgotten about this pet and how you get it so it was a nice surprise when I got it through in the mail.

 

Also, in slightly related news I got the achievement Rookie Pet Crew at the weekend. I'm slowly progressing with my battle pet roster and now have 17 level 25s (towards Pro Pet Crew) and need to raise only a dragonkin to level 25 to get All Pets Allowed.

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!

BPTT: Easter / Nobelgarden Edition

Welcome to my latest Battle Pet Theme Team post all about Easter / Nobelgarden themed pets! It's been a while since I've done one of these post so I'll try to make it a good one. Nobelgarden is one of my favourite world events and Perculia's guide can be found here. Whilst I have completed all of the Nobelgarden events I will still be taking part in it this year - just for fun!

As usual, the pet images used below are taken from warcraftpets.com as is the information I use. The pet name will link to the pets detailed page at warcraftpets.com.

The Contenders

 

Spring and Easter are times of the year heavily associated with new life whether it's baby lambs or chicks. And so, this has influenced the contenders for this particular theme team.

Bunnies

There's a whole range of rabbits/bunnies and even hares in-game. They all share what is essentially the same model but with slightly differeent skins. In terms of their abilities I think they're all identical. Having said this there is only one real choice and that's the Spring Rabbit. The Spring Rabbit is a vendor-bought pet available during the holiday for 100 Nobelgarden Chocolate's.

Lambs

There are two lambs availabe in-game - the capturable Black Lamb and the Elwynn Lamb which costs 40 Champion's Seal. Again, same model, slightly different skins but the same set of abilities. I only have the Black Lamb in my collections and in all honesty I prefer it to the white Elwynn Lamb.

Chicks

In-game there's a variety of chickens available but I wanted a chick, not the adult. A quick search on warcraftpets.com brought up the Imperial Eagle Chick and the Jade Crane Chick. Not what I was thinking of. Then, I remembered about Egbert - your typical half-hatched baby chick. Egbert is available as a reward during Children's Week (which will take place at the end of this month).

Final Team

 

This final team of: Spring Rabbit, Black Lamb and Egbert is purely based on their appropriate-ness to the Nobelgarden (or Easter/Spring-time) theme. As a result all three happen to be from the Critter pet-family. Despite this they only share a few abilities and it's possible that they may actually form a team balanced just enough to work.

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 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 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.

BPTT: Lunar Festival Re-Visited!

I thought it would be good to re-visit my first Battle Pet Theme Team based on the Lunar Festival. If you haven't read the original post you can read it here.

I opted to focus on the lunar / magic element of the Lunar Festival world event rather than the Chinese new year element (I will be covering the more oriental side later this week). This limited my contender pets to be largely from the magic family with most having the same abilities.

The Team vs Froggy!

So, when I came to choosing my final 3 it was more a case of get the best variety of abilities. In the end I went with the: Enchanted Lantern, Enchanted Broom and the Fjord Worg Pup [pet links to warcraftpets.com]. To be honest I wasn't sure how well the team would balance out. But to my surprise it went quite well! At the time of publishing I have leveled my Enchanted Lantern to level 16 and the Enchated Broom to level 17.

One thing that I had not considered, when picking my final three, was that the Fjord Worg Pup would start at a much higher level (due to it being a wild caputrable pet). My Pup is level 19 and of poor quality. My aim was to level the two enchanted pets high enough to go and find myself a rare quality pup but things didn't go to plan - I didn't have enough battling time.

Lantern casting illuminate.

Anyway, back to the enchanted duo. I really enjoyed leveling these two pets and they have some great moves and visual effects. I'd really recommend the Enchanted Broom as a good all rounder - with the magic passive and numerous non-magic abilities to mix it up. I'm going to continue to level said Broom 'til 25 and can see it being a really valuable addition to my squad of level 25's.

Broom casting Clean-Up.

A Darkmoon (A)Faire

Since I started playing WoW (even back before I had my own account) the Darkmoon Faire has been one of my favourite places. I love the carnival atmosphere and ofcourse the hourly shows by The Tauren Chieftain band. I try to attend the Faire each month on atleast my main 2-3 characters as it's worth the little time it takes. I'll assume that everyone has either been or understands the concept of the DMF but if not here is the event on Wowhead. Anyway, the DMF started last night at midnight game-time. I headed over and did the quests on my hunter and my mage. I was also fortunate enough to achieve several things last night!

 

Darkmoon Rabbit

The Darkmoon Rabbit was added with Patch 5.0.4. It's basically an evil rabbit that lives in a cave on the Island (it's a rare spawn on a 36+hr timer). Anyway, the idea is that people form groups and kill the rabbit. And last night I did exactly that!

More Pets...

After capturing my Minfernal on Sunday (link) I seem to have had some luck concerning the capture of battle pets. Considering that my play time has been limited due to work I've managed to tick a few off of my list of "must haves". As previously mentioned, the recent Patch (5.1) introduced both new wild pets and pets that drop from old raid bosses - and these pets have been on my list.

Since Sunday I have captured the following: Infinite Whelpling, Mini Mindslayer, Emerald Proto-Whelp and the Darkmoon Glowfly. I also saw Harbringer of Flame drop but lost the roll.

I found my Infinite Whelpling just outside the Caverns of Time. There was just the one and the capture was fairly simple. Once I'd won the battle and phased back out someone else had just appeared and was flying around presumably in search for one of these guys. I'm really impressed with how these guys look and their symbol.



Outside the Caverns of Time with my Infinite Whelpling.

 

IntPiPoMo 2012 #3: Stranglethorn Vale

Today I've been working on leveling my pet battle team. In particular I've been working on my, as of yet unnamed, Terrible Turnip and Viv (Voodoo Figurine). Both of these pets started at level 1 and I've got them to around level 9/10. When leveling my pets I following a set route through the Eastern Kingdoms that I've found works very well. This route includes both Northern Stranglethorn and the Cape of Stranglethorn.

Generally, I really enjoy questing, pet battling and spending time in Stranglethorn Vale. There's some amazing scenery from waterfalls to ancient ruins. I've also spent many a Sunday afternoon there in an attempt to win the Stranglethorn Fishing Extravaganza and get the Accomplished Angler achievement. Unfortunately, the fishing competition has been suspended for some time now, as a result of CRZ, but hopefully not for much longer.

Anyway, on with the screenshots...

Entrance to Zul'Gurub.

   

Happy Return!

On Thursday I had the final part of my masters course, my viva voce - an oral exam. Thankfully it went well and the questions about my thesis were fairly simple compared to the more complex ones I had prepared for.

Last night (Saturday) as a little reward the boyf bought me some game time, wooo! So, finally after several weeks of not playing I am back in the game - which should help me to blog more.

The first thing I did was log my banker and check out the auction house. After a quick browse I found that the Terrible Turnip had dropped down to just under 500G. Just 5 days before (last Monday) my boyf had purchased one for around 900G. I decided to buy one, primarily for their weakening blow ability which is ideal for collecting other low level pets. I know that they can be farmed via the ominous seed but as I no longer have access to MoP content this isn't an option for me. In fact, later in the evening a guildie was lucky enough to farm one up.