Power Leveling Battle Pets

As mentioned before, I was a bit lazy with respect to pet battles. I pretty much relied on Beast types -- the combination of the DPS and the bonus against Critters (which I've found to be predominant among wild pets) meant that leveling up beasts was pretty simple.  My Ravager Hatchling used Devour to heal itself and minimize trips to the stable master.  My spiders would web and suck life.  Life was easy.

And then I hit the master tamers. Or rather, then I met the master tamers and they hit back. Hard. Yeah, this team of beasts ain't gonna cut the mustard anymore.

So, now I have to actually use the mechanics of pet battles and have an honest to goodness team of multiple pet families with varying abilities (i.e. my Fledgling Nether Ray which is a Flying pet that has Magic, Beast, Elemental, Flying, Undead and Dragonkin abilities).

Enter attempts to Power Level.

I've tried a few methods flopping about in comments on the web.

1. Use two level 25 pets in Pandaria against level 25 opponents and just ensure the low pet (the power-levelee) does a single attack / buff.
2. Use two level 25 pets and ensure the low pet makes the killing blow (dots are excellent for this).
3. Use one level 25 pet and two low pets.

What I just read (check out the Experience Table on WoWWikki) makes me question this.  Unless I'm not getting something, it will probably be faster to simply level up a team of similar pets.   Essentially, you get bonus experience for leveling (i.e. the Difficulty bonus) if the pet(s) you're battling are two or more levels higher. In other words, if you are battling level 21s with a level 15, you would get the exact same bonus for the low pet if you were fighting against a level 17.

Plus, the experience earned in the fight is shared across each pet that participates. So, if all three of my pets participate, and two of them are level 25, there is absolutely no reason to use the max level because all they are doing is sucking up 2/3 of the available experience.

Hmm.

I think I'm gonna just pack a bunch of same or similar level pets and grind out battles near a stable master.  

I'll post back on how it goes.  Who knows?  I may even finally catch the damn Scourged Whelpling  that has eluded me to date!

The Waterloo of Pet Battles

I've been chugging along lately, popping in here and there to complete some dailies and muck about with pet battles. And, despite what I am going to say next, I am enjoying pet battles as much as I was with the expansion release. I'm so not into iLevels and Raids, but I am into blue pets and pet related achievements.

I'm up to 6 or 7 level 25 pets.  I've completed a few of the safari quests. And then I started working on the taming achievements. Which is when I hit the wall called Okrut Dragonwaste.

Holy hell.

I can cruise through the other tamers I've tried; I pretty much don't need to swap out pets. But this Orc? His damn dirty undead dragons wipe the floor with me. Part of it's laziness on my end -- my 25s include the Celestial Dragon, but then I have pretty much all beasts. Face it, beasts are so easy to level against all the critters out there. And, I gave into the easiness. Now, my Ravager Hatchling barely makes a dent before he's totally overwhelmed by the opponent's DPS.

Of course, I did actually get them down by some freak, and then being an undead, the little bastard respawned and toasted me, so I still lost.  

Now?  Now I'm licking my wounds and grinding up my Pandaren Monk, my Flayer Youngling, my Little Fawn and my Marsh Fiddler.  

Hey Okrut!  I'm gunning for ya!

Lost!

You ever get that feeling of being in the wrong place at the wrong time? The Game knew more that I did when I logged in.  See, I felt normal, but apparently I was in the wrong zone. So it told me so.

Wrong place, Wrong time!

Uhh... Ok! What zone should I be in?

Achievement feed issue

If you're using WAFB to showcase recent achievements, you won't actually see the achievements themselves.

I'm looking into this, but when I check the Blizzard site I'm getting the same error. See, I'm using the Achievement API to display the specific achievement's name, description, criteria, etc.  There seems to be an issue getting anything to return on the Achievement API (official forum post here if interested).

I'll be monitoring responses and if necessary will make any updates.  My hope is that this is purely temporary and will resolve itself!

Happy achieving!

Ding 90!

I'll preface this with a nod to truth written by Chuck Palahniuk in Fight Club:

You are not a beautiful and unique snowflake. You are the same decaying organic matter as everyone else, and we are all part of the same compost pile.

In other words, I know I'm not the first, nor will I be the last. Despite that knowledge I'm chuffed to say... "Ding!"

Yippe kai-yay, Mother Clucker!

I'm very happy to finally ding 90. It took me much longer than I would have imagined. In both Wrath and Cataclysm, I was not a server-first kinda guy, but I was still max level PDQ. In MoP, I totally got sidetracked in the leveling process. First, it was a case of the "lookits",  Look-it that!  Look-it this!

Next, duh duh DUH.. Pet Battles.  I did not get an iota of leveling or questing done while the frenzy of pet battles was upon my brain. So damn addictive.  So damn fun!

Finally, quests.  I love what Blizzard has done with the quests in MoP. I can pop about like a cracked up bunny rabbit should I so choose, and in fact I did, which resulted in several un-finished quest lines. Again, this was a case of the "lookits".  Each subsequent quest line looked so cool I just had to get there.

Now that I'm 90?  It sure isn't gonna get any easier.  So many blue question marks! Cooking... reputation farming, some poser prince that claims to be Deathwing's kid... All very interesting and totally distracting.

What to do next?