March 2013   « Archives | Current News »

Patch 5.2 is finally here, bringing many changes to Pet Battles as well as new pets to collect!


Here's a summary of what to expect in the latest content patch. For a full list of all the updates, check out the official 5.2 patch notes.

23 New Pets to Collect!

• The Gusting Grimoire is the common pet loot card from the latest TCG expansion deck, Betrayal of the Guardian
• 4 new wild pets on the Isle of Thunder.
• There are 3 new raid pets that can drop in Throne of Thunder LFR, Normal or Heroic mode.
• Completing a new quest to defeat Elite Battle Pets rewards the Red Panda and will unlock a daily. This daily has a chance to yield additional panda pets!
• Do you like dinosaurs? The Isle of Giants has 4 new baby dinosaur pets to collect as well as a quest reward pet for gathering up 999 dino-bones.
• 2 new pets that drop from (rare) elites.
• Better get your angling gear ready, because there are 4 new fish companions just waiting to be fished up!

View All New Pets

New Pet Battle Features

• Got inventory space? Battle Pet Bandages now stack to 25 and are BoA!
• Forfeiting a battle will no longer despawn your wild pet opponent. Additionally, your active pet team will take a damage penalty for fleeing. Note: This penalty should not affect Tamer Battles.
• Players at max level will have a chance to receive Lesser Charms of Good Fortune from a successful Pet Battle. The opposing team must be within 5 levels of the highest level pet on your active team, and higher level opponents have a better chance at yielding a charm.
• Players that are not level capped will receive player experience for winning a Pet Battle against a pet that is within 5 levels of the player's highest level pet.
• PVP Pet Battlers rejoice! There is a chance to earn a Battle-Stone from a successful PVP battle.
• Pet resilience is a new mechanic that grants a pet that has been recently affected by crowd-control, immunity to crowd-control for a short period of time.
• Many pet attacks and abilities have been re-tuned to help balance gameplay.

Patch 5.2 offers a large list of pets to collect and new opponents to battle, so what are you waiting for?

Go get 'em!

UPDATE: Player experience earned from Pet Battles was hotfixed. A blue post provided some clarification and insight on how experience is calculated. [source]

It's been a few days since Patch 5.2 was released, and a few bugs were discovered along with some updates to existing content.

Update to the Darkmoon Faire
The regular Darkmoon Faire dailies now reward Darkmoon Game Prizes. These packages will always contain a faire ticket, but now they also have a small chance to drop any of the Darkmoon Faire vendor pets! [source]

Note that it's unlikely the Darkmoon Eye will also come from the Darkmoon Game Prize. This pet will probably remain exclusive to the Darkmoon Pet Supplies.

Known Bugs In 5.2

• Player experience earned through successful battles is slightly over-tuned, and a hotfix will be implemented to address this issue. [source]
• Pets that can only be obtained once, such as companions rewarded from achievements, were changed so any earned after 5.2 was released would only be of a single breed. However, pets that were earned prior to the patch still retain their original breed(s). Developers are looking into a way to change these existing pets into the new single breed. [source]
• The Gusting Grimoire is currently uncommon quality. It will be hotfixed to the intended rare quality in the near future. [source]

If you notice any other 5.2 pet-related bugs, feel free to discuss them here.

Updates to Pet Battle Guide
In light of the new mechanics added to Pet Battles in 5.2, we've updated our Guide to Pet Battles with all the latest information:

Updated Guide to Pet Battles

Enjoy our monthly web comic created for WoW pet collectors! We feature a new World of Petcraft strip every month.


About the Artist
Meaghan McLaughlin is an aspiring artist and the author of "Nerds Illustrated." She's currently available to create custom WoW artwork.

We've launched another round of exciting updates for WarcraftPets! Topping the list are site-wide pet collection rankings according to pet score.

Score a New Rank!
Pet score is a numerical assessment of your pet collecting efforts. Your score is primarily determined by the total number of unique pets you've collected and the quality of those pets. To a lesser extent, your pets' levels play a role.

Prior to the introduction of pet score, all collections were ranked according to the total number of pets collected. However, with the addition of qualities and levels for pets, it no longer felt proper to rank collections solely based on the number of pets collected.

We've also given pet score a little more visibility across the site. User profiles now show realm rankings according to pet score rather than the number of pets collected. In addition, pet score is shown underneath site comments and to the left of forum posts, beneath a user's avatar.

Rankings apply to WarcraftPets' Top Pet Collections and to Realm Leaderboards.

Top 50 → Top 500
With the popularity of pet score, showing only the top 50 collectors felt a bit too restrictive. So we've updated the Top Pet Collections list to show the top 500 collections, rewarding many more collectors for their pet collecting prowess.

So if you're an avid pet collector, check the new list — you might discover your name somewhere in there!

Pet Score = Zero?
We introduced pet score two months ago, giving our most active members plenty of time to unlock their scores. However, anyone who hasn't unlocked their score yet still has a score of zero, regardless of the number of pets they've collected.

Once a user logs into the site and reimports their collection, they're score will update and they'll be ranked accordingly.

BattleTag^® Support
For all of you pet traders who are active on our pet trading forums, we've added support for Blizzard BattleTags^®, allowing you to add and edit your Battle.net BattleTag^® within your WarcraftPets account.

Once you've set your BattleTag^®, it will appear to the left of your forum posts (beneath your avatar). Adding your BattleTag^® can make it much easier to coordinate in-game pet trades with collectors on other realms.

According to Blizzard:
A BattleTag^® is a name you choose to represent yourself on Battle.net. You may set your BattleTag^® from within your Battle.net account.

Other Updates
We've implemented corrected base qualities to all non-battle pets. This update will increase the pet score for many of our users. Base Quality has also been added to the General Info tab of all pet profiles.

In addition, we've removed Captchas site-wide for Site MVPs, since their accounts have been verified. This also provides another minor perk to our elite members.

More to Come...
Some other sweet updates will be coming soon, including an expansion of pet collection filters and a Power Search feature. We expect these updates to go live sometime in May.

We thank you for your continued support of WarcraftPets, making regular updates like these possible.

"Winter" as we know it officially ended recently, and although the Snowy Owl has gone back into hibernation, the Qiraji Guardling has yet to start spawning.

Cory "Mumper" Stockton clarified on Twitter about the status of the Guardling companion:

"The Qiraji Guardling will be available in the summertime. Still a few months to go."

So when exactly can we expect to see the Guardling in Silithus?

Real-world summer starts in June in the northern hemisphere, however it's entirely possible for this wild pet to start spawning a month earlier. If this is the case, it would match up with the Snowy Owl, who made its first appearance one month prior to our real-world winter.

We will just have to wait and see!

Pets Not On the Fish Time-schedule
The speculation that these two pets would follow a similar (if not exact) pattern as the Summer Bass and Winter Squid doesn't seem to hold true, and now we have confirmation of this from Cory:

"Seasonal pets will follow the pre-existing seasons starting in patch 5.3. Note that the existing fish are available for spring/summer and fall/winter. The pets are available only in the Summer and Winter seasons so the dates are not the exact same." [source 1/2] [source 2/2]

So although the fish don't seem to mind the extra heat/cold, the Snowy Owl and Qiraji Guardling must have more particular tastes in seasons!

Patch 5.3 is nearly ready for testing on the PTR. Notes for new Pet Battle achievements and pets have already been datamined! [source]

Preview of a New Wild Pet
Mumper posted a small screenshot (pictured right) of a new wild pet coming in 5.3. [source]

"A new battle pet wanders the vast expanse of Northrend in patch 5.3. The elusive Unborn Val'kyr awaits!"

New Pet PVP Achievements
If you enjoy Pet PVP, there are four new achievements that may interest you. One even rewards a new pet while another a title!

• Brutal Pet Brawler - Win 250 PvP pet battles through Find Battle with a full team of level 25 pets. Reward: Stunted Direhorn.
• Deadly Pet Brawler - Win 1000 PvP pet battles through Find Battle with a full team of level 25 pets. Title: Trainer.
• Merciless Pet Brawler - Win 10 PvP pet battles through Find Battle with a full team of level 25 pets.
• Vengeful Pet Brawler - Win 50 PvP pet battles through Find Battle with a full team of level 25 pets.

New Raid Dropped Pets
Burning Crusade raids are getting some re-tuning in preparation for a second batch of raid pets.

There are a total of 10 to collect. They drop from Karazhan, Serpentshrine Cavern and Tempest Keep.

• Lil' Bad Wolf
• Menagerie Custodian
• Netherspace Abyssal
• Fiendish Imp
• Tideskipper
• Tainted Waveling
• Coilfang Stalker
• Pocket Reaver
• Lesser Voidcaller
• Phoenix Hawk Hatchling

Collecting all of them rewards the achievement Raiding with Leashes II: Attunement Edition and the pet Tito!

View All 5.3 Datamined Pets