Hating the Pet Battle grind...

[theredviola]

I love pet battles. I really do, I like the collection mentality and the "pokemon in WoW' feeling that it instills. What I DON'T like is the insane amount of grinding that I'm having to do. I went to WoW Battle Pets website to look and see what "good" pets I had, picked a few and started leveling via catching and defeating creatures. The first 5 levels weren't bad for most of them, and the next 5 were a little slower... but it seems I've hit a HARSH downward slope of XP. "Random encounters" don't give much xp and for a team of 3 pets, that's a TON of needed XP...

My question is this...

What's the most efficient way of training pets? Do I have to just suck it up and grind?

[Ragashii]

Battle the trainers and they will pretty much railroad your first set to 25. The birds in dragonblight are amazing to grind with too btw, the stable master is really close by. Once you hit like 16 you can probably grind a few pets to 20+ off them as well.

http://www.petbattlearena.com/pet.php?pet=103 these birds btw

[Raelbo]

My question is this...

What's the most efficient way of training pets? Do I have to just suck it up and grind?

Pet battle dailies:

You can level up your low level pets using the Kalimdor (in Winterspring) and Eastern Kingdoms (near Karazhan) dailies.

Then there are a bunch of dailies in Pandaria which can be used for massive XP.

Typically I do up to 9 dailies in Pandaria and if I do them all I can level 2 pets from 1 to 25 in about 40 mins. The trick is figuring out strategies to beat the dailies in such a way that you can afford to pull in your boosted pet 1 round. Also finding a pet that works against many of these opponents helps a ton, because it means you only have to level up a few pets to get to full speed. My personal "champion" pet is the Onyxian Whelpling - and it has a few generic equivalents if you never got this little beauty. The real reason I use it is simply because it was one of my favourite pets and among the first I levelled up. It just so happens to be pretty effective.

There are obviously many combos that work, but here are a few of mine:

Earth Spirit:

Rapana Whelk (or any snail). Dive, Acidic Goo, Absorb;
Onyxian Whelpling (or a generic equivalent Spawn of Onyxia, Wild Crimson Hatchling, Crimson Whelpling). Tail Sweep, Healing Flame, Lift Off.
Random pet to be boosted (any level/family).

Open with Rapana Whelk to eat the elemental. Dive in the first round, follow up with that acidic goo and then absorbs. Use Dive on CD if opponent isn't dead yet. Against the next opponent just do some damage. Follow up with my Onyxian whelpling. I destroy Ooze opponent with Tail sweep - 1 usually kills it, but if 1 shot doesn't kill it I immediately heal with healing flame and then finish it with the next tail sweep. Part of the trick is to enter the last opponent Darnak the Tunneler with the Dragonkin +50% damage buff up. I open against it with a tail sweep. Immediately lift off to dodge the burrow attack and hopefully get in a big hit. Then I use healing flame to recover from the big elemental hit. The following round your opponent does nothing because all his abilities are on CD, so I can swap in my boost pet for a round. Immediately then switch back to my dragon, take the hit, follow up with Tail sweep and then lift off again, repeating that combo until victory.

Air Spirit:

Onyxian Whelpling;
Spawn of Onyxia;
Random pet to be boosted: Anything that can survive the opening attack. Mechanicals and magic can survive at level 1, any non aquatic can survive from about level 10.

Start with levelling pet first. Swap out after the first round, bring in 1 of the dragons. Lift off. That will dodge the moth balls attack and then hit after the cocoon expires. Healing flame. Swap to other dragon. Rinse and repeat. Sometimes a dragon will be put to sleep and lose out on its heal, but its ok, you should go into the next opponent with close to full health on both dragons. Open up against the dragon opponent with a tail sweep which should be at +50%. Healing flame after. Two more tail sweeps and your opponent is dead. Lift off in the first round against the elemental to dodge the dot. Then just go with tail sweeps and healing flames. Using a lift off when the dot has 1 round left ensures the next dot misses. If your first dragon dies (this sometimes happens if you had bad luck), bring in the other.

Hyuna (Jade Forest Battle trainer)
Onyxian Whelpling;
Spawn of Onyxia;
Random pet to be boosted (any level/family).

Open with Spawn of Onyxia. Lift off, tail sweep, heal, tail sweep (with the P/P breed this wins, with an Onyxian Whelpling or some other generics the moth may still have a few Hp and needs to be finished with another tail sweep). Hit the snake with Tail Sweep. Lift off, tail sweep, heal, tail sweep. If you are lucky you will survive Dor's first hit and get in a tail sweep. Either way, bring in your boosted pet next round. If it is coming in because your dragon died, then make it hit Dor once in order to be elligible for XP. If you had to swap it in manually, you can swap to your other dragon immediately. Tail sweep, then Lift Off - should dodge the attack. Follow up with tail sweeps and healing flames until it dies. You can time your lift offs to dodge every second head butt, but anything pretty much works from here since your dragon can heal faster than Dor can deal damage.

Water Spirit
Onyxian Whelpling;
Spawn of Onyxia (usually not even needed and you can go with a second levelling pet if you want)
Random pet to be boosted: Anything other than elemental with > about 900 hp.

This boss is often a good way to finish levelling two level 24s that are about 2/3 or less XP to level to avoid wasting XP.

This fight is a bit more random than most of the dailies because of the water striders attacks which seem to be random, so you may need to adapt a little as the fight develops. A bit of experience on the fight and it won't be a problem at all.

Open with Onyxian Whelpling. Tail Sweep, Lift off to dodge the dive, Healing flame to recover from the hit. Tail sweep to finish. If you miss one of your attacks, reset the fight, heal your team, go again. Against the water strider, tail sweep at +50%. Depending on how the fight goes you might want to toss in a heal or lift off, but remember the sooner you finish this guy, the less of its wave attack will hit your backline (and your levelling pet). One thing you want to do here is enter the last opponent (elemental) without the 50% buff. This means make sure your last hit on the strider is made with the buff. Four tail sweeps against the elemental will result in the elemental dying just before the whirlpool and geyser hit your dragon. This kills your dragon, ensuring that your levelling pet(s) get the fight XP even though they never entered the fight. If things don't go according to plan, you can finish it off with your second dragon (or the 2 level 24s should both be able to get a hit in).



I could go on with recipes for all the dailies if I had the time, but this will have to suffice for now GL.

- - - Updated - - -

Second: Those websites should give tips how to two-man trainers for insane amounts of xp. <snip>

Loads of excellent advice in here (didn't see it before I started typing my post). It shows how there are many combos that can work, provided you use the right abilities and synergies.

I tend to park alts at the Winterspring and Karazhan trainers as they reward also bags, the pets can be soloed by lv 25 pets and you can add 1 or 2 lv pets (2 pets split the xp however)

A great little gem this. It is particularly nice if those alts are alts you want to level up but don't really have the time and/or inclination to do so. They get XP for both the battle and turning in the quest. Furthermore switching to that alt to do the battle and get all that XP costs you less time than sending your main all the way there. So basically you get to level up an alt or 2 practically for zero additional effort.

[Wilderness]

The first handful of pets are somewhat painful to level up. But don't think of it as rushing through it - I'd try to go around to different zones as they gain levels and try to capture some rares, as that will give you a larger stable of higher level pets that you can level faster later on. I found this to be a great guide for me as I was starting out in pet battles and leveling pets: http://fecklessleader.blogspot.com/p...for-noobs.html

He's also got intermediate and advanced guides which level pets much faster as you are able to do higher and higher level tamers, which is the fastest and most efficient way to level pets. Even if you can't do higher level tamers yet because you don't have the right types of high level pets, you want to do all the trainers you can do each day, and as many total trainers as you can. Once you have defeated 40 different trainers you get an achievement which rewards you with Safari Hat.

The fastest and most effective way to level pets is by battling the trainers with 2 level 25 pets and then your leveling pet. Read up on each of the trainers (parking an alt at Winterspring/Kara is a good idea, although I generally just stick to the Pandaria ones) and see what pets you'll need to be able to do that, and then level them up. If you aren't leveling up an Anub Idol, make that your next priority. Its quite good against several trainers and in PVE in general. Once you have that, you just want to get a couple decent ones of a few types: a couple mechanicals (Darkmoon Tonk was the 1st one I leveled up and I get a lot of use out of it still; Darkmoon Zep, Mechanical Dragonling, and Clockwork Gnome are also good); a couple dragons (Celestial is good, as is an Emerald Proto-Whelp although you probably don't have one but Emerald Whelpling is a good substitute; a flyer or two (Crow and/or Gilnean Raven are great if you have them; and an aquatic (crab - Emperor Crab if you have one, but Magical Crawdad is good as well, or just a wild one that you capture and level). Once you get a group of solid pets with some diversity, between 5 and 10, then you'll probably be able to do just about all of the higher level trainers with 2 of them, and that's when you can really start leveling pets quickly.

Prior to that, once you have a couple of 25s you can do most lower level trainers, or you can grind wild pet battles with your 2 25s and the pet you want to level. I usually just go to the Valley of the Four Winds and kill critters, but that's because its quick for my alt to get to (I'm finishing off 87-90 on him just through pet battles), but its really quick because I have a couple of Beast pets that just destroy critters and can heal themselves so there's no downtime (Xu-Fu and Feline Familiar are great there). What I'd do if I were you is to figure out what types of pets your few 25s are strong against, then go to a high level zone that has those kind in them.

Doing the Beasts of Fable quests and dailies will reward you with an item that gives you a buff for an additional 15% pet experience for 1 hour. You can kill every single one of the Beasts of Fable pets with a howlbomb team, which consists of the Pandarian Water Spirit and Chrominius. You throw up the 2 dots of the water spirit, switch to chrominius and howl so those 2 dots go off with more power, then surge of power to finish them off. I had read up on and created teams for each of those beasts before I learned about this but it makes it soooo much easier. I do that for all of them now, except I just use a team of birds to destroy No-No because timing the howlbombs is harder on him with his dive and dam.

Its kind of overwhelming at first, because there's so many good pets, and so many pets that are used to kill this guy, and other ones for that guy, and for PVP, and for the Celestial Tournament, and ... whew. It is and will always be a grind - there's always more pets to get, the right breed to try for, and endless battles against trainers to level the new shiny pet that you got or the one you just learned is great for <insert pet stuff here>. But its also a lot of fun, for me. There's a ton of information to take in at first, and soooo many pets that you feel you "need" to level, or at least I did. Try not to worry about it and just enjoy the battles. Its interesting, particularly once you start doing some PVP (there's a weekly for 10 PVP wins that gives you a biscuit that has a 50% exp buff for an hour, which is amazing) as you really start to learn how different pets and abilities interact.

I'm not the best or most experienced pet battler out there, but it wasn't long ago that I was right where you were. I got the achievement for raising my first pet to level 3 on 6/21/14 so in less than a month I went from about 200 unique pets to almost 460, I am at 63/75 for the raise pets to 25 achievement, and last week I tried (and won) the Celestial Tournament for the first time. If you don't let yourself get too bogged down on all the things that you need/want to do and just focus on leveling this pet and that, it all comes together nicely. I honestly only started doing pet battles for achievements and was very surprised at how much I'm enjoying it. Its my new obsession in game, and taken up most of my in-game time outside of raiding.

[emidas]

I am not sure if I am allowed to link this, but I have a wowhead guide on how to one- or two- pet every single trainer in Pandaria: http://www.wowhead.com/guide=2373/pa...em-efficiently

I average anywhere from 3-5 new 25s per day now that I have my system in place.

[Illiterate]

Boost your pets with a black tabby + kun lai runt on the critters in vo4w

[Deleted]

As people have said, getting the first three to max level is the grind. What I did was level my pets with a new alt. It synchronised brilliantly. Whereas you outlevel professions nowadays, I found I was typically questing in the right level for my pets to fight. Also, it meant the battles were a nice break from questing, professions or dungeons - and pretty decent character XP iirc.

There are some very good guides for leveling - there's an old one about how to beat all the trainers with just the Idol and a emerald protodrake. It's not strictly true nowadays, but still largely right. So, focusing on those two is a good move, as is the Terrible Turnip, as it has a move that can never reduce an enemy below 1 HP.

Once you have three max level pets, things really speed up - you can start fighting trainers in Outland, Northrend and beyond. It can get really fast and lucrative doing that. There are guides for how to do the trainers in Pandaria. You'll gradually need to build up a varied team but with Idol/protodrake/carry and variations thereof, you'll level up newbies really fast.

It takes about 20 or so well chosen pets to do the Tournament. Once I did that, I kinda lost interest but I really enjoyed it as a diversion from standard leveling (also gave my main some valor and achieves etc).

[Deleted]

Vale of eternal blossoms has water striders that use a heal for their first attack.
Pop level 1, they heal, u land a hit.
Swap to flying pet, finish all 3 off 1 hit
Lvl 1 pet gets 3k experience.

[calinass]

If I start from level 1, how do I get 25 the fastest? do I have to buck up and farm 25 levels zone to zone?

[Gumboy]

Do the low level pet dailies as you gain levels is probably the fastest, but yes you will have to move zones as you get your pets higher. Catch rare pets as you go, this will give you a bigger stable of levels/types.

[RelaxedFM]

The first few to 25 suck, but once you get there it is really easy to level more pets to 25 and start collecting.

Try get as many quests done as possible while you are leveling though (Pet battle quests). Saves time later and gets you your safari hat faster.

[Jazzycakes]

I love pet battles. I really do, I like the collection mentality and the "pokemon in WoW' feeling that it instills. What I DON'T like is the insane amount of grinding that I'm having to do.

>People complain because there isn't enough content.
>People complain because it takes too long to finish content.

Thankfully I don't work at blizzard and have to deal with this logic as manufacturer of this content otherwise I'd go garrosh hellscream on you all.