WarcraftPets Forum

I haven't actually been able to do any pet battles myself, thanks to the bugginess and subsequent battle removal, but from reading other people's accounts, reading up in the Journal, and watching streams, I think I've figured something out about the order in which pet attacks are learned. At lower levels, pets seem to gain only the abilities from the left side of the table shown in the journal, without access to the ones on the right. Some seem to think it's a bug, but I don't think that's the case.

I haven't seen any proof of this, but I get the feeling that pets gain the left-hand abilities first while levelling up, then gain the ability to choose between those and the right-hand abilities later. One thing that supports this is that all the pets seem to have for their first left-hand ability "Do 20 (type) damage to target", and a LOT of pets seem to have for their first right-hand ability "Do 20 (same type as before) damage to target, double under certain conditions". No one in their right mind would choose 20 Beast Damage when they could get 20 Beast Damage Plus, so I'm thinking the choice isn't actually available for a while.

I don't know if anyone else has brought this up already, or if it's just obvious and it's only because I'm half asleep that it seems like an epiphany. I'm going to try going back to bed. Insomnia ahoy!

when learning abilities it goes down the colums:

level 1 - level 10
level 3 - level 15
level 5 - level 20

You can switch between the 2 abilities in each row:

level 1 with level 10
level 3 with level 15
level 5 with level 20

based on what i've seen it's mostly like this:

level 1 and level 10 - basic attack/stronger attack
level 3 and level 15 - buffs/debuffs/heals/ejects/weather changes/DoT's/HoT's.
level 5 and level 20 - special attacks

@ Evilgnomey Yeah, that seems about right.

The level ten attack usually does the same average damage, but has some additional feature that can make it better under certain circumstances. Sometimes it's another 20-damage basic attack, but of a different type. Seeing a triple attack (same or different type) is pretty common for that slot too. Triple attacks could be weaker, roughly the same strength, or stronger, depending on the relative probabilities of hitting one, two, or three times. even if it does the same damage on average though, a triple attack would be stronger when an effect adds a set number to damage done (like Mangle), and weaker when an effect reduces a set amount of damage done (Like the broom's Sandstorm or Duststorm ability). Sometimes it's a poison or bleed type attack that does half damage up front and the rest over a number of rounds. Sometimes it does 10 damage but heals the attacker the same amount. One pet has Blizzard for its level 10 ability, which is odd (pretty sure it's the Baby Blizzard Bear).