WarcraftPets Forum

I look at all my pets and I have SO many lvl 1's I love the pet battle system but I don't mess with it all the time, so I've a limited amount of really nice lvl 20-25 pets to beat grandmasters and catch wild pets. I was just wondering what are the must have pets that I should lvl for any situation I might need them for? I'd like to devote some time to getting this done so if I happen to find a rare pet in the wild I can trap it and ACTUALLY get it instead of getting my arse kicked

I just posted on this a couple of days ago

http://www.warcraftpets.com/community/f ... 38#p130156

My standard advice to any new battler is to be sure you're using the addons
Rematch
Battle Pet Breed ID
Pet Tracker

My "must have" list starts

Anubisath Idol
Mechanical Pandaren Dragonling
Emerald Proto-Whelp P/P breed
Emperor Crab P/P breed
Darkmoon Tonk
Iron Starlette
Nexus Whelpling P/P breed
Teroclaw Hatchling
Zandalari Anklerender P/P or P/B breed

Blighted Squirrel H/P breed
Chrominius
Pandaren Water Spirit
Voodoo Figurine

H/H Bone Serpent
Clockwork Gnome
Gilnean Raven or Crow
Lil' Bling

Any time you spend on any of those is time well spent.

and this list of extremely useful wild pets

- Unborn Val'kyr
- any Rabbit S/S breed that has 357 speed at Blue 25
- a good Snail. I mostly use Shimmershell Snail H/P, but a Rapana Whelp H/B has the advantage that it's nearly 25 when captured.
- Sprite Darter Hatchling - you can find a use for both S/S and P/P breeds
- Mud Jumper either breed

If you want more recommendations, I'm sure we'd all be happy to throw dozens in

Here are a few bonus:
Kun-Lai Runt P/B or P/P
Flayer Youngling S/S
some Moth - long story there. For Wild moths, my favourite is Gilded H/P
Junglebeak P/P
Ghastly Kid
Crow S/S next Darkmoon Faire
Blighthawk H/H or H/P
Fel Flame
Amethyst Shale Hatchling P/P
any Spider- you will find a use for both fast and power breeds
Fen Crab P/P
Moonshell Crab P/P
any Strider

Next weekend (november 5th) will be a day where the weekly aspect of the petbattler and a trainer in your dreanor garrison named Squirt coincide. If you have an enchanted broom and a Weebomination leveled (not my strat, check on this site or on wowhead for credit+attack order) you can very easily in 3-4 battles level any pet from 1-25 fighting squirt in your garrison. You don't have to move, its next to a stable master for fixing your pets, and its the fastest pet leveling in the game by far. So if you're looking to level pets, those might be a good bad to kickstart expanding your stable of lvl 25 pets.

I would also recommend Grumpy, which is an easy quest reward from Valsharah, because howl + Superbark (will not reduce enemy pet hp below 1) can lead to the enemy pet having very low hp, making it easier to catch. The Terrible Turnip also has a spell which cannot reduce hp below 1, but it's not a strong as Grumpy's skill. That said, Grumpy is a beast and the Turnip elemental, so the difference in family may be meaningful in certain battles.

If you want to be able to take advantage of battling Squirt in your garrison I recommend an S/S Bronze Whelpling and Widget the Departed (or a Spectral Tiger Cub, if you have one). Since you're in the US, using this strategy this week during the pet battle bonus could significantly boost your level 25 pet roster, as Squirt will be in the US Garrisons on Saturday NNovember 5th, during the pet battle bonus xp week. If you can't get an S/S Bronze Whelping or Widget, another popular strategy uses the Weebomination and Enchanted Broom, both of which you can use well in pvp battles.


Good luck and happy leveling

Gráinne wrote:I just posted on this a couple of days ago

http://www.warcraftpets.com/community/f ... 38#p130156

My standard advice to any new battler is to be sure you're using the addons
Rematch
Battle Pet Breed ID
Pet Tracker

My "must have" list starts

Anubisath Idol
Mechanical Pandaren Dragonling
Emerald Proto-Whelp P/P breed
Emperor Crab P/P breed
Darkmoon Tonk
Iron Starlette
Nexus Whelpling P/P breed
Teroclaw Hatchling
Zandalari Anklerender P/P or P/B breed

Blighted Squirrel H/P breed
Chrominius
Pandaren Water Spirit
Voodoo Figurine

H/H Bone Serpent
Clockwork Gnome
Gilnean Raven or Crow
Lil' Bling

Any time you spend on any of those is time well spent.

and this list of extremely useful wild pets

- Unborn Val'kyr
- any Rabbit S/S breed that has 357 speed at Blue 25
- a good Snail. I mostly use Shimmershell Snail H/P, but a Rapana Whelp H/B has the advantage that it's nearly 25 when captured.
- Sprite Darter Hatchling - you can find a use for both S/S and P/P breeds
- Mud Jumper either breed

If you want more recommendations, I'm sure we'd all be happy to throw dozens in

Here are a few bonus:
Kun-Lai Runt P/B or P/P
Flayer Youngling S/S
some Moth - long story there. For Wild moths, my favourite is Gilded H/P
Junglebeak P/P
Ghastly Kid
Crow S/S next Darkmoon Faire
Blighthawk H/H or H/P
Fel Flame
Amethyst Shale Hatchling P/P
any Spider- you will find a use for both fast and power breeds
Fen Crab P/P
Moonshell Crab P/P
any Strider

All this has been quite helpful! I freaking love the rematch addon and I just got the breed id one. I would consider myself an intermediate pet battler. I understand alot but not everything! I will def use this list to my advantage and take some time to get this done.

Ravyn wrote:I would also recommend Grumpy, which is an easy quest reward from Valsharah, because howl + Superbark (will not reduce enemy pet hp below 1) can lead to the enemy pet having very low hp, making it easier to catch. The Terrible Turnip also has a spell which cannot reduce hp below 1, but it's not a strong as Grumpy's skill. That said, Grumpy is a beast and the Turnip elemental, so the difference in family may be meaningful in certain battles.

If you want to be able to take advantage of battling Squirt in your garrison I recommend an S/S Bronze Whelpling and Widget the Departed (or a Spectral Tiger Cub, if you have one). Since you're in the US, using this strategy this week during the pet battle bonus could significantly boost your level 25 pet roster, as Squirt will be in the US Garrisons on Saturday NNovember 5th, during the pet battle bonus xp week. If you can't get an S/S Bronze Whelping or Widget, another popular strategy uses the Weebomination and Enchanted Broom, both of which you can use well in pvp battles.


Good luck and happy leveling

Unfortunately both my S/S Bronze Whelpling and Widget the Departed are lvl 1 I know the xp event is going on. remind me again what's the fastest way to lvl them up?

Any WoD or MoP trainer will get you level 25 in 2 battles if you wear safari hat during the pet battle week.

Here are some beginner 2 pet strats with only 4 total pets:
http://www.warcraftpets.com/community/f ... =10&t=4580
http://us.battle.net/forums/en/wow/topic/15353775980

Can substitute nether fairie dragon s/s for the sprite darter that is mentioned in the WoD guide.

Gráinne wrote: ...
My "must have" list starts
...

Great starter list.

Even though it might not happen with the Darkmoon Faire only once a month, I do recommend having the Zeppelin. Between it and the Mechanical Dragonling Whelpling, you have 2 decoys to be used in different fights.

I like the fact that the Unborn Val'kyr comes in two breeds, and I like them both. One does more damage and the other has a slightly better survivability. I rarely use them for the Curse of Doom anyway, as they are valuable fighters and can do some very good damage.

Of the freebies from the Garrison Daily, I would think the Weebo is a good one to level ... he's nasty when you get to try him against Tarr with the Creepy Crate (Halloween and you probably just missed it ... easy quest!!!) or the Fossilized bugger (Archaeology and in Un'Goro I think it was). That Bonestorm of theirs is excellent.

Not too hard to come around is the Eldritch Manafiend in Azsuna. I recommend him for two reasons ... 1 bomb, and one half bomb (the bump), and that is all he is good for, but when that bomb is 802 and the bump something like 450 something, it is a pet battle finisher, and I tend to use him at the end, since he will need 2 rounds to recover from the bomb, but you use that when you know the opposition is under the number that you need. I use him extensively to end the Pet Battles leveling to 25. Makes the fights nice and fast.

The Zandalari's ... you want the 2 that can match up the Cry with the Stampede. They are in that island north of the Kun-Lai Summit ... might consider doing this with a friend, so that it is easier ... mobs in there are not hard, but they can be annoying. (Anklerender and Kneebiter I think ... sorry have to look!!!)

Nice listing Grainne.

Ravyn wrote:I would also recommend Grumpy, which is an easy quest reward from Valsharah

Yes, I love Grumpy.

And [pet]Ikky[/pet] belongs on my list too. Howlbomb is still possible, but not what it was, so various Bleed & Stampede strats are becoming popular, and Ikky is key to several of those.

I am still working on the safari hat unfortunately. Looking on wow just now, I'm 27/40 master pet tamers

Luc2919 wrote:I am still working on the safari hat unfortunately. Looking on wow just now, I'm 27/40 master pet tamers

Went looking for the Safari Hat ... and I can't find it ... bahhhhhhhh ... and I've had that quest done quite sometime ago. Anyone know of a way to get it back?

Safari hat is in your toy collection now.

Gorlab wrote:Safari hat is in your toy collection now.

Now I feel totally silly! I swear these old man pills!

Thank you for this! It's very helpful for those of us like me who are just getting started

Canidserpent wrote:Thank you for this! It's very helpful for those of us like me who are just getting started

You're welcome from all of us, I'm sure.

When I started, I kinda kept a small list of all the pets that everyone talked about, and used left and right on anything, and those were the first ones I went after. And I've only been at it for a year and a half, maybe. When that time came I got Pet Tracker and ... far out ... now I knew what to go after in every zone, and did that.

After that, it was mostly cleaning things up of duplicates and levelling pets up.

The Top 20 is a good list, and so was a list that someone had made that had 36 pets (something like it) listed and their breed type, which made it real nice all around ... when I went after that one spider, I was mostly looking for this particular one, and would use a stone on it, if I had to, rather than wait forever for a blue to show up. In all actuality, that list, today, is probably a great starter for any of us. The Top 20 on this site, is good, however there are 3 or 4 pets that very few of us are likely to get, let alone see anyone play one. In watching many pet battles, specially these days against the buggers in Legion, I have yet to see a named Tiger, a Graves, a Lil' Ragnaros and so forth ... which is good ... I'm not a great fan of these pets and the time requirement needed to get them in another game, just to bring a pet here, and then a Tournament, where one loss means you have to start all over ... that's just bizarre, stupid and it was a wonder not many folks did it, and still don't!

Another list. made from a different angle.

Xu-Fu, aka Aranesh, who keeps the most comprehensive and up to date strats on [url]http://wow-petguide.com[/url], kindly makes available the list of pets used for the preferred strat in each range of battles, and how many times each pet is used.

I pasted all of these lists except one into a spreadsheet and added them up. I excluded the Family Familiar achievement, since that takes us to some strange places, and adds a lot of one-off pets to the list. Whet we should have here is a general sense of the usefulness of each pet to the beginning battler facing tamers and World Quests. The total number of uses of the pet is on the left.

17 Chrominius
13 Anubisath Idol
13 Teroclaw Hatchling
12 Iron Starlette
10 Ikky
10 Mechanical Pandaren Dragonling
8 Clockwork Gnome
8 Nexus Whelpling
8 Unborn Val'kyr
8 Zandalari Anklerender
7 Darkmoon Tonk
7 Emerald Proto-Whelp
6 Darkmoon Zeppelin
6 Emperor Crab
5 Any Moth
5 Any Snail
5 Scourged Whelpling
5 Stitched Pup
4 Eternal Strider
4 Nether Faerie Dragon
3 Sprite Darter Hatchling
3 Zandalari Kneebiter
2 Any Fox
2 Any Rabbit
2 Effervescent Glowfly
2 Fluxfire Feline
2 Menagerie Custodian
2 Red Cricket
2 Shimmershell Snail
2 Silkbead Snail
2 Sunreaver Micro-Sentry
2 Swamp Croaker
2 Tranquil Mechanical Yeti
2 Voodoo Figurine
1 Any Roach
1 Cockroach
1 Cogblade Raptor
1 Corefire Imp
1 Crow
1 Dark Phoenix Hatchling
1 Draenei Micro Defender
1 Elfin Rabbit
1 Fel Flame
1 Flayer Youngling
1 Fossilized Hatchling
1 Ghastly Kid
1 Ghostly Skull
1 Infinite Whelpling
1 Kun-Lai Runt
1 Lesser Voidcaller
1 Lil' Bling
1 Lil' Tarecgosa
1 Mei Li Sparkler
1 Mini Mindslayer
1 Mr. Bigglesworth
1 Mr. Wiggles
1 Mud Jumper
1 Pandaren Water Spirit
1 Rabbit
1 Sandy Petrel
1 Sea Gull
1 Son of Sethe
1 Wild Jade Hatchling
1 Wildhammer Gryphon Hatchling

Some comments:

I'm a little surprised that [pet]Bone Serpent[/pet] and [pet]Blighted Squirrel[/pet] aren't in there anywhere. Maybe I should popularise some strats for them. Bone Serpent is infamous in PvP, but can plug a lot of holes in PvE teams as well. OTOH, when you are trying to make a repeatable strat, you really would prefer to avoid introducing a 10% miss chance with Darkness. And Ikky's Black Claw/Flock covers the same ground as the Squirrel's Woodchipper/Stampede combo.

I'm also a little surprised to see [pet]Chrominius[/pet] still so dominant, now that his partner in crime, the [pet]Pandaren Water Spirit[/pet], is reduced to a shadow of its former self. But that Howl -> Surge of Power combo still nukes just fine.

Breeds. If you say to me "Hey, I'm off to get one of these pets. Which breed should I pick up?" my first answers would be:

"Any Moth" - I love [pet]Yellow Moth[/pet] P/P, [pet]White Moth[/pet] H/H, and [pet]Gilded Moth[/pet] H/P
"Any Rabbit" - any S/S that has 357 speed at level 25, like [pet]Spring Rabbit[/pet] S/S or [pet]Alpine Hare[/pet] S/S
"Any Snail" - my personal go-to is [pet]Shimmershell Snail[/pet] H/P, but they all work fine.
[pet]Emperor Crab[/pet] P/P
[pet]Emerald Proto-Whelp[/pet] P/P
[pet]Iron Starlette[/pet] - I want to say H/H, and I want to say P/P, and I want to say P/S. I don't know which to pick. They all work pretty much the same way.
[pet]Kun-Lai Runt[/pet] P/P or P/B
[pet]Nether Faerie Dragon[/pet] S/S, but pick up a P/P as well while you're there.
[pet]Scourged Whelpling[/pet] H/H
[pet]Unborn Val'kyr[/pet] - both breeds are good. I slightly prefer H/H, but either will do.
[pet]Nexus Whelpling[/pet] P/P
Zandalaris - go for Power. P/P or P/B.

Gráinne wrote:Breeds. If you say to me "Hey, I'm off to get one of these pets. Which breed should I pick up?" my first answers would be:

"Any Rabbit" - any S/S that has 357 speed at level 25, like [pet]Spring Rabbit[/pet] S/S or [pet]Alpine Hare[/pet] S/S
Zandalaris - go for Power. P/P or P/B.

I have a slightly different spin on these. As there's so many rabbits and hares in the game, I have a mix of all sorts of breeds. But I find that I most often turn to a H/S or S/B type as their speed is high enough to go first on most fights (to take advantage of Dodge and Burrow), but you're not sacrificing everything for speed in lieu of power or health, which are also beneficial.

Since there's 4 different Zandalari raptors (only 2 with the combo of Hunting Party and Black Claw) I went with a mix of all 4 breeds. I find a S/S to be advantageous in starting off the attack, to hopefully get in both a Black Claw and both rounds of Hunting Party, and then finishing up with a P/P (in my case, a S/S Kneebiter and P/P Anklerender).

I wouldn't argue with that .. for my second, third, fourth rabbit or Zandalari. My second most used rabbit is the S/S [pet]Grasslands Cottontail[/pet] with 325 speed, and I also have an S/S Anklerender for those few times I really want speed.

But for a new battler getting their first rabbit? You get your most useful breed first, and worry about picking up the specialised cases later.

Gráinne wrote:I wouldn't argue with that .. for my second, third, fourth rabbit or Zandalari. My second most used rabbit is the S/S [pet]Grasslands Cottontail[/pet] with 325 speed, and I also have an S/S Anklerender for those few times I really want speed.

But for a new battler getting their first rabbit? You get your most useful breed first, and worry about picking up the specialised cases later.

If I could only have 1 rabbit or 1 Zandalari I think... I would probably stick by my picks. A slightly slower rabbit goes a much longer way for me with the boost in damage and health over speed (my "perfect" Rabbit is a H/B, it has just over 300 speed but is "good enough" in most situations where it's needed) and anything slower than an S/S Zandalari always seems to get killed off just before it can get off the last round of Hunting Party. But YMMV, what works for me may not work for others.

While a [pet]Sprite Darter Hatchling[/pet] has a different stat profile, 309 speed is still pretty much, and with the Pet Magpie existence it shouldn't be as hard to get as it used to be.

And [url=http://www.warcraftpets.com/wow-pets/aquatic/frogs-and-toads/]frogs[/url]. Y'know, against those nasty undeads such as these of Nearly Headless Jacob. Any "specialised" one will do, such as [pet]Mud Jumper[/pet], [pet]Swamp Croaker[/pet] (H/B), [pet]Benax[/pet]; the gems among the classic frogs are [pet]Leopard Tree Frog[/pet] (S/S) and [pet]Yellow-Bellied Bullfrog[/pet] (P/P).

Also, regarding snails, fortunately a [pet]Mudshell Conch[/pet] can be H/P aswell. Legion surprise!