Are You Unprofessional If You Don't Do This?

[Officialpandy]

Recently, I was looking at other people's collection on here.

They barely have any poor or common pets. Also, they don't have a lot of duplicates. For me, I have a lot of duplicates, and some poor/common companions.

Am I unprofessional if I don't sell the duplicates or something? And have some poor/common companions?

I rarely see anyone have a lot of duplicates.

<When I say unprofessional, I mean, does my collection look disorganized or confusing?>

[Undeadgoat]

I usually release a gray, white or green pet if I capture a blue equivalent (or a significant level upgrade), because I don't want to get anywhere near the limit--I know the maximum number of pets now is 1,000 but still.

I wouldn't worry about how "professional" or not your collection looks to others on a site like this--your score here ignores duplicate pets, and as long as your pet journal in-game is usable for you when you battle . . . it doesn't matter how many duplicates you've learned, IMO.

[Peanutty]

You can collect however you see fit, it really is your call. There's no "right" way to do it. And yes, I'm one of those wall of rares, no duplicates type (except to cover all unique skins), but I know that isn't the norm for most players. I would guess the majority of people who do pet battles aren't quite so "hardcore" and have a range of rarities and levels amongst their collection, and quite a few duplicates as well.

[Eekmeister]

Collecting and battling pets for anything other than your personal gratification is cheating yourself of valuable time. Don't worry about how "professional" or organized your collection looks. That's like asking for an opinion on the organizational status of your underwear drawer. But if you're curious about strategies, this is how I roll.

The only time I collected pets of less than uncommon status was when I was catching the last pets for the Safari achieves. But I don't level wild pets unless they're rare. I do keep multiples because I've never met a rare I didn't want and I like to play around with breeds for my own trial and error research. Plus, I'm waiting for breeding to go live.

Once I start to get near the max, I'll address the duplicate issue, but until then I'm keeping my clones. But as I don't have all the time in the world to be doing this, I'm taking it at my own pace. Just 60% of my collection is rare. And I'm one of those weird people who prefer to lvl a lower pet. I know it doesn't make any difference, but in Pokemon, your pets become happy faster if you lvl them from the bottom. So doing that makes me feel better.

[Kendrah]

Am I unprofessional if I don't sell the duplicates or something? And have some poor/common companions?

Unprofessional? Nah. You're just beginning your collection. Blue pets are simply stronger in pet battles and once you start doing the pandarian dailies, you get a whole crapload of battle stones that turns pets to rares. I have a whole ton for humanoid, dragon, and elemental that I'll probably never use at all. I get at least one a day. Usually I'll get around three. So seeing a lot of rares isn't necessarily because people here are anal and insist on only getting rares. A HUGE chunk of my rares come from those stones.

[Mehetabel]

It's a very personal choice I think. Some people are only collectors, so as long as they have every pet (and often duplicates for colour varieties etc) then they are not fussed which rarity it is. Others take the opposite extreme and have not only rare pets but in certain breeds that suit that particular pet best.

I'm somewhere in the middle. Whilst I now have every (possible) pet in my collection upgraded to rare (and I only used battle stones on non-wild pets, so that took a while!), I'm not really fussed about breeds or having duplicates for different colours. The only duplicates that I DO have are simply for the Celestial Tournament as I found some pets so useful there that it made my life easier to have extras of them.

[Bretonas]

It's a very personal choice I think.

I think that almost says it all. There is no wrong or right in having duplicates or non-rare quality pets. For myself, I try to get as many rares as possible and my goal is to eventually have a collection of rare only pets. Any wild pet I try to get the rare version, unless ofc it is some difficult to get Val'kyr or something.

I don't have duplicates because simply I don't need them. I don't do pvp pet battles and have kinda figured out the tournament by now to deal with it without having some pets more than once.

Having duplicates or poor / common pets etc. doesn't make u "unprofessional". It's simply your way of collecting them. My wife for example only collects pets. To her the quality doesn't matter. (no battling going on at all, unless she's trying to capture a missing one).

[GilroyKilroy]

Me, I have all rares. Virtually all the "duplicates" you may see are different breeds. I think only one pet, Chrominius, is a "true" duplicate (backup pet for Celestial Tournament).

Your collection is completely yours. You should not care what anyone else thinks of it.

[Sanzul]

Duplicates that won't ever get used just take up space and make the pet journal more difficult to navigate, so if I catch a rare I'll get rid of any lesser quality ones (and any rares of inferior breed). I personally also consider using two of the same pet in any battle to be rather lame, so I never bother to level more than one of each pet. If I ever have duplicates, it's because I'm transferring some pet to another server in order to sell it.

As for chasing rares, I do it while leveling interesting pets. If I'm going to be fighting level 15 pets (or whatever), it might as well be something I don't have a rare version of. It's not the fastest way to level up pets, but it's an excuse to get a change of scenery every now and then and to visit places you wouldn't normally go (when was the last time you visited Blade's Edge Mountains?)

[Tiggindy]

Definitely a personal thing.

I made sure I had all rares because of the pet fights (you don't want to do fights with less than rare because you're handicapping yourself), and I don't have duplicates because early on having all the pets brought you close to the pet cap, so I simply didn't have room.

Although, considering the sheer number of pets available, I don't see the need for duplicates either. There's loads of strategies that use lots of different pets, including ones that don't use repeats for the Celestial fights.

When new pets come out, I'll take whatever quality I can catch until I can get them up to rare (I'll do multiple fights if til I get a rare).

For me, the priority is "do I have it", followed by "how do I make it better".

[Kpb321]

I think it really depends. I was trying to keep my duplicate pets cleaned out fairly well but that was mainly because before 5.4 the cap on the number of pets was a little on the low side compared to the number of unique pets one could capture and I was getting close to the cap. Now that the cap is up to 1000 I haven't been bothering as much. Since they raised the cap I've only really been releasing duplicates when I end up with three of a particular pet to ensure I can capture another if I find one I want.

I have been working on upgrading pets to rare but that is because it's an eventual goal to have all pets as a rare lvl 25. It is also definitely a long term goal too.

[Mystik_sok]

Do whatever makes you happy. We all do it differently depending on what our personal goals are.

As for myself I view pet battles as a journey, a long journey. My goal for the last few months was to level all my rare pets (I caught most pets as rares) to 25 doing MoP pet dailies and I'm on the final phase of that (~200 or so pets within 1 pet trainer battle of L25). While completing this goal I've collected a couple of hundred pet-battle stones which I've only used on pets I needed to help complete this goal (i.e. unborn Val'kyrs) and have left the other 90 or so non-rare pets I as uncommon. After I complete all my rares to L25 (~3 weeks from now) I'll start upgrading families of pets starting with the families I have the least of and working my way to beasts (about a 3rd of all uncommon only pets seem to be beasts). I'm doing that simply because that will allow me the most flexibility in trading in battle stones for the few beast stones I may need. After that I'll work on the 5.4 pets I haven't acquired yet, but I'm not as focused on those right now because that's not the path I'm on. Hell, I haven't even turned in a celestial tourney coins because I hate picking one pet over another. I also sold two engineering mounts so I'd have gold to buy pets if needed and I'm a patient man.

As for Dupes, I started with a ton back in January and by summer I had weeded most of them until I got rid of almost all. With the addition of the Celestial Tournament I've added some back in that seem to be very useful (unborns, a few whelps, chrominus, etc.)

Obviously my path is different than yours, and probably the majority of people here, but it works for me. Find the path that works for you.

[Droodics]

I am kind of new in the battle pets world, and when i had about 100 pets, i had most of them grey or white.
I started to get them at least green, if not rare blues, and I began to make my collection mostly rares.
I did this only because a rare pet is stronger than a common one for example, and i like to get the most out of my pets.
Duplicates i have only with different breeds, and sometimes, in case of some strong pets, duplicates help me in celestial tournament, if I mess up a bit my rotation and i get one killed, i got a backup to take it's place.
Everyone is welcome to get his pet collection all greys, all white, all whatever they want to have. I saw top ranked players here on warcraftpets that have 70-80% grey or white pets.

[Cat666]

Nah not at all. I went around all the zones collecting all the pets and greys/whites I kept unless I got a blue show up later. Catching pets is a pain, so I saw little point in getting a green, only to come back later for a blue.

Now I'm a bit further along I try to go back and collect blues wherever possible, but to be honest there are far more fun things to do.

[Maizing]

It's a very personal choice I think.

I think that almost says it all.

I agree. I try to keep my own duplicates low as possible (even with a journal limit of 1,000 pet), I don't ever want to get close to max limit again (when Mists first launched, I had well over 2,000 pets from the combined collections of each of my army of alts), but there are some pets that I like so much that I have gone out of my way to get 2 or even 3 of the same pet. Some of my duplicates are different breeds, but not all. I have also gone out of my way to make sure that each pet in my collection is as rare as possible, but I have so many battle stones now, that I no longer pay much attention to rarity when capturing a new wild pet.

[Skyquake]

A few thoughts:

At some point, we will be allowed to breed our pets. No one knows what this will entail, but assuming Azerothian rabbits don't reproduce via cellular mitosis, it's a good bet that we'll all want multiples.

Having said that, be careful you aren't leveling multiples (unless you want to). I got rid of a bunch of mine the second time I sorted my pets by level, leveled the 12 to 24 via the day's Tamer quests, and saw I already had a 24 I'd forgotten about.

Rares are trickier. I started just grabbing one of everything, then decided I wanted a really first-class collection and had to go back to farm rares. But having said that, once you start with the Tamer dailies you will get Stones that upgrade pets from any quality to rare quality. I say farm rares for pets that are very common, just take the first one you can get of pets that are very difficult to catch ([pet]Minfernal[/pet]), and establish a threshold you're comfortable with somewhere in the middle. The first pet I just said, "The heck with it- I'm burning a Stone." was [pet]Tiny Twister[/pet]. Also, you may want a particular breed. There are nine breeds of [pet]Flayer Youngling[/pet], only one of which is desireable. It takes about an hour to find one of any quality, so to my mind farming a rare is silly. I have a lot of Stones I don't need for the forseeable future and am accumulating more, but again, depending on what breeding turns out to involve, they may still come in handy. Cheers!

[Abashera]

I have duplicates of some pets, but I have a method behind my madness.

Generally I avoid duplicates whenever possible so as to stay far away from the limit, as others have stated.

Whenever possible I try to find another pet in the same family with the same abilities, rather than get two of the same pet. For instance,there are 10 frogs that have the same abilities. Rather than get multiple breeds of the same frog, I have my Yellow-Bellied Bullfrog in P/P for power hits, and my Leopard Tree Frog in S/S for when I need speed. I can technically get ten different breeds of frog without ever having to get duplicates, simply by making sure I get a different breed for each frog type.

That's basically what I do with all pets whenever possible. Get a S/S Silver Dragonhawk for speed, a P/S Red Dragonhawk for power, and a H/H Blue Dragonhawk for health. The other Dragonhawks, do whatever you want; but you only need one of each. I bought a P/P Netherspace Abyssal, and got a H/H Minfernal—they're basically the same pet, but the Minfernal doesn't come in P/P. For cats you will never need more than a Feline Familiar, a P/P Cornish Rex, and a P/S Cat, and either a S/S Siamese Cat, or S/S Cheetah Cub for speed. All that without getting any doubles.

Exceptions to this are my power players for the tournament. I have about 30 pets that are doubles so I won't run out of my best players should one die or it's health is too low for the next battle.

Cageable pets, I leave them out of my journal and put them in a guild bank, where I will either give them to friends, or later level to 25 to sell on AH to lazy people for exorbitant amounts of gold—though I only give the best breeds to friends, so you know what I'm selling on AH. ;^)

. . .And if it's not rare, I don't care.


(True Story: I was leveling by the Dragonbone Hatchlings in Dragonblight, Northerend, and came across a P/P Dragonbone. Another player, obviously a collector, was standing there, seemingly AFK. But I decided to whisper her that I had found a rare P/P (I didn't need it as I already had one). She responds back "Thank you, but my invintory is already full." To add to this, she hadn't a clue about breeds, and had multiples of many pets, not even knowing what she had. For all she knows she could have three of the same breed, or even three of one pet that only comes in one breed. Well, she missed out because she had too many pets.

You could say she is a die-hard pet collector. But the way I see it, there are smart collectors, and there are. . .)

[Astraldr0p]

(True Story: I was leveling by the Dragonbone Hatchlings in Dragonblight, Northerend, and came across a P/P Dragonbone. Another player, obviously a collector, was standing there, seemingly AFK. But I decided to whisper her that I had found a rare P/P (I didn't need it as I already had one). She responds back "Thank you, but my invintory is already full." To add to this, she hadn't a clue about breeds, and had multiples of many pets, not even knowing what she had. For all she knows she could have three of the same breed, or even three of one pet that only comes in one breed. Well, she missed out because she had too many pets.

You could say she is a die-hard pet collector. But the way I see it, there are smart collectors, and there are. . .)

See, thats a little funny. I would have probably answered the same way and I wouldn't think of myself as not being a smart collector. I don't pet PVP, plain and simple. I collect pets because I've always collected pets before pet battles were implemented. I battle the NPCs and do the celestial tournaments. I have 1-2 of each pet, which satisfied the requirements for zookeeper.

I mean, it's cool that you think like this but she could also have her own method to her madness too. If she was in Dragonblight, there is a spawn for the val'kyr there too.

All I'm saying is that there are different types of collectors out there and it's however you see your collection fit. If people have multiples with ranges of poor to uncommon, it might be for breeds and theyre waiting on stones to drop. I see my collection with having 1 each that is uncommon or rare. The only times that I would try to go for something lower is if I know it's extremely rare to spawn like the val'kyr or Minfernal.

[Opallena]

I usually don't do duplicates myself, but some people prefer to have multiple breeds of one pet for those pets that come in many different breeds. some just like having two of the same pet to fight with if it's a particularly good one, regardless of breed.