When to hunt for rare or not?

Dulahey · Post by **Dulahey** » January 5th, 2015, 12:03 am

Hey guys, I'm not a total noob to pets, but I still am a noob. I'm wanting to finally really get into pet collecting/battling so I'm about to begin my long quest to Zookeeper.

My question is, should I bother hunting for rares? Should I just run around and collect one of everything and then in the future when I really want a specific pet to use in battles, use a stone? I guess the same question goes for breeds.

What do you guys tend to do?

Beastlyserenity · Post by **Beastlyserenity** » January 5th, 2015, 12:34 am

I tend to look for blue quality rares when I know that particular pet spawns often.
Otherwise if its a rare pet to find to begin with I'll usually just stone it.

WarcraftPets Profile: Abbotta · Post by **Abbotta** » January 5th, 2015, 12:48 am

I just really went hardcore back in November and here's some tidbits I can share with you but by no means am I an expert.

Farming is a pain in the butt but it does help with power-leveling low level pets. But there are some really hard pets to obtain on that zookeeper list and even I am at a point that I will have to wait til summer to complete mine ([pet]Qiraji Guardling[/pet] is a summertime only pet).

This site is amazing for research and in the end I would look here to see what others think of the pet - if it has a low battle rating them perhaps it's not worth the effort to spend all day finding that one rare but perhaps grabbing an uncommon instead. If it is hard to get like the [pet]Minfernal[/pet] - sometimes it's best to grab what you get and use a battle stone to upgrade.

A couple of things to help. If you haven't done so already, get your Pet Menagerie 3 going at your garrison. Those Daily Pet Battles means 8-9 Pet charms a day and some of the dailies are easy power-leveling days. The rest of the Draenor Pet Tamers is another 24 which means you could buy 2 Flawless Battle-stone a day to update your junky pets to rare quality.

Peanutty · Post by **Peanutty** » January 5th, 2015, 1:46 am

Honestly it depends on your own goals and tolerance levels. When I started out I simply wanted one of everything, with no regard to breed or rarity. Looking back at it I kind of regret doing it that way, because I ended up having to go back through all the zones and recapture a ton of stuff to get better rarities and specific breeds.

Nowadays my aim is to always go for rares (with my desired breed and skin) when possible, even though I have no shortage of stones. I just find it more satisfying that way. The only times I'll stone a wild pet are: 1) the pet is hard to find due to long spawn timers or limited spawns, i.e. Minfernal or 2) I've somehow surpassed my limits with patience (very rare but it does happen, usually after I've put in hours of effort over several days).

If you don't have that level of patience or just aren't that OCD about having all rares then I would say pick up the desired breed for specific pets you plan on using, and stone as needed.

Dulahey · Post by **Dulahey** » January 5th, 2015, 9:40 am

Thanks for the confirmation guys!

Dulahey · Post by **Dulahey** » January 5th, 2015, 9:57 am

And yeah, my first goal is to catch and level up the pets I need to be able to do the Draenor trainer dailies with only 2 pets. That way I can start getting the tokens and leveling up the next set of pets that I need to do the Garrison dailies. Then after that I can just start catching and leveling everything!

Kpb321 · Post by **Kpb321** » January 5th, 2015, 1:42 pm

Yeah. I was much the same way too. When I first started collecting I just wanted to get the achievement and get more pets so I wasn't too picky on rarity and breed. I did end up having to go back and upgrade pets and recapture some to get a different breed. Unless you really feel like you need to capture it yourself I wouldn't spend too much time working to capture rares. In the end the more you do in pets the more common upgrade stones get.

One more good reason to stone that I haven't seen mentioned is something like the Flayer Hatchling which is available in all breeds to hunting for a Rare of a specific breed in the wild is pretty tough. Just capture a s/s and stone it. Another thing to think about is the list of pets that have to be stoned:

http://www.warcraftpets.com/community/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=2978

It only takes a quick glance to see you need a lot more flying, beast and critter stones than other types of stones so using up those Undead/Dragonkin/Magical/Elemental stones on wild pets isn't that big a deal if you are doing the MoP dailies and getting a variety of stones. You'll invariably end up with way more of those than you need. A 3 for 1 trade for a generic stone is possible but it seems more time efficient to use the stone on a wild pet and save the time hunting for a rare of that type than to hunt down 3 rare undeads so you can trade those stones in to stone 1 flying/beast/critter.

Abashera · Post by **Abashera** » January 5th, 2015, 3:49 pm

That's really a personal decision. And it depends on what you intend to accomplish in the end.

I did it the hard way... But it paid off in the end. I caught every pet in Rare quality, in the best breed, before moving onto another zone.

This takes more time. However it also saves a lot more time if you want the best-in-breed, because you won't have to backtrack to get rares and breeds later... which in the end will MORE THAN double the amount of time you've spent.

Not intending to sound like I'm bragging, I'm just stating a fact: A friend collector of mine got rares in whatever breed. But later he decided he wanted particular breeds. Every now and then I still hear him tell me "You were smart. You got all the pets in the best breed the first time. I still have to go back and re-capture a lot of pets." He still hasn't done that, because it takes more time to back-track and do it all over again the right way.

Ultimately it depends on what you want to achieve.

— Are you just a collector who wants the pets, and doesn't care about breeds or rarity? If so, then just get whatever.

— Do you just want rares, no matter the breed? Then don't worry about breeds, just get your rares.

— Do you want to always have the best breed so that no matter what tamers Blizz puts in the game, you already have the pet to beat it, without needing to go out and get the same pet again in a different breed? Then take the time to do it right the first time... IMHO.

— Do you want to get into PVP? In this case the breeds you choose will often be different than breeds for beating tamers—You will often favor speed breeds over power, and your selection of PVP pets will in most cases be different than the pets you would chose for PVE.

Dulahey · Post by **Dulahey** » January 5th, 2015, 7:09 pm

Abashera,

How did you know what the best breed is? I know there are many that are looked upon favorably because of their use against certain NPC's. But it sounds like you are implying you knew the best breed no matter what, no matter what kind of NPCs Blizzard puts into the game in the future.

I know I've read that B/B is considered the worst breed. Is that all you went after? Or do people always go for Power? Or is it different for every pet? Is this discussed somewhere?

Peanutty · Post by **Peanutty** » January 5th, 2015, 11:25 pm

Dulahey wrote:How did you know what the best breed is? I know there are many that are looked upon favorably because of their use against certain NPC's. But it sounds like you are implying you knew the best breed no matter what, no matter what kind of NPCs Blizzard puts into the game in the future.

I know I've read that B/B is considered the worst breed. Is that all you went after? Or do people always go for Power? Or is it different for every pet? Is this discussed somewhere?

IMO there is no hard and fast "best breed" for all situations which is why I termed it "desired breed." Most people favor certain breeds, like P/P for dragon whelps, as most dragons will use Tail Sweep which favors a slower speed to get a bigger hit, or S/S for pets with Dodge, since that will effectively give you a second turn with the dodge in place. But sometimes you might have a trainer strategy that favors having a little more health to last an extra round, so maybe you want to go H/H or H/P for that, for example. And B/B isn't always a terrible thing... they get a spread of all stats. They just don't get the same amount of points to spread as the pure breeds would.

Don't be afraid to try out different breeds to see what works for you. For example I know a lot of people like S/S Flayer Youngling, but I use a P/P. I use an H/B Rabbit on the Thundering Pandaren Spirit trainer when others use S/S or H/S.

I know others can explain this far better than I can, but that's just my 2 cents.

WarcraftPets Profile: Ziboo · Post by **Ziboo** » January 6th, 2015, 9:56 pm

As someone that did it the 'wrong' way, if you want rares or specific breeds for pet battles, get them while you go, it's a PiA to go back and find them later - unless you're an altaholic too, then you can level another toon, while collecting the ones you want!

Lazerbath · Post by **Lazerbath** » January 9th, 2015, 2:15 am

Given that the new mechanics in the Menagerie and the fact that 3 of the Draenor Tamers are ridiculously easy to farm even if you don't have a ton of Level 25 Pets, I personally have stopped killing myself over rares and am starting to focus on what I think the most useful breed type will be if I think I'm going to use that wild pet. If I'm probably not ever going to use that pet, I just catch whatever for the achieve and will get around to using a stone on it eventually.

Maizing · Post by **Maizing** » January 9th, 2015, 5:43 am

When I started collecting, I would grab the first pet I could of a specific species. Then, once I had all the pets that can be caught in a zone, I would look for better quality. I wasn't even able to look at breeds back then and would have had no idea what breed I wanted anyway.

These days, I have an add on that tells me what breed each pet is and I have a much better idea what breeds I want in each pet. I actually went back to the Isle of Thunder today to get a [pet]Swamp Croaker[/pet] in B/B (of all breeds!) for a specific fight. I have had an H/B one (the only other breed they come in) since they were introduced, but it just wasn't cutting it for the strategy I was trying. I would never have thought that those few points of power and speed would have made that much of a difference.

As for rarity... I have stones practically coming out of my ears now, so I don't worry about rarity anymore, I just get the breed or breeds I want and stone them if I need to.

Peanutty wrote:Don't be afraid to try out different breeds to see what works for you. For example I know a lot of people like S/S Flayer Youngling, but I use a P/P. I use an H/B Rabbit on the Thundering Pandaren Spirit trainer when others use S/S or H/S.

I have an S/S, an H/P and a P/P Flayer. Which one I use depends on what I want to do with it... and I use a B/B rabbit (plus a Son of Animus) on the Thundering Pandaren Spirit (that fight is one of my most reliable pet leveling battles... I can use a level 1 pet in the leveling slot).

Knots · Post by **Knots** » January 9th, 2015, 9:32 am

Another thing to keep in mind is how many alts you have. With 5 100's I stopped caring about farming rares in the wild because I get so many stones from the garrison. If you play just one main though, it would take over a year to stone all your pets. If you are really serious about it, you'd probably save time in the long run just leveling alts to do more garrison menagerie dailies. But if you like to just go out and battle in the wild more power to you!

WarcraftPets Profile: Sweetdr0ps · Post by **Sweetdr0ps** » January 10th, 2015, 5:11 pm

When i First starting collecting wild pets upgrade stones were rare and far and inbetween so I tried to get rare of most everything but stones are easier now. I reccomend addons like pet quality and "battle pet breedid" because if your going to be picky about breeds for optimal battles you will want the breed over quality, searching for rare in a particular quality is insane. but the addon will also let you know when your out battling and a rare you dont have is in group so thats handy. There are also lots of pets that are just really hard to come by and searching for rares is futile, things like shadow sporebat, minfernal, unborn valkry,

When to hunt for rare or not?

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