Blizzard’s Lead Content Designer, Cory “Mumper” Stockton joins me on the show this week to talk about all the new goodies coming in patch 5.3, and to give us insight into how Blizzard builds the pets we love to throw into the gauntlet.

Subscribe to The WoW Pet Battle Crew on iTunes or via RSS!

The Interview

Cory and I talk about a lot interesting things on the podcast this week. Here are some of the highlights and big reveals:

• Why PvP has become a bigger focus for the battle pet devs
• A crazy pet idea that didn’t make it into the game
• The devs’ 3 major goals for pet battles in patch 5.3
• What criteria makes a pet considered “broken” or “overpowered”
• What’s next for pet battles?
• How they’re making the new Beasts of Fable harder
• The pet team Cory’s currently playing with
• Cory explains how the spawning mechanic works for the amazing (and frustratingly elusive) Unborn Val’kyr pet

We’re coming for you, Unborn Val’kyr. And we’ve got plenty of pets for your to resurrect!

Thanks again for being on the show, Cory! Everyone can (and should) follow him on Twitter for more WoW talk.

Join The Podcast

• SUBSCRIBE to the WoW Battle Pet Crew podcast on iTunes or this RSS feed.
• FOLLOW me on Twitter or Google+
• MEET fellow battle pet tamers and discuss team strategies and the latest pet battle news in our Google+ Community.

Last week we looked at the hero abilities for the Rogue, Mage, Paladin, and Priest heroes in Hearthstone. Now the other five launch-day heroes get their turn in the spotlight.

Half-geek-half-jock superster Dan joins me and provides some awesome insight on the hero abilities.

UPDATE: A few helpful readers explained to us that the Druid ability works differently than the text shows. I’ve adjusted the text and our power/flavor ratings for the Druid hero ability below to reflect the actual functionality, but the audio podcast is still incorrect. Sorry!

Subscribe to The Happy Hearthstone Podcast on iTunes or via RSS!

The Links

• See the hero abilities
• Watch the Shaman vs Mage game
• Sign up for the beta!
• Check out Dan’s awesome podcast!

Hello!

• Dan is on the show this week
• Topic: Hero Abilities
• Reasons to be happy this week

Who is Dan?

• History with card games
• History with Blizzard games
• Favorite class in WoW
• Hunters carry cards?

What are Hero Abilities?

• 9 Heroes in the game, each with a unique ability
• 2 mana to use
• Can be used once per turn, unlimited times during game

Garrosh Hellscream

Orc Male Warrior

Ability: Gain 2 armor.

Discussion

• What Defines Warriors in WoW?
• Our Impressions
• Flavor Rating: 6,8
• Power Rating: 9,7

Gul’dan

Orc Male Warlock

Ability: Lose 2 health and draw a card.

Discussion

• What Defines Warlocks in WoW?
• Our Impressions
• Flavor Rating: 10,10
• Power Rating: 8,11

Malfurian Stormrage

Night Elf Male Druid

Ability: Shapeshift for one turn, becoming a bear that has 1 Attack and 1 Armor.

Discussion

• What Defines Druids in WoW?
• Our Impressions
• Flavor Rating: 10,10
• Power Rating: 3,3

Thrall

Orc Male Shaman

Ability: Summon a random totem. (4 unique options)

Discussion

• What Defines Shamans in WoW?
• Our Impressions
• Flavor Rating: 11,10
• Power Rating: 8, 2/4/6/8/10

Rexxar

Orc Male Hunter

Ability: Deal 2 damage to the enemy hero.

Discussion

• What Defines Hunters in WoW?
• Our Impressions
• Flavor Rating: 5,7
• Power Rating: 8,7

Card of the Week

Felguard don’t care about your precious crystals

Farewell

• Follow Dan on Twitter
• What you want to see in future episodes
• What hosts you want to visit the show

Join The Podcast

• SUBSCRIBE to The Happy Hearthstone podcast on iTunes or this RSS feed.
• FOLLOW me on Twitter or Google+
• MEET new Hearthstone friends and discuss deck strategies and the latest game news in our Google+ Community.
• PLAY with us in Hearthstone, whenever we actually get into beta!

Subscribe to The WoW Pet Battle Crew on iTunes or via RSS!

Goal of the team

The team we’ve been testing for the last two weeks was lovingly dubbed The Dodge Team (trademark incoming). The core of the team was using pets that have the ability to avoid enemy attacks for one or more turns as a part of their DPS rotation. The core was a rabbit, with Darkmoon Zeppelin as its main partner.

Your suggestions

• @r9sid9nt9vil: “This avoidance team is so painful to level… The core abilities don’t really even start until 20 and that’s what defines them”
• My thoughts: The team is pretty weak before level 15. That’s a big part of why I released guide for leveling pets quickly last week.
• @r9sid9nt9vil chimed in later in the week to say that he’d swapped in a second rabbit for his third slot and went from a 45% win ratio to 80%.
• I ran into Navimie out on the battlefield: “That makes me wonder if I saw you on the field there, Josh! Just the other day I came across a zep, rabbit, and something else combo! Made me start levelling my Zep!”
• Navimie’s feedback: “I chopped and changed a bit, but I had used Darkmoon Rabbit with an Amethyst Spider with a Kun-Lai Runt. I tend to run spider and runt a lot, with an ooze or an amber moth as the third wheel.”

Quick, amass the defenses! Hoist the cocoon shield!

Changes I made to the lineup:

Navimie’s last comment came in right when I was having an existential crisis with my third slot. I had been using Restless Shadeling most of the time pre-25, but it just wasn’t pulling its weight. It died too quickly, and it lacked a big nuke to help it even trade with powerful Humanoid pets, which it’s supposed to counter. At best, it was trading one-for-one, but most of the time it was dying before the enemy pet.

So I remembered’ Navimie’s comment about the Amber Moth and that sounded like a perfect addition. It has Cocoon to dodge an attack, a heavy attack that has a chance to put the enemy to sleep–and a passive that boosts its attack speed, making those two attacks even more powerful at avoiding an enemy attack.

I was happy with the Rabbit’s ability lineup that I started with: Flurry, Dodge, and Burrow.

The Darkmoon Zeppelin’s lineup needed a few more changes. I still can’t choose between Missile and Thunderbolt. Allowing the Zeppelin to duel with a pet has won me a couple games, but the DPS is so much higher if you can afford to simply throw down the barrier, Thunderbolt, and swap him out. But if you’re forced to fight, the Zeppelin is going to have too long of cooldowns on its abilities–it’ll have to pass on some turns.

I’m currently running with Thunderbolt, but I’m still not convinced one is “better” than the other–it’s just a matter of getting lucky and picking the best one for each fight.

I ended up replacing Bombing Run with Explode as well. Bombing Run’s damage as weak (barely more than a punch) and Explode is a fairly reliable nuke, which helps the Zeppelin trade well with anyone.

It’s an odd role to put the Zeppelin in, but it worked best as a two-turn pet: swap it in, throw down Decoy, play Thunderbolt and then swap it back out and let the Rabbit or Moth do the damage. It basically turns the Zeppelin into a weird AoE DPS and support combo.

When it works:

When this lineup worked well, I was ready to construct a golden idol in the shape of a giant rabbit. This team worked best against teams that focused their damage in big attacks that I could predict and avoid. Players have to be paying attention and plan well to beat the Rabbit.

Most wins went something like this:

• 1. Bring out the Zeppelin, construct a barrier
• 2. Swap in the Rabbit, get in a free Flurry
• 3. Dodge, then Flurry while unhittable
• 4. Burrow, and get big hit
• 5. Flurry and kill the pet
• 6. Swap in the third wheel and do a rotation of its abilities
• 7. Swap in the Zeppelin and repeat

When games went really well, my pets could easily end the fight above half heatlh. Normally I’d end the fight with one full-health pet against 3 dead pets. It was fun.

And I think that’s the biggest part of this team: it creates a minigame where I have to look at the possible abilities of the enemy pet and try to get into the mind of my opponent to guess what order they’re going to use them in. Using a Dodge at the exact moment can swing the entire momentum of the match, and makes me feel really smart when I pull it off, whether it’s based on luck or not.

Dodge is just as good of an ability as I thought, as long as I was faster than the enemy pet. Decoy is about as strong as I thought it would be, and often stalled out an opponent rearing up for a big attack. If they have to swap at all while it’s up, I’d get a ton of free hits in.

This is a metaphor.

When it doesn’t work:

This team failed when it got locked up in stun locks, got hit with a lot of small hits, or had a way to reduce damage taken per hit.

Problem: Sandstorm
Things like Anubisath Idol were once again a nightmare: Sandstorm and Shell Shield is just brutal to the Rabbit’s DPS. Moth burst and Rabbit’s Burrow helped some, but it was very noticeable

Problem: Burst Damage
One of the most brutal combinations I ran into was a raptor that applied Exposed Wounds + then Lightning Storm + Turrets. I won’t break down the math for you, but it’s essentially 1,000 damage each turn for two turns if you don’t have a mitigation like Shell Shield. The downside, of course, is that it has a long setup time, and a pet swap negates a fair portion of the damage. But it was absolutely BRUTAL to my bunny, when it got caught exposed with no dodge cooldowns left.

Problem: Stun Lock
Stun locks were surprisingly a problem for this team, but only because the Kun-Lai Runt is bugged right now. At the moment Kun-Lai Runt’s Stun completely ignores all stun-reduction effects (Critters’ passive does not reduce it and Arcane Winds does not prevent it)

So it ended up causing a lot of problems for this team if the enemy knew how to exploit its advantage. And a lot of people do, making the pet extremely popular right now.

(If flavor of the month bugged pets are your thing, you know what to do. It’s not really my style, so I won’t be doing a team for them, but it’s such an easy pet to play you don’t really need a strategy guide anyways. Just know that Blizzard is also bugged for the pet as well, making it not apply the Chilled effect to Proc the stun, use Frost Shock to apply the Chill.)

Problem: Faster pets
Versus a faster pet, I never used Dodge. At best, it would just be a one-ability-for-one-ability trade, but in most cases, they’d just use a defensive ability and I’d simply lose a turn by using it. Burrow was weaker because there was no surprise, but the damage was still worthwhile.

A worst case scenario:

• I start with Zeppelin Decoy, it uses a 3-hit ability that instantly removes it and hits me
• I Thunderbolt and it hits me with a heavy Elemental attack, halving Zeppelin’s health
• I swap in the Rabbit and get stunned
• I use Dodge and it’s wasted while the enemy swaps or uses a defensive ability
• I Burrow, but the attack misses and I get hit with a huge Beast attack afterwards
• I cry.

But that worst case scenario only happened once or twice. I usually felt like the match was in my control, rather than being at the mercy of my opponents–which is a good place to be.

See the team in action

Watch live video from watchjosh on TwitchTV

Final record

28 – 11 (72% win ratio)

The win ratio after swapping in the Moth as the third wheel was probably closer to 80-85%. In PvE, this team stomps because enemy pets are so predictable and easy to dodge.

Do I still use the team?

Yes. I believe there might be a better replacement for the Zeppelin out there, especially with all the new pets that have blocking abilities in Thunder Isle content. But this team is in a great place as it currently stands. This is a strong foundation that I feel like I could play with for months, while swapping out different pets and trying different combinations.

If you’re wary of starting a team with me because you don’t think it’s going to last or won’t be worth your effort. Start with this team. It’s a strong team that’ll be reliable and fun to play for a long time to come.

Individual pet reviews

Tolai Hare (all rabbits): 10 — This is one of the most fun pets I’ve ever played with. It’s powerful and tactical, giving you strategic decisions to make, instead of just blindly following a set rotation. Everyone should play a rabbit pet.

Darkmoon Zeppelin: 7 — The Zeppelin is interesting, mostly due to its Decoy ability, but it’s other abilities leave a lot to be desired. I wish it had a spammable attack that could increase with power beyond a simply punch in its 3rd slot. Without something more reliable, to punch with, this pet is stuck in a support role.

Amber Moth (all moths): 9 — The moth is another great pet. It has so many good ability options, and most of them synergize so well with the Flying passive, which gives a speed boost. This is also an amazing PvE pet, especially against the Beasts of Fable. Level with confidence.

Restless Shadeling: 5 — The best part about this pet in this lineup is its Undead passive. It was rarely fast enough for Phase Shift to be worthwhile, and its damage output was severely lacking. It’ll probably work better in a lineup that can take advantage of its lifegain on hit ability, but definitely don’t take this for the dodge.

Join The Podcast

• SUBSCRIBE to the WoW Battle Pet Crew podcast on iTunes or this RSS feed.
• FOLLOW me on Twitter or Google+
• MEET fellow battle pet tamers and discuss team strategies and the latest pet battle news in our Google+ Community.

We kick it off this week by taking a look at four classes: Rogue, Mage, Paladin, and Priest. We picked these because those are the classes that my guest, Gavin, plays in WoW. We’ll continue the fun next week and tackle the other 5, Warrior, Shaman, Druid, Hunter, and Warlock!

Note: This is not a summary of the class as a whole, or all its unique cards. We’re solely looking at the unique ability power that each class has at launch.

Download The Happy Hearthstone #7: Hero Abilities (part 1)

Subscribe to The Happy Hearthstone Podcast on iTunes or via RSS!

The Links

• See the hero abilities
• Watch the Shaman vs Mage game
• Sign up for the beta!
• Read some of Gavin’s articles on PC Gamer

Hello!

• Gavin is on the show this week
• Topic: Hero Abilities
• Reasons to be happy this week

Who is Gavin?

• History with card games
• History with Blizzard games
• Favorite class in WoW

What are Hero Abilities?

• 9 Heroes in the game, each with a unique ability
• 2 mana to use
• Can be used once per turn, unlimited times during game
• New heroes?

Valeera Sanguinar

Blood Elf Female Rogue

Ability: Equips a 2/1 dagger onto the hero. If hero already wields the dagger, it adds 1 attack to the dagger.

Discussion

• What Defines Rogues in WoW?
• Our Impressions
• Flavor Rating: 9,9
• Power Rating: 8,7

Jaina Proudmoore

Human Female Mage

Ability: Deal 1 damage.

Discussion

• What Defines Mages in WoW?
• Our Impressions
• Flavor Rating: 5,4
• Power Rating: 5,6

Uther the Lightbringer

Human Male Paladin

Ability: Summons a 1/1 Silver Hand Recruit.

Discussion

• What Defines Paladins in WoW?
• Our Impressions
• Flavor Rating: 8,6
• Power Rating: 6,6

Anduin Wrynn

Human Baby Priest

Ability: Heal target minion or hero for 2.

Discussion

• What Defines Priests in WoW?
• Our Impressions
• Flavor Rating: 7,6
• Power Rating: 9,9

Card of the Week

Slam, slam, thank you, ma’am!

Farewell

• Follow Gavin on Twitter
• What you want to see in future episodes
• What hosts you want to visit the show

Join The Podcast

• SUBSCRIBE to The Happy Hearthstone podcast on iTunes or this RSS feed.
• FOLLOW me on Twitter or Google+
• MEET new Hearthstone friends and discuss deck strategies and the latest game news in our Google+ Community.
• PLAY with us in Hearthstone, whenever we actually get into beta!

I really enjoy fighting PvP battles at lower levels and taking a pet all the way from 1-25 in PvP, watching it evolve and unlocking new abilities and playstyles as they grow up. But sometimes, you just need to get a specific pet up to a certain level in a day, so you can add him to a team you already have in progress.

And that’s what my strategy is built to do. This guide shows you how to take a pet from level 1 to 18 in 15 minutes or less, using Pandaria tamers and pets from our previous teams that we should already have leveled.

It’s helped me a lot while testing out teams for this show, and I hope it helps you too!

Download WoW Pet Battle Crew #15 — Guide: Powerlevel your pet

Subscribe to The WoW Pet Battle Crew on iTunes or via RSS!

Guide Intro

Let me start this off with a disclaimer: this is a lazy-person’s guide to powerleveling. There are faster ways to grind it out if you want to spend all day doing it. This is just the easiest way to get a daily boost for the absolute minimum amount of time and effort.

This is the strategy I use when I’m trying to level a pet up quickly, mostly because I get bored with PVE fights after awhile. I almost always want to just PvP battle when I’m online, but you level pets really slowly through PvP.

So when I’m testing a team out and want to swap out the third-wheel pet based on some cool advice one of you fantastic listeners put on the site, I use this to boost the new pet up to level 18 so I can start using it in the lineup right away.

And then if the pet doesn’t work out, I don’t feel like I wasted hours of my life leveling a pet that I can’t use in the lineup. It was just a few minutes.

The Basics

The basic premise of my strategy is that I looked for the two highest-level Pandaria tamer battles that I can beat with only two pets.

Tamer battles give a lot of XP for the time investment, making them the most efficient way to level if you know how to beat them.

As you know, you get different amounts of XP based on the level of the pets you’re facing. But there’s more working behind the scenes than just that. Tamers get a bonus modifier that boosts the XP reward for beating them, and that XP bonus is based on the “difficulty” of the tamer.

There are 3 levels of difficulty:

• Basic Tamers: 2.5x normal XP (most tamers fall under this category)
• Northrend, Cataclysm, and Master Azeroth Tamers: 3x normal XP (Stone Cold Trixxy in Winterspring and Lydia Accoste in Deadwind Pass)
• Pandaria Tamers: 5x normal XP

If all that math is just way too confusing for you, let me say it simply: We’re going to play 4 pet battles and take a pet from level 1 all the way to level 20.

Watch the guide in action

Watch pet battle videos

Step 1: Preparation

1. Pick a character that has easy access to the Vale of Eternal Blossoms

• That’s the central zone in Pandaria, that houses the main hub cities for Horde and Alliance
• Max-level characters should have unlocked it and will probably have their hearthstone bound there

Step 2: Put on your Safari Hat

• We won’t be fighting any dangerous creatures during this trip
• If you’re anything like me, you forget to put this hat on about 50% of the time and end up kicking yourself afterwards

Step 3: Fight an aquatic wild pet

1. Fly to the eastern pond in the Vale of Eternal Blossoms

• Coordinates: 69,44

2. Adjust your pet lineup

• Your two strongest level 25 battle pets and the noob pet you’re power-leveling
• Guidelines: Flying attacks and Magic pets have an advantage. Do not bring Elemental pets or Undead attacks
• My go-to lineup for this sort of situation is durable pets that can heal themselves
• You need two pets to kill three pets, so you can’t do fast trades.
• From our previous teams, I’d recommend Corefire Imp, Clockwork Gnome, Lil XT, Magical Crawdad, Gilnean Raven
• Important: Put the noob pet in the first slot so it starts on the field

3. Start a fight with a frog or water strider in the pond and start the fight

4. First turn: attack with your low-level pet

• It probably won’t hit and even if it does, the enemy’s health bar will barely move.
• The reason we’re doing this is that pets must spend one combat turn on the field to get XP
• Frogs and water striders usually spend their first turn healing their team or starting a pump ability, so your pet should be safe

5. Swap out the noob pet for a level 25 and start killing the enemy team

• This part should be straightforward and easy
• Just make sure to leave your noob pet on the bench so it doesn’t get hit by a DoT and die

DING! After you win this fight, your pet should be LEVEL 6

Step 4: Fight another aquatic pet

1. Bandage up your pets

2. Repeat Fight #1

DING! After you win this fight, your pet should be LEVEL 7

Take that, foolish water dwellers!

Step 5: Fight Aki the Chosen, Pandaren Tamer

1. Bandage up your pets.

2. Walk/Fly to Aki the Chosen

• Coordinates: 67, 40

3. Adjust your pet lineup

• Slot 1: Corefire Imp
• Abilities: Rush, Immolation, Cauterize
• Slot 2: Pandaren Monk
• Abilities: Jab, Focus Chi, Fury of 1000 Fists
• Slot 3: Noob pet
• Abilities: Any big damage, single-turn abilities

4. Accept the daily quest to defeat Aki and start the fight.

5. Solo-kill the Cricket with Corefire Imp

• Your Corefire Imp should end the fight with full health
• If health is below 1k, use Cauterize to Heal
• If Immolate buff is not active, put it on
• Otherwise, Rush for damage
• IMPORTANT: Do not kill the Cricket if Immolation has 2 or fewer turns on it left. This is key to killing the next pet, and its worth extending the fight with Cricket to make sure it ends with at least 3, and ideally 5+ turns left.

6. As soon as the Cricket dies, the Wind Serpent will come onto the field. Immediately bring in your Pandaren Monk

• Do not cast any spell with Corefire Imp
• Delaying one turn will cause you to lose this fight

7. Cast Focus Chi with Pandaren Monk on its first turn

8. Cast Fury of 1000 Fists on its second turn

• If you crit, you’ll instantly kill the Wind Serpent
• If you don’t crit, the Immolation DoT + Lightning Storm proc will kill it at the end of the turn

9. Otter comes in next. Leave your Pandaren Monk in and cast Focus Chi on its first turn

• At this point, your Pandaren Monk will be incredibly close to death if the enemy crit at all
• The Otter will always Dive down, becoming unattackable before your turn to swing

10. Watch your Pandaren Monk die

• His job is now to take the huge hit from dive so that your other pets don’t have to
• If the Otter misses, you can give it a big, Chi-powered punch before dying

11. Bring in your noob pet

• Keep it in for 1-2 turns, depending on its health pool
• Deal as much damage as you can, but make sure it can’t die even if otter crits

12. Bring in the Corefire Imp

• Same priorities of abilities above, possibly saving Cauterize until after a Dive to maximize healing, if you can afford to
• Corefire Imp should be able to kill it.

DING! Your pet should now be LEVEL 14

Aki, you’re going down. You and your cricket too!

Step 6: Fight Courageous Yon, Pandaren Trainer

1. Bandage your pets

2. Fly to Courageous Yon in Kun-Lai Summit
ul>

3. Change your lineup: Corefire Imp and Clockwork Gnome

4. Accept quest from Yon

5. Start the fight with Corefire Imp’s Burn

• Follow it up with Immolate buff on turn 2
• The enemy bird pet always flies up on turn 2, so you don’t want to waste an attack

6. Kill the Bird

• Same gameplay with Corefire Imp as the last fight
• Keep Immolate up, punch when you can
• Cauterize when hurt, preferably after their big hit

7. The Rabbit is going to mess your face

• Just deal as much damage to it as you can before your Imp drops
• Poor Impy…

8. Bring in the Clockwork Gnome when the Imp is done

• Ideally, keep Corefire Imp on the backline with Immolate instead of dying
• Use it to swap in and eat a heavy hit later on

9. Build one Turret and then Repair

• If you wait to build 2 Turrets before repairing, you will die once before Repair ticks

10. Punch the Rabbit dead

• Your Gnome is going to take a beating
• Place Turrets every chance you can

11. When the Ram comes out, the clock is ticking

• Build Turrets and Punch only
• Repair will be wasted because Clockwork Gnome will die before it goes off
• Just try to DPS, and swap in the Corefire Imp to eat a Chew burst damage

12. Clockwork Gnome will either kill the ram, or die while Turrets are up

• If it dies, just try to tank it with your noob pet until the Turrets kill it.

DING! Your pet is now 18

Thanks for the assist, monk. I owe you one!

That’s it!

That’s my quick and easy guide to bring a pet to level 18 in 18 minutes! Keep in mind you can only do these tamer battles once per day. You can come back and do this combo again tomorrow and get the pet into the low 20s if you’d like, but I find I have plenty of pets in the 18 range for it to pair up with in PvP. And I kind of like fighting the rest of the way to the top. Hopefully this helps you as much as it’s helped me the past few months

Join The Podcast

• SUBSCRIBE to the WoW Battle Pet Crew podcast on iTunes or this RSS feed.
• FOLLOW me on Twitter or Google+
• MEET fellow battle pet tamers and discuss team strategies and the latest pet battle news in our Google+ Community.

Today, we talk about everything else! Lucas Sullivan joins me for this week’s episode, and we take a scatter shot approach, talking about all the little things in Hearthstone that we think will make or break it. Tune in and learn something new about the game!

Download The Happy Hearthstone #6: Leftover Questions

Subscribe to The Happy Hearthstone Podcast on iTunes or via RSS!

The Links

• See the new Warlock card reveal
• Watch the Shaman vs Mage game
• Sign up for the beta!
• Read Lucas’ articles on GamesRadar.com

Hello!

• Lucas is on the show this week
• Topic: The little things of Hearthstone
• Reasons to be happy this week

Who is Lucas?

• History with card games
• History with Blizzard games
• Favorite mode in card games

Hearthstone as a casual game

• Does that phrase make you excited about the game?
• What do you think that means for the game depth?
• Can casual games be fun?
• Are you going to play on PC and iPad?

Combat Mechanics

• Stealth
• No instant-speed cards
• Secret cards
• Creating cards that don’t exist in your deck

Equipment

• Weapons can only be equipped by heroes
• Weapons lose one durability every time they attack
• No equipment for units

Heroes

• Do you like heroes as a card game mechanic?
• Need more heroes?
• Different health amounts?
• How powerful should heroes be on the battlefield?

Cards

• Is 300 enough?
• How often do they need to add new cards to keep your interest?
• Do all card games follow “blocks/sets” like Magic?
• Does WoW tie-in interest you at all?
• Standard rule is that mana cost roughly = HP + Power

Community

• No trading, no gifting
• No chat in the game, except with battle.net friends
• Concerns

Card of the Week

Kill it quickly, or die quickly—just like in Gnomeragan!

Farewell

• Follow Lucas on Twitter
• What you want to see in future episodes
• What hosts you want to visit the show

Join The Podcast

• SUBSCRIBE to The Happy Hearthstone podcast on iTunes or this RSS feed.
• FOLLOW me on Twitter or Google+
• MEET new Hearthstone friends and discuss deck strategies and the latest game news in our Google+ Community.
• PLAY with us in Hearthstone, whenever we actually get into beta!

But what can we expect as we charge into this maze? Which cards do we want by our side, and what creepy creatures should we be afraid of, come launch day!

Download the MP3

Intro

• Greeting
• We DON’T have a show name!
• Introduce Topic: Grand Prix thoughts and Dragon’s Maze preview

Tales from the Grand Prix

• What we thought
• Selling cards
• Drafting and having fun

Gatecrash Overview

• Breakdown of the new mechanics: split cards and more
• Guilds and secret alliances
• Which one we picked for prerelease and why

Our favorite Dragon’s Maze cards

Our favorites, not necessarily the best by arbitrary standards

Josh:

• Voice of Resurgence – Good early creature card, trades REALLY well later on, dissuades counters + other instants. Changes opponents’ playstyle
• Plasm Capture – Great counter, huge potential for early game-winners
• Master of Cruelties – So many tricks, any unblockable or hexproof or pump + pinger = win
• AEtherling – Triggers evolve, has so many tricks
• Maze Abomination – Deathtouch is so good, especially on big creatures
• Skylasher – How does it have all these perks for no mana increase?
• Pontiff of Blight – Gross
• Far/Away – Solid

Adam:

• Boros OP
• Warleaders Helix
• Gleam of Battle
• Viashino Firstblade
• Turn and Burn
• Bubblebut Shikaka

The best card in the entire set

Josh:

Voice of Resurgence

Adam:

Advent of the Wurm

Dragon’s Maze cards we hate

Can be the objectively worst cards, or cards we personally hate

Josh:

• Trait Doctoring – So specific, maybe good in constructed. Terrible here
• Runner’s Bane – 3 power or less makes it a terrible pacifism
• Armed/Dangerous – Dual cards are dumb. This one is dumber
• Drown in Filth – For when you want removal to be unreliable and backfire
• Riot Control – Terrible fog, high cost, bad life gain
• Awe For The Guilds – Awww
• Down/Dirty – Meh
• Fluxcharger – Switch it, i dare you
• Notion Thief – So specific, weak creature
• Bloodrush jerks – I hate you

Adam:

• Goblin Test Pilot – I know you hate this
• Every Cluestone – costs too much, have to tap it to sac it

The worst card in the entire set

Community:

Emmara Tandris rage

Josh:

Awe for the Guilds

Adam:

Drown in Filth

Plans for Saturday Pre-Release event

• Any plans for how to play your guild on saturday?
• What color are you hoping to splash in, if any?

Feedback

Leave feedback below, our contact us on Twitter.
Josh is @jaugustine
Adam is @arclegger

The solution is simple: don’t let the enemy pets hit you.

Download WoW Pet Battle Crew #16 — Team: Rabbit and Darkmoon Zeppelin

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Rabbit Role: DPS Tank Type: Critter (varied quality) Source: Wild Pet Defining Ability: Dodge	Darkmoon Zeppelin Role: Tanky DPS Type: Mechanical (Rare) Source: Darkmoon Faire prize Defining Ability: Decoy

How To Stop Pets From Hitting You

There are a lot of ways to make an enemy pet not hit you. You can use crowd control (like a stun) on it; you can make block the next attack made against you; you can reduce your opponents’ chance to hit; you can make yourself invulnerable for a turn.

All of these tactics, except for one, have a drawback, though. Stuns and crowd control effects now trigger Resilience, which makes the enemy pet immune to all crowd control for awhile. Which means it’s not a long-term solution to the problem of a huge nuke on the enemy team. Blocking the next attack is good, but it’s completely negated by DoTs (which will absorb the effect for minimal loss to the enemy team) and it’s easy for the enemy team to work around. Reducing your opponents’ chance to miss is great, and usually cheap cooldown-wise, but you’re handing over your strategy to lady lucky, who we all know — it’s always a classy lady.

The best bang for your buck is full-turn-duration dodges. These are the abilities that activate one turn and last through the next, making you immune to all attacks during that time. We all know these moves: the Dives, the Dodges, the Phase Shifts. We’ve all been frustrated by them in PvP plenty of times.

Well this week, it’s time for us to do the frustrating! We’re going to build an evasion team centered on the principle that the best way to avoid death is to not get hit.

This is not your typical, fluffy, friendly bunny. Ghost bunnies crave blood!

Why The Combo Works

It was super easy to pick the first pet for this team. It’s the pet that has single-handedly killed my entire team more than once, and absolutely defines this evasion playstyle: the cute little bunny rabbit. Thankfully, there are a ton of rabbit pets in the game, and all of them share the exact same, hyper-evasive skillset.

So grab any bunny pet for your first slot (make sure it has speed as a primary attribute!) and you’re already halfway there.

The second pet was a lot harder for me to nail down. I’ve tried about 8 different pets paired with the rabbit already, and I’m fairly confident that the Darkmoon Zeppelin is a solid partner. It has a great ability that blocks 2 attacks from the enemy, and it has Mechanical damage, which counters Beasts–which are the biggest threat to the poor Rabbit’s survival.

To be 100% honest, there are so many good options for the rabbit’s partner that I’m not sure that Darkmoon Zeppelin will still be on the team come review time in 2 weeks. But he’s a solid starting point as we learn the nuances of this team.

How To Execute It

1. 1. Start with the Zeppelin. if he’s faster than the enemy, throw out a Bombing Run.
2. 2. If not, start straight with Decoy. I’ve found that most big attacks happen on turn 2, because the enemy pet usually needs a turn to prep, either with a buff or a weather effect.
3. 3. So a Decoy on turn 2 should either block the big attack, or force them to stall out and pet swap for 2 turns while they eat up the decoy.
4. 4. If the pet out is a Beast, I leave the Zeppelin in to chew its face. Otherwise, I swap over to the Rabbit and start the carnage fest.
5. 5. I’ll Flurry until the Decoy is down, and then Burrow. That’ll make me immune for the next turn as well, and then get one big hit on them while they get one hit on me.
6. 6. Then I activate Dodge, which will block two attacks because I’m faster than them. That’s another free hit for me.
7. 7. The Rabbit is then exposed for one turn without a dodge effect on it. I Flurry and hope they don’t have a bit nuke for that turn.
8. 8. Then start the cycle again with a Burrow.

In theory, the Rabbit will trade 1 Burrow hit and 3 Flurry attacks on the enemy pet for 2 turns of getting hit.

That trade should almost always work out in my favor. And heaven help them if they have an Undead pet on their team, because they’ll just get obliterated.

Concerns

My big concern with this team is the one pet that’s been the bane of my existence more than any other lately: the Anubisath Idol.

Sandstorm is just way too powerful right now, and it’s a perfect counter to the Rabbit. It almost completely negates the entire damage from Flurry on its own, and coupled with Anubisath’s Humanoid family taking less damage from Critter attacks, it’s kind of GG for the rabbit.

I’ll need to make sure I have a pet on this team that can take down the Idol, otherwise it’s going to be a quick loss whenever I face one–and that makes me a sad pet battler.

Curse you, bunny biter!

Suggested Third Wheels

So my mind isn’t really thinking about a third wheel this week. It’s thinking about 20 different wheels that could all fit on this team. There are just so many options for this team that it’s hard to pick.

So I kind of want to go back to the basics of what a third-wheel pet should do on a team. Here’s what I think–and feel free to let me know if you disagree!

1. First a foremost, a third-wheel pet needs to fill a valuable role that’s missing on the team. If you have all tanks, you want a DPS. If you have all DPS, you want a healer. If you have all Elemental damage, you want a different damage type, etc. So what’s missing from this team? I think burst damage is missing from this team, and so is healing

2. Secondly, I think the third wheel needs to be able to use the existing strategy. It’s not just about shoring up weaknesses. The third wheel needs to shore up weaknesses but still pitch in on the main strategy with a different flavored variant. Like a different type of evasion or a different way of avoiding hits, like the ones I mentioned at the top of this show

3. And third, and probably least importantly, I think the third wheel should counter the counter to your most valuable pet. There is always going to be a pet on your team that does it’s job best. For example, on our AoE team last week, it was Lil’ XT. He just did way more AoE damage than any other pet. For our fire healers team, it was the Corefire Imp, who’s healing and damage output was just perfect for that lineup.

For this team, the rabbit is our MVP and we know that there are two things that will counter it: Humanoid family (less damage output) and Beast attacks (which deal 50% damage to Critters like Rabbits). We already have the Beasts covered, but Humanoids can go to town with us. So I think we need to get some heavy undead attacks on the team to deal with humanoids that the Rabbit can’t push out.

So for our third wheel, the ideal pet is a pet with undead attacks that can dodge attacks or stun the enemy, and has some form of self-healing way to keep itself alive and burst damage. That’s a tall order for any pet, and if you can think of a pet with all of those, please let me know.

I did find one pet with everything but the burst damage, though: Restless Shadeling. It’s an undead pet with mostly undead attacks that can put a debuff on the enemy target that causes your pets to heal every time they attack it (bonus synergy with Rabbit Flurry!), and it also has a pure Dodge that will let it avoid 2 attacks if it goes first.

Sounds pretty good to me.

But there are a lot of other options I’m trying out, such as:

• Lanterns, Lamps, and Nordrassil Wisp for the blind and dodge effects
• Stinker the Skunk for the accuracy and damage debuffs for the enemy team
• Feral Vermling for the interrupt
• Core Hound Pup for the same Rabbit ability lineup + an Elemental attack
• Frigid Frostling for the accuracy debuff and stun
• Sprite Darter Hatchling for the dodge
• Spectral Porcupette for the big blocks and damage reduction
• Wolpertinger for the plethora of CC and damage output

Skulls for all who oppose the Rabbit King!

How To Get The Pets

A basic Rabbit
There are 13 different types of rabbits you could collect with this ability set, but the easiet to get is the plain ol no-fancy-name Rabbit pet. It’s capturable in just about every race’s starting zones and it’s a very low-level wild pet, so almost anyone can get it.

Alliance players can grab it easily in Stormwind, and Horde players’ best option is to grab one in Azshara.

Bring: A team of 3 pets, any level.

Darkmoon Zeppelin
This one’s a little trickier. The Darkmoon Zeppelin is a reward that must be purchased from the Darkmoon Faire, which is only available in-game one week every month. If you don’t already have it, I recommend stocking up the 90 tickets required to buy it ASAP. The best way to earn these tickets is through daily quests playing carnival games at the faire while it’s active.

Wowhead has built a great guide to the Darkmoon Faire that will help you figure out how to earn the most tickets every day to help unlock this pet faster. According to their guide, you can earn 145 tickets in a single week that the faire is active, so you should be able to earn this pet in one week!

Bring: a level 20+ character that has leveled professions, and a love for minigames.

Join The Podcast

• SUBSCRIBE to the WoW Battle Pet Crew podcast on iTunes or this RSS feed.
• FOLLOW me on Twitter or Google+
• MEET fellow battle pet tamers and discuss team strategies and the latest pet battle news in our Google+ Community.

This week, we take a look at how the business model might work for Hearthstone. Speculation abounds, but we call out anything that has been confirmed by Blizzard on the show.

Download The Happy Hearthstone #5: Free to Play

Subscribe to The Happy Hearthstone Podcast on iTunes or via RSS!

The Links

• Sign up for the beta!
• Watch the Shaman vs Mage game
• Visit the official website
• Hear more awesome, royalty-free music created by Jason Shaw

Hello!

• Derrick is on the show this week
• Topic: Free to play as the business model
• Reasons to be happy this week

Who is Derrick?

• History with card games
• History with Blizzard games
• Are you a cheapskate or a big-spender?

Free to Play in General

• This is Blizzard’s first F2P game ever
• What does that mean?
• Microtransaction controversy
• Examples you might be familiar with

Microtransactions We Expect To See (Speculation)

• New skins for the avatar
• New hero to unlock
• Buff to boost chance to find gold cards in packs (just visuals)
• Card packs
• New voice-over packs
• Playmats
• In-game Tournaments
• Technical account conveniences: name changes, inventory moves between PC and iPad

Microtransactions We Don’t Expect To See (Speculation)

• Rent cards temporarily
• Purchase more powerful cards than you can get in packs
• Game Modes
• XP potions

On A Technical Level

• Probably Paypal
• Diablo 3 Hook-up
• Battle.net authenticator

Buying Card Packs

• Only confirmed purchase so far
• Planned $1 per pack
• Pack = 5 cards
• 1 guaranteed rare
• Each other card slot has a chance to have higher rarity

Why Buy Packs?

• Thrill of opening for random cards
• Build out your decks with more/better cards
• Use to play in the Forge

How To Earn Free Cards

Every time you play a game, you earn the most basic “starter” level cards

Every other card is an “expert” card and can be earned from 4 sources:

• Opening packs, which can be won periodically by playing
• Purchasing them from Blizzard directly?
• Crafting them (we’ll discuss this in-depth in future)
• Earning achievements in-game

What We Want To Come “With The Box”

• 1 hero starter deck (your choice)
• 3 packs dedicated to your hero deck after you pick
• 1 free pack every time you “level” via XP system (if there is one)
• 20 avatars (like LoL)

Card of the Week

The bane of noobs returns to rain torment onto the card table!

Farewell

• Follow Derrick on Twitter
• What you want to see in future episodes
• What hosts you want to visit the show

Join The Podcast

• SUBSCRIBE to The Happy Hearthstone podcast on iTunes or this RSS feed.
• FOLLOW me on Twitter or Google+
• MEET new Hearthstone friends and discuss deck strategies and the latest game news in our Google+ Community.
• PLAY with us in Hearthstone, whenever we actually get into beta!

Download WoW Pet Battle Crew #15 — Review: Lil’ XT and Kirin Tor Familiar

Subscribe to The WoW Pet Battle Crew on iTunes or via RSS!

Goal of the team

I built this team because I’ve always wanted to try an AOE team that killed all 3 enemy pets at the same time, and patch 5.2 provided some minor buffs to the strategy that I thought might finally make it worthwhile. Lil’ XT had been sitting in my bench for a long time, begging to let me unleash his huge AoE ability, and I thought I had finally found a team strong enough to back him up.

Your suggestions

• Skruffy Zookeeper is a new listener who jumped right into the team with me this week, which is just awesome. I’ve been doing this show for 15 episodes now, and this was the first time that someone created the team and played alongside me–and actually a few people did it this week. Skruffy went out and bought Lil’ XT and paired it up with a Lofty Libram. After a few bad matches, he thought that the team needed more AoE damage and a solid dodge to avoid big attacks. So he put in a Spawn of G’nathus for his third

  I think Spawn of G’nathus is an incredible addition to this team, but he’s so hard to get that I didn’t even mention him on the original show. He drops off of a group rare in the ocean of Kun-Lai Summit (called G’nathus unsurprisingly). I tried to form a group for this every night for a week, since it takes at least 4 people to kill it without some intense 20-minute kiting tactic. I even offered hundreds of gold to anyone that would help me and never got a single response.

  But, hey, if you can get this pet–by all means give it a shot! Skruffy had amazing success with it! He got 47 wins and only a couple losses the first day he used it and in his own words, “ Most were not even close wins; some were so bad I was doing that I feel sorry for you kinda wins.” He also told me that “Lil XT is great but you have to use him knowing you are only gonna get to use hime once.”



Oh, Call Lightning, we meet again.

• Green Armadillo also pointed out that there is a cheap knock-off of Lil XT available in-game. Engineers can make the Personal World Destroyer. It has a lot of the same type of abilities, but all a little weaker. It’s AoE Quake hits for 17% less damage, and his damage buff is Supercharge, which doesn’t hurt himself, but only gives +125% damage boost for 1 turn, instead of 100% for 2 rounds.

  Armadillo also says that it’s really hard to not go with Call Lightning and suggests the dragons who can also cast Cyclone for more AoE damage. I agree that it’s extremely tempting, Armadillo–and I’ll talk about my experiences with it later.

• Fluid Core wrote in with a link that shows every AoE ability in the game, which is super useful! He also mentioned occasionally fogetting that the Kirin Tor Familiar is actually an Elemental-type family, despite dealing all magic damage. I forgot that a lot too, thinking he would survive a huge nuke and then watching it die. Whoops!
• Later in the week, Green Armadillo showed up to suggest putting a single-target DPS machine into the third slot. He found that having only AoE made it hard to eliminate threat, and that having a pet that could “clean up” after the AoE might be useful.

  He suggested the Nexus Whelpling for its Mana Surge ability, which lasts 3 rounds and deals bonus damage when in the weather effect that the Kirin Tor Familiar spawns. It sounded like a great fit, but I didn’t have a Nexus Whelpling in my stable at all.

• Thankfully, Holybee showed up, who’d also been trying this team and had a great recommendation as well. Holybee wanted a pet with “a nice single target burst, with small passive heals, and some small amount of speed.” And found it all in Harbinger of Flame–that pet we used on the last team and already have leveled up to 25. Perfect!

  Holybee also had two other insights to provide about the team:
  “If they trigger Heartbroken, Lil’ XT’s Tantrum is absolutely devastating. He is very much the glass cannon though”
  “This team is either extremely effective or you get demolished. Very rarely is it a matter of one hit, one miss, or who has the last hit like with some other comps. While it was not the most fun to level, it is pretty fun to play at cap, and seams to win more than it looses at cap too.”

You can’t go wrong with huge fire blasts.

Changes I made to the lineup:

I swapped pets around a lot while leveling this team. I wasn’t quite sure which AoE pet I wanted in that third slot, and even ran it without Lil XT early on since my XT was already level 21 and the rest were below 5.

I ended up ditching the Darkmoon Zeppelin because having one Mechanical pet on the team is already really hard, and having two just guarantees you lose against any team with an Elemental pet.

I ended up ditching Curious Wolvar Pup because I usually only got to use his AoE ability once before it died (it has a 4 round cooldown), and there are much better pets with single-target damage or utility to fill the third slot.

I wanted to run Spawn of G’nathus or Nexus Whelping in the third slot at least for awhile, but like I mentioned earlier, couldn’t get my hands on either in the time I had to test this team. So if you don’t like my lineup, try slotting in one of those.

Instead, I settled into having the Harbinger of Flame in the third slot. It excels at cleaning up the low-damage pets left behind the AoE torrent left behind by the third pets. He’s also just a really strong pet on its own, letting it duels with most of the big threat pets you might face.

When it works:

When the lineup worked, my opponent jaw must’ve hit the floor. When Lil XT gets his Heartbroken damage buff for two rounds and unleashes his huge 3-turn AoE against a team with no Elemental pets and at least one beast pet, it can kill the frontline pet, and take the backline to below half health.

It’s amazing. Then I swap in the Kirin Tor Familiar to spam some more AoEs and kill the other two pets at the same time. When Lil XT’s ability dominated, I didn’t even need a third pet.

I really like Heartbroken as an ability
It’s the equivalent of a red-mana card in Magic. It’s high risk, high reward that relies on massive aggression. It’s a little frustrating that you have to rely on the other team being greedy enough to attack you and trigger it, but they usually did. The best was when there was a DoT on XT that I could use to trigger the buff a turn early if XT was faster than the opponent and the other pet used a defensive ability or swapped out.

Tympanic Tantrum was just as effective as I thought
Even not pumped up, it’s a solid damage dealer, and pumped up, it’s an absolute monster.

Lil XT has some on the most ridiculous voice effects
Anyone who fought the real XT in Ulduar will know.

Arcane Explosion was more effective than I thought it would be
If I got a couple lucky crits on the front line pet, it would provide some pressure on that pet to force it to use defensive abilities, just buying me more time to spam AoEs. The Elemental aspect came in handy more than once to avoid annoying weather effects.

All the porcupines shall fall before my might!

When it doesn’t work:

There’s really only one reason why this team failed to win: I could not get XT’s supercharged AoE off on a non-Elemental pet. Whenever I could make that happen, it was almost always a guaranteed win. But without it, this team just didn’t have the raw firepower to take the match.

There’s two factors that make this problem a fairly big one:
1. Getting the supercharge relies on your opponent CHOOSING to give it to you. He has to attack you for you to get the damage buff, and smart players will resist the temptation of dealing more damage to you because they know it will hurt them in the long run.
2. There are a lot of elemental pets out there, and they’re still pretty darn popular.

Sandstorm is my bane once more
All AoE hits are broken up into smaller chunks. Even XT’s huge hits are broken up into two smaller attacks on the frontline pet that just evaporate in Sandstorm.

Arcane Winds is bugged
I was able to still be stunned by the Kun-Lai Runt on my Curious Wolvar Pup and Harbinger of Flame (both Humanoid). It was really annoying, because stopping stuns is pretty much the only thing that the weather effect is supposed to do, and it doesn’t do it. The Kun-Lai Runt is super popular right now too; I fought it in probably 20% of my fights.

So a bad game looked a bit like this:
I would take a risk and start with XT while they had an Elemental pet on my bench. They would start with the Elemental pet. I would activate Heartbroken and they would either spend that turn either powering up a big attack (Deep Breath, Pump, etc.) so I would not get the damage buff.
Or they’d unleash a huge Elemental hit that, thanks to the 50% damage taken from my Heartbroken would one-shot my pet.

In either scenario, XT would get one turn of a super-powered AoE or 2 turns of a weak AoE before dying.

In the worst games, a couple of the pets on the enemy team would dodge the AoE so that I lost an entire pet while only dealing about 10% damage to 2 of their pets. From there, my other two pets would take turns stepping up to the firing squad and getting exploded.

See the team in action

Note: Twitch seems to have lost my livestream for this team. I’m working with them to try and track it down. Apologies for teasing the livestream on the podcast while the it’s MIA!

What you missed: a lot of me chanting “please hit me, please hit me,
please hit me.

Final record

49 – 39 (56% win ratio)

This is one of my least impressive win ratios so far, and that doesn’t really surprise me. I went into this team fully aware that it wasn’t an optimum team–that it had some glaring weak spots I knew would drag down the ratio.

Do I still use the team?

Yes. I still had fun with the team, despite not having a great win-loss ratio. Even though it happened less often than I would’ve liked, seeing Lil’ XT bring down an entire team’s health bars from full to zero was incredibly fun, and so surprising for both me and my opponent that I got a little bit addicted to it. Watching one pet just wreck their team is really quite funny — you just have to have be able to stomach the other 80% of games where you’ll have a much harder time of winning.

Individual pet reviews

LiL’ XT: 8 — Lil’ XT is a solid pet. He has the best AoE potential of any pet in the game, but that power is offest by being fairly easy to shut down. When your opponent lets you activate its full potential, however, it’s really, really fun.

Kirin Tor Familiar: 6 — This pet worked well in this lineup, but I’m not convinced he’ll work great anywhere else. His AoE spam isn’t worthwhile without a heavy hitter like XT to back it up, and it’s single-target damage is interesting, but not the most effective.

Harbinger of Flame: 9 — I’m sticking with what I said in his first review on the last team’s episode.

Curious Wolvar Pup: 4 — If Snap Trap was more reliable, I might be more excited about this little rascal. But without his most unique ability, the rest of his kit is just blah, and his visuals aren’t cool enough to carry him. Pass, unless you simply can’t resist ferocious yet adorable woodland critters.

Join The Podcast

• SUBSCRIBE to the WoW Battle Pet Crew podcast on iTunes or this RSS feed.
• FOLLOW me on Twitter or Google+
• MEET fellow battle pet tamers and discuss team strategies and the latest pet battle news in our Google+ Community.
• GUESS what the mystery pet is on next week’s podcast! Congratulations to Kiisu for spotting the obnoxious tones of Harpy Youngling on this week’s show!