Zandalari Raptor Breeds

[Yodathehulk]

Hello all. I have a feeling this has been asked before, but doing a search using teh keywords "Zandalari" and "Zandalari Breed" garnered me to pages of posts that mainly dealt with trades, but not actual optimal breeds.

I have been sitting on 2 breeds of each raptor for months now. 2 reasons I haven't learned them is due to my maximum pet slots being filled (652) and not knowing what one to actually keep. I am pretty sure (not logged in atm) I have the P/P and S/S breeds of the raptors. What I am unsure on is, which breed to learn and keep in my journal.

From what I have read, it comes down to personal preference and what type of team/battles you do. I have never and not even sure I will ever, do PvP. Mainly work on tamers (haven't done the Fable line yet) and PvE battles. So based on all of that, which breed should I learn...regardless if they are no longer a good pet. One can take PvP into account if they like.

Thanks in advance.


PS. Also, if people are willing to help me out on letting me know which dupes to get rid of, it would be awesome. I know I have some reward pets and the like that are dupes but I kept them due to the fact you can't cage them. Some of my wild pets I have dupes of due to breeds and still unsure which are teh best to keep/stone.

[Luciandk]

A 341 speed rappy will outspeed all but skitterer Xi'a, whom isnt a terribly difficult pet.

Edit:
Some experiments. You can 2 pet Nitun easilly. Opening with the S/S Zandalari Kneebiter, Black Claw, then Hunting party. By round 3 Nitun will be near death or dead. If Nitus opens with Prowl, forfeit immediately or you will get 1 shot in the next round.

If Nitun uses Prowl on second round and kills the rappy on third, healing to half life. Dont despair. Nitun will have the double damage debuff. Swap in your second pet like a direhorn and use horn attack. Nitun blows up.

Edit2:
Speed seems absolutely crucial for the rappys, being as fragile they are. Much, MUCH better performance when super fast. Which makes me wonder. Opening with a pet using Dazzling Dance and using P/P breeds instead..

Edit3:
Dazzling Dance is quite helpful as I suspected! Though the rappy swapping in takes a nasty hit before it gets to start its combo which may knock it out early.

Edit4:
If you let the boss pet kill your dancer, then your next pet gets first move if fastest.

Edit5:
I find Zandalari Kneebiter to be the absolute top performer due to having Bloodfang, which works wonders as a powerful finisher.

Going P/P over S/S doesnt seem to be that much of an increase in kill speed, plus it ties up a pet slot to bring a dancer. So id say S/S as the premier choice.

[Kpb321]

I don't know that there is an answer to which is best because that is subjective. Only one of the 4 types has an obvious direct benefit from being faster. The toenibbler with flank gets an extra hit if faster. When battling the tamers being faster is an advantage sometimes other times it works out better to be slower. When you get hit and the beast racial activates and then they attack they can be brutal in the dmg they deal. I run 3 P/P raptors for all of the critter fabled and rarely have trouble even against nitun as any one of the three can pretty much solo him. Depending on his sequence of moves he'll usually kill one or two off but rarely all three. On the other hand it is a bummer when you don't get to attack with the Hunting party debuff up because the opponent goes first and kills your pet.

All the pets also have the option for at least a debuff opponents speed or buff their speed with leap and Primal Cry or screech. The Kneebitter even can have both at the same time but I'm not sure why you'd want that.

With the cap going up to 1000 in the next patch I'd just keep them all and call it good.

[Luciandk]

My oppinion is that the raptors are so fragile that if you waste turns debuffing enemy speed, you take way too much damage, and lowering your own damage potential.

My favorite S/S Kneebiter can frequently solo Nitun in 3 rounds. And if Nitun survives round 3, a second pet with a strong attack will destroy him in next round.

Any of them that couldnt outspeed him, such as a P/P kneebiter I tested, would get destroyed before it could pull off the combo.


Perhaps I should say that I feel S/S Kneebiters shine at destroying elite pets.

[Domie]

I personaly just chose to have 2 of each of those breeds, i chose it rather randomly tbh, but the 4 of them are pretty similar, and i figured if i had 2 S/S and 2 P/P, i would probaly be able to have a good pet for fights where any of them are strong.

It would be quite a work to go into details on all your duplicate pets, but i wouldnt mind helping, you could add my battletag if you want some specific answers ingame (im on eu tho). But ill try with some general things here:

First of, there are tons of pets that are very generic, if they just have a lot of abilities you see on other pets, the chances are that you are never going to use them, and getting the perfect breed wont be important, like your arctic fox kit, i see you got 3 of them, but you will probaly never use any of them in fights (unless you have really strong feelings for the skin :P ), so you should just keep your highest rarity with the highest level and get rid of the rest.

And with pets like the moth, there is about 10 of them that are basicly identical, so you just need to find the best 1 or 2, and the rest of them you can have in any random breed. The 2 you would want is yellow moth as p/p, since it gets the highest attack, and i also like to have an amber moth with P/S, since there is a few fights where the yellow gets out speed.

I also see you have a lot of pet that have diffrent breeds even tho they arent rare, you will never use them for fighting if they arent rare anyways, so i wouldnt care about the breed unless you find a rare, or before you have the spare stones to upgrade them, finding a specific breed when you have the stone to upgrade wont take more than a few minutes, assuming its not a rare like minfernal or valkyr.

Also i think a general guideline for pet battling is that Power and Speed is going to be better than balance and balance is better than health, specialy if you can get it as full power or speed (P/P and S/S). health is ofcouse good on some tanking pets / pets with abilities that scale with health. But outside of that i think this mostly holds up. You mostly want speed on pets with stuns, abilities that avoids attacks (like dodge), damage reducing abilities (like extra plating) and debuffs that does other things that just damage. I personaly preffer just to have power on other pets, that dont specificly needs speed, and power is specialy important on pets with healing, outside of the crawdads heal that scales with health.

I wouldnt mind helping more with specifics, but with 650 pets, its a little much to go over all of your collection, but with these few guidlines try and clean your collection a bit, and after that it will be easier for us to help out. And if you have any specific question im sure we can answer those for you :)

I hope my messy post is making any sense to you, good luck with cleaning up a bit ^^

[Yodathehulk]

by Dec » August 29th, 2013, 1:50 am
Strictly for PVE I think that the s/s breeds are best as the attacks end up powerful anyway with the buffs from back claw and hunting party, so the speed bonus is an advantage.

Thanks very much. At the time of the time of my post, was so tired that I did not think to look at the movesets.

by Luciandk » August 29th, 2013, 3:22 am
A 341 speed rappy will outspeed all but skitterer Xi'a, whom isnt a terribly difficult pet.

Edit5:
I find Zandalari Kneebiter to be the absolute top performer due to having Bloodfang, which works wonders as a powerful finisher.
Going P/P over S/S doesnt seem to be that much of an increase in kill speed, plus it ties up a pet slot to bring a dancer. So id say S/S as the premier choice.

You are a very dedicated person! Not only did you test a S/S breed, but also using a P/P with a team speed boosting pet...something that I woudl never have thought to do. But like you said, P/P would tie up a slot for the speed buff and more then likely be more of a hinderance.

by Kpb321 » August 29th, 2013, 11:59 am
I don't know that there is an answer to which is best because that is subjective...

With the cap going up to 1000 in the next patch I'd just keep them all and call it good.

Can't argue that it is purely subjective, but it doesn't hurt to ask and get opinions when possible. As for the 1K cap, wasn't aware of this...haven't been doing my due diligence on keeping up with upcoming changes...game has kinda become bland over the last several months. So I will most certainly keep both breeds till the increase!

by Luciandk » August 29th, 2013, 1:47 pm
Perhaps I should say that I feel S/S Kneebiters shine at destroying elite pets.

Will keep this in mind when I get around to the Fable chain.

by Domie » August 29th, 2013, 2:02 pm
First of, there are tons of pets that are very generic, if they just have a lot of abilities you see on other pets, the chances are that you are never going to use them, and getting the perfect breed wont be important, like your arctic fox kit, i see you got 3 of them, but you will probaly never use any of them in fights (unless you have really strong feelings for the skin ), so you should just keep your highest rarity with the highest level and get rid of the rest.

Yeah I kept those because it took me months of camping and checking for a single snowstorm event. And when I did, I wasn't leaving till I had 3. But I appreciate you bringing this up...a stable cleaning is certainly in order.

And with pets like the moth, there is about 10 of them that are basicly identical, so you just need to find the best 1 or 2, and the rest of them you can have in any random breed. The 2 you would want is yellow moth as p/p, since it gets the highest attack, and i also like to have an amber moth with P/S, since there is a few fights where the yellow gets out speed.

Again, something else for me to work on. Thank you.

I also see you have a lot of pet that have diffrent breeds even tho they arent rare, you will never use them for fighting if they arent rare anyways, so i wouldnt care about the breed unless you find a rare, or before you have the spare stones to upgrade them, finding a specific breed when you have the stone to upgrade wont take more than a few minutes, assuming its not a rare like minfernal or valkyr.

I have almost 6 of every stone, if not more. I have been stoning the pets that only come in uncommon first, since its the only way for a rare. But I plan on stoning the hard to find pets that I have, regardless of breed (darn you Minfernal ), or ones that I still need to find (Valk).

Also i think a general guideline for pet battling is that Power and Speed is going to be better than balance and balance is better than health, specialy if you can get it as full power or speed (P/P and S/S). health is ofcouse good on some tanking pets / pets with abilities that scale with health. But outside of that i think this mostly holds up. You mostly want speed on pets with stuns, abilities that avoids attacks (like dodge), damage reducing abilities (like extra plating) and debuffs that does other things that just damage. I personaly preffer just to have power on other pets, that dont specificly needs speed, and power is specialy important on pets with healing, outside of the crawdads heal that scales with health.

If I know pets have the P/P, S/S or H/H breed, I do my best to farm those. When it comes to pets that have 10 breeds, like the Sporeling, my brain just gets all . Again, I know this is all subjective, but having others lend their thoughts on the matter helps a great deal.

I wouldnt mind helping more with specifics, but with 650 pets, its a little much to go over all of your collection, but with these few guidlines try and clean your collection a bit, and after that it will be easier for us to help out. And if you have any specific question im sure we can answer those for you

I hope my messy post is making any sense to you, good luck with cleaning up a bit ^^

I will clean out over the next few days as all I am doing atm in WoW is checking on my farm, then jumping over to D3 for some mindless clicking!


Everyone has been most kind and very helpful. Appreciate all your time and 411. Thanks and best of luck to all.