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!

5.1 Achievement Adjustments

According to the latest datamined information from the 5.1 PTR, it turns out that Mr. Bigglesworth will not be a drop off of a raid boss. Instead, he will be the reward for completing the achievement to collect all the vanilla raid boss dropped companions.

In addition to this, the achievement name has changed. Before it was Classic Raid Collector. Now it's called Raiding With Leashes.

MMO-Champion also has some screenshots of the Red Panda Cub that was mentioned as the reward for completing the achievement Seek and Defeat (defeat 8 legendary pets). However, when searching for this achievement on Wowhead and MMO-Champion, it seems to have been either removed or renamed. We'll see if the Red Panda Cub is still an achievement reward or a pet from some other source.