Preview of Latest PTR Pets

UPDATE: Apparently the model for Ji'kun is a placeholder and will be updated in a future PTR build. Other pets will also be updated with sweeter models too.

Here are some previews of the latest datamined pets, plus an update on some previously discovered companions.

The other pets that were recently datamined were not added into the pet journal this PTR build, so maybe next udpate!


Raven-Lord-ish pet?! Finally?! :D



So... the actual creature, G'nathus, lives in the water. Does that mean his spawns will need a protective bubble once we adopt them into our pet families?



The updated skin on the Elder Python. Wowhead has a much better preview (in 3D no less!), so go check that out if you'd like to see this wild pet better.



It looks like the Electrified Razortooth might be getting an updated model. It still looks similar to the baby crocos, but it might have a nifty spine.

5.2 PTR: 5 More Pets

More pets have been datamined!

Ji-Kun Hatchling (BoP) - Drops from Ji-Kun in Throne of Thunder
Pygmy Direhorn (BoU)
Pierre
Direhorn Runt (BoU)
Spawn of G'nathus (BoU) - - Drops from Zandalari Dinomancer on Isle of Giants

The direhorn companions might be the replacement pet that Mumper mentioned on Twitter, after revealing that the Stunted Direhorn wouldn't be ready for 5.2.

The Stunted Direhorn must be amazing to warrant two similar pets as replacements! I can't wait to check them all out though. :)

Wowhead has a 3D model preview of what Pierre will probably look like. It's an animated stove!

Does this mean we should expect everything and the kitchen sink as pets in the future too? :P

I'm curious how we'll get the Spawn of G'nathus. If you're unaware, this pet seems as if it looks and shares a name with a level ?? elite that swims off the shore of Townlong Steppes. It looks like a giant eel.

I had a close encounter with this creature while exploring, and you can bet that I high-tailed it out of there as soon as I saw it lol. I hope we don't have to kill G'nathus for a chance at one of its babies.

Once I patch the PTR, there will hopefully some information on where these pets come from within the Pet Journal.

5.2 Pet Updates From Twitter

There's news about the 5.2 pets from Twitter. Mumper confirmed and clarified a few things about the new pets and Elite Pets.

RE: Stunted Direhorn

"Stunted Direhorn is not 5.2 anymore, most likely 5.3 at this point. We have a cool replacement though!"

I'm a bit sad that the triceratops companion won't be ready for 5.2. It's good to hear that it won't be abandoned forever though, and will hopefully make it into patch 5.3. I think I'll name mine Cera. ;) Internet high-five if you get the reference. XD


RE: Elite Pets despawning/level changing

"Despawn on elite pets is a bug, fixed in next build to work like normal tamers."

"Different levels each time is a bug, fixed in next build."

It sounds like the Elite Battle Pets will be like the Pandaren Spirit Tamers, but instead of getting one goodie bag from each "tamer", you'll only receive one for defeating all the Elite Pets.

My question now is just how long will it take to defeat all 8 each day? Dailies are starting to eat up quite a bit of time for a task that's supposed to be doable on a daily basis. On top of traveling to each of these new Elite Pets and then battling them, players will probably continue doing the other Grand Master dailies for a chance at Battle-Stones. Combine travel time with time necessary to go through an encounter with each pet team/pet, I don't know if I'll have much time to do any other dailies.


RE: Raid dropped pets

"Plan is to have bonus rolls work for raid boss pets. Currently 2 of those and one pet on raid trash."

"Currently plan is that they will drop as normal loot and on bonus rolls."

And last but not least, I find the raid dropped pets interesting at the very least. I'm not a fan of having vanity items drop in raids, but hopefully the way devs are implementing these will work out for everyone. If they drop in both LFR and normal/heroic, then they won't be exclusive to just raiders.

Being able to roll for a bonus loot/pet using Elder Charms sounds like a good way to handle it. Leave the RNG up to each individual, rather than having 25 fight over one pet.

But I'm curious how the "raid trash" dropped companion will work. What kind of droprate will it have? Need or Greed? Or just Greed? Cageable? These factors directly affect if placing a pet drop on raid trash is successful or not.

- If the drop rate is too low and 25 people have to roll, there will be a lot of frustration.

- If players can Need, there will ultimately be those that always Need and others who always Greed. Each side in the same raid always leads to conflict.

- If the pet is cageable, everyone will have a reason to select Need (if possible). Those who aren't pet collectors will want it simply to sell. These players could easily take advantage of the situation. It's not against the rules, nor is it "wrong", but it is frowned upon in the pet collecting community. Nabbing a companion from someone that will actually use it and adore it for the sake of earning some extra gold can be seen as underhanded and shady. It depends on your POV though. One person's "right" is another person's "wrong".

Well, we'll see. I have a few Elder Charms so I'll definitely try out the new raid LFR if and when it opens up on the PTR.

Anyway, just my thoughts so far!

Elite Battle Pets Quest and Daily

It was quite unexpected that the "elite pets" quest would reward an achievement that unlocks a daily quest of the same nature. Defeat elite pets each day? Does that mean they'll be commonly found?

Trin on Twitter found the answer on the PTR. Elite battle pets seem to be named that are specially marked with a yellow paw print instead of the standard green one.

This will make it loads easier to complete the daily each day, and obtain the Fabled Pandaren Pet Supplies reward. Many speculate that the other panda pets (other than the red one) will be random drops from the bag. It's entirely possible since their source is listed as a quest reward, much like the pandaren spirit pets.

If this is true, we'll likely be doing the elite battle pets daily for a while since there are 3 different panda companions to collect!

5.2 PTR: More Pet Previews

Finally got around to patching the PTR and checking out the new pets in the Pet Journal. Here are some previews and info on where you can obtain them.

There's a triceratops!


Reward from quest, Beasts of Fable



Reward from quest, Beasts of Fable



Reward from quest, Beasts of Fable



Reward from quest, A Large Pile of Giant Dinosaur Bones, on Isle of Giants



Drop from Isle of Giants



Drop from Sunreaver Constructs on The Lightning Isle



Drop from the Isle of Giants



Drop from Throne of Thunder
The new wild pets don't have any unique models, except for the Thundertail Flapper.

Must Love Dogs

My guild did an alt/unofficial 10 man raid tonight and got the Must Love Dogs achievement! :D Normally I'm not big on completing raid achievements, but since this was a fun run and it had to do with pets, I was all for it. XD


We used Magical Mini-Treats on all of the Perky Pugs for extra-super-cuteness. :)

5.2 PTR: 9 New Pets and a New Achievement

UPDATE: New wild pets too!

Elder Python
Electrified Razortooth
Swap Croaker
Thundertail Flapper

All of them are on the Isle of Lightning. They don't have very unique models so far (except for the Thundertail Flapper), but we'll see.

Wheee! 9 new pets and a new pet achievement datamined from the latest 5.2 PTR build.

Sunfur Panda - BoP
Snowy Panda - BoP
Mountain Panda - BoP
Spectral Porcupette - BoU
Stunted Direhorn - BoU
Sunreaver Micro-Sentry - BoP
Living Sandling - BoP
Zandalari Hatchling - BoP
Son of Animus - BoP

The Living Sandling was datamined from an earlier PTR patch, but now it has its very own item. :)

Once I patch the PTR and check out the Pet Journal, I'll update with details on where these pets might come from.

The Fabled Pandaren Tamer achievement will be for completing the "Elite Battle Pet" quest. This was confirmed by Mumper on Twitter. According to Wowhead, this quest will be account-wide. It doesn't list which pets we have to defeat yet, though. So that's still a mystery. ;)

Apparently defeating certain elite pets unlocks a daily after you've completed the initial quest. This daily rewards Fabled Pandaren Pet Supplies. Think the Spectral Porcupette will be inside? lol :P

Does this mean that these unique pets will be easy to find in the wild? Will they be in a set location? A "daily" implies that it should be repeatable every day, but that will depend largely on how difficult it is to find these elite pets.

There are some other items that might or might not be tied to companions somehow. These include and are not limited to: Primal Egg and Cracked Primal Egg.

This egg could lead to a similar pet reward like the Cracked Egg from Scholazar Basin. Or could it be the reward of a quest chain like the Jubling and (the original/vanilla) Sprite Darter Hatchling quests? Either way, I hope it yields a pet. :)

Prematurely Dropped From Battle

Well that was... something. I spent way more time on the DMF Tamer than necessary, all because of a persistent bug.

What happens is that the game will drop you mid-battle, and your pets never receive any experience, end-of-battle recovery healing, and the quest to defeat any Tamer you're currently up against never completes. It's not a forfeit or early win; essentially, you're prematurely kicked out of the pet battle.

This bug has been around for some time now, but doesn't seem to occur too frequently. At least that's what I thought.

I didn't have any problems late last night when I challenged the DMF Tamer, but this morning... WOW. Only after being dropped from battle 5 times in a row, relogging once, switching realms, was I finally able to win the battle. I SHOULD have won it on the first try, but this extremely irritating bug decided to rear its nasty head and refuse to leave me alone.

During the 5 attempts where I was prematurely dropped from battle I was using the Mechanical Dragonling, Fel Flame, and Darkmoon Zeppelin. Perhaps it's one of those pets that's triggering the glitch?

I was also switching between pets either late or prematurely each time a new opponent came onto the field. So for example, when my Fel Flame bested the tonk and the eye came onto the battlefield, I would dot up the eye first before swapping to my second pet.

I don't know if this also played a factor in whether or not the bug occurred, but after switching out the Darkmoon Zeppelin for the Clockwork Gnome AND not swapping pets out late or early, was I finally able to finish the battle. This was on the 6th attempt.

Note: Not swapping out late/early means that I waited until I defeated one opponent and the next one came out before switching pets. So it was always 1 on 1, and each of my pets was up against only one pet. During the stuns, I passed and didn't switch.

So just a few tips if you're also experiencing this bug:

- Try a different pet team.

- Don't switch out pets early or late.

- Just keep banging your head against it until you win.

I'm glad that I finally managed to complete the entire match. Never have I been so frustrated with a Tamer battle before And not because the battle was difficult, but because the battle was incompletable!

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 Opens

The 5.2 PTR is open! There will probably be lots of initial bugs, so actually getting onto the PTR and checking out things might take some patience.

Also, I'm not entirely sure if all the upcoming Pet Battle changes will be up and ready for testing yet.

"Please note: Many of these changes have not yet come to the PTR, but will be available soon."

New pets might be around, but don't be surprised if they show up at a later date on the PTR.

Here's a recap of the announced changes coming in 5.2:

- Supercharge now provides a 125% damage bonus (was 150%), and its cooldown is now 4 rounds (was 3).

- Sprite Darter Hatchling – Evanescence and Arcane Blast have swapped ability positions.

- Nether Roach is now a real roach and can now survive the apocalypse.

- Battle Pet Bandages now stack to 25 and are Bind to Account.

- Battle-Stones now have a chance to be awarded from PVP Pet Battles.

- Pets whose color schemes change each time they are summoned have returned. Older pets with this behavior now have it back, as well as some newcomers.

- Pet levels will now only display on the map when pets are tracked.

- Taming the World now lists its reward correctly in the Achievements pane.

- Level capped players will now have a chance to each Lesser Charms of Good Fortune after winning a pet battle versus a Pet within 5 levels of the highest level pet on their team. Higher level pets will offer a better chance to earn a Charm.

- Winning a pet battle versus a team within 5 levels of the player's highest level pet will now award player experience.

- Fleeing a pet battle will no longer despawn the pet that was being battled, but doing so will now inflict some damage on the fleeing pet battle team.

- Disconnecting from a pet battle will once again respawn the pets you were fighting.

- Any pet that has been killed in a pet battle will now never respawn.

- A number of new pets can be found on the Isle of Lightning, including Rare spawn drops, wild pets, and raid boss drops.

- Elite Battle Pets have been added to the game world. These rare pets will spawn alone against an entire team. A new quest has been added to track progress as these new pets are hunted down, and defeating that quest will award the new Red Panda pet.

And here's a small list of the datamined pets found:

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

I'll be checking out these things and more once I manage to download, update, and install the PTR.