Picking your first 3 pets for MoP Pet Battles

[Runestones]

Most of the information that I've seen so far regarding pet battles falls into one of two categories: how to collect pets or the how-to basics of pet battling. What I haven't seen is any guides as far as which pets people should level first. I think this is especially relevant to people looking to start pet battling on Tuesday or immediately after they hit 90.

Leveling strategy: What I found most effective in Beta was to select 3 pets to level from 1 to 25 through PVE pet battles. Once you hit 25, it is easy to tame any pet in any zone. This level process is quite time consuming so most people will find it more convenient to tame lvl 15+ pets and just level them to 25 instead of starting from level 1 with a new pet. You don't even need to start at 1 for the Pet Leveling achievements. You can simply tame level 9 pets and level them up to 10 to get credit.

Here are some basic selection criteria:
1) You want to pick 3 pets from different families so they each have different strengths/weaknesses.
2) You want to avoid pets that have a weakness to the most common pets found in the wild.
3) You want to pick pets that are Rare (have higher health/speed/dmg).
4) You want to select pets that you can't easily tame later.

Here are some stats to go with our selection criteria:
- The most common pets in the wild are Critter (31%), Beast (29%), Flying (14%), and Aquatic (13%) although specific areas have a higher concentration of a specific type (e.g. Eastern Plaguelands and Undead).
- The rare pets will say "Cannot be traded" in your Journal. They can also be found on this list.
- The most common pet families available via pet battle taming are Critter (71%), Beast (64%), and Aquatic (60%).
- The semi-common pet families available via pet battle taming are Flying (46%), Undead (40%), and Elemental (31%).
- The LEAST common pet families available via pet battle taming are Humanoid (11%), Dragonkin (16%), Mechanical (17%), and Magic (20%).
- Undead pets take additional damage from Critters, Critters take additional damage from Beasts, Aquatic pets take additional damage from Flying, and Elemental pets take additional damage from Aquatic.

So if we combine the stats AND selection criteria a few pet families stand out as more advantageous for PVE leveling: Humanoid, Dragonkin, Magic, and Mechanical. If you don't have rare pets in these categories, Elemental and Undead can be substituted as secondary choices.

[Guest]

Now if I haven't totally lost you let's bring in some data about pet abilities. The thing I was most surprised by was the wide diversity of abilities that each pet has, although the abilities are not distributed evenly. For example, the most common ability is the Beast ability Bite which 79 pets have while other abilities are unique to a pet. There are some abilities (e.g. Breath, Shadowflame, and Frost Breath) that are essentially the same but it would take a LOT of manual effort to get this data so for now I just keyed off the ability name.

Note: Just because an ability is classified as "Magic" or "Elemental" does not mean it is exclusive to that family of pets. One pet can have ability types from multiple families. The family simply determines the passive and weaknesses the pet has.

Here are some ability stats:
- Beast abilities are strongest against Critters, Mechanical abilities are strongest against Beasts, Flying abilities are strongest against Aquatic, and Magic abilities are strongest against Flying.
- Elemental abilities are weakest against Critters, Humanoid abilities are weakest against Beasts, Undead abilities are weakest against Aquatic, and Beast abilities are weakest against Flying.
- There are 70 abilities that only ONE pet in the game has.
- There are 82 abilities that only 2-3 pets have.
- The rarest families of abilities are Humanoid (79%) and Magic (65%).
- The semi-rare families of abilities are Undead (56%), Dragonkin (53%), Mechanical (52%), and Elemental (51%).

So if we combine the stats AND selection criteria a few ability families stand out as more advantageous for PVE leveling: Mechanical, Flying, and Magic. Beast, Aquatic, and Dragonkin abilities are semi-advantageous.

The pet rarity data is interesting, but doesn't give an explicit advantage for PVE leveling. It should, however, be considered when it comes to selecting specific pets to get the most out of your pet leveling.

[Runestones]

It is possible to recommend specific pets by combining the PVE advantage families with the PVE advantage abilities. I've included 3 pets per family as a starting point. Your selection will be based on the pets you have and personal preference.

NOTE: All of the Rare Humanoid and Magic pets are from promotions or bought through TCG/Pet Store except the Disgusting Oozeling and Feral Vermling. The Feral Vermling isn't available until you've been pet battling a while so is not included here. As a rule, I tried to select pets that are still available in the game or purchase.

Humanoid
Moonkin Hatchling - Humanoid, Elemental, Flying, Magic
Gregarious Grell - Humanoid, Elemental, Magic
Grunty - Humanoid, Mechanical, Magic

Dragonkin
Sprite Darter Hatchling - Flying, Magic
Dark Whelpling - Dragonkin, Beast, Humanoid, Flying
Celestial Dragon - Dragonkin, Beast, Magic

Magic
Disgusting Oozeling - Magic, Undead, Aquatic, Critter
Spectral Tiger Cub - Beast, Magic
Zergling - Beast, Critter, Magic, Undead

Mechanical
Darkmoon Zeppelin - Mechanical, Elemental, Flying
[pet]Lil' XT[/pet] - Mechanical, Beast
Darkmoon Tonk - Mechanical, Humanoid

Elemental
Pebble - Elemental, Flying, Mechanical
Tiny Shale Spider - Elemental, Undead, Beast, Magic
Dark Phoenix Hatchling - Elemental, Magic

Undead
Voodoo Figurine - Undead, Dragonkin, Elemental, Magic
Fossilized Hatchling - Beast, Undead, Dragonkin
Crawling Claw - Undead, Dragonkin

[Quintessence]

Great tips and information on this thread!

One thing I should point out, though, is that the list on the beta of non-wild pets that will be upgraded to "rare" is out-dated. According to a tweet by Mumper, it's no longer accurate. We'll find out more information on which non-wild pets will be upgraded in quality after MoP is released, and the Pet Journal will actually list them as "rare" in patch 5.1.

[Sohvan]

Thanks for the great info. I wish we had an updated list of rare pets, though.

You could add a section on pet family passive abilities, as some are much stronger than others. For example Magic pets cannot be dealt more than 50% of their maximum health in one attack. There are very few situations where you'd take more than 50% of health as damage from one attack, so this passive is nearly useless in most situations. On the other hand Mechanical pets get an automatic self resurrect to 20% health, and Humanoids get health back with every attack. These are very powerful abilities in comparison.

The Sunlight weather is worth mentioning for capturing pets. Sunny Day increases maximum health by 50% and healing done by 25%. So instead of capturing a pet at 70/200 health, you can capture it at 105/300 health. This will make you less likely to kill the pet accidentally. Pets that can cause Sunny Day include:

Enchanted/Festival/Lunar Lantern at lvl 2 (Currently uncommon)
Soul of the Aspects at lvl 2
Venus at lvl 2 (from 400 pets achievement)
Terrible Turnip at lvl 4 (from MoP content)
Singing Sunflower at lvl 20

Soul of the Aspects is an obvious choice for Sunny weather if you have it. Otherwise you might have to settle for the uncommon lanterns, as the other options are from MoP content or require a lot of leveling first.

[Runestones]

Excellent points.

I *almost* added a section about the passives but didn't have strong data to back it up. From my personal beta testing, I really liked the mechanical pet's rez, dragonkin damage, and human health passives in PVE. I also liked having an undead pet in PVP because you essentially get two "free" attacks before they die.

[Myrikenes]

I like the summary and I think it helped a lot but it confused me, too.
As it it is possible to have groups of three pets, which three types should be combinded to be most usefull?
As of now, I leveled the Smolderweb Hatchling, The SInister Squashling, The Pandaren Monk and the Spectral Tiger Cub.
But i am constantly unsure which of these to leave out.

[Runestones]

I would leave out the Smolderweb Hatchling. Spiders are fairly common and you can pick one up with similar abilities later. The other three you selected are all "rare" and have better stats.

[Damara]

Awesome advice ^^ thanks alot ^^

[Niall10]

This is just my imput and works for me first off these are the pets i dont battle with pvp.

1/ Magic , Normally only good against flying and will nearly always come up against Dragonkin.
2/ Flying, poor set of skills good against Aquatic but most Aquatic have healing they just dont pack a punch.
3/ Critter, Well nearly all pets get extra damage against critters , cute but useless.
4/ Undead, Borderline this one, never really played with undead pets so cant tell atm.

Pets familys i would deffo have.

1/ Aquatic , Great against elementals which most ppl have in there line up, the crocs rock they have 2 healing abiltys , and there arc foe flying pets dont crop up to often in pvp pet battles.
2/ Humanoid, you just know the other guy is going to have a dragonkin so get peddlefoot or flayer youngling to take em down fast, there arch foe undead dont crop up that often in pvp battles.
3/Dragonkin , can inflict large ammounts of damage and most can self heal, easy to lvl and will not come across there arch foe humanoids that often due to how hard it is to lvl them.

This system works for me and i hope it might help other peeps to understand the pvp pet battles 50% is the luck of the draw and 50% is chosing the right pets in the battle but if you know most peeps will have an Elemental , a dragonkin you can outwit them andf hopfully win many battles ..

thx

[Rubberbiscuit]

It is tricky knowing what to level up as your team. I def like using my clockwork gnome and spirit of competition for heals and also the avoid and turrets. Not sure what to go with for no3 though.....currently trialing a rare water snake and the pandaren monk.

[Croxy]

It should be noted that the next patch is going to include a way to increase the rarity of battle pets. Details have not been included.

Also, I would suggest Elemental as a very excellent choice. At least two trainers you will battle during quest chains will have all mechanical teams, so elemental will help those to go much more smoothly. Taking the time to level a high level, rare, critter will not hurt as one trainer has a team of all undead.