The Most Epic Pet Battle Post EVER

Editor's Note: Squee! Got my wish! Krash sent this to me this morning, but I didn't check my email until after I had gone to work, and we know I can't do any fun Azeroth stuff at work. So finally, without further ado:

The Celestial Tournament, by Turkic/Krasher

My good friend Matty is like a bloodhound, relentlessly on my trail, trying to get me to write a "guest" column.  I admit that I read her blog regularly, and through it, those of some of her friends.  I am impressed by the quality of the work, and am not sure that my skills as a writer are up to par.  With that said, I did have a topic of interest that I don't know has been covered in any detail.

For those who know me, I try to be efficient in everything I do, in WoW and out.  I play within the rules, but I try to see the game as a wider zone of possibility than others might.  As an example. I haven't done a daily quest since patch 5.1, and yet I have three level 90 characters exalted with every Pandaria faction, and all with cloud serpent riding capability.  I get all my raid bonus roll tokens from pet battles, and pet battles are what I wanted to talk about today.

The pet battle system is one of the best features in the Mists of Pandaria expansion.  Despite its flaws, it has overall been a huge success.  Players like collecting, leveling, and battling their pet collections.  In 5.1 they added Battle Stones; 5.2 yielded the Beasts of Fable and Raiding with Leashes.  In 5.3 they did some major balancing, added some powerful new pets, and made pet battles award leveling experience.  On September 10th, patch 5.4 will come out, and as Illidan Stormrage would say, "You are not prepared!"

Besides the Siege of Orgrimmar, patch 5.4 brings the Timeless Isle, replete with solo content, group content, lots of cool loot, and a plethora of new pets.  The real story though, is the Celestial Tournament.  This is an opportunity to earn 1000 Timeless coins per week in a grand pet battling tournament.  You face 7 tough fights, and you have to beat them all.  It sounds fun, and it is, but there is a catch.  During the 7 fights (3 trainers plus 4 Celestial Beasts of Fable), you cannot heal your pets, at all.  Once you zone in, you have to beat all 13 pets with what you have with you.  It sounds challenging, and it is supposed to be.

Before I go into detail about the fights, I wanted to mention about hard counters.  Every pet type is either strong or weak in attack and defense versus other pets.  As an example, dragon pets take less damage from flying pets, and flying pets take increased damage from Magic attacks, so a dragon that does magic attacks would be a hard counter to a flying pet.  A good specific example is Lil' Terecgosa.  As you face these opponents, try to use a hard counter for every one of their pets if possible.  You can start the fight and leave without taking a turn, just to scout out their team.

I've completed this on the Public Test Realm (PTR) a couple of times now, and I wanted to share some pets that I feel are critical to success in the tournament.  The three trainers vary week to week, but the celestials are always the same.  One point -- I have about 140 level 25 pets, but on the PTR I had about 30, so my choices were more limited.  Realistically, you will need 40 or more pets to be able to beat this.  Here are the fights I saw this week, and the pets I used to beat them:

Sully:

Mojo

Zandalari Kneebiter

Turkey

Dr Jon Goldbloom:

Dark Whelpling (I would recommend a better dragon here, but this was what I had on the PTR)

Menagerie Custodian

Sunreaver Microsentry

Lorewalker Cho:

Onyxia Whelpling (nearly killed 2 pets)

Stitched Pup

(didn't need a third pet)

Yu-la:

Bonkers (killed him solo) 

This is the easiest of the celestials.  Any humanoid with an avoidance move like dodge or reflect and 287+ speed is good here.  If I were on live I'd probably use a Flayer Youngling, Hopling, and a Lil Bad Wolf with 287+ speed until I could catch Bonkers.

Xu-Fu:

Tranquil Mechanical Yeti

Clockwork Gnome or Darkmoon Zeppelin

Mechanical Pandaren Dragonling

This guy hits like a ton of bricks and heals for a lot.  Be sure to use avoidance when his heal is on cool down.  I found the Decoy especially effective here.

Chi Chi:

Water Spirit

Chrominus

Unborn Val'kyr (optional)

This combination is deadly, so much so that I may level a second of these two pets before the patch.  I will explain this specific team strategy below.

Zao:

Water Spirit

Chrominus

Unborn Val'kyr (optional)

I used the same Water Spirit and Chrominus here as well.  While the Valk'yr isn't necessary, it makes it a sure thing.  Here's the basic attack sequence.  Note that this can destroy all the Beasts of Fable as well, except for Dos Ryo.

Open with Unborn Val'kyr:

Round 1: Unholy Ascension (Val'kyr will die and resurrect for one round)

Round 2: Curse of Doom

Round 3: Bring out Pandaren Water Spirit; use Geyser

Round 4: Use Whirlpool

Round 5: Swap to Chrominius

Round 6: Use Howl, which doubles their damage taken.  After this turn Doom, Geyser, and Whirlpool will detonate for massive damage, killing them.  If they somehow manage to live:

Round 7: Surge of Power.

I hope this has been helpful and not too boring.  Matty is a good friend, and I wanted her to have some scoop to go with her dish in 5.4.  May your battles be the stuff of legends!



Postscript: We will be back to our regulary scheduled Friday Fished-Up Wish soon!