Guide to tamer daily pet battles (5.3) - For veterans

[Madsen]

Are you guys experiencing these tactics being less effective since last maintenance? I'm halfway through all Pandaria trainers and for the first time I'm having problems with almost every single one of them.

No they are all the same. But Onyxia deep breaths more.

[Marusia]

I also don't enjoy fighting the Whispering Pandaren Spirit. I would like to replace the Anubisath Idol so if anyone is out there using a different strategy let me know.

Try the Celestial Dragon (2,1,2) instead of the Anubisath Idol. It does quite well and can often take care of the first 2 opponents or close to it.

Marusia

[Celestya22]

Just found out about your guide today. Thanks for writing this all up!
I hated the fabled pets before the buff. Now I find them so near to impossible that I'd stopped trying to do them ><. So I thought I'd give your setup a try. However, I am having issues getting it to work. I've only tried it against Ti'un so far. He annihilates Chrominius before I can get a howl off every time (I've done at least 8 attempts now, so I don't think it's just RNG).
Any suggestions ? Pretty please!

edit: Not sure why I was only seeing page 1 until I reloaded the thread. >< Woops! Found my answer in others replies! Thank you all SO much!!

And to all those that said to use a moth for no-no - Brilliant! My P/S Amber moth (2,1,2) easily soloed him! So much easier and faster than my guardian cub and other fliers.

[Shinsui]

I also don't enjoy fighting the Whispering Pandaren Spirit. I would like to replace the Anubisath Idol so if anyone is out there using a different strategy let me know.

Try the Celestial Dragon (2,1,2) instead of the Anubisath Idol. It does quite well and can often take care of the first 2 opponents or close to it.

Marusia

I've had really good luck with the infinite whelping P/P (1.1.1) Start off with a Tail Sweep followed by Early Advantage. Early advantage goes off when he has the shield, so it will break the shield and do a small ammount of damage. Then just whittle him down till he's a hit away from dying, heal up, then kill him so you have the buff going into the next pet. This allows you to do a super Early Advantage that nearly kills the 2nd pet

Also I was looking at the Wastewalker Shu fight and hate having to miss during the sandstorm phase. Chrominus is a good universal pet, but I was thinking of trying the Pandaren Water Spirit. Its elemental so it doesn't get the reduced accuracy, and it has aqua attacks which do double damage to the sand pet. Thoughts?

[Madsen]

I also don't enjoy fighting the Whispering Pandaren Spirit. I would like to replace the Anubisath Idol so if anyone is out there using a different strategy let me know.

Try the [url=http://www.warcraftpets.com/wow-pets/dragonkin/serpents/celestial-dragon/]Celestial Dragon (2,1,2)[/url] instead of the Anubisath Idol. It does quite well and can often take care of the first 2 opponents or close to it.

Marusia

Celestial dragon is safer but was as slow for me as anubisath idol.
I tried Direhorn Runt, Chrominius, Boostpet now and beat him in 13 turns with decent rng. I will continue using it until i see a reason not to.

[Pikafido]

Im having troubles with the Flowing Pandaren Spirit. Im using a bat, because i dont have the Vampiric Batling. But his 2nd turn is a dive. and when he comes back mostly my Bat is dead. Im using a Bat (8) instead of 4.

Any suggestions??

Pika

[Gemini4t]

Get a Bat (4). Use an upgrade stone if you have to. But instead of using Reckless Strike -> Hawk Eye -> Reckless Strike, use Reckless Strike -> Bite -> Hawk Eye -> Reckless Strike.

[Fruitt]

Im having troubles with the Flowing Pandaren Spirit. Im using a bat, because i dont have the Vampiric Batling. But his 2nd turn is a dive. and when he comes back mostly my Bat is dead. Im using a Bat (8) instead of 4.

Any suggestions??

Pika

Yeah, using Bat is unreliable and Vampiric Bat shouldn't be in the guide since it can't be obtained anymore and there are decent alternatives.

Against Flowing Pandaren Spirit, I recommend Sandy Petrel (2,2,2). For Marley, just keep using Thrash and use Lift-Off when it uses Dive. Should beat Marley without taking much damage, if any at all. Same idea against Tiptoe.

[Ravnhawk]

With Nishi I use 2 Dancing Water skimmers and 1 carry pet.

I mostly use Pump to down the sunflower easily. Pump again when Turnip goes under switching in carry pet. Back to Dancing Water Skimmer - Kill turnip. Many times just the 1 DWS kills all three if he dies then I switch in my 2nd DWC. Takes about 16 rounds very fast rounds and the rng makes no difference. I've never lost this fight with these pets. Carry Pet is usually a level 10.

[Ravnhawk]

Against Major Payne. HIGHLY reliable.

I use Infinite Whelping P/P.
Tail Sweep - Healing Flame and Early Advantage.

Infinite Whelping against Grizzle. If Grizzle stuns then white flag until he does damage on his first hit. Tail Sweep -until he goes to heal himself. Then Healing Flame then tail sweep. This should kill Grizzle.

Beakmaster
Early advantage with the dragonkin Racial usually kills the Mechanopeep. If not 1 more tail sweep does it. Infinite whelping is dead at this point. Switch in carry pet to either finish off Beakmaster or use him for one attempt at the Elemental. I use any lvl 18 or higher here. In my last battle slot is usually a frog or a crab or any pet with aquatic abilities takes out the elemental pretty quickly. I rarely if ever lose this fight.

[Pikafido]

Finished it yesterday using the Sandy Petrel. thanks for the tip.

Found out on legendary No-No that sometimes you can solo it just using Kun-Lai Runt.
Used last night also a lv23 pet to level, but only getting 40K exp. So not worth it as you get more then 100K in the wild.

[Yamum]

Im having troubles with the Flowing Pandaren Spirit. Im using a bat, because i dont have the Vampiric Batling. But his 2nd turn is a dive. and when he comes back mostly my Bat is dead. Im using a Bat (8) instead of 4.

Any suggestions??

Anubisath Idol can solo this tamer with enough RNG on your side. Sandstorm is the key as it protects your backline pets from Tidal Wave, so use it first round and on cooldown. Use Deflection to avoid Whirlpool. Use Crush when Sandstorm is on cooldown or you have no reason to use Deflection. If the RNG is not in your favour he will die to the 2nd pet, so bring in your carry then immediately bring in an S/S rabbit or hare. Use Burrow and Flurry to finish off the 2nd pet. Use Flurry vs the 3rd pet (it does not benefit from the Sandstorm as it is elemental) until you see Whirlpool and Geyser up with 2 rounds remaining. Use Dodge. Keep using Flurry. If you get really really bad RNG use Burrow and Dodge as needed to avoid the subsequent Whirlpools and Geysers. Easy peasy!

[Stencil]

I'm not sure if this would be the right place for it, but the newest ptr mentioned that they have moved ability slots for the Darkmoon Zep and the Mech Dragonling. Namely, they've placed Decoy/Explode on the 3rd tier, which will make them much less useful for Jeremy Feasel/Mo'ruk. Time to work on some new combo's for those guys, which is a shame because the explode strategy was awesome for leveling pets with ease

Summary:
Moruk: Zeppelin (Missile, Bombing Run, Decoy) works; best if carry pet can swap in and eat the Moth Dust attack
Feasel: Dragonling (Breath, Bombing Run, Explode) should be BETTER than current setup


Full Analysis:

Explode currently gives us two benefits. The first is its high damage. However, since you have to get under the threshold to use it, some amount of it is usually wasted but probably no more than 100 points. The second is that compared to using the usual death swap, Explode spares you a round of taking damage swapping in after the leveling pet.

Moruk

Zeppelin (Missile, Bombing Run, Decoy) and Chrominius will still be a solid team against Moruk; I've tried it out a few times this week and its worked. Heh, when I first suggested using a Zeppelin on Moruk that swapped around Lightstalker, I wasn't even using Explode. I didn't know about how it gave the free swap. Using Explode, and replacing the Emerald Proto-Whelp with Chrominius, were improvements made later by Phraide.

One option is to have the leveling pet swap in after Woodcarver dies and eat the Moth Dust attack. You need that pet to have a decent amount of health, but it means you get back the round of damage that the Zep would take from Needleback hard swapping in after the leveling pet. Note also that hard swapping in the Zep that way could result in getting Headbutted before you could deploy your Decoy. I don't think that can happen when the Zep swaps immediately after Chrominius dies because, even if Headbutt is off CD, Needleback seems to want to Grasp first.

The Zep's Explode does 618 damage while Bombing Run averages 439. Tooltip math tells us we will need 4 Missile hits to push Needleback down into Explode execute range and that, on average, it would be at 446 health. So, while at first glance the difference between the abilities seems to be 179 damage, the difference in damage actually done to Needleback would on average only be 7. There will be some attempts where Bombing Run + Missiles will kill Needleback in the same number of rounds that Missiles + Decoy would have, but generally you'll need one more attack. That puts us a round down which is important more in terms of damage taken and not getting killed than the strategy's rounds to kill average. Note that if Needlebacks health is low enough that additional attack can be another Bombing Run which, unlike Missile, WON'T miss.

I often find with Woodcarver that after 3 missiles he'll still have around 100 health left and I need a 4th missile to finish him off. If even a single missile misses, and we hit round 6, he'll put another Goo on the Zep. With Bombing Run, you only need two missile hits to kill him; that means you have room for one missile to miss. The odds of hitting 4/4 missiles is 65.6%; the odds of hitting 2/3 missiles is 97.2%. Goo does more damage than either Needleback's Grasp or Powerball attacks.

So, maybe 30% of the time, we'll have already paid for the extra round we need to kill Needleback by *not* getting hit with a second Goo during Woodcarver. RNG with Missiles missing can still wreck us, but this pet combination still seems fast and pretty reliable.


Feasal

The Mechanical Pandaren Dragonling's Explode does 560 damage while its Bombing Run, against a beast like Fezwick, would average 666. So, swapping Explode for Bombing Run wouldn't reduce our damage; mainly we're losing the free swap in of the leveling pet.

I tried a run where I started with the carry pet and had it spend a round against Judgement as he does the least damage. But that meant the Infinite Whelpling didn't start damaging Judgement until round 3 which allowed Darkmoon Curse to come back off cooldown. That resulted in an undesireable reduction to the big Early Advantage attack on Honky-Tonk. So that's out.

The extra round when you hard swap after the leveling pet does the death swap could leave you eating a Shock and Awe or even a Lock-On. This is especially true if Failsafe hadn't already been triggered as it guarantees at least 2 rounds for Honky-Tonk to attack you.

The current strategy calls for Decoy on the first round of Fezwick. The one thing you gain from using Decoy then, instead of attacking, is whatever damage is blocked from the attack on round 2. It appears to be random as to whether Fezwick will cast Smash or Banana Barrage. If its Bananas, then you will only block one chunk of the damage which looks to be something like 130 on average. That's a very poor return from a long cooldown ability.

In fact, I think the strat in the current 5.3 guide should be updated with this optimization: if the Dragonling comes in versus Honky-Tonk and Failsafe has not yet been triggered, use Decoy first and then Breath. Normally in that situation you'd have to use Breath twice to kill Honky-Tonk and you'd be attacked once. The average gain from blocking that attack should be higher than the average of "single banana or Smash". Even better, if one of those attacks was Honky-Tonk building up the first charge of Lock-On, which is highly likely in my experience, then you will carry a charge of Decoy over to Fezwick and block his stun. That means you could attack twice during Fezwick's first two turns instead of only once (because you either cast Decoy or were stunned). So, same average damage mitigated and your own damage done increased. Pretty cool, huh?

But back to 5.4; the problem with Decoy is that you would have to use the Death Swap mechanic. That's an extra round of damage taken. Taking a 370-450 damage hit in exchange for blocking one 120 damage banana would be a lousy tradeoff.

Lets look instead at what we get by taking Bombing Run and Explode. Currently you need to hit Fezwick three times with Breath to put him in Explode execute range; you would also need three Breaths to complement a full Bombing Run. Breath has a 10% miss chance, but like the Zep's Missiles it feels higher. The nice thing about Bombing Run and Explode, besides the high damage, is that they can't miss. The kicker is that if you subtract their damage (666 and 560) from Fezwick's health (1570) you get 344 which means you likely only need to hit him with one Breath (355 average)!

So, compared to the current situation with Decoy+Explode we lose Decoy's mitagation of dubious value but need one less attack saving us a full round of damage. Factor in 3 of the 4 attacks required by Decoy+Explode having a 10% miss chance, versus 1 of 3 with Bombing Run + Explode and you will lose fewer turns (and take less damage) to missed Breath attacks. All in all, the Dragonling should be even better in this fight after those changes.

Note: If your leveling pet is low level then you will need to make sure you don't Explode if the Bombing Run debuff on Fezwik show more than 1 round remaining. For example, if the Whelpling made it to Fezwick and ate the stun, you could in three successive turns cast Bombing Run, Breath and Explode. Fezwick wouldn't die until the round after Explode when the bombs would land meaning you leveling pet would get attacked once.

[Kickascii]

I've got 20-21 rounds for Pandaren Earth Spirit, and a very predictable fight.

Rabbit, Darkmoon Zeppelin, carry pet.

Rabbit:
Flurry, Burrow, dodge, flurry flurry flurry (7)
Burrow, dodge, Flurry Flurry Flurry (rabbit dies) (6)
MIssile, Missile, Missile (3)
Missile, Decoy, Missile, Missile, Explode (5)

[Kendrah]

I just found this guide and haven't read all the posts so forgive me if I'm just repeating old stuff, but I thought I'd add a little tip on No-No since a friend of mine was having a lot of trouble. I've found a rare Mei Lei Sparkler is the most OP pet for No-No. Just use Slicing, Cocoon, and Glowing. Hit him up with Glowing first and Cocoon after he dives. Use Slicing for everything else. It only takes me that one pet to kill it. XD

[Madsen]

It only takes me that one pet to kill it. XD

I'm pretty sure you only beat it twice in that case. His moves are not always in the same order, and if he decides to tail slap you twice you are done. I'm not saying it's not a good pet, but so is Yellow Moth or any other flying pet. It all depends on what moves No-No decides to use.

[Kendrah]

I'm pretty sure you only beat it twice in that case. His moves are not always in the same order, and if he decides to tail slap you twice you are done. I'm not saying it's not a good pet, but so is Yellow Moth or any other flying pet. It all depends on what moves No-No decides to use.

Erm. Nope. I've killed it more than twice. I actually got the idea from a youtube guide, where in the guy using only two (with the second, the Mei Li, not fully healed from the last fight) to kill him, so I can't be the only one who thinks Mei Li is great against it.

But perhaps I've just been really lucky with RNG. *shrug* Just wanted to help. Take it with a boulder of salt.

[Miatog]

First off, thanks a ton for this guide and the beginner one as well. Leveling and catching pets around both guides and it's helping me a ton.

One small note I'd like to make.

- Notes: Grasslands Cottontail [5] is the only variant of rabbit with this stat distribution. I strongly recommand you to avoid any other rabbit/breed for this fight.

Spring Rabbit also comes in the S/S breed. It has slightly lower attack but higher speed. It's what I use since I don't have a S/S Grasslands Cottontail and it works perfectly fine for me.

[Gemini4t]

I'm not sure if this would be the right place for it, but the newest ptr mentioned that they have moved ability slots for the Darkmoon Zep and the Mech Dragonling. Namely, they've placed Decoy/Explode on the 3rd tier, which will make them much less useful for Jeremy Feasel/Mo'ruk. Time to work on some new combo's for those guys, which is a shame because the explode strategy was awesome for leveling pets with ease

Summary:
Moruk: Zeppelin (Missile, Bombing Run, Decoy) works; best if carry pet can swap in and eat the Moth Dust attack
Feasel: Dragonling (Breath, Bombing Run, Explode) should be BETTER than current setup

Zeppelin can still keep its current strat. Explode is now second slot and Decoy third slot, but you can still use both.