Noob needs some help....

[Kissieface]

I am new to pet collecting, but devoted to it. However, I have a learning disability...I'm blonde.

There are terms used that I do not understand. The slash ones are not understood.....s/s.....etc.

Can someone please explain....I apologize for being so stupid.

[Quintessence]

Don't apologize! There's a lot of things about Pet Battles that's not directly explained in-game. You'll pick it up eventually, don't worry!

Terms such as S/S, H/H, and so on refer to the pet's breed.

S = Speed of the pet
H = Health of the pet
P = Power of the pet (attack power)
B = Balanced (stat points of a pet are evenly spread out between the 3 stats listed above)

S/S would mean that pet's breed is focused all on Speed. S/H is a breed that's focused on a mix of Speed and Health.

Here's a more in-depth guide on breeds that might help.

A good addon for checking what breed your pet is while in-game is Battle Pet BreedID.

And of course, you can always upload and update your collection here on WarcraftPets. Viewing your collected pets will also show you the breed of each pet.

Hope this helps!

[Kissieface]

Thank you so much!

Very helpful, but honestly it is still quite confusing that the same pet can have different attributes.

So ....s/s means speed/speed?

[Quintessence]

but honestly it is still quite confusing that the same pet can have different attributes.

Some pets do come in multiple breeds, and it can be a bit overwhelming at first. If you're not heavily focused on pet battling or pet PVP too much, it's ok to just focus on collecting a pet, regardless of its breed. You can always go back and collect the other breeds of that pet if you want to in the future.

Of course, trying to collect all the breeds of a specific pet right at the start is ok too.

[Ranok]

Sounds like you have already attained the first important stage of pet collecting, you like it.

Something that got stuck into WoW a few years back, don't remember exactly when. Lot of players thought it was kind of silly. Has grown into what keeps many folks coming back day after day (and sending Blizz 15 bucks month after month).

Sure it's Pokémon, but has gotten so complex that you've got to admire the geniuses that designed it at the same time you're cursing them when your team gets slaughtered in ways you never expected.

Some fights, Speed is super important cause it means you hit first. Reason why some of the strategies you read about tell you what pet to use and it's got to be S/S. Mostly though, you want to build up your own pet collection with whole lot of different pets with different talents. Later on after you bunch of unique pets is when you need to start to worrying about their attributes.

warcraftpets.com, btw, is best place I've found to get info about pets, and troll-free help on the forums.

[Ziboo]

Well I want to troll a new pet collector - Blondes aren't dumb......grumble grumble grumble.

Warcraft Pets is amazing and a daily resource for me. Another that I use learning to fight Xu-Fu's Pet Battle Strategies. Very helpful with combo's I wouldn't have thought up.

For some strategies a specific breed may be needed and IDK, I kind of think about it like tank, heals dps. The tanking ones I tend to favor H/H (highest health) and the ones you want to hit fast S/S or P/P (power) for the big hitters (how my blondie brain works it!).

The HH, SS, PP get an extra point or two to their stats to I believe. But some of the really hard to collect, I take whatever! It's easier too with the availability of stoning ones, so if you get a SS you want that's poor quality you can stone him/her, versus it seemed like alot of battles finding the breed I wanted. Also different types/species are better against other types. Ex. flying > aquatic or critter > undead. There are great helpful charts for this.

If you are an addon user - there are some very useful ones out there too.

Good luck and welcome to your new addiction.

It's very addicting and the more you do it the more you'll learn and then you'll want them all, and need to do your daily battles, and want them all level 25, and then all rare and ........

[Paladance]

*** This post may not guarantee 100% applicability and can be modified in any moment. ***

Well… take a look on your pet.
Do you find your passive meaningful for your strategy or is it just a nice addition?
Are there abilities that work well together?
And what else would you like to make use of?

When you "see" what's your pet going to do, answer to these questions in the order:

• Are you gonna use some low-based healing (e.g. [ability]Renewing Mists[/ability]) or shielding (e.g. [ability]Shell Shield[/ability]) or apply a raw damage fragility debuff? (e.g. [ability]Wild Magic[/ability])
• Are you gonna deal an AoE attack (e.g. [ability]Arcane Storm[/ability]) or healing (e.g. [ability]Bleat[/ability])?

If so, focus on Power.

If not:

• Are you gonna use a spell that obviously performs better if pet is faster? (e.g. [ability]Alpha Strike[/ability], [ability]Flurry[/ability])
• Are you gonna use an avoidance (e.g. [ability]Dodge[/ability]) or crowd-control (e.g. [ability]Clobber[/ability])?
• Are you gonna rely on various buffs or debuffs that either base on fractions (e.g. [ability]Crouch[/ability]) or provide big values already? (e.g. [ability]Shell Armor[/ability])
• Additionally, are there breeds that give your pet more than 324 speed on 25th lvl?

If so, focus on Speed.

If not:

• Are you gonna use a spell that obviously performs better if pet is tougher? (e.g. [ability]Explode[/ability])
• Are you gonna benefit from Sunny Day weather?
• Are you gonna benefit from Humanoid, Beast, Flying or Mechanical passives?
• Is your pet so powerful anyway that is likely to do overkills a lot?

If so, focus on Health.

If not, focus on Power, or pick up anything as it isn't definitely "your" pet.

Note that "focus on" doesn't have to mean that you need to, or are able to pick up the supportive breed.
It can just move your focus away from less desirable breeds.

Remember also about the order. You may have a pet that can commit overkills, but benefits from speed. Then health isn't as much important. ;p

[Sagcat]

While this is overly simplistic, if you're looking for the better breeds, consider this:

The H/H, P/P, & S/S breeds have the biggest bonuses.
then
Breeds with two stats listed (P/S, H/S, & H/P) are next best.
then
Breeds with one stat bonus (P/B, H/B, & S/B)
then
Balance (B/B) is your "ah crap, I got a balance" bottom feeder.

The reason it's overly simplistic is because some specific uses for a pet require particular features. For example, the [pet]Unborn Val'kyr[/pet] comes in Balance B/B (everything gets a small bonus) and Guardian H/H (health gets a large bonus.) If your intent is to [ability]Curse of Doom[/ability] followed by [ability]Unholy Ascension[/ability], then the extra health is useless. You're committing suicide on the second turn. You want damage, and the B/B (292) has more power than the H/H (276).

But for the most part, the rule of thumb should help guide you.

[Mykro9]

I hate to say that most of the advice here, though helpful, is WAY WAY overkill for the asked question, and could borderline on confusing.

If someone is new to pet collecting, and not yet into the pet battle PvP metagame, most of the advice is superfluous.

Also, stuff like strategizing on which pets to use in a particular Grand Master tamer battle, when someone doesn't even have a full team of level 25 pets would be useless too.

The OP has 2 posts people, '2', TWO!! and not even 100 pets at 25.

[Paladance]

Chill out. It isn't like someone will prevent them from looking here later…

[Avalee]

If you're just collecting, you shouldn't worry too much about breeds and such. I'm a collector and just HATE pet battles. Battling is just another part of the pet feature in wow.
Unfortunately, to collect some pets, you do need to battle. For example the Tournament. I'm using guides on wowhead for those so I only need to level up the correct type of pets and don't have too worry about the petbreeds.

[Mehetabel]

If you're just collecting, you shouldn't worry too much about breeds and such. I'm a collector and just HATE pet battles. Battling is just another part of the pet feature in wow.

This is how I am too. I LOVE collecting, hate battling. I have 752 pets now, all at 25 and I have NEVER once paid any attention to breeds! It's only important if you want to focus on a lot of pvp pet battles.

[Lordblacknail]

Guys, you obviously didn't listen to the OP. She said she is a BLONDE. So please type slower.

[Khorah]

Welcome to WCP's!!

As many have said, this is a solid site with few trolls (we have great mods!! )

Overall, when in doubt, grab a few pets you LIKE, then use that team to start until you get a feel for things. I used a terrible team up through the upper teens in leveling but I enjoyed those pets so it was more fun to do it that way for me.
Go look at some strats for the tamers, as they will come in handy once you hit 25. They hold the keys to free bandages and free upgrade stones!! Try to get a lvl 100 character so you can have access to a level 3 menagerie. The daily and weekly quests there will net you leveling stones AND once you pick up the weekly quest with your 100 character, you can use a 90<toon<100 to do the fights with Erris/Kura and the tamers for some easy exp for that character as well.

You will want to grab a diversity of pet families (undead, magic, etc) and level them as some of the tamers can really be farmed pretty easy by certain family.

Pay attention to the special events to grab limited availability pets (Like Peddlefeet in the Love is in the Air event going on now..)

And.. be sure to have fun.. don't look at the massive number of pets out there and try to get them all in one week or something crazy like that.. For most of us, this is a lazy race that we enjoy doing, not necessarily a sprint

[Revmrblacktn]

I am fairly new to pet collecting a well (7 months) and have found this website to be an EXCELLENT resource in helping me understand all things pet related. I am not blonde, but I am old, so I also share a disadvantage.

My advice, take you time and enjoy. You will eventually learn all the stuff and it takes a while to get the hang of the terms. I am still confused with breeds and pet battling. I cannot win a PVP pet battle at all!!

Thanks Warcraftpets.com, you rock!