May 2014   « Archives | Current News »

There are many different aspects of Pet Battles to enjoy. From battling NPCs to queuing and battling other players, and of course we can't forget the pets themselves. These are the basic and core activities of Pet Battles.

But there's another awesome way to utilize this mini-game — Pet Battle tournaments!


WarcraftPets Guild-run Pet Battle Tournaments
In the past, we covered GKick Network's Global Pet Battle League. However, tournaments aren't reserved for just large organizations. Anyone can put together a fun and rewarding contest for their guild or friends and family.

The official WarcraftPets guild on US Horde Madoran has had many successful Pet Battle tournaments, and continues to host lively events.

Many of the tournaments are themed and award prizes. Limiting the selection of allowed pets adds a little bit of challenge and keeps the contests interesting. Prizes come in the form of what else but pets! Guild members can donate pets for the tournaments, but the majority or prizes come from the WarcraftPets guild bank.

There's no entry fee to participate in these officer-run Pet Battle tournaments, and everyone is welcome to attend whether you wish to battle or simply spectate. Don't forget to bring your pets!

Hosting Your Own Tournament
The original WarcraftPets guild has grown in numbers and branched off into several official and unofficial sister guilds, some on the same server. But don't let size deter you from organizing and hosting your own Pet Battle tournament. Regardless of how big or small, how few or many, any Pet Battle tournament can be fun.

Here are some helpful tips on getting your own tournament started.

• Plan and organize prior to announcing your tournament. Gauge the interest level among your guild or friends and determine the best way to hold the contest. Is there a theme? What level do pets need to be to enter? How will players progress through the tournament? What method of determining the winner is fair and best for your group?
• Announce when and where your tournament will take place in advance. Give others time to plan whether or not they will be able to attend.
• Communicate with your attendees. Be sure to let them know if the tournament needs to be canceled, postponed or if changes need to be made. They'll appreciate being kept in the loop.
• Have more than one judge observe the tournament. Disputes can pop up over the results of a battle. However, now that everyone can spectate a Pet Battle duel in progress, having multiple eyes and ears around will help the contest run more smoothly. Of course too many and it might go the other way!
• Although you may have a few judges watching over the matches, it might be best to have only one scorekeeper to track wins and losses. (In the WarcraftPets guild Tizril does a fantastic job maintaining tournament brackets.)
• Ventrilo, Mumble, or any other VoIP program can be helpful when making announcements or handing out directions for the tournament.
• 
  You can also use raid markers to help direct participants as the event progresses.
• Because the level requirement to join a raid group is level 10 or higher, it's helpful to set the minimum player level to 10 and up. This isn't absolutely necessary, but having all participants in the same raid together allows for more efficient communication and organization.
• Prizes are not always necessary or mandatory, but they make for great incentives. They can be pets, gold, or other desirable goods.
• Handing out prizes after the event can sometimes be tedious. Our very own guild leader of the WarcraftPets guild, Doobjanka, recommends creating a guild bank tab and guild rank designated for contest winners. Once the tournament is over, the winners can be promoted to a specific rank that allows them to withdraw one pet from the bank tab.
• Take screenshots to commemorate the event. Encourage attendees to capture some memorable moments as well.
• And last but not least, have fun! Although you'll want to keep the tournament organized, it's still possible to maintain a lighthearted atmosphere.

Come Join Us!
If hosting your own Pet Battle tournament doesn't seem like the task for you, feel free to attend one of the WarcraftPets guild events instead. Many tournaments are announced in the WarcraftPets Guild forum section; if you have any questions, don't hesitate to ask.

Whether you'd like to take on the challenge and duel another player or observe from the sidelines, everyone is welcome. Battle on!

It's time for another round of updates to WarcraftPets, and we've got some good ones!

Sort Pets by Community Rating
During our last round of updates we overhauled our pet rating system, allowing each pet to be given a different rating for battle and appearance. Well, we've made those updated ratings far more useful.

Now when you use our Smart Pet Search or Pet Filters to zero in on various types of pets, you'll be able to sort your results by community rating.



This allows you to easily discover, for example, the highest rated Aquatic pets, or the best looking pets that can fly alongside your mount. The possibilities are almost endless.

Pet Score Formula Updated
Ever since we introduced pet score, we've received a number of requests to increase the amount that pet level contributes to the overall score. But we wanted to do it in a way where it wouldn't trump rarity or lead to exploits.

Bwana, one of our users, proposed a clever change to our formula that perfectly addressed these concerns. Here's the updated formula (changes in red):


Previously, the formula added 4 times your average pet level. So this change increases the contribution of pet level from 3% to roughly 18%, whereby each level 25 pet you own is worth 1 point. That increase should make the majority of you very happy.

For those of you who haven't leveled many pets, keep in mind that more than 80% of your score is still contributed through collecting alone. No one will lose any points as a result of this update.

News Comments
You'll notice another useful update at the end of this very news post — comments!

All of our registered users are invited to comment on our latest news posts. Share your thoughts, opinions, and add to the discussion. We encourage all comments, provided they comply with our user guidelines. In other words, try to keep it light and constructive.

We welcome your feedback, especially when we implement a big round of site updates like this! So by all means, chime in below.

Pet Ratings Filters
Quintessence, our Content Manager, noted that she had trouble sorting through her list of pet ratings. So we decided to help her (and the rest of you) out!



You can now filter your pet ratings by not only rated and unrated, but also by type (battle and appearance).

Other Usability Tweaks
We made a handful of other usability tweaks as well...

• Improved Pet Index - Our A-Z index of all pets is a little easier to navigate. Click a letter of the alphabet to pull all pets that start with that letter.
• User Search - We've added a User Search page to find WarcraftPets users by username or character. We've always had this functionality within our Realm Leaderboards, but it's now easier to find on its own.
• Updating Help - Sometimes you're told that your character wasn't found when you attempt to reimport your pet collection. This is most often caused to a bug in the Armory following a merging of your realm. We've included some new helper text that gives you a workaround if you run into this problem.

Developer Resources Page
Last but not least, we've added Developer Resources (accessible from the bottom of any page in our footer). This page outlines how you can link to pet profiles and categories on our site.

This should be very useful for all of you addon, app and web developers.

Special Thanks
A very big thanks goes out to our Lead Developer, Weena, who has worked tirelessly to polish and implement these improvements. I also want to thank the many members of our community who provide useful feedback and suggestions to make WarcraftPets a better site.

In addition, I'd like to extend an extra special thanks to our Site MVPs. Your continued support helps to makes updates like these possible. Thanks again!

Another WoD Alpha patch was recently released. Datamining revealed new achievements, two new pets, and two new Battle-Stones.

New Achievements
Five new Pet Battle achievements were added to the WoD Alpha, however they may only be for testing purposes and are subject to change as indicated by their names. [source]

• [TEST] Beast Beat-down - Finish a battle with a Beast ability.
• [TEST] Hydraulics - Win a pet battle with an Aquatic and a Mechanical pet on your team. 5 points.
• [TEST] If One Is Good... - Win a battle with 3 Vengeful Porcupette pets
• [TEST] Survivalist - Win with three pets alive!
• [TEST] We've Got a Bleeder! - Win a pet battle with Bleeding as the final damage.

We'll have to wait and see whether or not these achievements stick around for the release of the expansion. More might be in store for us, but let's just hope there isn't a challenge that involves using three Darkmoon Rabbits or three Viscous Horrors to win a battle!

New Pets
Two new pets were also discovered, the Grovestrider Hatchling and Lifelike Mechanical Frostboar. [source]

List of all WoD Alpha datamined pets

It's unclear where the Grovestrider Hatchling will come from, but the Lifelike Mechanical Frostboar is currently listed as an engineering recipe (requiring skill level 700).

To possibly accompany our new piggy-pet, a new Battle Pet ability was added, Pig Out. There aren't any battle pets assigned to this ability yet, but it sounds as if it was made for a hungry hog!

New Battle-Stones
Last but not least, two new Battle-Stones were found lurking in the WoD Alpha, Training Beast Battle-Stone of Testing and Training Battle-Stone of Testing.

There are currently only the two listed above, and as their name suggests, they are subject to change. With all things in testing phases, these stones may not make it into the expansion, but it will be interesting if they do.

The Training Battle-Stones are different than the stones that currently exist — instead of increasing the quality upon use on the selected pet, these new stones raise your pet's level by one. They are also of epic quality and are Bind on Pick Up.

We look forward to learning more about these "rare candies" as well as all pet-related additions to the WoD Alpha.

We're feeling a little "crabby" this month, but there are no ill-tempered feelings here! For this Pet of the Month we're featuring the Spirebound Crab.

Collecting the Spirebound Crab
The Spirebound Crab is one of two wild crab pets in Pandaria (the other being the Emperor Crab), and can be found on the Windward Isle or appear in wild battles as a secondary pet throughout the Jade Forest (pet level range 23 to 25).

The Windward Isle is a large island off the northeast coast in the Jade Forest, and is largely populated by friendly Cloud Serpents and not-so-friendly Saurok and tigers. For max level players that have access to flying in Pandaria the high level hostile creatures can be easily avoided in order to access the small beach on the island's eastern coast where the Spirebound Crab spawns.

For lower level characters, reaching the isle and capturing your own crab may be more of a challenge. If you're brave enough, you can take a leap of faith off of the sheer cliff overlooking the waters west of the Windward Isle. However, if you'd prefer a safer approach, you can reach the water's edge by following the road heading northeast from Dawn's Blossom. This path will take you to the Sri-la Village, and from there you can swim to the isle of Cloud Serpents. Just watch out for the sharks patrolling the waters.

The Spirebound Crab shares the beach with hostile Saurok, so be prepared to defend your crustacean companion. There are quite a few spawn points for this pet on the Windward Isle, so don't despair if one happens to be a little too close to a Saurok camp.

This pet that may interest not only collectors but also avid Pet Battlers, as it can come in a breed that is exclusive to only one other crab pet. So don't miss out on adding the Spirebound Crab to your collection! Spend some time in the Jade Forest and you may run into this pet as a secondary in a wild battles, or take an adventurous trip to the Windward Isle.

Battling with the Spirebound Crab
The Spirebound Crab brings a ton of versatility to your stable. No, I'm not talking about cakes vs legs. With its defensive ability Shell Shield, it makes an excellent tank for both wild battle grinding and several different tamer fights.


The Spirebound Crab also has 2 varied heals to back up its shield. Healing Wave is a standard self-heal with a 3-turn cooldown, while Renewing Mists is a Heal Over Time that persists on the front pet for 3 turns. Healing Wave has more healing throughput, but you can use Renewing Mists to heal other pets after you swap out your crab.

But sometimes, the best defense is a good offense. You can choose either Surge, an aquatic move that 'always goes first', or Snap, a beast move which deals more damage but won't give your pet the initiative for your filler attack. The versatility here comes from Whirlpool. It's a hard-hitting dps move which explodes 2 turns after you cast it, and roots the opposing pet in place for 2 rounds. Because Whirlpool hits so hard and restricts swaps, it's quite popular for PVP. It shares a slot with Shell Shield, so for most PVE fights where I'd use my crab, I opt to not use Whirlpool. However, if you come up against a rogue elemental you'd really like to beat up on, the combination of Whirlpool and Surge will extinguish it in no time.

Check out our forum thread discussion on the Spirebound Crab and submit your own thoughts on this pet.

Battling Discussion on the Spirebound Crab

Pet of the Month is co-written by Liopleurodon, an experienced pet battler and long-time WoW player. She maintains her own Pet Battle blog, comprised of pet analyses, team strategies and general thoughts on pets.