Questions, mostly regarding battle-stones and breeds.

[Maltherion]

Hi all. (Sorry in advance for the long post; perhaps just best to skip to the bottom.)

I picked up MoP almost a year ago after having been out of the game for about two years and eagerly jumped right into pet battling/collecting. I hadn't been into it very long when I first caught wind of breeds, but in a rare attempt to save my sanity I tried to disregard that facet of it, and focused solely on collecting rares.

Over the past couple of days (perhaps thinking that I've amassed something of a respectable collection, or perhaps because I've largely finished my daily quest cycles/rep grinds and seem to think I have more time on my hands), I've suddenly decided to get serious about my collection, and seek out superior breeds.

A bit of browsing here led me to the petsear.ch listing, so I'm using that to see what's available for any given pet. Beyond that, is the determination of "best" breed ultimately a matter of personal preference? Are there specific breeds that are widely considered optimal?

As far as stones go, I've heretofore reserved them for those pets that can be acquired only as uncommon, and used them prior to leveling them. Being aware of the stat differences between qualities, I had posited (but never researched) that it must be better for any pet to grow as rare, rather than be converted at a higher level and risk losing stat growth. Is this not the case after all? Does a stone allow stats to scale appropriately to the higher quality?

I apologize if these things have already been addressed.

TL; DR:

• Are there "optimal" breeds or is it all about personal preference?
• Is there a stat difference between natural rares and stoned rares?

[Tekulve2012]

Welcome to WCP forums!

Your 2 questions ~
2nd) if you catch any uncommon pet then upgrade it with a battlestone the stats are the same as if you caught that breed as a wild rare

1st) breed affect stats ... If you do pet PvP, breeds are especially important and can be the difference between a win or a loss.

For collecting and tamer battles, breed is less important in my opinion...these forums offer strategies to level your pets and beat any content in game.

Some collectors will value unobtainable breeds of pets highly in auction houses (s/s gilnean raven will fetch 12 to 15k gold) so be aware of some of the more coveted breeds of certain pets if you want to make gold that way.

[Digem]

Hello and glad to hear about a new pet collector/battler,

1) breed does mean almost everything when pvp pet battling in pve it isn't as big of a deal but can help.
What is best breed?
That depends on the pet and the pets move base.
Also some pets have a very limited to no breed choices.
Generally if the pet has a move like blind, stun, dodge you want to be faster than your opponent to get max value out of those moves so you would want the pet to be s/s.
If your pet has high damaging moves or heals generally you want p/p since it would hit harder and also heal for more.
If your pet has heals based on its total life the h/h is better for max life.
Finally if a undead or dragon usually want slower, harder hitting breed types like p/p or h/h since slower gives one two turns on undead round or takes full advantage of tail sweep.
These are but a few examples.

2) it doesn't matter when you make a pet rare using a stone it will end up with the same max stats that a rare of that breed can have.
But, if you make it rare after level 16 I think it is may be a bit higher you lose levels.
So better to make a pet rare at 15 or below so one doesn't have redo some leveling but one doesn't always get that choice if stoning a wild pet.
Some like valk are only found level 20+ and worth stoning because not any easy pet to find with its long spawn times.


Hope this helps

[Peanutty]

• Are there "optimal" breeds or is it all about personal preference?
• Is there a stat difference between natural rares and stoned rares?

I did the same... got all rares first and then only months later started looking at breeds.

1) I would say it's mostly personal preference with a few specific pet & breed combos that seem more favored over others. You need to consider the abilities the pet has and also think of how you want to use them. Like abilities that hit more often based on high speed, you'll probably want to favor a speedier breed. Power affects both attack and healing (so for many whelps, PP seems the way to go).

2) Rares are rares, period. Regardless of being stoned or being caught as rare, the stats will always be identical between all pets of that specific type, of the same breed and level.

[Graven]

Highly recommend the addon "Battle Pet BreedID" as shown on the Pet Addons page of this site. It tells you on mouse-over what breed your pet is, as well as the possible breeds available, and what their stats will be when rare and 25. Invaluable.

Also, don't worry about stat loss from stoning - there's no such thing. Stoning a high level pet will cause it to lose up to 2 levels when it becomes rare, but this is not a permanent change and you can just level them up again.

[Wilderness]

Highly recommend the addon "Battle Pet BreedID" as shown on the Pet Addons page of this site. It tells you on mouse-over what breed your pet is, as well as the possible breeds available, and what their stats will be when rare and 25. Invaluable.

Also, don't worry about stat loss from stoning - there's no such thing. Stoning a high level pet will cause it to lose up to 2 levels when it becomes rare, but this is not a permanent change and you can just level them up again.

Definitely recommend that addon as well. Also, if someone is so inclined if you level a green (or anything below rare) pet to 25, use a stone on it, then level those last 2 levels back to 25 it will count twice for your "raise 75 pets to level 25" achievement. I wouldn't go out of your way to do that really, but if you are going to use a stone on a pet that's above 15 anyway, and thus going to lose those 2 levels, then you may want to do that if you haven't gotten that achievement yet.

For the most part, I wouldn't worry about breeds. It does matter for pet pvp, and to a lesser degree pve, but its not going to matter for the majority of your pets, particularly if they are one of several pets with the same move sets. For example, you'll want an S/S rabbit, because speed makes dodge and burrow better when they can go first, but its not like you need an S/S breed of every single type of rabbit out there.

[Kpb321]

As others have posted the final stats are a result of the quality and level at that point. It doesn't matter if you captured a poor quality pet and leveled it all the way to 25 and then stoned it. It will end up with the same stats as a rare lvl 25 as one captured as a rare.

As far as the best breed discussion goes the answer is generally, it depends.

Speed is probably the easiest one to see this with. Moves that get an extra hit or do extra damage if you are faster are obviously better if you are faster but it's still situational. In PvP you may want to be as fast as possible to ensure you are faster than as many pets as possible. For PvE it's going to depend on the specific fight. P/S or H/S might be fast enough to be faster and will provide more power or health than a S/S.

The less obvious things that are better if you are faster are things like Dodge, Blinding Poison or Clobber that can basically get an extra turn if you are faster. Anything that provides a buff for your pet or a debuff on your opponent may benefit from your pet being faster. Even things like Bubble can be better if faster. It doesn't give you an extra attack absorbed but it does make it much easier to use it for things like Lift-Off or other big two round moves as you can cast it the second round when they are already lifted off and committed to the attack rather than trying to anticipate when they will use it.

Speed also has another potential benefit. If you are faster you get an attack on the round you die. If you are slower you loose that attack. This doesn't provide any benefit for an undead because they come back to life and still attack on the round they die and then still get the extra round after that. Fast undead are pretty rare but probably wouldn't be very good anyway as the racial doesn't mix well.

H/H has some synergy with the human racial and can work well for undead.

P/P can be really effective for Shields that reduce damage by x because it does scale. A P/P emerald whelpling is very difficult to kill with his shield and heal.

Another thing I will note is that for many wild pets there are multiple pets that have the exact same or basically the same move set so while s/s may be a the "best" move set for a moth with things like Alpha Strike, Cocoon Strike and even Moth Dust all getting some benefit from being faster you don't really need 12 S/S Moths. Some variety is good and sometimes there might be a different option. A Yellow Moth is the only one that comes in a P/P breed and ends up being pretty handy for PvE fights as the racial is enough to make if faster while you are over half health.

[Peanutty]

Another thing I will note is that for many wild pets there are multiple pets that have the exact same or basically the same move set so while s/s may be a the "best" move set for a moth with things like Alpha Strike, Cocoon Strike and even Moth Dust all getting some benefit from being faster you don't really need 12 S/S Moths. Some variety is good and sometimes there might be a different option. A Yellow Moth is the only one that comes in a P/P breed and ends up being pretty handy for PvE fights as the racial is enough to make if faster while you are over half health.

This was my thought too. I don't see much benefit in having a dozen SS rabbits/hares or a handful of HH turtles. For pets with same movesets (i.e. squirrels, rats, moths) I deliberately go for a variety of breeds, including BBs, just to have a mix of stats. For PVE sometimes you'll find that oddball breeds (i.e. H/B Rabbit) are useful in certain situations.

Also keep in mind not all base stats are the same even for same type of pet and same breed (i.e. lvl 25 rare SS Grasslands Cottontail has 325 speed vs. lvl 25 rare SS Rabbit at 357 speed) so make sure to look at what the max level stats will be if you really want to optimize a certain stat.

[Maltherion]

Thank you all for the warm welcome and thoughtful responses! I wasn't able to reply as swiftly as I'd hoped -- I'd been browsing the site at work for a few days, but shortly after I posted that the filter decided to start blocking the site. (I was surprised that it hadn't picked it up to begin with.. Ah well.)

I'll take the time to fully respond tonight I hope, but in the meantime I wanted to say thanks, and that I haven't just abandoned the post!

[JEC]

As far as the best breed discussion goes the answer is generally, it depends.

This is very true. There are three things that factor in pvp battles - match up, strategy, and breed, in that order.

If you just don't match up well against your opponent, chances are you will lose. For instance, you are relying on mechanicals and your opponent has one or two good elements, or you are up against one of the three-moth teams and you're relying on pets that don't match well against flyers.

To an extent, you can overcome a bad match up with strategy and breeds, but if your opponent really knows what they are doing, a bad match up is hard to overcome.

If you pay attention to strategy, you increase your chances quite a bit. Anticipating what an opponent will do based on their pets and planning accordingly will increase the odds in your favor. Pet pvp is much different that player pvp because of the turn taking aspect. You have time to think about what your opponent will likely do and figure out how to counter it. Most people tend to use obvious moves. For example, if the have a mechanical pandaren dragonling, they are likely to bring it out first and use decoy followed by thunderbolt. Or most people who use lil ragnaros use magma trap and sons of flame. Remembering those things can help counter them. Most people play very predictably, and sometimes just doing something out of the ordinary can throw them off.

Breed can be important, particularly for the speed factor. Knowing that a pet will have the first move can really help to enhance your strategy. For example, if you are facing that mechanical pandaren dragonling that's going to decoy to start, an SS death adder hatchling as your initial pet can blind them and nullify their first two moves.

However, opponents that rely on breed alone can pretty easily be countered. For example, if you are continuously up against someone relying on that S/S DAH, you can counter them with pets that take over that first move - an aquatic using surge for example.

A "better" breed might give you a little edge, but if you aren't paying attention to strategy and trying to maximize your chances, breed alone isn't going to help. I used to use a B/B crow as the main pet, which a lot of people will tell you is a "bad" breed, but I won a lot of battles with that team by paying attention to how people played. I see a lot of people with breeds commonly held to be best that lose badly because they think all they have to do is stick a "good" breed out there and they aren't paying attention to strategy. Or are trying to play like they would in pve, which is very easy to counter.

Regarding stones, if you do the pandaren dailies, you'll soon have more stones than you know what to do with, which makes those decisions easy.

[Corah]

Some pets breeds are obviously better, for example the [pet]Baby Ape[/pet], you can get it in a 3 or a 4 breed. Power is a better choice than balance as he's all about hard hitting.

[Undimere]

I also highly recommend the addon "Battle Pet BreedID" as an addon!