Alright, so I’ve gotten into this pretty hard and now I’m finding myself increasingly frustrated that Polished Pet Charms seem to be almost impossible to come by.
I need them for bandages, because I need to do the dungeons and with only 6 lvl25 pets it’s really difficult. I’ve been at it for the past few days, all day long, and it’s just kind of annoying that when you win battles, you don’t win anything and when you beat players, you don’t win anything and when you beat elites, you still don’t win anything. How am I meant to sustain myself through a pet battle dungeon or do a whole questline of beating several NPC’s when I can’t even afford to buy bandages or anything to keep going? I have to keep flying back jus to heal. This is a joke honestly…
You know, Pokemon has heal centres, battles drop money, you can find items around the maps and you can also heal your pets in battle if you need to with potions. Why did blizz leave all of this out and give us this kind of hollow pet battle system and no rewards?
6 level 25’s is not even close enough to having a viable roster. And never pay any kind of currency for bandages. Bandages fall thick and fast from Legion/BfA world quests.
World quests are where it’s at. The dailies usually offer 20-40 charms each day + maybe a dozen pet family stones per day, per level 120 char. Send the level up stones to your nominated pet alt. Im happy to screenshot my pet alts bags if you want to see… she could make several 100 blue level 25’s right now if needed. I just choose not to use the stones because each time… that next patch… always drops a ton of new pets gobbling up resources. And most pets arnt unique or valuable enough to waste level up resources on.
Your best bet for levelling up (when you do not have many stones) is level 25 battling with your safari hat on close to a tamer (almost free unlimited heals). I leveled up a char from 45’ish to 100 in Panderia>Vale of Eternal Blossoms>Mistfall Village doing nothing but that - and gaining a 100+ level 25’s boosted.
It was boring. It is mind numbing. Pet week and other methods (Draenor pet bosses and garrison being examples) can speed this up. And wild caught pets might already be at level 22 or 23, making the race to 25 easier.
Also when you catch pets dont be too concerned on the quality. It’s breeds that matter. An SS imp is gold, a PS imp is dog doo-doo. Learn what you want with what I assume will be Gráinne’s answer right after mine. Or look at any of her (his??) posts. It’s all good stuff.
And since you mentioned PvP battles - look at Disco Doggy’s site: pvppetbattlesDOTcom/daily-battle/
There you will find introductions to PvP pet synergy. Watch a few vids. Get a feel for how the teams work together to compliment each other. For example weather affects like lightning and flock. Or really kick it up and add black claw and cyclone to that same combo.
But 1st things 1st: You need alot more blue level 25’s. Pick a few tier ones and work your way up from there. Perhaps buy a few cheap ones on the AH as well.
OK, Abacabb, I don’t know anything about Pokemon, but I’m pretty sure it must have a phase of levelling up and collecting. You have skipped that, thanks to Blizzard’s idea of catch-up being now applied to pets as well.
Blizzard’s original design in Mists for introducing people to pets, teaching them about families and attacks and buffs and levels, was masterful, genius, and got me involved.
Blizzard’s current design for force-boosting people into level 25 and feeding them repetitive and unthinking content is empty and industrial.
You, and others, are caught in the trap of not having the resources to progress without even knowing that you do have to progress.
I will follow this up with a copy of a separate long post I already wrote about how to develop some understanding and a basic roster. Read it, and do it. Especially, do the Battle achievements up to and including Pandaria, so that you earn the Pandaren Dailies for levelling, and the Safari Hat for the extra +10% XP.
You should consider that you are on STEP 2 of this progression in the next post. But you still need to go back and do the lower battles from Taming Kalimdor on I mention as part of Step 1.
While you do have three pets at 25, you need to get the right pets to help you beat battles and help you capture more. You can buy them at the AH or farm them, but you cannot simply assume “I now have 6 (random) pets levelled; I should be able to do everything”. You need to gear up to do the content, and “gearing up” in this context means having a roster of 25s so that you can bring the right pets for the job every time.
Tier I and Tier II of this page is your target starter list of pets to acquire and level to 25. You can ignore the asterisked pets, but add Grumpy, because Grumpy is invaluable for capturing:
The basic method is to have pets that you battle around the zones, taming good-looking recruits as new pets, and defeating the Tamers in order. As Horde, you should follow Taming Kalimdor to start - then Taming Outland, Taming Northrend, Taming Cataclysm, Taming Pandaria. Each tamer gives you a quest to the next, I think.
Alliance characters do Eastern Kingdoms instead of Kalimdor
which sometimes causes problems for people trying to do pets on characters from both factions. If you have characters on both factions, it’s safest to do either one, but not mix them until you have completed one.
As you do that, you will naturally level your original pets and the ones you tamed along the way.
You will learn about families, and what is strong against what.
There are short-cuts.
If you have a level 100, you can buy your first 25 by getting your Draenor Garrison to Level 3. Then a quest pops up that rewards you an Ultimate Battle-Training Stone, that levels one pet to 25 instantly. However, you will not, of course, learn anything at all from that.
Without that stone, this video shows the fastest method for getting one level 25 pet
Basically, pick up a couple of level 4-6 crabs.
Fly off to Badlands where you can use them to beat level 14 critters.
When you have captured a couple of level 14-16 crabs in Swamp of Sorrows, fly to Valley, where you can beat the Critters and capture a 23.
Now go to the Briny Muck and serve your inevitable hour or two looking for the Blue P/P Emperor Crab you’ll have to catch anyway someday (so you might as well get some XP out of the search).
Once you have one pet at 25, you can buy level-25 pets at the Auction House and learn them.
2. Get a full team of 3 to 25. (Quickly followed by a half-dozen more.)
Beating the high-level tamers requires a decent team. You will need to choose your first pets well, to be able to beat the battles you face. wow-petguide.com has strategies for all major tamers and quests.
Here is a list of the most important pets to get in general - not specifically for Naz and Mech, where most of the load can be carried by a H/H Valk + Ikky or a Sen’jin Fetish + H/P Infected Squirrel - but for use in general:
These are all much-used pets that will serve you well.
You might take special pleasure in doing the Raiding With Leashes achievements to go back and solo old raids, to get the pets that drop from them. You can buy them at the Auction House, but the other way is more fun and more satisfying.
3. Open up the Pandaria Tamers and the Safari Hat for daily farming.
Pandaria and Draenor Tamers each reward HUGE XP once per day. Once you have defeated all Pandaria Tamers you can challenge them all daily. Draenor Tamers are easier; you can challenge them any time. Amelia is especially easy.
With the right team, you can beat a tamer with two level 25s, and bring in one low-level pet for one round. That low-level pet then scoops the XP jackpot, and gets enormous XP from the tamer battle. A level 1 will get to level 11 in one battle. A level 11 to level 16 in another.
Legion Tamers used in the Family achievement are infinitely repeatable when their eorld quest is up, and are the richest common source of XP.
4. Farm the Legion and Pandaria and Draenor tamers to level more pets.
This guide shows the fastest ways to level once you have some of the most important pets.
This is the stage when you spend your time rehearsing all the battles again and again … and again … and again …
You will also be collecting more pets from the wild, from old raids, and from the Auction House.
5. Continue with the Pandaria Spirit Tamers.
6. Do the Pet Dungeons and then Celestial Tournament and Family Familiar.
The following addons are near-mandatory:
Rematch (organises pets and saves your teams)
BattlePetBreedID (shows the breed of each pet)
I highly recommend
Pet Tracker
Derangement’s Battle Pet Cooldowns
as well.
Ikky: Black Claw → Flock (-> Savage Talon if the first opponent pet is still alive).
If the first opponent pet dies during Flock, you have a choice of applying Black Claw or Flock to the second opponent before you die.
Anklerender / Kneebiter / Footslasher: Black Claw → Hunting Party → Leap.
If Ikky already applied Black Claw, you don’t need to apply it again. If Ikky already applied Shattered Defenses from Flock, you might want to take advantage of that with Leap before you start your run. Depends.
Starlette: Wind-Up → Supercharge → Wind-Up.
If there is a barrier like Bubble or an avoidance move coming, do
Wind-Up → Powerball (however many times) → Supercharge → Wind-Up.
Finish up if necessary with Wind-Up → Wind-Up or Powerballs.
Not all battles will necessarily use this exact formula, but that’s the default.
Comments on Breeds:
I’m using a P/B Anklerender just because. I’m pretty sure that a P/P or S/S would be at least as effective.
I’m using a H/H Starlette because it survives AoE in the back line better and because of the extra health when it resurrects after Failsafe. I think a P/P would probably be at least as good, though, because Wind-Up → Wind-Up on its own without Supercharge is so much more effective.
You can also do almost all of them almost unthinkingly with three Nexus Whelplings (Breed P/P preferred though P/S will probably do) you have to capture, or Stormborne Whelplings (only P/S available) that you can buy at the AH, with Arcane Storm, followed by Mana Surge and then Tail Sweeps.
These are terribly inelegant ways to brute force the BfA battles, but they will get you your Charms like clockwork.
.
Final thought.
I know this is a LOT.
But think of yourself as a new player who has just taken a boost to 120 with green gear, facing BfA start and systems, knowing nothing about geography, flight masters, whistles, world quests, bags, vendors, auctions. Such a player would be very confused and annoyed that everything is so complicated and not the way they expect.
Yeah, that’s you right now.
You want your PPCs fast? Put your hand in your pocket, buy the three pets I mentioned for the WQs, and the Stormborne Whelpling, all as Blue 25s, and start grinding.
You want to understand what’s going on? Do your Taming achievements from the ground up, and capture all the major wild pets needed, in the breeds needed. Use the cheat sheets at wow-petguide.com if you must, but work your way through the Pandaria, Draenor and Legion dailies. And then grind them to level more pets.
Thanks for the massive help here guys. Getting mighty tired of being 1-2 shot in battles so I’ll go through the whole thing from start to finish to better understand what’s going on. I mean I’m honestly a strong player when it comes to pokemon so I expected this to be similar just with more ‘type’ combinations.
Good! It’s much better to understand what’s going on.
OK, so at least do yourself this much of a favour. Prioritise getting these pets as Blue 25s
Grumpy (with Superbark for capturing)
Anubisath Idol (10% drop chance, or buy)
P/P Emperor Crab (capture)
Ikky (you have one. blow your first PPCs on a Blue stone. if you’re stuck, I’ll stone him for you)
Iron Starlette (any breed will do for if quick and cheap now, but P/P or H/H preferred)
Zandalari Anklerender / Kneebiter / Footslasher - I see you have a couple
Just those 6 tick a lot of boxes in the list of qualities you need. The link I quoted before
has more.
Ideally you would level those along the way, so that you’re facing tamers with pets of the same level rather than with 25s who will blow the opposition away without you having to grasp what’s going on, but at least try to lay hands on them sooner rather than later.
