Requesting advice on which pets to level next

[Monkeykibble]

I'm trying to level pets to 25 so I can do the Celestial Tournament, I have a handful already, just don't know which to tackle next.

Also, I haven't seen much in the ways of promo pets that may be good on teams, I have all the CE pets except for vanilla WoW and I have all the blizzcon pets. Didn't know if any were worth using or not.

[Rendigar]

With regards to collector's edition / store bought pets, often times they are not listed in strats (like in my guide for 5.4 levelling / Beasts of Fable) because they are too uncommon and people don't want to make a strat 70-90+ percent of the people cannot use. Several of the hard (or impossible) to get pets are quite useful, though.

With regards to what to level for the Celestial Tournament, I think your best bet is find the guide you want to follow first, so you can target the specific pets/breeds you'll need. There are several good forum posts walking through the entire celestial tournament that you can use as a starting point. If you're having trouble finding them, though, I'm sure a link can be posted here to point you in the right direction. I'm at work so I can't look at my teams, and it's been over a year since I fought them, but I *do* remember Mr. Bigglesworth can solo one of the celestials, so there's a good one for you to start on (assuming you have him).

[Kpb321]

As Rendigar mentioned you aren't likely to find many guides that use the CE/Blizzcon pets not because they aren't good, some of them are very good, but because they aren't available to many people.

There are lots of guides available. I've included the a link to mine below. IMO you have to start by figuring out your teams you want to use based on what pets you have and which ones are already leveled. I'd start with the 4 celestials because you have to beat them every week. Then start looking at first three for this week, or next week depending on how much leveling you need to do and start planning for them.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1WRFc0_8-8YJy_umslj45Xv7gqOFoNl0tpQeMgxlcRqs/edit?usp=sharing

Trying to combine that with the following two guides isn't a bad idea. The pandaria tamers are probably still the best option for leveling lots of pets. The WoD tamers give good exp but without flying it's much harder to make a loop and it's difficult to part alts at most of them. Sometimes the battle in the Garrison can be good exp and you can redo the fight as many times as you want and their is a tamer right there to heal your pets so they can also be a good option for leveling pets.

http://www.warcraftpets.com/community/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=7556

http://www.warcraftpets.com/community/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4580

Of the pets you have I'd recommend leveling the p/p Znklerender, the s/s Kneebiter, The Pandaren Water Spirit and Snarly. Finishing off lil bling is a good idea. I'd also recommend picking up a mechanical Pandaren Dragonling, Chromimius and Emerald Proto-Whelp to level. Those are all pretty solid pets and ones I use pretty regularly. Anything with Howl, Shattered Defenses and the like end up being very useful against pets that have the 50% damage reduction buff.

I also like a s/s flayer youngling but as they come in so many breeds you'd probably need to stone one to get one and that might not be an option right now. A Rare Kun-Lai Runt shouldn't be too bad and can be pretty effective against dragonkin too.

[Beave]

There's a really good guide on Wowhead on how to beat the Celestial Tournament with 18 pets. Here's teh deal though, it's really like 8-10 most weeks.

You have to have:
Pandaren Water Spirit
Darkmoon Zeppelin
Chrominius
Anubisiath Idol

If you don't have those pets those are must-haves for the Celestial Tournament. Beyond that start working on the list provided. Some are harder to get and you can substitute, others just require you to gather in the wild. Those same pets are often very useful for the Pandaren Trainer dailies, which are incidentally a really good way to level pets.

[Monkeykibble]

Awesome Really appreciate the resources, tips, pointers and guides! I have most mentioned, will get to levelling Thanks all!

[Kpb321]

For beating the CT with the fewest pets at lvl 25 this is the best guide I've seen. I haven't personally tried it and it looks at least someone susceptible to rand as it does use the same pet multiple times in some of them which might go bad if you get an unlucky crit against you but if you just want to beat it quickly this should be a good route.

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/10195019513?page=1

[Iibis]

IMO you have to start by figuring out your teams you want to use based on what pets you have and which ones are already leveled. I'd start with the 4 celestials because you have to beat them every week. Then start looking at first three for this week, or next week depending on how much leveling you need to do and start planning for them.

That's what I did. First I checked which pets I already would have for the 4 celestials, Then I searched for teams for the current week's Celestial Tournament, picking pet teams that didn't overlap with the Celestial teams (oh the glory of the spreadsheets!). For example I use Clockwork Gnome against Xu-Fu and many strats for the first round utilized the Gnome as well, and I didn't want to level duplicate pets.

I checked multiple guides, Celestial Tournament thread here and comments at Wowhead. [url=http://www.wowhead.com/guide=1827/how-to-easily-beat-the-celestial-tournament]This wowhead guide[/url] wasn't there at the time, but after completing CT I started searching for better teams on the ones that didn't feel strong and also came across that one. I tried to avoid teams with any replies about how it might work. Also I only picked teams where the strategy was actually written pretty much turn to turn. I also gathered the pets I would need for the next week, leveled them and did CT always on the last day before reset. The wowhead guide isn't perfect and especially Taran Zhu strats I feel are missing the mark, but it's nice in that it also lists cageable strategies that might not be as efficient, but still (mostly) work. I borrowed my cageable pets to my friend

Keep in mind when searching for tactics that there have been changes to pet abilities and also opponents along the way. Some parts of 5.3 guides were already old in 5.4 and now some 5.4 stuff is also old. It might be that some tactics work even better and some aren't as great anymore.

First what I would now do is get pets to open the Menagerie and then get the teams that can be used to boost pets in the menagerie and use those menagerie dailies to full advantage.

It's actually funny... I don't use Chrominius, Anubisath Idol, Pandaren Water Spirit (well it's in a backup strat) or the Zeppelin in any of my Cele teams. x) They are all great for Pandaren tamers though so I do use them in other teams, and definitely worth having.

[Awq]

I would recommend Kbp post. It is very detailed.
I would almost recommend someone to follow an 'Elekk Plushie strategy' though. You can combine both achievements/pets. I can't recommend any Plushie guides myself, since I do not want spoilers.

t's actually funny... I don't use Chrominius, Anubisath Idol, Pandaren Water Spirit (well it's in a backup strat) or the Zeppelin in any of my Cele teams.

Neither did I. The tournament can be completed by a wide range of pets.

[Iibis]

I would recommend Kbp post. It is very detailed.
I would almost recommend someone to follow an 'Elekk Plushie strategy' though. You can combine both achievements/pets. I can't recommend any Plushie guides myself, since I do not want spoilers.

That's a good point, and I'd also only do any daily tamers with a leveling team. I think the only downside is that there aren't that many complete plushie guides available yet ([url=http://murlocharbor.com/an-awfully-big-adventure-elekk-plushie-achievement/]Murloc Harbor[/url] is pretty much the only one I know to be complete, [url=https://petcharge.wordpress.com/an-awfully-big-adventure/]Pet Charge[/url] is working on it and [url=http://battlepetroundup.com/tag/elekk-carry/]Battle Pet Roundup[/url] has some). It seems that the Plushie strats are still quite RNG and/or can use very niche pets, and probably rely on the fact that you only need to defeat the first tier of tamers, so it's not that bad if you have to restart the entire tournament multiple times. Also there's probably not that much feedback on the success of those teams and the few team choices makes it difficult to pick ones that fit your pet collection the best. But it's always tempting to try and kill multiple birds with one stone, and I'd probably try it if I was just starting!

[Monkeykibble]

So far bumped up my Anubisath/Chrominius/Lil' Bling up to 25, and Pandaren Water Spirit up to 23! Will post updates as I get closer to having viable teams Thanks again for all the feedback!