Levelling my first team, having a lot of trouble. Help!

[Dockirre]

Heya folks! Here's the skinny: I'm terrible at pet battle games. I love them to pieces, but I'm just no good at the things! As such, I tend to find myself getting... well, smushed. If anyone could provide some assistance in getting my team a little less... crap, it would be hugely appreciated! My team listing follows!
1: Terrible Turnip - Weakening Blow, Inspiring Song, Sunlight. Level 18 (I'm really bad at this ><)
2: Soul of the Aspects. Love this little guy! Claw, Reflection, Surge of LIght (Will replace with Solar Beam)
3: Darkmoon Zeppellin. Missile, Flyby, Bombing Run.

I know this team is just ick for what I need it for (slaughtering/capping wild pets), but I had no idea how to fix it up. My collection is publically viewable! Please, help me people of the forums! You're my only hope!

[Bistromath]

Good Evening Dock,

Looking at your 3s team, if i may make a suggestion. The team you got isn't to bad, but the one thing that may help you out is use a pet with better healing ablities.

Now while your Turnip has Inspiring Song, it's just not a good heal. if you dont mind leveling another i wounld switch your Turnip out for the Crimson Lasher.
The Lasher as great healing plus it hits harder then the Turpin.

Also you Zep has Decoy, this is a really power ability, with it being able to absorb 2 attacks, but on the same note Flyby is good if you want to just hammer out damage.

Honestly your team looks ok, but i'd still recommended swap'in out the Turnip.

If you have anymore question send me a message or my Bnet ID is Aidbag#1732.

[Dockirre]

Trading out the turnip... that could work, yeah. I've felt he just hasn't been pulling his weight. Or it's weight. I can't tell with plants. I'll give the Lasher a whirl, that could be nifty and I think I've got one.

[Zaelo]

Leveling your first pets can be long and harduous. Once you have one level 25 though, leveling is much faster and simpler.

My advice to you Dockirre, is to start by focusing on a team of pets that will be easy to level. What family types are almost always seen out there in the wild? Beasts, Critters, Flyings, Aquatics. So if you have a team that does well against these types, the leveling will be a lot easier. If you don't often do pet tamer dailies and don't have plenty of bandages, it's certainly a good idea to aim for pets that are able to heal and tank, so that you dont have to wait on any pet healing cooldown in between fights. With these tips in mind, here's some suggestions:

A lot of mechanical pets are very resilient, mostly those with Repair. Mechanical attacks are also strong against beasts, which there are plenty of in the wild, so leveling a mechanical is easy. The Fluxfire Feline does not have Repair, but his damage output against beasts is so extraordinary that it makes him a very easy pet to level too.

Flyers are very easy to level when battling aquatics, which are easy to find as well. They don't have much heals though, but if you go with a Moth, for example, you'll get quite a couple abilities that will help you dodge some damage. Personnally I like the bat too, as it has Wreckless Strike, which detroys aquatic pets pretty fast.

Flayer Youngling is absolutely awesome against Critters, which are all over the place. So this pet is also very easy to level. His humanoid passive spell grants him some healing too, which makes him last longer before having to heal.

Magical Crawdad, if you can get your hands on one (took me only a couple hours to farm mine), is awesome to level as a first pet too, as it has an attack good against Critters, a damage reduction spell, and a super heal at 20 (Wish). No wild pet other than flyers can take this guy down, so if you dont want to have to use bandages much at all, this is your guy.

Celestial Dragon is a popular choice too as he is quite easy to level, with a strong attack (Moonfire), and a strong heal every 3 rounds, makes him very resilient and hard to kill.

You don't HAVE to form a new team to level up though, the key here is fighting the right enemies with what you have/want to level. I would need to double check to make sure but I believe your Zeppelin will be good against beasts, and your Soul of the Aspects good against critters, so make sure you do your leveling in a spot where there's plenty of beasts and critters, which should be easy to do. The Turnip can be good against Mechanicals or Elementals I think? Which is hard to find in the wild, so maybe changing that one pet for one better suited to take down Critters and/or Beasts would make a big difference for you.

P.S.: Sorry I appear to have written a book here. Hope it helps though!

[Dockirre]

That info was just what I needed, Zaelo! I should have a MUCH better time levelling up now. ^.^ Thank you very much for the help!

[Wynn]

My MVP this whole time been my Onyxian Whelpling

Since she slow tail sweep hits 2 times most times, Healing Flame is a big heal and then Lift-Off allows her to dodge stuff and hits really hard.

She was my tank and used her for all my leveling on the first team.

[Deb86]

few pets i found easy to find and easier to level..

( you said you have soem sub 20 pets already .. so keeping that in mind )

Crimson geode - Deepholm (lvl 23 ish )

takes damage first 2 rounds .. 3rd round pretty much one shots everything .( i will let u figure out how )

Emrand proto whelp - ( scholzar basin )

decent damage and heals like god , you can also swap one heal to boost damage potential .
you may find it hard to farm a rare one , i would settle for uncommon if unlucky with rares.
thanks to battle stones , you can upgrade later.

and most fav one is spawn of onyxia

low health , but excellent damage and superb healing ..

In fact , i could solo 3 wild pets , 2 lvl higher than my onyxia , in wild pet battles.
made leveling lowbies much much easier and faster.

[Kinski]

all what Zaelo said!

if your time and pet budget is tight i would go with:

1. spot: mechanical: darkmoon zeppelin, believe me you will need him sooner or later once you figured out what incedible side effects his abilities can have.

2. beast: if you start from scratch a spider would be a very solid choice, brittle web + life leach makes them very durable.

3. joker spot: celestial dragon, magical crawdad, emerald proto drake, any kind of flying or draconic pet, or just pick a pet you really like.

i would stay away form the turnip and any undead pets for the first team. i tried to level 2 undeads in my first team, man that was a PITA.

happy leveling!

[GormanGhaste]

You might want to watch out about using a dragon if you're trying to catch rares while you level. Their family ability makes it easy to accidentally kill pets you're trying to catch!

[Zaelo]

2. beast: if you start from scratch a spider would be a very solid choice, brittle web + life leach makes them very durable.

Oooh yes! Forgot about that.
Actually more specifically, go for a Molten Hatchling as soon as you can capture one. On top of Brittle Webbing (which causes enemies to take damage when they attack and be rooted), followed by Life Leach (that heals you twice as much if the target is webbed/rooted), she also has Cauterize, another self heal, just to make sure she never ever dies (except vs a mechanical).

[Darkke]

My advice to you Dockirre, is to start by focusing on a team of pets that will be easy to level. What family types are almost always seen out there in the wild? Beasts, Critters, Flyings, Aquatics.

Excellent advice by Zaelo. As a suggestion for a strong pet against Aquatics and Flying, you can't go wrong with Nether Faerie Dragon. They are found around level 11 outside of Dire Maul. It has a useful toolkit with:

-Slicing winds (strong against aquatics)/ Evanescence (2x dodge if you're faster then opponent)
-Arcane Blast (strong on flyers, increased damage each time used)
-Moonfire (strong on flyers, increases magic damage by 10%)

Particularly with aquatics, hang around rivers, oceans and lakes. There are an abundance of crabs, frogs and turtles around these areas, regardless of the zone.

[Bithalver]

If I can make an advice on a single pet, it will be a Molten hatchling. Leech life, Sticky web, Brittle webbing set of skills are awesome and kills nearly anything (even flying and aquatic pets, where some of the skills do reduced damage).

Other pet I had with me why I just leveled up is Mini Thor. If you do not have Starcraft II CE, there are some pet with the very same skill set (like the Warbot, obtainable from a Dalaran vendor).

Some other examples:
Celestial dragon is good, Chrominius and Fluxfire Feline are insane and easily obtainable.
Clockwork gnome tears apart beasts; all Moth are insane against any aquatic pet.

And yes, if you can acquire a breed 4 (strong) rare Nether Faerie Dragon, or a breed 5 (fast) rare Nordrassil Wisp, you can kill anything.

I can not write down all the ideas (currently 50 lvl25 pets and growing) because it could make a wall of text ; surely I took a lot of those ideas from some topics on this forum.

[Zaelo]

There's one aspect that I did not mention, and noone else did here, when it comes to choosing a team to level.

And that would be.. killer combinations! Depending on what pets you're wanting to level and all, you may be able to find some combos that will make them more powerful. For example, adding a pet with Plagued Blood in your team and keeping that debuff up on your opponents with that pet will allow your two other pets to get healed a small ammount for every hit they make. This can be awesomely profitable if you play with pets that have multi-attacks, like the Clockwork Gnome with his towers that each shoot 3 times per round. I didn't check post-5.1, but pre-5.1, he was getting healed on every single tower hit. Another example could be combining a pet that has weather effects that will benefit other pets, like having a pet that does Sunny Day to play with the Magical Crawdad, increasing his health pool and the ammount his Wish heals by a lot. Another example could be a pet that does Darkness with another that has abilities that deal more damage when targets are blinded. Yet another example could be to have a pet that has Blizzard like the Tiny Snowman, and pair him with a pet that has abilities that deal more damage or stuns targets that are Chilled.

[Renmiri]

For the trainer pet battles I have found that my Emperor Crab at 23 could solo 3 level 25s Crabs and frogs are excellent in self healing, just watch out for strong fliers against them

[Jrshoe]

My suggestion is that versatility will get you very far in your leveling experience. It's rarer that you will be able to utilize a type advantage to exploit a weakness against an opponent than it is to be able to exploit an opponent's weaknesses, if that makes sense. In other words, use pets that can cover a wide variety of movesets to exploit a damage bonus against an opponent, since odds are that you won't be able to exploit a damage reduction against them.

The best pet so far that I have found for this are oozes, primarily Disgusting Oozeling and the catchable ooze out in the Hinterlands region (also where you can attempt to grind out the Oozeling pet). The build setup you will want with this pet can't be obtained until level 20, but it is incredibly effective provided you are not facing an enemy dragon (or an enemy that uses a dragon skill).

Absorb (level 10) : Undead
Corrosion (level 2) : Magic
Acidic Goo (level 20) : Critter

This will give you a damage bonus versus humanoids, flying, and undead. Undead you will face quite a bit when you hit Northrend tamers, and flying is fairly abundant in Pandaria. The "rotation" for this set is to lead with Acidic Goo, using Corrosion second round, and then two rounds of Absorb (with a repeat of the rotation as needed, or simply using a second Corrosion as a finisher if health is between 200-300). In a four round spread, provided you are not facing a dragon, this will effectively do about 1600-1700 damage and 500-700 healing to yourself. This is plenty to take out most, if not all, opponents you will face from tamers. The only other drawback is facing an opponent that uses an ability such as Shell Shield. However, that is very infrequent.

Darkmoon Zeppelin is also very strong as a hybrid. You best bet from that point is to try and find a pet that can cover three of the remaining four move types you have available. This will give you a team that can exploit nine of ten possible weakness advantages, meaning that it will be very, VERY uncommon to find an opponent who will not at some point be taking additional damage from your attacks. With those two your four remaining attack types that are lacking are as follows.

Beast
Dragon
Humanoid
Aquatic

A Clouded Hedgehog caught in Dread Wastes can cover dragon (Spiked Skin), humanoid (Counterstrike) and Beast, which leaves only Aquatic as your one lacking attack type. However, most elemental pets can easily be handled without using an Aquatic type attack, including the Pandarian Spirits.

I hope this helps you on your journey!

[Dockirre]

Thank you all for the tips! With your advice, I was able to form a pretty darn effective team! Got a four-man squad at present, swapping around as needed:
1x Celestial Dragon, who is a glowy blue patch of hate
1x Warpstalker Hatchling, who I have affectionately named Critterbane (he rips them apart, it's scary. o.o)
1x Darkmoon Zep, because holy crap Decoy is insane
And the suggested Disgusting Ooze as a backup, just in case. This has been serving me VERY well throughout outlands. I no longer have to wait 8 minutes between battles, and am instead ripping face! It's so much more FUN this way!