WoW Pet Battle News: Patch 5.3
April 10, 2013
I come bearing terrible news. A new patch has landed on WoW’s Public Test Servers, and that means it’s time to be rotatingly excited, anxious, fearful, bitter, and happy about all the changes coming to your favorite battle pets.
But which of those emotions should you feel most with patch 5.3 breathing down our necks? Let’s take a look at all the changes scheduled so far and find out.
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I am a new pet, and I want to love you. Also, to yell at you. And shed leaves on your lawn.
New Pets in Patch 5.3
There are a lot of pets coming in the patch, and we’ve almost certainly not seen all of them so far. Here’s what we know is coming.
From Thunder Island Raids
- Living Fluid — Primordious
- Viscous Horror — Primordious (Heroic)
- Pygmy Direhorn — Horridon
From Burning Crusade Raids
- Phoenix Hawk Hatchling — A’lar in The Eye
- Pocket Reaver — Void Reaver in The Eye
- Lesser Voidcaller — High Astromancer Solarian in The Eye
- Tainted Waveling — Hydross the Unstable in Serpentshrine Cavern
- Tideskipper — Morogrim Tidewalker in Serpentshrine Cavern
- Coilfang Stalker — Lady Vashj in Serpentshrine Cavern
- Lil’ Bad Wolf — the Big Bad Wolf in Karazhan
- Menagerie Custodian — the Curator in Karazhan
- Fiendish Imp — Terestian Illhoof in Karazhan
- Netherspace Abyssal — Prince Malchezaar in Karazhan
- Tito — Achievement for collecting all the raid pets in 5.3
From everything else
@proffessor_oak Less elusive than the Minfernal. The spawning is certainly unique on her though.
— Cory Stockton (@mumper) March 25, 2013
- Unborn Val’kyr — Unknown spot in Northrend
- Stunted Direhorn — Achievement to win 250 PvP battles
- Gahz’rooki — Reward from the 5.3 world event
- Filthling — Drop from Quivering Filth on Isle of Thunder
- Direhorn Runt — Drop from Direhorn on Isle of Giants
- Blossoming Ancient — Unknown
Pet Balance Changes
- Same level pets: no longer have a base 5% chance to dodge
- Higher level pets: miss chance reduced from 5% per level to 2% per level
- UNCHANGED: 5% crit (1.5x damage) and 10% natural variance in damage O_o
- Blistering Cold damage doubled, but only (currently) used by the LK CE pet
- Rebalancing a lot of basic attacks to provide more risk/reward options
- These abilities all have +5-15% damage boost, -5-15% accuracy
Bug Fixes
The Ethereal Soul-Trader has returned to full size, but the bug that I do not own one has still not been fixed.
New Things To Do
- Pet battle in dungeons and raids
- Cheer for favorite teams while spectating battles in the open world
- Collect all the new level 25 PvP achievements and the new weekly PvP quest to earn the title “Trainer”
- Tackle the new Beasts of Fable quests, which are now broken into 3 parts. You can take one or all of them. The epic pets are harder to defeat now, but I’ll update my guide if needed.
This otter is plotting to kill you in patch 5.3.
Quality of Life Improvements
- Hit chance for all abilities is now displayed in the tooltip, and will change based on buffs/debuffs on you.
- Ability loadouts are saved when swapping pets in and out of the lineup
- Flawless Battle-Stones are now bount to Battle.net account
- Beasts of Fable and Spirit Tamer quests all give XP and battle stones now
How You Can Prepare For It Now
- Get a level 25 PvP team ready. If you need suggestions, look out the teams we’ve covered on the show! My personal recommendation would be the Hot Healers team: Corefire Imp, Molten Hatchling, and a third wheel.
- If you like high risk/high reward pets, look up the list of abilities that are getting the higher damage + miss options, and start leveling them now. Personally, I’m going to stick with the lower damage, no miss pets if I can help it because a miss frustrates me, but a lower attack doesn’t.
- Beat the Epic Beats of Fable pets while they’re still easy!
- Find a friend to run the BC raids with and start practicing them to learn the encounters, if you want to be super intense
- Prep to get the Unborn Val’kyr on day one. Drop a fast-flying alt in Northrend, and level up an army of Aquatic Pets that deals Critter Damage (the perfect counter for and Undead pet that does all Undead damage). Any Frog will work great, thanks to Tongue Lash + Swarm of Flies + Heal. Swamp Croaker is great for blocking heavy-hits if it uses Curse of Doom. Also, it’s a new Isle of Thunder pet, so it’s awesome.
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Tags: pets, World of Warcraft
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Nice will have to keep this one book marked
So many pets, right?
Can’t wait to try them out. I wish they had more unique abilities, but their appearances are still rad.
Unborn Valkyr:vI just had to mention this, as you it wasn’t something you said had been tried, and it was the very first thing I thought of.
Death. Try running around dead. Val’kyr raise the dead and by norse lore, bringing fallen soldiers to the next world. They also look quite alike spirit healers which also resses us. Worth a try atleast!
That’s a great idea, Fluid Core. Good points about the death-aspect tie-in to their lore as well
It makes perfect sense!
Apparently one person on the forums has tried this, with no luck. I wouldn’t be surprised if maybe she’s just not implemented on the server yet, and that death does end up being involved with her spawn conditions. Good thought!
Maybe I’m unusual, but I have never played a single PVP pet battle, despite owning 426 unique pets (including 49 level 25 pets and almost 300 rare quality pets).
Green Armadillo recently posted: Fruits of SWTOR Double Exp
Haha, you madman. I don’t think it’s unusual at all
I think a lot of people prefer the PVE side of it, especially if you’re leveling a character and constantly visiting new zones, which house new pets to capture.
I’ve caught most of the Pandaria pets, so I usually do PvP because I can queue for it while doing my dailies or waiting for a raid queue to pop
Also, I love the challenge in PvP, and seeing the cool combinations that other players come up with.
[…] Patch 5.3 is just around the corner, bringing a pile of new pets to capture, harder challenges for our little brawlers to overcome, and plenty of PvP incentives to keep us fighting. […]