I'm in the Celestial Tournament!

[Alfonzzo]

finally managed to level 30 pets to 25 (mostly by capturing 30 random lvl 25 pets and repeatedly beating the Pandaren Earth Spirit while having Pandaren Spirit Tamer quest in my log) and got into the Celestial Tournament.

Mechanics wise, the tournament is a scenario. It's an instanced version of the Timeless Isle w/ 3 tamers. The rules are you have to beat the three tamers w/ the pets in your stable w/ no bandages or revives between fights. if you lose, you can create a new team and try again, with the obvious limit being how many pets you have. If you're out of teams, you can leave the scenario, revive, and try again.

first impression trying to beat these tamers w/ the pets i have is that they're tough but would be very doable w/ the right pets and some thought. I can see folks who have the bare minimum of 30 pets struggling though.

so far, it looks like fun stuff.

As far as the pet rewards go for battling, I have Chi-Chi, and it's ... good for pve, but i'm doubtful about pve. it's got great avoidance, but the first slot abilities both require speed, and my build only has 273.

[Gwenolyn]

Thanks for the info, I'm getting excited!!

For the scenario, did you win currency used to buy the pets... or some sort of bag reward?

[Quintessence]

Who do you speak to to enter into the tournament on the PTR?

Although I have enough level 25s to enter into the tournament, I haven't been able to. Is it due to the fact that you have to manually level 30 pets to 25? Does starting out with a collection of 30 25s not count?

[Alfonzzo]

I forget his name, but the guy who tells you to level 30 pets is the same guy who queues you for the scenario.

for some reason despite having hundreds of pets, the PTR had no knowledge of my prior pet collecting. I had to start from scratch including talking to Audrey Burnhep to learn pet battling. Fortunately it did know i qualified for all the tamer dailies, so that helped.

some things that worked for me was to battle on the isle of thunder and the vale where there are more lvl 25 pets. i mostly tried to capture greens, but i wasn't picky on type or rarity. I leveled ~half the old fashioned way battling accross pandaria, and the other half on the earth spirit using s/s darkmoon rabbit and Onyxian whelpling (sludgy is magic now). I also had a bunch of stones i transferred over and used them on non-rare lvl 25's in my stable. that brought them down to 23 and converted them to rare which seemed like a good idea if i wanted to actually battle with them.

Re the scenario, i managed to clear the three tamers, but that was just the first phase! The combos that worked were

Taran Zhu: Eye of the Legion, Darkmoon Rabbit s/s, Pterrodax Hatchling
Chen Stormstout: Zep, Anub, Water Spirit
Wrathion: Crawdad, Deathy (Darkness), Lil' Bad Wolf

Now i'm at the final stage and have to clear the celestials themselves. So that's 7 battles in total... with no bandages.

[Azrile]

I find it hard to believe they would make us go back and level up pets if we have over a hundred at 25 now. I am thinking that is either a bug, or a glitch because it is a ptr character.

Seems very doable if you have enough lvl 25s, and hopefully before it goes live we will learn if there are any battles where a single pet is fairly mandatory ( or at least makes it faceroll like darkmoon rabbit does for earth spirit). That way people will know to powerlevel those pets prior to 5.4

Thanks for the info!

[Alfonzzo]

so far, avoidance is key because these guys hit so hard. i'm finding the darkmoon zeppelin pretty useful for the decoy and the hard hitting beasts. Darkness also seems important because there are some very big heals going around.

Niuzao's pet has wish
Chi-Ji's pet has Tranquility (313/round)
Xuen's pet has Feed which hits and heals for 700 before bonuses
Nizau's pet has life exchange!

It may not be so much that there's one specific lockdown pet like the s/s rabbit, but more that we need to start stacking multiples.

[Quintessence]

Thanks for all the info! I'm considering re-leveling pets on the PTR just to check out the Celestial Tournament, but I may not have that much time.

Side note, though, [url=https://twitter.com/CM_Crithto/status/358362880472657921]Crithto mentioned on Twitter[/url] that they're lowering the number necessary to enter the tournament to 15 on the PTR.

Details on each team such as health of pets, abilities, etc. would be super appreciated!

[Alfonzzo]

Side note, though, [url=https://twitter.com/CM_Crithto/status/358362880472657921]Crithto mentioned on Twitter[/url] that they're lowering the number necessary to enter the tournament to 15 on the PTR.

That's silly. considering there's 7 fights in here, even after we figure all this out you can 2 man each of these fights 15 is barely enough pets to manage it.

Based on what i'm seeing though i'm expecting to hear lots of crying that this is too hard. So far, these guys seem as hard if not harder than any of the other tamers... but still doable. just got Zao Califang of Niuzao down w/ a Zandalari Anklerender and 2 Sons of Animus.

I'll try to post more detailed notes for the tamers this evening

[Luciandk]

Interesting info. So people with a large pet stable is definitely at an advantage here.

Though I do wonder if theres any opposing team randomization, or they are fixed?

[Opallena]

I find it hard to believe they would make us go back and level up pets if we have over a hundred at 25 now. I am thinking that is either a bug, or a glitch because it is a ptr character.

They have to re-level pets because your character looses all pets upon being copied to PTR. Once this goes live, any current 25s you might have will count towards the total.

Back on topic, I'm wondering if we'll only be able to use 15 pets or if we'll have access to every level 25 we have. Meaning, if we loose our first 15, will we still be able to use other 25s in our journal? I know many have atleast 75 level 25s due to the achievment for the singing cricket, and this would make the tournament much easier.

[Jadax]

Interesting info. So people with a large pet stable is definitely at an advantage here.

That pretty much applies to any of the pet battle activities on WoW, though.

[Guest]

Thanks for the preview!

I find it hard to believe they would make us go back and level up pets if we have over a hundred at 25 now. I am thinking that is either a bug, or a glitch because it is a ptr character.

I'm pretty sure it's a PTR problem, they have trouble copying over live pet data. I'm sure it will be retroactive on live servers.

[Alfonzzo]

I find it hard to believe they would make us go back and level up pets if we have over a hundred at 25 now. I am thinking that is either a bug, or a glitch because it is a ptr character.

They have to re-level pets because your character looses all pets upon being copied to PTR. Once this goes live, any current 25s you might have will count towards the total.

Back on topic, I'm wondering if we'll only be able to use 15 pets or if we'll have access to every level 25 we have. Meaning, if we loose our first 15, will we still be able to use other 25s in our journal? I know many have atleast 75 level 25s due to the achievment for the singing cricket, and this would make the tournament much easier.

number of 25's in your stable did not count. only newly leveled 25's counted. I started at 0. at least that's how it is for now on the PTR. hopefully it changes soon so more folks can test.

Once in the tournament, you have access to your full pet stable. you can use any pet you like, and try as many times as you like. only rule is no healing between battles.

[Alfonzzo]

Chen Stormstout
1. Tonsa (Beast) 1600/381/287

• Bite - 401
  Headbutt - 601
  Chew - 501

2. Chirps (Critter)

• Flank - 169
  Lullaby - 5 round cd, 100% hit, Sings the target to sleep for 2 rounds. Similar to Sooth, but without the delay.
  Locust Swarm - 2 round ability, 4 round cd, 100% hit. this is a wind up move that does 762 critter damage w/o the 10% damage boost.

3. Brewly

• Brew Bolt - 448 aquatic damage
  Barrel Toss for 720
  Inebriate - 100% hit, reduces the enemy team's hit chance by 25% for 4 rounds.

Darkmoon Zeppelin, Anubisath Sentinal, Chuck worked versus this tamer.
the beast is pretty managable. Save Anub's shield for the lullaby. Chuck's Blood in the Water says "always hits if the target is bleeding" seems like a way around inebriate.

Wrathion

• 1. Cindy (Undead) 1725/300/375
  • Diseased Bite - 384
    Blistering Cold
    Ice Tomb - 480
  2. Alex (Dragonkin) 2100*/300/300 - *health includes Ancient Blessing boost.
  • Breath - 384
    Ancient Blessing - 448
    Flamethrower - 240/80
  3. Dah'da (Dragonkin) 1725/375/300
  • Shadowflame - 513
    Roll - 197
    Elementium Bolt - 592

Magical Crawdad, Scourged Whelpling, [pet]Lil' Bad Wolf[/pet] worked against Wrathion.
Crawdad can last forever v Cindy @ full health. I found Alex's Ancient Blessing problematic, so i wore him down as much as I could w/ the crawdad, then finished him with Darkness. I went w/ a strong slow Bad Wolf to maximize Counterstrike damage.

Taran Zhu

• 1. Yen (Humanoid) 1600/362/306
  • Comeback - 286/191
    Blackout Kick
    Feign Death will swap in Bolo
  2. Li (Humanoid) 1600/300/394
  • Triple Snap - 160
    Cauterize - 320
    Kick - 240
  3.Bolo (Humanoid) 1863/334/300
  • Punch 354
    Blinding Powder - reduces target hit chance by 100% for 1 turn
    Rampage 442

I got the combo of Eye of the Legion, Darkmoon Rabbit S/S, and Pterrordax Hatchling to work, but I'm still figuring this fight out.

[Alfonzzo]

Got it!

The last Celestial to go down was Yu'la, Broodling of Yu'lon. he had a 750 point breath, 156 damage shield and life exchange. was down to my last few decent pets and squeaked it out with Sprite Darter Hatchling, [pet]clock'em[/pet] and an s/s [pet]Lil' Bad Wolf[/pet].

At the end i had 19 dead pets, but that included a few attempts on the dragon who i hadn't practiced yet on.

The Celestial Coin is an item that takes up bag space, and not a currency. it is BoA so you can send it to an alt.

The first time you complete the tournament quest a one time quest opens up titled "The Rainy Day is Here". This is a one time quest that rewards 2 coins. This way you get a pet the first time you win the tournament. Total time to get all 4 pets (not factoring the AH) is 10 weeks (1 + 3 + 3 + 3).

[Luciandk]

Hum. The celestial tournament is weekly only I understand, but with the celestial coins being BoA Id asume you can do it multiple times as long you can bring more alts to the place.

Would be worth checking if theres any lower limit to the tournament. Elsewise I could imagine it being quite lucrative for warlocks to ferry a legion of levels 1 to the place so people can get all four celestial minipets in a single week.

And nice with a Celestial pet for first win. Then Id imagine Xuen to be quite popular as the first pet chosen for many, given that he is theorized to be the most powerful of them. As well being the pet many will need to finish Crazy Cat.

[Smokes]

All the pet battle quests are account wide, I don't see them changing their routine for the tournament to be character specific. I'm gonna have to work harder on leveling more pets to 25!

[Dash]

Side note, though, [url=https://twitter.com/CM_Crithto/status/358362880472657921]Crithto mentioned on Twitter[/url] that they're lowering the number necessary to enter the tournament to 15 on the PTR.

That's silly. considering there's 7 fights in here, even after we figure all this out you can 2 man each of these fights 15 is barely enough pets to manage it.

So they only lowered it to 15 while it's getting tested on the PTR? Otherwise I think they could keep it at 15 just to prevent having some people howling about how life is unfair and only basement-dwellers have time to level up pets, etc... even though apparently you do need a versatile menagerie to compete here anyway.

Anyway, thanks for the info, I'm looking forward to it.

[Guest]

Sounds fun! I always imagined there being a tournament type event for Pet Battles, similar to Pokemon's Elite Four. Very happy it was added!

Hopefully they add other rewards for the coins so there's an incentive to do the tourney once you collect all the Celestials.

[Alfonzzo]

All the pet battle quests are account wide, I don't see them changing their routine for the tournament to be character specific. I'm gonna have to work harder on leveling more pets to 25!

yep, it's account based... mercifully. I don't want to have to do this on all my alts.