Xu-Fu's Pet Guides

[Aranesh]

Hey everyone!

I haven't posted here about my pet project before, but I think this is a good moment to start.
Beginning of 2015 I started working on a web page to list all the different strategies I collected over the years and make them available to everyone who's interested. The page is online since May and I got a lot of feedback and great suggestions already.
By now I have strategies collected for all the major pet tamers in Pandaria and Draenor, with only a few exceptions (like the Beasts of Fable or the Elekk Plushie achievement - those will come soon-ish!). It is one of my main hobbies where a lot of energy goes into, and I'm always happy to read comments about it.

One of the main requests I got quite often was to publish a guide on the Celestial Tournament.
After 3 months of working on that, it's now finally done: http://www.wow-petguide.com

It's not 100% polished, some tiny things are missing, but all my strategies are included and the tool is fully functional.
Now I'm inviting everyone to have a look, try around, hopefully beat the tournament with it ^^ but if you notice anything, be it issues with the page, things to improve, errors in the strategies or maybe a cool one that you'd like me to add - anything at all: I'm happy to hear your feedback!

Be it here, via mail, a comment on the page - doesn't matter to me, I'd love to hear what you guys think about it!
That of course counts for all other parts of the page as well.

[Jerebear]

Great site! I bookmarked it so I could share it with some guildies as they ask.

If you are up for alternate teams, this guide focuses on the "fastest" stable teams for Draenor tamers. I think most of yours match that, but there were one or two alternatives in there.
viewtopic.php?f=3&t=13853

For Ashlie, if you have a P/P Infinite Whelp (Breed matters here):
R1: Tail Sweep
R2: Tail Sweep
R3: Tail Sweep (pixiebell dies)
R4: Swap to Carry
R5: Swap Infinite Whelp
R6: Early Advantage (hits the talbuk)
R7: Tail Sweep (talbuk dies)
R8: Tail Sweep
R9: Tail Sweep
R10: Tail Sweep
R11: Tail Sweep

2 carry pet mod:
R8: Swap in 2nd carry pet
R9: Swap in Infinite Whelp
R10: Tail Sweep
R11: Tail Sweep
R12: Tail Sweep
R13: Tail Sweep


This guide was written up for Pandaria tamers with the same idea in mind:
viewtopic.php?f=10&t=7556

Despite the 5.4 tag, most all of these teams still work and are pretty fast (there might be better ones now with the new pets). Also, there are some comments on the last page with some possible optimizations (after the author stopped posting though)

If you want some alternate "2 pet teams" for building up the others:
http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic ... 980?page=1
viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4580

Keep in mind, these last two guides are neither fast or completely stable. They are meant as stopgap teams until you can level pets for better ones. Also note that the 5.3 one wasn't updated at the end of MoP like the 5.4 one actually was (despite the name), so there are a couple of anub/epw strats that don't work as we well now. I haven't verified any of these 2 pets teams like I have for the fast/stable guides.

Again, great site, just want to get some ideas to you incase you want the data.

[Gráinne]

Wow, Aranesh, you sure did a number on the Tournament. Calendar, Planner and all!

That's a lot of work. And very nice work it is too!

Once Rematch 4 is up as well, with the new Notes feature, the journey to beat the hardest pet PvE content in WoW will become so simple - which is sad, but that's how things go.

As usual, I'll try to break it, ofc. Expect my comments.

[Gahtmilch]

Really impressive work. I especially like how you did not simply "prettyfy"/regurgitate/reformat other people's previous guides.

The only thing I might have liked to see (though I know the HTML frame is the difficulty) is for the local map for each entry to be in the display frame, perhaps next to the boss/trainer name rather than over on the lower left of the button frame. It's not terribly obvious what it is (the map icon) and it took a bit of experimentation to find. Perhaps you could consider a narrow right-side frame with the map at the upper or lower right so it seems to be a component of the teams frame rather than an 'addition' to the buttons frame? Maybe include the map icon as a standard part of the background tile on the display frame with a mouseover box for the linkage rather than a separate .img linked into the button frame?

You might also consider a 'suggest an additional team' button for people to submit their teams for you to add if you see fit, otherwise the comments section under each entry will likely bloat with "the team I use is..." entries. It will also take some of the load off your shoulders down the road when additional bosses/trainers are added (you won't have to trial/error every team yourself).

And if you REALLY want a challenge, you could even add an icon to the lower right of each team member frame indicating how it is acquired. A $ for blizzard store, a boot for a boss/dungeon drop, an enraged kitten for wild-caught, etc. Not at all necessary, but a useful piece of information to have for newer pet battlers who don't immediately know where so-n-so pet that you recommend in your guide comes from.

While I don't personally PvP, there is a great absence of PvP teams information on the web (only Discdoggy that I am aware of). You could add a subsection and include a few of those if you like.

You could also have a subsection for 'Utility Teams" so you can include leveling teams for certain expansions or classic utility teams that everyone uses like 'howl bomb' , 'rot-n-ruin' , capture teams and anti-type teams.

**One last trivial addition, you might want to include the 3 pets that are required to open the L3 Menagerie under your Garrison section. May seem silly for veterans, but new-to-pet-battles folks may appreciate it.

***Erp.. one more: In the Chaos Pup description for Tanaan it currently reads

"He's in the Sha'naar temple, not on the mountains."

You may wish to edit it to read "He's in the Sha'naar temple on the bottom level of the mine, not on the mountains.

**** Ummm... on Cursed Spirit it reads

"First time I looked for this little guy I feel down the big hole next to him in pursuit of a rare creature..."

I would wager you fell into the hole, not gave it a good feel (though I may be wrong).

***** I'll stop now. Sure you have others to proofread silly typos....


Excellent work. I hope you maintain your interest and keep it updated.

-Gaht

[Aranesh]

@Jerebear
Hey! Great suggestions. I'm always looking for alternatives to my own strategies. And I haven't looked around the forums here enough definitely.
My page is mainly aimed at casual pet battles who already have a set of lvl 25s, and for those it's often highly annoying to scour different forums or wowhead comments until they find a strategy that also works with their pets. Thank you very much for the praise and the links! I'll slowly go through them and add more. In between fixing stuff and adding new features - will take some time, but it's greatly appreciated!

@Gráinne
I completed the tournament last week, but since today I can go in again and test a few strats. Thanks for your comments, as always!

@Gahtmilch
Xu-Fu's page is currently a 1-man show, apart from all of you guys making suggestions and leaving comments. I am grateful for every spellchecking and error reports! In more detail:

The only thing I might have liked to see (though I know the HTML frame is the difficulty) is for the local map for each entry to be in the display frame, perhaps next to the boss/trainer name rather than over on the lower left of the button frame. It's not terribly obvious what it is (the map icon) and it took a bit of experimentation to find. Perhaps you could consider a narrow right-side frame with the map at the upper or lower right so it seems to be a component of the teams frame rather than an 'addition' to the buttons frame? Maybe include the map icon as a standard part of the background tile on the display frame with a mouseover box for the linkage rather than a separate .img linked into the button frame?

The maps were added later on and I ran into the positioning problem already. Thanks for the user story - I'll revisit that topic. My original plan was to add it to the Tamer title (when hovering), but I wanted to have a visual representation as well - a map icon - to have it more obvious. It's good to know that the map icon on the left menu is not doing that job well currently.

You might also consider a 'suggest an additional team' button for people to submit their teams for you to add if you see fit, otherwise the comments section under each entry will likely bloat with "the team I use is..." entries. It will also take some of the load off your shoulders down the road when additional bosses/trainers are added (you won't have to trial/error every team yourself).

Love the idea! At some point I will rework the comment system because I don't like the current display. Will add this then

And if you REALLY want a challenge, you could even add an icon to the lower right of each team member frame indicating how it is acquired. A $ for blizzard store, a boot for a boss/dungeon drop, an enraged kitten for wild-caught, etc. Not at all necessary, but a useful piece of information to have for newer pet battlers who don't immediately know where so-n-so pet that you recommend in your guide comes from.

That is a rather cute idea as well. But I will probably not do that - it's a lot of extra work and I don't think it will hold too much value. To achieve this help I added the wowhead links when clicking on a pet name or picture, since wowhead offers so much info on acquiring a pet already.

While I don't personally PvP, there is a great absence of PvP teams information on the web (only Discdoggy that I am aware of). You could add a subsection and include a few of those if you like.

For that, I would need good knowledge in PvP myself... which I don't have :/

You could also have a subsection for 'Utility Teams" so you can include leveling teams for certain expansions or classic utility teams that everyone uses like 'howl bomb' , 'rot-n-ruin' , capture teams and anti-type teams.

I like it, will put it on my todo list for later on. Reason is: I need to rework the top menu of the page, because I'm running out of space. My idea is to add dropdown hovers (like here when you hover over "Community"). It would allow me to reduce the amount of buttons to the main categories, then add sub-categories. I could include a "Miscellaneous" tab then and add utility team information there.

One last trivial addition, you might want to include the 3 pets that are required to open the L3 Menagerie under your Garrison section. May seem silly for veterans, but new-to-pet-battles folks may appreciate it.

Same as above, that's something for when I cleaned up the top menu ^^
But I don't know yet, because I'm focussing mainly on the "recurring" tamers, those you want to farm. For that reason I also didn't include any of the old world tamers as most people just do them one single time and they hold little value afterwards. We'll see! Not sure yet.

Chaos Pup / Cursed Spirit

Fixed! Thanks

[Jesjbrown]

This guide/resource is amazing! Bookmarked it on my home page almost immediatly. I love how you've organized everything. Thanks for all the hard work.

[Gahtmilch]

Since you are just finishing the first attempts at the Celestial Tournament, I would wager the next major step of your Petbattlemastery will be the pursuit of the elusive 2-pet magical heffalump.... in which you must revisit all those old world trainers you mentioned (and disregarded) and defeat them all over again with 2-pet teams + the plushie, rather than the usual 3 members.

Take copious notes as you do the quest, because even though there are several guides out there (Chibimage's over at Murloc Harbor is a great example), the effort is rather extensive and you will likely be paying FAR more attention to specific breeds (which your current site largely overlooks). You may also hit upon some new strategies with new pets released since those guides were written, that are better (or at least as good as) than the teams suggested by older strategy guides that were written near the time when those events went live. They also rebalance the pets frequently which makes those guides less reliable than you might think... your namesake is a great example... he tends to wreck teams now that used to be reliably effective vs. him).

So- you would either have to add another fly-out for "2-pet option" to your existing entries, or create (yes, I heard you.. "I HAZ NO ROOM ON MY TOP BAR!") a new subsection just for this quest. If you use the flyout option, you could just crosslink the HTML with an information page which would reduce the space/work required to add the info as it's own subsection.

Other than PvP, I would wager that Celestial Tournament and 2-pet strategies are the most searched-for pet battle topics out there.

Also, unless they changed it, those old-world trainers are still really good exp for leveling up pets if you've exhausted the Pandaria Pack and still need a few levels, or, =gasp= if you are new to the game and don't have a slew of L100 flying alts and /or access to certain expansions.

-Gaht

[Jerebear]

Figured out a level 1 strat for Shu if you are interested. Posted it here:
viewtopic.php?p=119211#p119211

[Chibimage]

Is that custom code? It looks slick!

Wish I had the time to do use more than just a Word Press theme

[Aranesh]

Is that custom code? It looks slick!
Wish I had the time to do use more than just a Word Press theme

Thanks It's hand-written indeed (good old notepad). Probably not the most professional code, but it's just way more adaptable this way. Time is an issue though

Figured out a level 1 strat for Shu if you are interested. Posted it here:
viewtopic.php?p=119211#p119211

Aaaand onto my list of strats to check out! Cheers!

So- you would either have to add another fly-out for "2-pet option" to your existing entries, or create (yes, I heard you.. "I HAZ NO ROOM ON MY TOP BAR!") a new subsection just for this quest.

That decision has been made already - the magical heffalump (giggles ensued! ^^) will get it's own dedicated page because it is a major piece of content. And I haven't done it myself, yet! Intentionally that is, to force myself of getting out there and start doing it
I will most likely include the old masters as well, which will make it a big page and I'll need to add some kind of "ideal route" or subsections. But no flyouts or cross-references to the "regular" strats, that would be messy I believe. Rather a new assortment of 2-pet-strats only specifically for this purpose, even if it will include some repetitions.

or, =gasp= if you are new to the game and don't have a slew of L100 flying alts and /or access to certain expansions.

New players to the game!? What is this, some kind of madness?
I hear you, and it would be nice. But that goes way more into the direction of a first-time leveling guide, along the way with the old masters, because the majority of them is indeed trivial once you have *any* team of 25s. And there are *so many* of those guides out there already, that it dwindles at the very bottom of my own priority list ^^

For now most of my time for the page goes into bugfixing. Some nasty ones emerged that are mostly invisible in the background, but take astoundingly long to identify and fix. For example, the tournament guide includes a cross-referencing logic to warn if you multi-use pets. Unless it's part of a strategy (howl bomb for 2 celestials is fine. howlbomb for 1 master tamer AND 2 celestials is dumb, unless you have multiple copies) . I found a few errors in the code behind and they prove to be quite elusive :S

[Iibis]

This is great, I love trying out different options especially since I've wiped my addon data
I wish copying notes to Rematch wouldn't create line breaks between "Turn" + "ability to use this turn" texts. I don't know if that can be avoided though.

I see that Gahtmilch already commented on this, but I think this should be highlighted more: I'm not sure if you've considered pet breed requirements for teams to be successful? I can't see any mention of that, or a mention that any breed is acceptable when there are multiple to choose from. In many cases when there are multiple breeds, one is great, others doable but not 100% sure and the rest just won't work, and that will also be a major factor when there are complaints that this or that strat never works for them. It's frustrating for someone to try a strategy that is supposed to work, but doesn't, because the person writing the strategy hasn't considered breeds (and especially when the reader doesn't even know that breeds exist!).

But anyways great work and I appreciate the work anyone puts into making good collective guides! I know how much time it takes just to search for different tactics (so many different sources to browse!), let alone test them.

Edit: Also seems that the Rematch string copying isn't working at least in the CT planner. I could copy the first team (for Taran Zhu) but not the others. I wish a text box would appear to manually be able to highlight + copy, also I don't 100% like the idea of blindly copying something to my clipboard (I don't believe you have malicious intent, but it doesn't hurt to be transparent). Tested it without Adblock Plus (using Chrome) but that doesn't help.

Edit2: vs. Zao, Calfling of Niuzao the team [Wild Jade Hatchling, Zandalari Anklerender, Darkmoon Tonk] has listed abilities 2, 2, 1 for Anklerender, but since Black Claw is called for, it should be 2, (1/2), 2. Also Darkmoon Tonk has wrong abilities, listing 1, 2 (minefield), 1 (lock-on) instead of 1, 1 (shock and awe), 2 (ion cannon).

[Aranesh]

This is great, I love trying out different options especially since I've wiped my addon data
I wish copying notes to Rematch wouldn't create line breaks between "Turn" + "ability to use this turn" texts. I don't know if that can be avoided though.

I was thinking a lot about the possibilities with the new Rematch version. It would be possible (yet very complicated) to make the full instructions "copy-pasteable". But I don't think that it's worth it when I can also use the existing copy-button to include more info.
However, I have not decided yet what information to include there. For the script it would be very easy to create a string that includes proper line breaks to make the notes legible. But it would make the strings VERY long. I'm also thinking about offering 2 options: Only the team or Full Info, including the strategy itself.
As I said, I don't know yet. It means a good deal of work either way.

I see that Gahtmilch already commented on this, but I think this should be highlighted more: I'm not sure if you've considered pet breed requirements for teams to be successful? I can't see any mention of that, or a mention that any breed is acceptable when there are multiple to choose from. In many cases when there are multiple breeds, one is great, others doable but not 100% sure and the rest just won't work, and that will also be a major factor when there are complaints that this or that strat never works for them. It's frustrating for someone to try a strategy that is supposed to work, but doesn't, because the person writing the strategy hasn't considered breeds (and especially when the reader doesn't even know that breeds exist!).
But anyways great work and I appreciate the work anyone puts into making good collective guides! I know how much time it takes just to search for different tactics (so many different sources to browse!), let alone test them.

I have considered breeds, yes! And I hate them Or to be exact, I hate what Blizzard makes of them, which is nothing. They are almost completely invisible without addons and yet often play a deciding role. Which is in my eyes the main reason why so many sources on the internet have great intention, but plain out fail for many people and they have no clue why that is.

My approach - or my vision with Xu-Fu's guides - is to provide strategies independent of breed. I'm aiming at newbs or people who just don't want to be arsed with such stupid details (like myself ^^), so I want to be independent from addons. Adding convenience is cool (rematch). Adding requirements is uncoool.
So I test the strats I put up with different breeds where I can or at least do calculations (big thanks to Gráinne for the help on that ^^), and ideally they should work out 90% of the time no matter what breed you bring.

Edit: Also seems that the Rematch string copying isn't working at least in the CT planner. I could copy the first team (for Taran Zhu) but not the others. I wish a text box would appear to manually be able to highlight + copy, also I don't 100% like the idea of blindly copying something to my clipboard (I don't believe you have malicious intent, but it doesn't hurt to be transparent). Tested it without Adblock Plus (using Chrome) but that doesn't help.

Edit2: vs. Zao, Calfling of Niuzao the team [Wild Jade Hatchling, Zandalari Anklerender, Darkmoon Tonk] has listed abilities 2, 2, 1 for Anklerender, but since Black Claw is called for, it should be 2, (1/2), 2. Also Darkmoon Tonk has wrong abilities, listing 1, 2 (minefield), 1 (lock-on) instead of 1, 1 (shock and awe), 2 (ion cannon).

The copying feature is currently broken in the CT planner :/ And it proves to be way more complicated than an easy fix, sadly. I get your security concerns and actually all browser developers (except Microsoft^^) share your concerns and disable any calls that try to manipulate your clipboard. The only workaround is using a Flash plugin, which is kind a hacky but works. If you disable flash, the button on my page would not work anymore.
The popup with highlighted text to copy is a good alternative, but it's uglier, and less convenient - so again I really don't know yet which direction to go :/

Zao - Fixed! THANKS!!!

[Shingetsu]

Neat little website, you've got there. I found it "by accident" while browsing MMO-Champion. I think you recommended Rematch and accidently advertised your website.

Personally, I like website layouts a bite more "simple", but that's only me. With the quality content you're providing I'm not going to moan because the site may load a tad bit slower because of the graphics.

The only part I don't like are the popups for the comments. That's maybe because you don't want the content part to be too "long" so users actually have to scroll? Just a guess.

As for the rematch string copying feature... how about the wowhead approach? If you click the button a popup with a textbox containing the string appears. The text is already highlighted, so the user only has to hit CTRL+C. It's not the best-looking solution, but a big part of your userbase probably already knows this from wowhead and instinctively knows what to do with it.

[Aranesh]

Neat little website, you've got there. I found it "by accident" while browsing MMO-Champion. I think you recommended Rematch and accidently advertised your website.

Personally, I like website layouts a bite more "simple", but that's only me. With the quality content you're providing I'm not going to moan because the site may load a tad bit slower because of the graphics.

The only part I don't like are the popups for the comments. That's maybe because you don't want the content part to be too "long" so users actually have to scroll? Just a guess.

As for the rematch string copying feature... how about the wowhead approach? If you click the button a popup with a textbox containing the string appears. The text is already highlighted, so the user only has to hit CTRL+C. It's not the best-looking solution, but a big part of your userbase probably already knows this from wowhead and instinctively knows what to do with it.

Such accident ^^

Yeah I'm aware of the loading times and I'm trying to reduce where I can. But I do like graphical UIs and stuff so .. tradeoffs
For the comments I agree. A little background: Some parts of the page I did not code from scratch but took over scripts I made for some of my other projects and adapted them. I wanted to release the page so some things just had to make do. The comments feature is one such part. Now I'm going slowly over those older items and polishing them more. For the comments my ideal is to have a slide-bar opening up. You click on the comments and the page extends downwards to reveal the comments + write-form. Would be much cleaner and less obtrusive. In the future! If I manage to code it.

Regarding Rematch strings: Yes, with all the controversy around flash nowadays it will be the best move. It will come when I overhaul the strings to support the new Rematch and include notes and additional data on the pets.