Just got back into WoW, and pet battles

[Joasht]

I've been on a hiatus for several years, and just got back into WoW, only to be greeted with a pseudo-Pokemon minigame. Being a huge sucker for Pokemon, I got into it: my level 63 character has all the wild pets obtainable up to that level (except that damnable monkey at STV....), although only 31 of them are rare.

I currently used an Azure Whelpling, Harpy Youngling and Tiny Bog Beast (all rare) as my main lineup. I'm not entirely certain what to use as my secondary lineup, but I've been very impressed with my rare Sporeling Sprout.

I'm not sure if there is a way to link my collection here, but I'd greatly appreciate any advice on what pets to aim for, that are worth farming for. As well as any general advice and tips that I'd probably miss given my long hiatus from the game.

Thanks!

EDIT: Also, are there any daily/weekly quests that I may be missing out on? I've done the Stormwind questline up to the part where I beat the girl at Karazhan and Goblin at Winterspring, and have gotten through the first two Outland trainers.

[Lolfixheal]

Level your char to 90, you will have it so much easier. Then keep progressing on the chains, you will be send to EK, Kalim, then Outland, then Northrend, then Cataclysm zones, then Pandaria. In pandaria is where the tamers with XP are for levelling pets fast to 25, the satchels with rare stones in them and some pets aswell. And a lot of wild pets... a lot

For PvE, wild and tamers, you can pretty much use any pets you fancy. Make sure you do have +50% bonus damage, 33% bonus defense is nice aswell. A few pets are doublecounters and have both traits, so they are really endurant vs tamers.

I'd suggest you read some of the guides here on the site, addons aswell will make life way easier as the default Blizzard design is..ye.. well.. blizzardy.

And breeds. If you don't know what that is, then you got that to look forward too aswell

As you defeat tamers, and continents, you unlock them. Its good XP but nothing compared to 4-7k XP from pandarian tamers. Also its way too much travel to go around. You can always boost a lvl1 against any level tamer and it will get XP if it got switched in/out upon death of another of your pets. Ofc a level 1 cant survive backline damage but not all tamers have that.

Theres a lot pets that drop from various sources other than the wild. Perhaps make a few a miniproject to try and gather

[Teacake]

My 2 cents, continue to do the tamer quests as you level up. Eventually these will unlock dailies. Several tamer dailies drop supply bags; these are worth doing on a regular basis, as they'll sometimes contain stones you can use to upgrade your pets to rare.

As you're going through the zones, there are a few pets I'd recommend paying special attention to getting rares of. These are my top picks for PVE, in order from earliest you can acquire to latest (as a leveling character):

1. A moth. There are a million moths, so this won't be hard. But if you want to min-max, go the Exodar and buy the Yellow Moth from the vendor; keep buying these until you get the one that has 13 power as a green level 1. This is the highest power moth there is. You'll need to get a stone to upgrade it, but it's worth leveling in the meanwhile.

2. Shimmershell Snail from Darkshore. This will only be level 4. If you don't like the idea of leveling it all the way up, wait until you get to Pandaria and get a higher level snail instead.

3. Flayer Youngling from Terokkar Forest.

4. Fel Flame from Shadowmoon Valley.

5. Emerald Proto-Whelp from Sholazar Basin.

6. Scourged Whelpling from Icecrown.

7. Emperor Crab from Dread Wastes.

If you do the Darkmoon Faire, get a crow from Darkmoon Island, and buy a Darkmoon Zepplin as soon as you can. If you can't get the zep, or in the meanwhile, tame one of the wild mechanical pets from Winterspring. They're not the best mechs out there but they are readily available and you'll want a mech in your stable because they're strong against beasts, which you'll run into a lot of.

I also highly recommend picking up a Terrible Turnip, generally pretty cheap at the AH and a must-have for anyone building a collection, because you can use him to capture wild pets without accidentally killing them (he's got an ability that will never take the pet below 1hp).

These are not the same pets I'd recommend for PVP, but I'd suggest building up a variety of 25 rares before you get into that anyway.

[Joasht]

Thanks for the replies!
How do I check what breed my pet is? I noticed the table of numbers in the guide, but the guide doesn't tell me where to actually find those numbers.
Also, which stats are preferable?

Thanks!

[Dragonwizard]

I would also recommend getting your Celestial Dragon from the 150 pet achievement. He is a great starter pet. Other than that follow Teacakes list as that is pretty spot on for just starting out.

[Violetfemme]

As far as breeds, there are posts in the forums and on each pet page's "battle info" tab, there is a breed section with a little "?" that links to the breed information page. This link should bring you there as well. http://www.warcraftpets.com/wow-pet-battles/breeds/

I would suggest 3 add-ons....pet tracker (tells you what pets you are missing in a area), battle pet teams (I think that was the name of it) and battlepet breed id (shows you the breed of your pets, the ones you are fighting against and the options for each pet, so you can decided if you want to get a better breed). Without the battlepet breed id add-on, you actually have to look at the stats for each pet and compare them to this website to see what breed you have. It gets rather tedious after a while. And horrible when trying to catch good breeds in the wild. The best options (which you will see on the page with the breed information) are the ones with the most points used...so the new way of saying that is you will prefer a P/P (power), H/H (health), S/S (speed) breed where available as an option. The next best combos of points tend to be any combo of those three without a "B" in it - so P/S, H/P, etc. B/B breeds are the least preferable, though many pets only come as B/B.

As far as pets worth collecting, it can be personal preference. Sometimes I find myself with a pet that I wouldn't have cared about in reading about it, but it becomes my "go to" pet in many battles (Eternal Strider in Pandaria is one of these). I also tend to love the achievement pets, pets that drop from bosses, and pet store pets because they tend to have different move sets. I very quickly get sick of leveling frog after frog (or roach after roach or snake after snake) with the same exact move sets as previous ones.

Have fun collecting!

[Cat666]

You want to get to 90 really. Pandaria has so many wild pets, and all the fun PVE stuff, plus it's easier to level pets there.

As a starting line-up I used a Panther Cub, a Clockwork Gnome and a Pterodax Hatchling, but all 3 are out of your reach (unless you have archeology). The Panther Cub can really be any beast with a heal move on kill and most mechanical pets are fairly handy for levelling, although Repair is a nice move. A flying pet would be my 3rd choice for aqautics, I used the Pterodax Hatchling for Ancient Blessing. Moths are good replacements.

This lineup works as most of the pets you face when levelling are Beast or Critter (you'll get the odd aquatic and flying too). The Mech makes lightwork of the beasts, and the beast makes lightwork of the critter. Facing aquatics is more annoying than flying hence the flying pet (they are strong against aquatic)

The other option is to head to the AH. The Anibisath Idol is stupidly overpowered in PVE, where wild pets use the same moves all the time. Once you hit level 10 with it, it covers the Mech pet as well (albiet at a pretty low accuracy), Sandstorm/Stoneskin means you won't take as much damge, and really messes critters up, whilst Deflection will stop all damage for one turn. Slow levelling but solid.

[Quintessence]

Thanks for the replies!
How do I check what breed my pet is? I noticed the table of numbers in the guide, but the guide doesn't tell me where to actually find those numbers.
Also, which stats are preferable?

Thanks!

To find the breed of your pet, head to the Manage or My Collection section of WarcraftPets. Hovering over each icon of the pets you've collected will bring up a small window on your cursor. The breed for each one is located in the lower right hand corner (next to the gender icon). Male or female, it doesn't really matter at this point in time, although it is amusing if your pet's male but you named it a feminine name. XD

Since most people don't refer to pets using their breed number, you'll want to keep in mind the chart on the Guide to Breeds page.

As for which stats are preferable... Gromagrim made some good points that you should consider when it comes to each pet's breed. I would say breed matters more heavily in pet PVP than PVE, but it's still important to note for both aspects of pet battles.

[Tahsfenz]

Another great pet to use is Anubisath Idol. You'd ether need to down twin emps in AQ 40 or buy it off the AH

[Joasht]

Thanks for the info! I'm quite happy that two of my main's are P/P and H/H respectively, at least they are the stats that I correctly desire on them.
I have a feeling the Anubisath Idol might be a tad expensive for me though, so I'll probably hold off till I can farm him myself.

[Lolfixheal]

Another reason to get to 90 .D And as a 90 you could run KZ/SSC/TK once a week aswell, potentially get some RWL2 pets and sell them for 1-4k each


Karazhan/Serpentshrine Cavern/Tempest Keep, Raiding With Leashes 2 - acronyms might seem abit strange to you