Tiggindy's advice for pet leveling
Posted: April 26th, 2013, 10:34 am
Since I got asked, and I talk way more than the character limit in mail responses, I figured I'd make a post on how I did things.
For those that don't know, currently I've got every pet available to the US except the Argent Gruntling (and Murky, of course), and I've leveled nearly all of them to max. I've been focused almost exclusively on pets since MoP came out. I did the pet dailies every day, and most days I'd go out and spend a little time doing normal pet battles. I only recently (in the last couple months) started doing raids and non-pet dailies.
Regardless of how you approach it, it will take you quite a while, so be prepared for the long haul if this is something you want to do. That's just the nature of the game, and the fact that there are a LOT of pets. I set goals and approached things systematically.
The best thing for leveling fast is power leveling, meaning, a low level pet in a team with max level pets. This way the low level pet gets all the XP. This was a great change by Blizzard and made things easier for me since I didn't have to run a team with one or more pets committing suicide.
If you're just starting out, you want a team to level up to max so you can start doing power leveling. The team I ran was the Emerald Whelpling (my favorite pet in general
), Panda Cub and De-Weaponized Mechanical Companion. This may not be optimal, but it worked well enough. The reason being is that most battles out in the world will be with critters or beasts. You can go with your favorite beast, mechanical and one other.
This team was able to win any battle quite handily, and I beat all the tamers up through about halfway through Northrend without any problem. Once you have a couple of max level pets, you can start power-leveling other pets. The first pets I leveled, other than my starting team, were pets I'd want/need for the higher tamer fights. After that, level pets however you like. I leveled favorites, then by groups (source, then family).
There's two ways to power level: Tamer dailies and regular battles.
In either case, you want your leveling pet to be able to take a hit, I found that a pet that was level 5 or higher rarely died in a single hit regardless of where/what I was fighting.
This is also where the goals come into play. Whether I was hunting rare-capture pets, or later battle stones, I kept my goals in mind. The first goal was every pet to level 5, with one caveat: I did not level any battle pet if it wasn't rare. I would either catch it as rare, or stone it, before I leveled it, even if it was one I really liked.
I did most of my goal stuff with regular battles. So, I hunted low level areas and caught rares of every pet I could while swapping in my leveling pet til it reached 5.
The next goal was every pet to 10. Somewhere in this time frame I think I'd captured all battle pets as rares, which made things easier since I could then just fight in high level areas without worry.
My last goal was all pets to 15. Why 15? Because 15 is the highest level any pet can be without losing levels when upgrading, and it's also the level for doing Pandaria tamer fights without much wasted XP. Assuming you have a safari hat, it's 4 tamer fights to 25, so you can level 2.5 pets to 25 every day in Pandaria.
When hunting in an area doing regular battles to level pets, try to do it somewhere that there's easy access to a stable master (for pet heals) unless you have a ton of pet bandages. Also, try to do it somewhere that most (if not all) of the fights will result in the type of stone that you need. Lastly, make sure your team is optimized for the area.
For critter stones I hunted in the Valley with a team of Curious Wolvar Pup and the Gryphon hatchling) since it was mostly critters and aquatic, do this around halfhill. For beast stones, I hunted in Krasarang with the Emerald Whelpling and the Darkmoon Zepplin to counter beasts and flying, I did this around "The incursion". Not sure for horde peeps. For aquatic stones I hunted in the Vale with the Enchanted Broom and Gryphon Hatchling to counter aquatic pets. There's a decent amount of fliers and critters in Mount Hyjal, but the fights there are level 22 or 23, so it may not be optimal if you want the most XP.
If pets were at the current goal level, then I would level the the rest of the way (mostly) with Tamer fights.
Tamer dailies give the most XP, since Blizzard purposefully gave them a multiplier. Additionally, here's also the chance of stones in the tamer daily bags. Personally, to save some time, I only did the dailies with bag rewards and I parked alts and the non-pandaria tamers and did the Pandaria tamers in a nice circuit with minimal travel time between them.
For any particular tamer fight, try to have the pet getting XP be lower level than the tamer's pets, this way you get the multiplier and the XP bonus for being lower level.
Next, be aware of how much XP a tamer fight gives you since don't want to waste XP either. For example, if your pet is more than halfway through 23, the amount of XP you get from a pandaria tamer fight will be more than required to max out. If the pet was 24, I'd do regular fights rather than tamer fights.
Tamers have a predictable move set, so you need a strategy for them so that you can beat them with 2 pets to get XP for the third. I've got strategies that I used, detailed in the next 3 posts. Some of them I lifted from other guides, and some I made on my own. You can make your own strategies too. Focus on their attacks are weak vs you, your attacks strong vs them, or preferably both. You should also consider other things like heals, shields, damage reduction and whatever else.
Lastly, a note about battle stones. My advice is to upgrade favorites, then non-tradeable pets, then tradeable pets. Why? Because you can trade or buy the use of upgrade stones from other people that way. I finished my pet upgrades buying stone uses from other peeps, but you may not have the kind of gold I did at the time.
For those that don't know, currently I've got every pet available to the US except the Argent Gruntling (and Murky, of course), and I've leveled nearly all of them to max. I've been focused almost exclusively on pets since MoP came out. I did the pet dailies every day, and most days I'd go out and spend a little time doing normal pet battles. I only recently (in the last couple months) started doing raids and non-pet dailies.
Regardless of how you approach it, it will take you quite a while, so be prepared for the long haul if this is something you want to do. That's just the nature of the game, and the fact that there are a LOT of pets. I set goals and approached things systematically.
The best thing for leveling fast is power leveling, meaning, a low level pet in a team with max level pets. This way the low level pet gets all the XP. This was a great change by Blizzard and made things easier for me since I didn't have to run a team with one or more pets committing suicide.
If you're just starting out, you want a team to level up to max so you can start doing power leveling. The team I ran was the Emerald Whelpling (my favorite pet in general
), Panda Cub and De-Weaponized Mechanical Companion. This may not be optimal, but it worked well enough. The reason being is that most battles out in the world will be with critters or beasts. You can go with your favorite beast, mechanical and one other. This team was able to win any battle quite handily, and I beat all the tamers up through about halfway through Northrend without any problem. Once you have a couple of max level pets, you can start power-leveling other pets. The first pets I leveled, other than my starting team, were pets I'd want/need for the higher tamer fights. After that, level pets however you like. I leveled favorites, then by groups (source, then family).
There's two ways to power level: Tamer dailies and regular battles.
In either case, you want your leveling pet to be able to take a hit, I found that a pet that was level 5 or higher rarely died in a single hit regardless of where/what I was fighting.
This is also where the goals come into play. Whether I was hunting rare-capture pets, or later battle stones, I kept my goals in mind. The first goal was every pet to level 5, with one caveat: I did not level any battle pet if it wasn't rare. I would either catch it as rare, or stone it, before I leveled it, even if it was one I really liked.
I did most of my goal stuff with regular battles. So, I hunted low level areas and caught rares of every pet I could while swapping in my leveling pet til it reached 5.
The next goal was every pet to 10. Somewhere in this time frame I think I'd captured all battle pets as rares, which made things easier since I could then just fight in high level areas without worry.
My last goal was all pets to 15. Why 15? Because 15 is the highest level any pet can be without losing levels when upgrading, and it's also the level for doing Pandaria tamer fights without much wasted XP. Assuming you have a safari hat, it's 4 tamer fights to 25, so you can level 2.5 pets to 25 every day in Pandaria.
When hunting in an area doing regular battles to level pets, try to do it somewhere that there's easy access to a stable master (for pet heals) unless you have a ton of pet bandages. Also, try to do it somewhere that most (if not all) of the fights will result in the type of stone that you need. Lastly, make sure your team is optimized for the area.
For critter stones I hunted in the Valley with a team of Curious Wolvar Pup and the Gryphon hatchling) since it was mostly critters and aquatic, do this around halfhill. For beast stones, I hunted in Krasarang with the Emerald Whelpling and the Darkmoon Zepplin to counter beasts and flying, I did this around "The incursion". Not sure for horde peeps. For aquatic stones I hunted in the Vale with the Enchanted Broom and Gryphon Hatchling to counter aquatic pets. There's a decent amount of fliers and critters in Mount Hyjal, but the fights there are level 22 or 23, so it may not be optimal if you want the most XP.
If pets were at the current goal level, then I would level the the rest of the way (mostly) with Tamer fights.
Tamer dailies give the most XP, since Blizzard purposefully gave them a multiplier. Additionally, here's also the chance of stones in the tamer daily bags. Personally, to save some time, I only did the dailies with bag rewards and I parked alts and the non-pandaria tamers and did the Pandaria tamers in a nice circuit with minimal travel time between them.
For any particular tamer fight, try to have the pet getting XP be lower level than the tamer's pets, this way you get the multiplier and the XP bonus for being lower level.
Next, be aware of how much XP a tamer fight gives you since don't want to waste XP either. For example, if your pet is more than halfway through 23, the amount of XP you get from a pandaria tamer fight will be more than required to max out. If the pet was 24, I'd do regular fights rather than tamer fights.
Tamers have a predictable move set, so you need a strategy for them so that you can beat them with 2 pets to get XP for the third. I've got strategies that I used, detailed in the next 3 posts. Some of them I lifted from other guides, and some I made on my own. You can make your own strategies too. Focus on their attacks are weak vs you, your attacks strong vs them, or preferably both. You should also consider other things like heals, shields, damage reduction and whatever else.
Lastly, a note about battle stones. My advice is to upgrade favorites, then non-tradeable pets, then tradeable pets. Why? Because you can trade or buy the use of upgrade stones from other people that way. I finished my pet upgrades buying stone uses from other peeps, but you may not have the kind of gold I did at the time.
