WarcraftPets Forum

Hi!

I remember there were always various threads about 'best breeds' for pets before Shadowlands. Nowadays (Shadowlands and Dragonflight), I can't find any such lists and it makes me wonder which is the best breed for a pet that has like 5. By best I am talking about the breed that is the best for clearing PvE stuff and (for the grinders) PvP.

Any ideas why these topics aren't being created anymore?

It's an interesting question. I was involved in those, and I enjoyed them. But the subject has fallen right out of view. I don't feel any enthusiasm at all for another round of discussing the best breed. Why?

One big step-change was the ability to hold 3 of everything. Back when we had a limit on total pets, I and many others rationed how many non-essential pets we kept. We had one of everything, ofc, but were reluctant to burn a pet slot on a duplicate, for a breed we might never need. So it was optimal to choose just one of every species, and choose the best breed of that. I collect a P/P Frenzied Mawrat, and if I later find I need a P/B, no big deal to add the extra.

A more gradual change has been the increasing ease of levelling pets. Back in Mists, levelling even one pet was an INVESTMENT, with levelling opportunities limited to an hour-long tour of Pandaria once a day. Now, with first Squirt, and then the Legion Tamers, and then cheap and plentiful boost stones, it's much much quicker, easier, and cheaper to level a pet.

What these two points mean is that choosing the "wrong" breed does not lead to as much extra work as it used to, so there is less pressure on choosing the right one.

I would argue, as well, that the pets have become less interesting as the expansions pile up.

For a start, there is a simple dilution effect: you don't value the acquisition of your 1301th pet the way you did your 50th.

But I think we can say that there is also an objective difference as well. It seems to me that as the devs cram more and more pets into each expansion, the individual species become less and less compelling, especially for battling purposes.

I downloaded the spreadsheet from Xu-Fu's. There were 316 species added in BfA, 240 in Shadowlands, and 107 so far in Dragonflight. With that number of additions, the devs don't do anything very innovative in terms of movesets.

There are 26179 strat/species pairs in Xu-Fu's strategies, and 95 ot 1655 species account for half of that, and only one species of that 95 - the Timeless Mechanical Dragonling - is from after BfA. The later movesets are simply less relevant for battling.

I haven't done numbers, but I also feel that the breed differences available in Shadowlands pets are less important that in previous expansions. We see a lot of H/S vs P/S vs P/B vs H/B type breed selections, and it's just less clear which one will be preferable in more situations.

Maybe there are other factors I'm not thinking of, but that's what comes immediately to mind.

The same arguments apply for PvP, but there is aso an additional factor: the irrational buff to Sandstorm and Darkness simply wipes out any thought of using new - or old - pets in clever ways effectively.

Thanks for your long answer! It makes sense to me now. I did see that the bulk of my pets are from before SL & DF and they do any challenge easily. I guess I won't have to worry about breed anymore, I'll just try and get them to 25 & Rare. Thanks!

Hi,

I tend to look at the available spec's for each pet ... with the pet addon, you can see the other possible one, and I like to keep track of that ... ex: pet with 290/275 on one designation and 285/270 on the other ... and it makes no sense to get the one with the lower numbers. One other thought, for me, is that I have a tendency to stick to faster pets in all cases, since them not having a chance to go first is in some cases the difference between the resolution of the fight.