Patch 5.4 Battle Pet Changes and Updates

Like each major patch, patch 5.4 brings some modifications to existing Warcraft battle pets, which include some changes made to the passives of a few types of pets. Each type of pet has a passive that gives it a boost against certain attacks or maneuvers. For example, Elementals have ignored all weather effects (like lightning storms and sunlight).

New passives for battle pets include:

• Aquatic (Old): Aquatic pets take 25% less damage from damage over time spells (DOTs).
• Aquatic (New): Aquatic pets take 50% less damage from DOTs.

• Critter (Old): Crowd control effects are less effective on critters.
• Critter (New): Critters cannot be rooted or stunned and are immune to sleep effects.

• Dragonkin (Old): After bringing a target below 25%, Dragonkin deal 50% more damage.
• Dragonkin (New): After bringing a target below 50%, Dragonkin deal 50% more damage.

• Elemental (Old): All weather effects are ignored by elementals.
• Elemental (New): Elementals ignore negative weather effects.

• Magic (Old): No attack will take more than 40% of a Magic pet's life.
• Magic (New): No attack will take more than 35% of a Magic pet's life.

It's a good idea to keep these pet changes in mind as the changes may impact the future lineup chosen for difficult pet battles.

Other notable changes to pet battles:

• Pets may now be won from bonus rolls that use a Mogu Rune of Fate (in Throne of Thunder) or a Warforged Seal (in Siege of Orgrimmar).
• Players who take too long to make a move in PVP pet battles will experience shorter timers during successive moves.
• Combining 3 family-specific Flawless Battle Stones will reward a general-use Battle Stone
• Training to play with battle pets is cheaper
• Maximum learned pets has risen to 1000 from 650

Get Your Skywisp Moth on the Timeless Isle Warcraft Pets Patch 5.4

Get Your Skywisp Moth on the Timeless Isle

Patch 5.4 brings a whole host of new pets to collect and they come from vendors, are available from drops, and may also come from boss kills or off random mobs. On the Timeless Isle, the primary questing zone for the patch, there are three new wild pets to capture.

New wild pets in 5.4 include:

• Ashwing Moth
• Flamering Moth
• Skywisp Moth

Getting your hands on an Ashwing Moth or a Flamering Moth is easy and just requires a ride around the island on your ground mount. Getting the Skywisp Moth, however, requires a little creativity since you're not allowed to fly (on a traditional mount) on the island and the Skywisp Moths are quite high. They usually sit on pillars that seem completely inaccessible from the ground. But there is a way to get your hands on a Skywisp Moth without hacking the game!

The method requires using a Highwind Albatross as your vehicle to travel high around the island. These large birds travel in a predictable pattern around the island and all you have to do is hit one and it will pick you up and carry you around the island. You won't have to dismiss your pet if you're a hunter or a warlock.

Get Picked Up by a Highwind Albatross

IMPORTANT: Only hit the bird once! Make sure you don't have any trinkets equipped that proc damage because these might cause the bird to stop flying!

Every so often your bird will fly over a pillar or another high spot where there's a Skywisp Moth just waiting to be captured. Simply start hitting the bird again and kill it to get it to drop you right on top of your future moth. Note that the albatross may start to fly again if you don't kill it fast enough, so make sure you have some good firepower ready to get yourself dropped exactly where you want!

Kill your Albatross to Get Dropped where you want

Fortunately, each of the wild new pets in 5.4 spawn in abundance all over the isle, so it shouldn't be hard to snag nice rare versions of these new pets. Remember that you won't want to use Aquatic pets against these birds since Aquatics take more damage from birds. Your Magic pets will do more damage to the moths and might do too much damage for capture, so it's a good idea to use a few Beasts to capture these moths (Beasts won't hit the moths too hard to prevent capture nor will they take too much damage from the attacks!).

The Timeless Isle is sure fiery today!

Little Tommy Newcomer on the Timeless Isle

Patch 5.4 brings with it new pets, new battles, and more pet fun, and one of the first battles you'll likely encounter (if you're level 90 and have a slew of max level pets) is a fight against "Little Tommy Newcomer. He offers a daily quest for a pet battle which rewards some gold and some "timeless coins," which are a currency for purchasing items (like more battle pets!) on the Isle.

Little Tommy is located on the western side of the "Celestial Court" in the middle of the island (click on the picture to see a larger version):

Little Tommy Newcomer only has one pet and it's legendary status (orange). "Lil' Oondasta" is cute and adorable, but this little dinosaur will pound your team into dust if you bring the wrong lineup. This wee Beast can do heavy damage to the entire team and has the capability to 1-shot many pets. This means creativity in team choice is mandatory to beat this little beast.

Abilities that this mini dino will unleash against your team include:

• Spiritfire Beam: Deals 27 Magic damage to the enemy's active pet and 27 Magic damage to the enemy's backline pets.
• Frill Blast: Deals 72 Magic damage and forces the opponent's highest health pet to swap into battle.
• Crush: Crush the enemy, dealing 414 Humanoid damage.

One of the only ways to beat these heavy-hitting abilities is to abuse the resurrection ability of Mechanical pets. Conveniently, Mechanical pets also do heavy damage to Beasts, which will help tremendously with Lil' Oondasta.

This was my lineup:

There are likely many other comps that will beat Lil' Oondasta; however, it's all going to be about bringing the right counter classes. Note that my Wild Jade Hatchling (at the time I'm writing this) is green quality! You don't necessarily need to bring blue-quality pets to emerge victorious against Little Tommy Newcomer.

One of the great things about fighting against Oondasta is that this pet is a slow one and your pets will very nearly always go first. This means that even if a pet is one-shot, you'll get in at least one attack. And the resurrection of Mechanical pets works wonders here against Lil' Oondasta.

My strategy included using the "Call Lightning" ability, which deals mechanical damage (great against Oondasta), and which also increases Mechanical damage for several rounds. Unfortunately, my wee Wild Jade Hatchling gets one-shot by Ooondasta and so then its up to my Clockwork Gnome to put a few Turrets down and blast Oondasta for a lot of damage over several rounds. After the Gnome expires, it's easy to finish off Oondasta with some Mechanical attacks from the Cogblade Raptor.

One piece of advice: it's not a big deal if your Wild Jade Hatchling (or any pet with the Call Lightning ability) gets one-shot. This just means that your Gnome and Raptor (or your Mechanical pets of choice) will have more time under the Call Lightning buff to beat Oondasta with heavy hitting attacks.

Do you have another pet team that will beat Oondasta every time? Post it in a reply below!