Battling Books

I either have my dates mixed up or the next TCG deck release date has been pushed back. In any case, according to WoWTCGLoot Betrayal of the Guardian will be out shortly before the targeted week of patch 5.2 release. Appropriate since the patch is necessary to put the Gusting Grimoire in the game. :P

WoWTCGLoot has also updated their pre-sale announcement with the pet that one lucky pre-sale purchaser will win. It's Grunty! There are also other prizes for the new loot as well. You can review them all here.

If I remember correctly, the Gusting Grimoire shares similar abilities to the Lofty Libram, with a couple placement differences and alternate attacks. I have yet to try using the Lofty Libram in a battle, so I don't really have an impression of how books battle. ;P

Anyway, the pre-sale for the Gusting Grimoire is still going on, so don't miss your chance to get the grimoire as it's released and enter in to possibly win Grunty. :D

Preview of the New 5.2 Pets

The PTR hasn't been updated with the new Pet Battle changes yet, but I did find the source of the three datamined companions.

According to the Pet Journal, the Gusting Grimoire will indeed be the common loot card from the next TCG expansion deck, Betrayal of the Guardian.

As you can see in the screenshot below, it looks a lot like the Lofty Libram; it just has a different color scheme.


The Gusting Grimoire has a different set of starting abilities (1, 2, and 4) though. Its level 10, 15 and 20 attacks are the same as the libram's.

level 1 - Fel Immolate
level 2 - Agony
level 4 - Meteor Strike

The second datamined pet is the Living Sandling. Apparently, it's a drop from the Throne of Thunder. Wowhead categorizes it as a raid zone, which is new for a pet. Never before have we had a companion pet drop from current tier content.

This could change since I have yet to find the pet item that teaches this companion. But then again, that item might not yet be implemented.


Here are it's abilities:

level 1 - Slicing Wind
level 2 - Flyby
level 4 - Cyclone
level 10 - Wild Winds
level 15 - Bash
level 20 - Sandstorm

Last but not least, the Red Panda is a reward from a quest, "Boss Pet Battles". This is obviously only a placeholder name for the quest, since it doesn't exist yet.


The Red Panda might still be a work in progress, since it's currently categorized as a Humanoid with many humanoid attacks similar to the Curious Oracle Hatchling.

We'll have to wait for another update before we can get a better preview of these pets and the changes to Pet Battles.

5.2 PTR Preview

WowInsider is reporting that a new 5.2 PTR build will be deployed soon, BUT it's not ready for player testing or play yet. This doesn't stop us from datamining it though. :P

So far they've found 3 new possible companions:

- Gusting Grimoire (BoP)
- Living Sandling
- Red Panda (BoP)

They speculate that the Gusting Grimoire will be the common pet loot from the upcoming TCG expansion deck (aka: "Floating Spellbook"?), and the Red Panda was datamined from the 5.1 PTR as the reward for an achievement to defeat X legendary wild pets (where X was either specifically named legendaries or a certain number).

Unfortunately, the achievement and pet reward never made it into the live release of 5.1, but it could make it into 5.2! There was some mention of "boss pet battles" being considered where players go up against a legendary version of an existing wild pet. So that could be a thing. :P

Things could have changed since the previous datamining, so we'll have to wait and see!