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celestial tournament and hard-to-get pets

Posted: October 6th, 2013, 4:52 pm
by Se5s
can anyone do the entire tourny with as few hard-to-get pets? by hard-to-get i mean pets that have a low drop chance, from trading cards, or from past bliz cons...stuff like that. i'm just pointing this out for those who are quite new to WoW in general and would like to be able to get this tourny done sometime this month lol now i'm sure there will have to be some pets that are from things like pet collecting or leveling (which we should have if we're doing the tourny anyway ;) but can we leave chrominius, ruby drops and crawling claws at home? ^_^v

Re: celestial tournament and hard-to-get pets

Posted: October 6th, 2013, 8:57 pm
by Arwyn3
With the exception of unborn valk (which can be replaced by a ghostly skull in some ways) and chrominus (which actually isn't that bad to get, ~2k gold on my server and can kind of be replaced by another howl pet), most of the strats I've seen and used have had a very limited number of truely difficult to get pets. If you look through the various guides, Ive seen a number of strats for the celestials that people have posted that were them down to the dregs of their teams because of RNG issues etc. (3 foxes take down Xu'Fu, and 3 flies (glowfly, Mei lei sparkler etc) can take out yu'la, 3 snails for chi-chi, any call loghtning team for the 2 beasts, etc). I've also seen several bunny strats for a couple of the bosses. It's just going to be frustrating without some of the better combos out there. Realistically tho, expecting to beat the tourney without at least a few hard to get pets is kind of ridiculous. You can however absolutely beat the tourney only w pets available in game with no real money/TCG purchases necessary. Also the only timeless isle pet I use so far is the skywing moth, it's uncommon quality bc I haven't found a rare but works fine in my Xu'Fu team.

Re: celestial tournament and hard-to-get pets

Posted: October 7th, 2013, 11:30 am
by Ebil
I found that looking for abilities rather than pets to be the most helpful for me. Being someone who levels pets more on a whim then with any forethought I am lacking pets in a few families. During the tournament I went and looked at pets in different families to see which pets had hard counters for the different trainers. Or I went to different sites and looked up the abilities I wanted then looked at the pets that had them.

Okay, so you find out that using [pet]Tiny Blue Carp[/pet] is not a good idea against Chi-Chi (not that I did that myself :? ). But you may find that the list of good usable pets is a lot larger than you thought it was.

Re: celestial tournament and hard-to-get pets

Posted: October 7th, 2013, 2:29 pm
by Coilla
I would not put a Chrominius as a hard to get pet. The raid with the drop is pretty solable. Just try the raid, though you may need to run a quick attunement, since Chrominius comes only in one breed there is only the issue of having him drop. Even if he does not drop a lvl 1 can often be purchased for around 2K gold, with a full 25 around 5K from what I have seen.

In fact I would say that the classic and BC raid drop pets are very accessible to most players at this point and certainly no more difficult than getting a rare quality of a variety of pets in the wild.

My opinion is that a Pandaren Water Elemental + Chrominius team is a much more accessible one, to even have multiples of, than say a team based on a lantern and either the harder to get Breed 6 (P/P) Netherspace Abyssal, and/or pet bomblings. Not that the lanterns and bomblings are hard to get, but they may require upgrade stones to make them most effective.

Re: celestial tournament and hard-to-get pets

Posted: October 7th, 2013, 8:05 pm
by Kpb321
The only hard part about getting Chrominius is beating the first fight in the raid solo. If you have problems with that fight find a friend and it should be trivial.

Re: celestial tournament and hard-to-get pets

Posted: October 8th, 2013, 7:27 am
by Sanzul
Chrominius is easy enough to get. A few thousand gold in the auction house and he's yours. He should be at the top of your list of pets to get, so it's not unreasonable to expect that people have that pet.

Most Chrominius strategies will work with any pet that has [ability]Howl[/ability], though. Similarly, strategies that involve the water spirit will generally work using any other pets with [ability]Geyser[/ability], [ability]Whirlpool[/ability], [ability]Curse of Doom[/ability], [ability]Elementium Bolt[/ability], [ability]Ice Tomb[/ability], etc.

Re: celestial tournament and hard-to-get pets

Posted: October 8th, 2013, 8:32 am
by Rendigar
Sanzul wrote:Chrominius is easy enough to get. A few thousand gold in the auction house and he's yours. He should be at the top of your list of pets to get, so it's not unreasonable to expect that people have that pet.

Most Chrominius strategies will work with any pet that has [ability]Howl[/ability], though. Similarly, strategies that involve the water spirit will generally work using any other pets with [ability]Geyser[/ability], [ability]Whirlpool[/ability], [ability]Curse of Doom[/ability], [ability]Elementium Bolt[/ability], [ability]Ice Tomb[/ability], etc.
I'd have to say this is a bit too much oversimplification when it comes to the Pandaren Water Spirit. No other pet has both Whirlpool & Geyser, so while you can win with Elementium Bolt or Ice Tomb replacing Geyser, the lack of Whirlpool's damage at the same time, coinciding with the Howl doubling effect can frequently result in a failed attempt. Chi-Chi and Dos Ryga, for example, will often heal back any damage your non-timed attacks did. Against non-healing pets, though, you will have much better luck, because the damage you do will stick - especially if you are taking reduced damage from the opponents attacks. One of the Water Spirit's weaknesses is she can be killed before getting both effects in place - making other pets as viable. Though in my experience this has happened too rarely to justify downgrading her use.

Definitely look at the opponents in question and give it a try - if you have an Unborn Val'Kyr and don't mind dragging out the fight so you can ascension on the turn you know your opponent will kill you so you can Curse of Doom on your free turn then you can get by with just elementium/tomb, etc. - can save you some gold/time to be sure.

Chrominius' main strength isn't just his Howl, it's the Howl + Surge of Power combination. Many fox/wolf beasts have Howl, but they lack a strong finishing move so may not be able to fill the same role. But again YMMV and it's definitely worth a try - get an Alpine Foxling Kit and go to town.

Re: celestial tournament and hard-to-get pets

Posted: October 8th, 2013, 11:21 am
by Kendrah
Se5s wrote:can anyone do the entire tourny with as few hard-to-get pets?
Oh, certainly. My first time through I didn't have most of the harder to get pets (like Son of Animus.) If you could get only one harder to get pet then I'd say go with Son of Animus (because he's a godly mechanical) but I've gotten the job done with gnome in place of him.

My advise is to read the guides and understand why they chose those pets. Most pets have similar attacks that can be switched in with little or no problem. Also, on the trainers like Ion (where most say go for Animus), I found that if I kept that first pet in longer when I was using gnome, then gnome got the job done. Gnome doesn't have the healing of Animus so it was necessary to get him down a bit before bringing in gnome, but he worked.

Also, how you use your turns is almost as important as the pets you use. The first time I beat it I realized a lot of my problem was using my turns wrong. The tourny pets hit hard. You can't afford to be careless and unnecessarily swap pets in and out on your whim. It's much more tight than the dailies and such.

Re: celestial tournament and hard-to-get pets

Posted: October 8th, 2013, 7:08 pm
by Se5s
i agree that there ARE strategies for them all without using hard to get pets. the reason i made this post was because 9/10 strategies that people post seem to use very hard to get pets with low drop rates (i know chromi isn't technically "hard" to get, but he does require a drop to happen, which has not for me. he's also in the 4-6k range WHEN he's on AH lol)

that aside, you guys came through with good info. i like the idea of looking for abilities instead of pets. it's actually how i got through it all the first time, though it didn't occur to me that that's what i did ^_^v

i would like to see more posts about ability strats rather than just "these pets won for me." some people simply don't have the luck/time/patience. jussayin ;)

Re: celestial tournament and hard-to-get pets

Posted: October 9th, 2013, 12:44 am
by Undeadgoat
Guys, stop talking about how your strats don't "actually" contain difficult-to-obtain pets. That's really not the point here, don't get all defensive about it. A lot of regulars on these forums are insanely hardcore, even a little elitist at times, about their pet battling, but people who are trying to get more serious about battling use this forum as a resource.

To OP, there are plenty of strats out there that try to be more helpful to people who are just now becoming serious about pet battles! Although I love the WarcraftPets community in many ways, it can be overwhelming to wade through the forum threads here. Since Wowhead has upvotes/downvotes and threading on their comments, it can be a little easier to sort the wheat from the chaff and you might want to look over there. For example, I found a FANTASTIC "three moths" strategy for Taran Zhu . . . which doesn't require pets that are rare or difficult to obtain per se, but most people will probably need to do a little bit of farming and/or leveling to get three rare moths at 25. (Those people are not me, which is why I found that strategy so thrilling.)

Personally when I write about the strategies I use I try to talk about WHY I made the choices I did, not just "Cogblade Raptor works here" but "Use a pet with Batter that's faster than Xu-fu" or whatever. If someone's strategy is just a list of pets, breeds, and moves, that's not very helpful to you, especially if you're working with a more limited collection. One blog that explains reasons *why* fairly well in her strats is Tamer Liopleurodon: [url]http://battlepetroundup.com/2013/09/09/celestial-tournament-roundup/[/url]

I recommend COMPLETELY IGNORING any strategy that is just a list of pets, breeds and abilities. If you happen to have those EXACT pets you might as well try them out, but if you don't, there's no reason to worry too much about it. Sometimes a pet is on a team just to do a little DPS or as a backup, for example, and can be easily subbed out; for some reason I use a glowfly against Sully and a shale hatchling against Dr. Goldbloom, these pets aren't hard counters to the pets they duel but the hard counters are needed elsewhere.

Wowhead also has some great new pet search features that were just launched today, you can now search for pets with specific ability combinations: http://www.wowhead.com/petspecies?filter=cr=15:15;crs=0:0;crv=162:119#petspecies

And you can search for abilities by "same mechanic": http://www.wowhead.com/petability=350#same-mechanic http://www.wowhead.com/petability=592#same-mechanic

These might be helpful if you're looking to substitute a pet you have into a strategy that looks interesting but uses pets you can't get your hands on for whatever reason.

Good luck!

Re: celestial tournament and hard-to-get pets

Posted: October 9th, 2013, 5:38 am
by Rendigar
It's rather funny how different people can think about the same problem. I can agree with you that what is easy for 1 person is not easy for another - but I can also agree that it's a bit much to ask people who already HAVE winning strategies to go out and make up new, less effective/efficient ones just because you don't have the pets they use and can't be bothered to go get them. The people who post a strat did it because it worked - only the crazy ones keep trying to come up with new ways every week. :D (And the 3-moth strat is in the celestials thread, if you can dig thru it all)

By it's very nature adding extra "meat" to a posting of a strategy "Use a pet with Batter that's faster than Xu-fu" can be MORE daunting for a newer/less experienced person than just the straight up details. Adding all the extra information makes it harder to wade thru the pages of posts to find a working strat, not easier. I would bet you better than even money that people look for a strat that uses pets they have / specific pets and all they consider is "Do I have them / is it worth it to go get them?" and if not they just move on more often than not - most people DON'T think "Well I can replace Snarly with my Electrofied Razortooth, and just use Devour when it calls for Surge, I just have to be sure I can handle the 2-turn action of Devour"... My fellow guide tester did exactly that, which makes the 5.4 guide a better resource than if I had done it alone.

What Wowhead has is not just a thread upvote/downvote system, they have a system where you have 1 thread per opponent, because you look up "Taran Zhu" and then you see his 3 pets, and the strats for dealing JUST with "Taran Zhu". It's something that would be great to have, and we've asked for something similar here - the upvote/downvote system on Wowhead makes it somewhat self-administering, which can be a huge advantage over needing the thread to be moderated/maintained (but not always). But I love this site, so I am not going to redo all my work over there - I'm pretty sure they don't need my thoughts anyway.

It's why guides here are more useful a resource than the forums themselves (*IF* they are maintained). The user doesn't need to dig thru the pages and pages of posts, they just need to pull up the guide and get to it. If they want the "meat" they can read the threads and dig thru the pages of people talking back and forth (you want details, go read some of Stencil's posts on the mechanics). Right now the tournament opponents are too new and people have been in too much of a hurry to just WIN (some only won for the 1st time after week 2 or 3). Once things settle down you'll see more min-maxing, trying to make better times, less RNG, etc. and the discussions will get into the juicy details more often.

And I do agree that just a list of "Pet A of breed X with moves 1,2,1" is only useful to someone willing to take on the trial-and-error method (except in rare circumstances where there is only 1 real way to use a pet). For a new person that kind of a listing is only barely better than no information at all and can be MORE annoying because they don't know how to make it work. However not everyone bothers to remember what moves they did, so they just rush to post "Hey I won with these guys!". Give it time and it will work itself out, I am sure. And if you are an experienced person, a listing of pets and moves is all you ever need. Me, I'll stick to the details as much as I can with as little extra info as possible so the posts are easy to use when it comes time to fight.

Re: celestial tournament and hard-to-get pets

Posted: October 9th, 2013, 3:32 pm
by Kpb321
I might take some heat for this but I have a hard time with threads or requests like this for a couple reasons.

1) The Celestial Tournament is end game pet battle content. If blizzard wanted it to be easier they'd let you heal during the tournament or tweak the tamers to make them easier. You don't ask how you can do hard mode raids in valor/RF gear with 9 random other people from a pug group. You know that it is hard content that takes some effort to prepare for. The Celestial Tournament is no different. It takes a minimum of 21 level 25 pets with no reuse but I'd expect most people to need more like 50-75 lvl 25 pets to beat it the first time just to have the right mix of pets for the fights, dealing with the different sets of initial trainers and to provide some margin for bad luck/mistakes. It might even be higher if you had a bad mix of pets already at 25 when it was added.

2) Hard to get is really hard to define, varies from person to person and once you've got the pet it's obviously no longer hard to get. Yes, posting a strat that relies on a Vampire batling that can't be obtained anymore or requires the ethereal soul trader probably isn't very helpful but where do you draw the line. I don't think Chrominius or the Pandaran Water Spirits need to be excluded as neither is really that hard to get IMO but obviously other people feel differently. I do have both but I don't actually use them for any of the fights. Heck if you've been doing the trainers/Spirits to level pets for the Tournament you'll probably end up with extra Pandaran Water Spirits to sell.
What about pet store pets? Personally, I don't buy them in general so I only have the one that is cagable in game and the Boomkin (from the half off sale). Others might not see them as hard to get at all since it only take a little time and a little cash.

3) It's asking someone to do the work for them. There is plenty of information posted here and Wowhead and other places to build your own strats with the pets you have available. Look through the existing threads. Read up on what works. Pick out strats for the 4 celestials that will work with the pets you have or are willing to get/level and then start working on this weeks trainers or even planning for future group of trainers depending on how long you think it will take to get everything ready. Yeah it takes some work but that will be your quickest way to you being able to beat the trainers.

Re: celestial tournament and hard-to-get pets

Posted: October 9th, 2013, 4:32 pm
by Yalina
Undeadgoat wrote:For example, I found a FANTASTIC "three moths" strategy for Taran Zhu . . . which doesn't require pets that are rare or difficult to obtain per se, but most people will probably need to do a little bit of farming and/or leveling to get three rare moths at 25. (Those people are not me, which is why I found that strategy so thrilling.)
[url]http://www.warcraftpets.com/community/forum/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=6654&p=51660#p51660[/url]

I posted the same 3 moth strategy for Taran Zhu in the Week 2 forum post. It's very RNG dependent, as attempts to recreate it were not as successful as the first time I managed it. Checking dates, it appears I beat the wowhead comment by a few days. :)

Aside from my three moth strategy, there are a variety of strategies out there that don't state you must have Collector's Edition, TCG or super expensive raid drops. In my experience, those pets are the first to die, and I find myself having to finish off the pets with who's still alive.

Re: celestial tournament and hard-to-get pets

Posted: October 9th, 2013, 4:59 pm
by Anasa
Kpb321 wrote:It's asking someone to do the work for them.
I agree with your whole post, but especially that line.

I love talking strategy, and posting teams that worked (and why), and trying to get good overall guides produced. But c'mon. You can beat this thing if you're just smart about the family strengths/weaknesses. If you can reference the wheel of what's strong/weak against what, and have pets that are "strong" against each family, then teams just make themselves.

I don't think any of us want to get into the business of looking at a given person's collection and tailor-making their teams for them from what they have available.

We've said it before, but apparently it does bear repeating: Celestial Tournament is "end game" content, requiring no less preparation than other end-game challenges.

Re: celestial tournament and hard-to-get pets

Posted: October 9th, 2013, 6:18 pm
by Gilneas
The problem I see with a request like this is not the request itself, but more the assumption underlying it: what is hard to get. There really are very few truly hard to get pets in the game (in the game here, I don't see many strats asking for CE or Blizzcon pets as generally they aren't as good as other options anyway), and of those, people aren't going to agree on what's hard to get and what's not... where that line is. It is difficult to see how any of the RWL pets are hard to get, especially the first set which have a slightly more generous drop rate than the second. If those are hard to get, then what is easy? Just wild pets? Vendor pets (which would all require stones)?

I suppose that much like pet collecting in general, a large part of the Celestial Tournament is the journey. Part of the difficulty is going out and collecting those pets that you might need, and then leveling them. For some people, they did that part before the patch even came out. For others its part of the progress from Spirit Tamers/Beasts of Fable -> Celestial Tournament.

Re: celestial tournament and hard-to-get pets

Posted: October 12th, 2013, 8:32 am
by Beana
I will be the bad guy I guess and answer. You really do need some of the "hardish" pets to get to win this thing. I've now got the tournament down to my own science but it really was a lot of research, time, swearing, and my own testing before I finally got it. There are a few in my teams that are moths, alligators and raptors that will help you for sure. However some pets like mentioned above are just needed. Chrominius, Clockwork, Anubish Idol, Ragnaros are all used on my teams each week. Can you beat the tournament with squirrels, skunks and spiders? Maybe! However in my trials and swearing I didn't find they worked well for me. My advice (take it or leave it) do some work and get some of the hardish pets that you see repeated here on the forums that work well for us, and in the end you'll be very happy you did.

Re: celestial tournament and hard-to-get pets

Posted: October 12th, 2013, 11:44 pm
by Arwyn3
I've been beating the tourney every week since patch, with varying degrees of difficulty. RNG plays a huge part, as such it is entirely possible to get lucky and beat celestials w less than ideal teams. I've had 2 weeks where xu'fu and yu'la ate my primary teams. I beat yu'la with 2 glowflys and a bunny. One of the glowflies was 23. (The glowfly poison does 6% health every turn, swapping lets you cocoon strike to avoid hits. Bunny dodges/burrows to avoid most hits). Yu'la ate 14 pets before I beat it that week. Realistically the biggest barrier will not be rare pets, but how deep your collection is. If you can't front 2-3 teams per battle if something goes wrong, it will take you a lot of frustrating retries. I'd suggest focusing on learning strats to do all panda tamers w a carry pet to power level pets as you get them. You can get 2-3 pets to max per day if you try.

Re: celestial tournament and hard-to-get pets

Posted: October 13th, 2013, 10:17 am
by Slog
Beating the celestial tournament with only pet-battle "caught in the wild" pets sounds like a good challenge. The loss of the darkmoon pets will probably be the largest obstacle. I lean on them heavily with my current celestial teams. Mechanicals in general might be a problem: no yeti, no dragonling, no zeppelin, no animus, etc.