WarcraftPets Forum

Hi all,
Been getting good advice and I appreciate it.
I have a question and an observation for convenience?
I know everyone knows about the pets, and the famous.. or infamous crow capture!
I for one, DON'T like the darkmoon faire at all,
it makes my skin crawl when i'm there.
I can CLEARLY see the reference to the illuminati with the EYE.
moving forward...

I noticed that the pets aren't just one level, but varied from level 1 to level 10,
and that helped me a LOT, since I have about 7 low level pets to start off,
so leveling and trying to get the crow was 2 birds with one stone.
i WISH I'd known about the crow when I was working for the awesome [pet]darkmoon-tonk[/pet]
Moving forward...

So i got myself an S/S and a B/B [pet]crow[/pet]. I've been reading the comments,
and I believe people think you should get the S/S crow, and not the B/B?
If someone can confirm, I'd appreciate it.
not going to bother find a rare,
I like to stone mine

--- GENERAL PART ---

Flyers are complicated.

Most of the abilities rely on power or speed (or both) so while you consider the health factor, the HP differences between breeds need to be really significant to outweigh the advantages coming from other stats.

Yet, the flying racial -- 50% more speed while having more than a half of the health -- asks for stamina or other means of survivability. (This is why any flyer that can protect or heal themselves is instantly recognised. [pet]Teroclaw[/pet], almost any moth or [pet]Chi-Chi[/pet] are the examples.)

I'd tell that if there was no penalty for hybrid breeds, a B/B or P/B would be ideal. That isn't the case, so it's up to someone what they deem the most important.

--- END OF GENERAL PART ---

So, on the Crow.
Abilities:
[ability]Peck[/ability]: power.
[ability]Alpha Strike[/ability]: speed. Obvious.

[ability]Squawk[/ability]: speed for a longer debuff, power in a default way but not more.
[ability]Call Darkness[/ability]: Power for a hard hitter is usually good. Health if it's your only pet relying on the weather and you have no elementals either.

[ability]Murder[/ability]: health = speed > power. But with no DoTs or stuff such as [ability]Wild Magic[/ability] this is purely for an epic animation.
[ability]Nocturnal Strike[/ability] = power.

+ background: Back in time it was The One to make [ability]Call Darkness[/ability] + [ability]Nocturnal Strike[/ability] thing but then there came a [pet]Bone Serpent[/pet] and the ancient curse once more has pushed the feathered ones into the oblivion.

Available breeds:
The only "pure" breed is S/S with 325 speed. What is nice if you don't care at all about the racial and just want to spam your main attack, with other stuff treated quite casually. But consider a fact that this isn't the only fast pet that can do that.
P/S. Would be okay, but 289 value for either is like a Guinea pig (neither pigs, nor from Guinea), while the health still is average. Compare with a [pet]Nightwatch Swooper[/pet] that is a completely different P/S.
P/B and B/B is a simpler choice between more power and health, but the 3rd and 4th grade of bonus may be discouraging.

Conclusion (that will be shorter, I promise!):
Sometimes there is no ideal solution, what can make a pet outclassed, but you still can attempt to find a path that is interesting for you.
S/S is good but that speed may seem overbuffed sometimes. This isn't, however, anything you should be afraid about.
P/B is probably slightly better than P/S and B/B but still underbuffed in general.

Congratulations and good luck. (I have an S/S too, a pure fate )

And yep, Darkmoon Faire seems sinister sometimes. Even the game hosts aren't nice if you try to pay attention about what they say. Not the first haunted carnival, not the last, however, and yet it's still a bit merrier than the rest of the Azeroth. Makes one think how much the world needs to be fought for.

Short answer: I'd stone the S/S.

Longer answer: the Crow is a simple pet. Like the Raven, it's usually used to shut down a healer, especially an Aquatic healer like a Crab, and deliver a nuke real quick, before the healer can recover.

Call Darkness->Nocturnal Strike

then either Peck or Alpha Strike until dead or retire to the back line to do it again.

It doesn't last many rounds.

The speed means that it will likely be faster even after losing its racial. This may allow it to get in that crucial second NS after coming back, or an extra Peck, or keep its Alpha Strike hitting twice.

Technodruid wrote: ...
I for one, DON'T like the darkmoon faire at all,
it makes my skin crawl when i'm there.
I can CLEARLY see the reference to the illuminati with the EYE.
moving forward...
...

There is one great side of it, and it's very good. Any lower level characters that you have, you can pump up the abilities ... and it's worth it. Some abilities get stuff at a certain level and these 5 points usually help you get through that spot.

It's also great XP for the lower levels, and I always do the professions. And it still counts past 700 ... which is surprising for me!

Pets ...
Haven't used the Crow a whole lot, but will make an effort to try, seeing these notes here. Thanks.

For the other pets ... you really have to play the games some, to get the marks needed to get some pets from over there. The Tonk, Zeppelin, and a couple of others are very useful all around, and should be acquired. I think on my own collection I'm only missing the Rabbit and then the wolfie one, for example. So on one of my main characters I am piling up the needed marks for the rabbit.

As far as the crow goes, I'd definetly always choose S/S over B/B. There are only a few cases in which B/B is a prefered case, and they are usually in the case where only a few breeds are available, of which the others are less favorable for the use of the pet. For crows/ravens/etc, speed really determines the moveset you want. They are fragile, but they are glass cannons against aquatic healers especially, as stated above. Any healing team will have trouble with double/triple darkness teams. A S/S crow simply means that despite its low health, it will still remain faster then most oponents after going below half health. This means you can use alpha strike for extra damage. On a slower crow, or for example, the hatchling from the WoD collectors edition, a P or H breed would be preferable, because it keeps the speed buff longer or delivers more damage while it can, and you use Peck/whatever regular attack it has. B/B would definetly be a stat loss in this case, skilled in a few things but master of none, making it lose out in speed battles, while gaining little in survivability or power in return.

(for the poster above me, the DMF rabbit and MoonMoon do not come from tickets, but rather from two world bosses on the DMF. The Darkmoon rabbit requires a raid and only drops one pet (though personal looting might have messed a little with that, but the droprate/chance of getting it isnt great), moon moon also requires a raid and drops from Moonfang, the wolf that you can spawn in the woods. One lootchance per toon a day, with a decent droprate as far as i'm aware. Neither are particularly spectacular for battles, look for the darkmoon tonk and zep (tickets both) for exceptional battle pets)

You can kill the Moonfang Den Mother for Moon Moon as often as you find her. With the group finder, that can be several times an hour. When Moon Moon dropped for me, I had basically spent all week farming the raid boss and it dropped on the very last possible spawn as the DMF was ending in a just a few minutes.