Tiggindy's advice for pet leveling

[Shagina]

The Grasslands Cottontail (SS) paired with a Blue Clockwork Rocket Bot (SS) works like a charm for Major Payne, I can honestly not remember the last time I even needed a second try. The strat is highly resilient against RNG and you can carry pets at any level as they take no damage.

Are you sure the Blue Clockwork Rocket Bot is SS? Mine is BB and that seems to be its only breed per Wowhead.

My Grasslands Cottontail is SB and seems to work somewhat OK as well, though I tried a Darkmoon Zeppelin since my rocket bot is only lvl 12 and it got slaughtered. Mechanical is not a good breed in this fight in my experience.

Wowhead has it listed in three breeds, SS/PS/BB. Here's the link if you're curious: http://www.wowhead.com/npc=40295

As for the strat itself, I took it directly from Stencil in this post.

[Tuatha]

The Grasslands Cottontail (SS) paired with a Blue Clockwork Rocket Bot (SS) works like a charm for Major Payne, I can honestly not remember the last time I even needed a second try. The strat is highly resilient against RNG and you can carry pets at any level as they take no damage.

Are you sure the Blue Clockwork Rocket Bot is SS? Mine is BB and that seems to be its only breed per Wowhead.

My Grasslands Cottontail is SB and seems to work somewhat OK as well, though I tried a Darkmoon Zeppelin since my rocket bot is only lvl 12 and it got slaughtered. Mechanical is not a good breed in this fight in my experience.

Wowhead has it listed in three breeds, SS/PS/BB. Here's the link if you're curious: http://www.wowhead.com/npc=40295

As for the strat itself, I took it directly from Stencil in this post.

Confirmed that it's still the three breeds. I just bought 2 P/S, 2 B/B, and the fifth was a S/S. Now to stone and level that one and sell off my lvl 25 B/B. I really need to verify breeds before I put the effort into leveling my pets...

[Flopsyhunt]

Wowhead has it listed in three breeds, SS/PS/BB. Here's the link if you're curious: http://www.wowhead.com/npc=40295

As for the strat itself, I took it directly from Stencil in this post.

That link only shows B/B for me.

Breed: #3 B/B

[Tuatha]

Wowhead has it listed in three breeds, SS/PS/BB. Here's the link if you're curious: http://www.wowhead.com/npc=40295

As for the strat itself, I took it directly from Stencil in this post.

That link only shows B/B for me.

Breed: #3 B/B

That same link showed 3 breeds for me. Truly not sure what wowhead issues are occurring on your end (maybe cached info?), but I paid 175 gold a few hours ago to buy 5 blue bots, with 3 different breeds (at the Dalaran vendor, which may be a factor in game--but not on wowhead). SS is in game as of today.

[Flopsyhunt]

That same link showed 3 breeds for me. Truly not sure what wowhead issues are occurring on your end (maybe cached info?), but I paid 175 gold a few hours ago to buy 5 blue bots, with 3 different breeds (at the Dalaran vendor, which may be a factor in game--but not on wowhead). SS is in game as of today.

I just bought 2 more of them and I did get an S/S and a P/S.

I now have two crated B/B. I am not sure what I will do with those. Probably try and AH them.

Seems I was misreading Wowhead. User error of course. I know have one of each breed.

I do need to upgrade at least one more to get the S/S at rare though.

[Flopsyhunt]

The Flowing Pandaren spirit is the Water one, with the fish, skimmer and elemental; which is where you should be using the 2 oozes. My Jade Ooze is Breed 6, if that has any effect (I don't expect it should, but it might?). And yes, most times during that fight your second ooze will die when the elemental's geyser and whirlpool combo goes off, leaving just your leveling pet.

That is what happened to me the last time I ran it. I got the impression the second Ooze should live through it all though, which led to my comment, at least for my last attempt. I will probably be sure to use a leveling pet with a higher level if possible, just in case.

I tried this a couple times tonight and my first Ooze (H/H Jade Oozling) got slaughtered by the fish. My crow almost made it the second time, but 2 untimely misses at the end doomed him.

[Tiggindy]

I tried this a couple times tonight and my first Ooze (H/H Jade Oozling) got slaughtered by the fish. My crow almost made it the second time, but 2 untimely misses at the end doomed him.

I've never had this not work.

Leveler first round does whatever, fish whirlpools.
Swap Jade Ooze, fish dives
Acid goo, dive hits
Corrosion, fish pump
ooze touch, fish whirlpool
ooze touch, fish pump
ooze touch, fish dies
Even if the fish got a crit somewhere, you should still be alive.

On the second pet, do as much as you can before swapping in the second ooze, then kill the strider with the ooze. The second pet won't die. On the spirit, goo, corrosion, 2 touch and he dies, and you may or may not die to his combo, either way, the leveler gets XP.

I'm not sure why you put a crow in there.

[Flopsyhunt]

I'm not sure why you put a crow in there.

I tried it the first time, starting as you noted. 1 action from my leveling pet, swapped in the Jade Ooze. It died to the fish and forced me to swap in the second ooze. I believe it died to the strider, well before the 3rd pet.

I tried my crow knowing he has done well against aquatic in other cases. He did well, but the level of hits are too high. My oozes were getting 300-500 hits each time as well.

Though I just realized my error, straying from your guide. I didn't have Ooze Touch, I had Absorb, from using it elsewhere. I hadn't swapped it and it is weak against them.

Running it right now. Started with Viscious Globule (lvl 15), got off Expunge for about 250 hit. Swapped to Jade Oozeling. Fish missed. 350 or so hit from whirlpool. 500 hit from fish attack. At 985 against strider. 322 hit from existing whirlpool. Strider takes Jade out with 229 health left. Swap in Disgusting (only other lvl 25 ooze I have). Mistakenly went for Ooze touch and he healed for 500+. Applied dots and Ooze Touch kills strider.

Water Spirit is now out and I am at 1044 damage. Apply dots. 2 hits of Ooze Touch then do him in. I live with 37 points, though close to dieing.

Ooze touch is the difference here.

========

This is still far too frustrating. I still feel like I am always having to find the magic decoder ring, or at least dig the right one out of my bag, to do well. That is not good game design in my view.

I do greatly appreciate your post here. I have gotten help on these from Wowhead, but this is much more comprehensive. The only thing that would be nicer is to have them in a form that noted all the trainers in a travel order. I have now stuck alts at each, but I have to jump around the base ones between the two posts if I just use a single character for them. That is a minor quibble though.

[Tiggindy]

I do greatly appreciate your post here.

I'm always happy to help when/if I can.

That's one of the reasons I put my battletag on here too. Peeps can add me if they want to try to catch me in game.
Although, I haven't spent a lot of time in game the last like 2 months (finally working after a couple years unemployed). I need to do LFR for the last couple pets, work on alts and other stuff, but I spend most of my weekends either sleeping or running around doing all the stuff I didn't have time for during the week.

I have gotten help on these from Wowhead, but this is much more comprehensive. The only thing that would be nicer is to have them in a form that noted all the trainers in a travel order.

I broke it up for a couple reasons. First, because when I wrote it the person I wrote it for originally wasn't up to the spirit tamers yet. Second, because even though the character limit is quite large, I didn't think I could fit it all in one post (and it was easier just to leave it in the broken up form).

The post here was actually the third incarnation of my writeup.
First was email to a friend who was just getting her pet teams going well. Second was the posting to my guild site, which I don't think anyone actually used , where I copy-pasted the emails to posts. Then I posted it here because peeps had asked me what I had been doing, and the email responses for here definitely have a much lower character limit, so this post was a copy-paste of the copy paste. Since it's public, I try to keep it relatively up to date and answer questions when I can.

I have now stuck alts at each, but I have to jump around the base ones between the two posts if I just use a single character for them. That is a minor quibble though.

You'll get them down, and hopefully learn enough about the pets from your own experience and other posts that you'll remember them or come up with new (or better) strats of you own.

Actually, on that note, I use the PetBattleTeams add-on, so I have my teams (and moves) saved and named for all the tamers. All I have to do is pop the leveler in the right slot for the teams and away I go. I dunno how many teams you can set. Though FWIW, I have 27 teams saved: all the panda/spirit tamers, Jeremy, my pvp team, a "world" team, and the 13 teams for the celestial tourney.

[Rendigar]

This is still far too frustrating. I still feel like I am always having to find the magic decoder ring, or at least dig the right one out of my bag, to do well. That is not good game design in my view.

I do greatly appreciate your post here. I have gotten help on these from Wowhead, but this is much more comprehensive. The only thing that would be nicer is to have them in a form that noted all the trainers in a travel order. I have now stuck alts at each, but I have to jump around the base ones between the two posts if I just use a single character for them. That is a minor quibble though.

Grrr, I don't want to steal Tiggindy's thread but I also don't want to repeat what is elsewhere - check the guides section of the forum if you want all of the strats with a travel order and as little RNG as possible.

As for the Flowing Pandaren Spirit fight, instead of running the 2 oozes you could try what's listed for the fight here. It uses a Wildhammer Gryphon Hatchling [4-P/P] or Imperial Eagle Chick [4-P/P] or even an Amber Moth [8-P/S] for the 1st pet, a carry pet w/700+ health, non-elemental type for the 2nd, and a Tiny White Carp or Pandaren Water Spirit or Emerald Proto-Whelp [4-P/P] for the 3rd pet. It's solid, consistent, and relies on high percentage attacks. The Gryphon + Carp team only need their 100% hit chance attacks to win and has not lost once in the weeks since I switched to it. The one thing you have to remember is you MUST switch to the carry pet when the water spirit comes out - the Gryphon can (almost) solo the whole fight, but when the spirit comes out is the "safe" spot for switching.

Actually, on that note, I use the PetBattleTeams add-on... I dunno how many teams you can set. Though FWIW, I have 27 teams saved: ...

I also use PetBattleTeams and I have had 56+ teams at the same time while testing, not sure what the upper limit is, but I haven't hit it yet.

[Tiggindy]

Grrr, I don't want to steal Tiggindy's thread but I also don't want to repeat what is elsewhere - check the guides section of the forum if you want all of the strats with a travel order and as little RNG as possible.

This guide is a suggestion for you to build from. That's why it's advice, and not instructions.
I'm pretty sure I've stated time and again that this is how *I* do it, you may come up with something better (and in a lot of cases peeps have). There's plenty of other strats, and peeps can come up that work well or (in my case) well enough.

I just happened to be one of the peeps with a large collection that leveled early on, so I got asked about things.

Actually, on that note, I use the PetBattleTeams add-on... I dunno how many teams you can set. Though FWIW, I have 27 teams saved: ...

I also use PetBattleTeams and I have had 56+ teams at the same time while testing, not sure what the upper limit is, but I haven't hit it yet.[/quote]
That's good to know, since I could add in some alternate teams for things, or maybe play with the BoFs some more, even though there's no reason to. then again, I don't have to worry about the celestials anymore, so that's 13 teams could potentially delete too.

Oh, another good feature about this add on is that you can name the teams so it's easier to figure out what team is for what (either that feature wasn't there initially or I took a while to find it ), which is way better than scrolling through and trying to remember if team 6 was for shu or zusshi, or if you were on team 9 or 10 for the next tamer. :p

[Flopsyhunt]

Burning Pandaren Spirit (fire tamer) - Townlong Steppes
Slot 1 - Pandaren monk or Death talon Whelpguard, or another pet with humanoid attacks
Slot 2 - Leveling pet
Slot 3 - Whelk, Absorb, shell shield, dive

Why? Humanoid is good vs dragon, and critter takes less vs elemental, aquatic does more vs elemental, the shield blocks dots and absorb negates most of the damage.

Sorry to be heavily commenting, but this is another one that isn't working right for me. I use my lvl 25 Death Talon Whelpguard and he is getting mowed. 400-600 hits on the breat attacks takes him out quickly. What am I missing?

I have him with Blitz, Whirlwind and Darkflame. Open with Whirlwind and then Whirlwind, but he misses on launch and gets destroyed with only a hit or 3 on target, barely touching the dragon.

I have not paid for the Monk, so it might be nice to have a strat here without the monk, or note the attacks you used with the whelpguard.

Anubisath Idol does better, laying Sandstorm and then Crush, but that is very RNG dependent with the 75% hit rate. (Renew Sandstorm as needed.)

[Shagina]

The idol can solo this fight (with good RNG), but he will always take out the first two pets. I use him to take the first two pets, sub in my leveling pet on the last one, then switch to my celestial dragon to finish the fight (can be replaced by any dragonkin with a magic attack).

[Tiggindy]

Sorry to be heavily commenting, but this is another one that isn't working right for me. I use my lvl 25 Death Talon Whelpguard and he is getting mowed. 400-600 hits on the breat attacks takes him out quickly. What am I missing?

That I actually use Tyrael for this fight and just listed a couple humanoids that seemed popular with other strats (the monk because of high damage, and the whelpguard for resist vs the flying attack)?

The goal is for the first pet to take out the dragon. It's maybe slow, but the second two pets simply can't kill the whelk.

And I changed my mind on the first pet.
Maybe go for a Scourged whelpling, less damage from dragon attacks and has human attacks. Tail Sweep, Call Darkness, Plagued Blood. I just did it with plague first round, pass, then call darkness, then tail sweep til it dies. I got one attack in on the elemental. Killed the elemental with the whelk, did the usual first round dive attack, then swapped in the leveler after dive went off (leveler sucks one round of the swarm), then swapped the whelk back in to finish it off.

Anubisath Idol does better, laying Sandstorm and then Crush, but that is very RNG dependent with the 75% hit rate. (Renew Sandstorm as needed.)

Also a good option. The implication is the first pet is up to you, since all it has to do is kill a dragon, while the whelk does the heavy lifting.

[TML]

A couple of corrections...
1) If your carrier pet is swapped in during the battle, it can swap out as its move and still get xp. This doesn't work if it starts as starting pet and immediately swaps out...

2) Stones reduces the level of the pet by 2 for any pet of level 15+

For the fire spirit tamer I use the Idol (Sandstorm is golden for me), Eternal Strider (to take the elemental), carrier pet.
If Sandstorm is up, Swarm is blocked (goes for all abilities of the same type - Flock etc) and you can swap in carrier pet without it getting damage (it can be level 1)...

For the 2 tamers in Jade Forest I use Emerald Whelpling and 2 carrier pets. A bit RNG dependant...

The idol can solo Couragous Yon so I use it with 2 carrier pets (Sandstorm again - start with crush, sandstom, deflection - swap carrier 1, swap carrier pet 2, swap idol, crush for damage, sandstorm when lift-off/burrow, deflect lift-off/burrow/chew)...

[Jerebear]

For the fire spirit tamer I use the Idol (Sandstorm is golden for me), Eternal Strider (to take the elemental), carrier pet.
If Sandstorm is up, Swarm is blocked (goes for all abilities of the same type - Flock etc) and you can swap in carrier pet without it getting damage (it can be level 1)...

Only problem with the carry pet being level 1 is that the dragon's cyclone usually hits it a couple of times. I actually avoid sandstorm for this fight, since I aim to have the idol solo the whole fight if possible (I.E. I want crush to hit as much as possible). Since the carry pet has to survive cyclone anyways, I plan my pet swap for the glowfly's swarm.

[Tiggindy]

A couple of corrections...
1) If your carrier pet is swapped in during the battle, it can swap out as its move and still get xp. This doesn't work if it starts as starting pet and immediately swaps out...

Ah, okay, I wasn't sure what the trigger was. I knew that I didn't get XP if I swapped out before doing something initially, and I commented that it seemed to have changed, because I was getting XP when I swapped later in the fight regardless.

2) Stones reduces the level of the pet by 2 for any pet of level 15+

When did this change?

[TML]

2) Stones reduces the level of the pet by 2 for any pet of level 15+

When did this change?

I think it always has been that way... If you capture a pet, the pet loses 1 level if it is level 15-19, 2 levels if level 20+

[Dakaf]

2) Stones reduces the level of the pet by 2 for any pet of level 15+

When did this change?

I think it always has been that way... If you capture a pet, the pet loses 1 level if it is level 15-19, 2 levels if level 20+

Correct, so if you capture and stone a green level 25 for example, it will be 21 when you start leveling it.

[Tiggindy]

I think it always has been that way... If you capture a pet, the pet loses 1 level if it is level 15-19, 2 levels if level 20+

The person I was quoting said 2 levels lost regardless, as long as you are 15+. I was asking when they changed it, because I didn't think they had.

Also, saying level lost at 15+ implies 15 or higher, and that's just not the case.
I will reiterate, level 15 DOES NOT lose a level when being stoned. I just stoned my new [pet]silver pig[/pet], it was 15 pre-stone, and is still 15 now that it's blue.

I'll get another RAF tomorrow, and I'll re-check the next stage.
*edit* I was off by a day , but a level 20 only loses 1 level, exactly as I thought.
So, to re-iterate, level 1-15 loses no levels when being stoned, level 16-20 loses 1 level, level 21-25 loses 2 levels.