WoW Pet Battle Guide
WoW Pet Battle Guide
Here is the comprehensive guide to Pet Battles. More info will be added as time from time to time, so check back often.
Buying up pets on the AH can be a great strategy to get the best, most powerful pets and test various combinations. If you need to get gold in a hurry, I suggest you either get the Tycoon add-on, especially if you have at least one gathering or crafting profession.
Pet Battle Guide Table of Contents
Picking the Top Ten Favorite Pets
Earning Experience and Leveling
Other Pages about Pet Battles:
Full list of each race’s trainable battle pet
Current list of tamers and the questline walkthrough.
The Basics
Here are the major “need-to-know” things:
- The battles can occur with different number of pets from your roster involved. Solo 2v2 and 3v3 battles can take place.
- You may capture wild pets in the world to add to your roster. They will randomly vary in quality and strength.
- You can queue for pet battles from anywhere in the world similar to PvP Battlegrounds.
- There are epic questlines that you can embark on to defeat Master Pet Tamers around the world!
- Certain pets will be able to be purchased and sold on the AH.
- Pets and Mount are account-wide so each character will access to the same roster.
Pet Journal
The in game Pet Journal will be an easy way for players to keep track and organize their pets. Here are some items that will be part of the Pet Journal:
- The pet’s name - Naming your pets helps you keep track of them, and it also gives them a little bit of personality.
- Level - As your pets fight and win battles, they will gain experience and level up.
- Stats - Each pet has 4 stats – Health, Power, Speed, and Quality. Health, Power and Speed increase as your pets level up. Quality designates the overall strength of your pet’s stats and will vary on every pet that you catch.
- Abilities - Your pets can learn new abilities when they hit specific levels. You will be able to choose between several different active abilities for each pet.
- Family - Pets are grouped into common categories called families. Families include Critter, Dragonkin, Mechanical, Magical, and there are many more. Each pet ability also corresponds to a specific pet family; Deep Breath for example is a Dragonkin-type ability, and Lift-Off is a Flying-type ability. Family determines a pet’s strength and weakness against other families. Each family also has a unique passive bonus.
Battle Pet Families
All the Battle Pets will fall into on of 10 possible categories. Each family will have it’s own strengths and weaknesses when fighting against other families.
Aquatic - Aquatic attacks deal bonus damage to Elemental companions and less damage to Magic companions.
Beast - Beast attacks deal bonus damage to Critter companions and less damage to Flying companions.
Critter - Critter attacks deal bonus damage to Undead companions and less damage to Humanoid companions.
Dragonkin - Dragonkin attacks deal bonus damage to Magic companions and less damage to Undead companions.
Elemental - Elemental attacks do more damage to Mechanical companions and less to Critter companions.
Flying - Flying attacks deal bonus damage to Aquatic companions and less damage to Dragonkin companions.
Humanoid - Humanoid attacks do more damage to Dragonkin and less to Beast companions.
Magical - Magical attacks deal bonus damage to Flying and less damage to Mechanical companions.
Mechanical - Mechanical attacks deal bonus damage to Beast companions and less damage to Elemental companions.
Undead - Undead attacks do more damage to Humanoid companions and less to Aquatic companions.
Battle Pet Passive Abilities
Each Battle Pet Family will have a unique passive characteristic that will aid it:
- Aquatic: [Purity] - Aquatic pets have reduced DoT (damage over time) effects.
- Beast: [Enrage] - Bests increase their damage 25% when they fall under half health.
- Critter: [Elusive] - Reduces stun and crowd control effects.
- Dragonkin: [Execute] - Damage is increased by 50% to targets under quarter health.
- Elemental: [Weather Immune] - Elementals ignore all weather effects.
- Flying: [Swiftness] - Flying creatures gain 50% extra speed while above 50% health.
- Humanoid: [Recovery] - Humanoids recover 2% of their maximum health every time they attack.
- Magical: [Spellshield] - Magic pets cannot be dealt more than 50% of their maximum health in one attack.
- Mechanical: [Failsafe] - Comes back to life once per battle, returning to 25% health.
- Undead: [Damned] - Undead pets return to life for one round when killed.
Unique Racial Pets
Each race will have their own unique pet that they can purchase from the battle trainers. For a full list of each race’s pet and how to get any race’s pet:
Full list of each race’s trainable battle pet
These pets seem to be slightly “buffer” that the wild pets, so it might make sense to snatch up a few for your arsenal. If you are hell-bend on dominating the pet game, it might make sense to scoop up every race’s pet, in fact. Check out the guide above for more info.
For the full description of the Master Trainer storyline and list of all the available trainers check out this guide:
Current list of tamers and the questline walkthrough.
It’s important to go through the questline as this will unlock pet slots and level up your pets after which you can focus on the PvP aspect of the pet game.
Tips for beginners
Pick out multiple pets to level up. Don’t limit yourself to just three pets, try to have a pet from every pet family leveling up. This will help down the road when you run into situations where every advantage is needed to win. The pet families work in a rock, paper, scissors like fashion, so having a diverse range of pets will help you.
Set you favorite pets as “Favorite”. This will help you concentrate your leveling effort on your most important pets, by easily swapping it in and out of the battle.
Look over your pets abilities. Before committing to a pet, look over what skills it will unlock as it level. Try to have pets that have complimentary skills. For example, some pets have an ability heals whichever pets is out at the time for 3 turns (the ability persists through swapping), start out with that, followed by a DPS pet to dish out damage. This will be more effective that having each pet battling throughout the whole fight.
Earning Experience and Leveling
Leveling up is the name of the game; the higher the level, the better your companion’s stats will be, which can give you a slightly higher chance of success in battle!
- Only pets that actively take part in an encounter will earn experience. Those that aren’t switched in during the battle will not earn experience.
- Pets that die during combat will not earn experience.
- Higher level opponents will award more experience.
- A “difficulty bonus” is sometimes awarded, either for especially long fights or encounters with higher level opponents.
- Leveling up will unlock new abilities for your pets. You will have three ability slots per pet, but you can switch these abilities between battles.
- New abilities are unlocked at levels 1, 2, 4, 10, 15, and 20.
Wanna Buy any Damn Pet You Want on the Auction House?
If you have 24 hours a day to farm, then this is something that probably isn’t for you. For most students/working professionals, spending a few bucks to save hours a day in grinding just makes sense. If this is something that makes sense for you, check it out here.
