January 2016   « Archives | Current News »

It is with heavy heart that we say farewell to Curtis Mueller (a.k.a Doobjanka), WarcraftPets' community leader for the past 6+ years.

It was 2009 when Doobjanka joined the WarcraftPets team. He'd caught my eye as our leading pet collector for many months. As I got to know him, I knew he'd be the perfect candidate to lead our growing community.

Big Shoes to Fill
Throughout the years, Doobjanka has accomplished much for WarcraftPets. He initially signed on to field questions and account-related issues, but he's achieved so much more than that throughout his tenure.

Doobjanka ran our site contests, manned our Twitter and Facebook accounts, and helped manage our forums.

Later he would host our BlizzCon Meet-and-Greets solo, always eager to engage fans of the site in person. His passion for pets was grand – he could talk for hours on the subject and tell engaging stories about his adventures. He knew WoW pets like the back of his hand.

But Doobjanka's greatest legacy is something he did all on his own. In 2012, he created the WarcraftPets family of guilds. He recognized the need to bring fans of the site together in-game and took it upon himself to make that happen. Without Doobjanka, guilds like WarcraftPets, Magical Menagerie, Pet Peeves, Littlest Pet League and Dead Mole Society wouldn't exist today.

A Heartfelt Goodbye
While I'm saddened by his decision to step down, I completely understand and applaud his choice. He's ready to move on and enjoy other aspects of his life. I know that if he approaches those things with even half the enthusiasm and optimism that he brought to WarcraftPets, he'll be wildly successful.

If you'd like to say your own goodbye to Doobjanka, feel free to do so in his goodbye post in our forums, or leave a comment below. I know we'll all miss him.

New Volunteers Welcome
For the time being, I'll be covering for Doobjanka in the spare time I have. But I'd love to bring on another volunteer to take up the cup of being WarcraftPets' new community leader full time.

If you're interested in becoming WarcraftPets' new community leader, keep watching our news feed. Within the next week or two we'll post details about the position and how you can apply.

UPDATE: As of January 18, 2016 we are no longer accepting applications for the Community Leader position. Our sincere thanks to everyone who applied.

Following the departure of Doobjanka, WarcraftPets' lovable Community Leader of 6+ years, we're seeking a new Site Admin!

Help Lead our Community!
We're looking for a mature-minded, responsible pet collector to step up to become our new Community Leader.

The Community Leader provides a fun and positive atmosphere for members of our community. Additionally, he or she will provide information and feedback to visitors of the site via email and/or through our social pages.

About the Position
Those with excellent communication skills, patience, and professionalism will truly excel as our Community Leader. Responsibilities include:

• Replying to questions, suggestions, and comments submitted via email by site visitors.
• Assisting site members with account management issues.
• Posting to our Twitter and Facebook accounts.
• Running occasional contests.
• Moderating misconduct throughout the site and forums.
• Time: About 5-15 minutes, 2-3 times per day.

Join the WarcraftPets Team!
To apply, fill out our Site Admin application. (Takes about 10 minutes.)

We'll be accepting applications for the next week. So if you're interested in joining the WarcraftPets team, be sure to get your application in soon.

Dalaran Pet Tournament Island
Legion Alpha is up and running once again and a new pet area was discovered in Dalaran. [source]


One of the floating islands outside of Dalaran is now home to what appears to be a Pet Battle arena.

The island is currently only accessible by walking along the outer edge of the city. You can accomplish this by carefully jumping down from the flight path area, and navigating towards the left side of Dalaran.

The island (pictured above) is set up with a similar building as the Menagerie, complete with a battling ring and pet stalls.

It even has a training area with Target Dummies (pictured right) presumably for pets, although you can't interact with them.

There are two NPCs on the island, Tournament Announcer and Greg, both of which are flagged as "Dalaran Pet Tournament Employees".

You can't interact with them at the moment, however the Announcer has some amusing dialogue.





It's still unknown what this area will be used for, however if the NPCs are any indication, a new Pet Battle Tournament could be in the works for Legion. We look forward to learning more as testing continues!

Want to prepare for the upcoming Legion battles? Check out the new boss pets Wowhead datamined from the latest Legion Alpha patch.

New Pet Models
No new pets were added in the recent Legion Alpha patch, however datamining revealed some interesting models — a bat, corgi (pictured below), and celestial hippo and rabbit.


We can only hope that these new models will belong to upcoming battle pets that we can collect!

If you love Pet Battling and dinosaurs, we've the perfect pet for you. You're sure to dino-score with this month's pet — Zandalari Kneebiter!

Collecting the Zandalari Kneebiter
The Zandalari Kneebiter is a pet that drops from Zandalari Dinomancers on the Isle of Giants, located in the sea north of Kun-Lai Summit, Pandaria.

The Dinomancers are level 90-91 hostile elites. There are roughly eight areas on the island where these NPCs spawn. Most come in packs of two or three, with only a few spawning in as single pulls.

Defeating Dinomancers is fairly straight forward, however it's important that you interrupt their heal. If allowed to complete the cast, the heal will bring them back to full health. After reaching 50% life, they will no longer heal themselves and instead transform into a dinosaur (a neat ability!).

The largest number of Dinomancers can be found on a boat just off the south-eastern coast of the Island of Giants. However, be wary of the level 92 rare elite, War-God Dokah, that also spawns on the boat. Unfortunately, he does not drop any of the Zandalari Raptor pets, but he can be avoided.

Traveling around the island to reach each pack of Dinomancers can be dangerous for characters sub-level cap. A max level character should have no problem safely moving around the zone and killing the NPCs.

All of the mobs found on the Isle of Giants are level 90+ elites. Flying is not permitted on the island, which can add to the difficulty of getting around.

Using an Intact Direhorn Hide while on the island can help reduce the distance at which the dinosaurs and Dinomancers agro onto you. This item can be purchased from friendly NPCs at a camp on the western side of the island.

The Zandalari Kneebiter is but one out of four possible raptor pet drops. With RNG being RNG you might need to kill many Dinomancers until you find your own Kneebiter.

This pet also comes in four different breeds — another reason to spend even more time on the Isle of Giants if you're looking to collect them all. But don't stay for too long; you might turn into a fossil yourself!

Battling with the Zandalari Kneebiter
The Zandalari Kneebiter is one of the most powerful solo pets in the game. That power comes from that one two punch of a combo in the form of Black Claw and Hunting Party.

Hunting Party functions similarly to Swarm, but deals more damage. It also has a cooldown and a shorter Shattered Defenses duration to compensate for its raw power.


The big combo comes when you add in the second slot ability Black Claw (pictured above), the strongest additive buff in the game. When you get that Hunting Party’s Shattered Defenses buff too, that extra additive damage gets doubled as well.

The obvious finisher is Bloodfang, which deals a good bit of damage for a decent heal, but again, when combined with Shattered Defenses a ‘good’ damager can get just plain silly.

The other three choices in the first three slots aren’t nearly as effective, generally speaking. On many other pets they’re passable beast moves, but in the Kneebiter they’re outstripped by the power of its other three moves.

A case could be made for Leap and its 100% speed modification over Bloodfang, depending on the fight. Bite is a decent, no-frills move, but Hunting Party’s big DPS and multiplier makes that far preferable. It’s rare that Screech is ever a preferred move, but side by side with Black Claw it’s a no-brainer.

The Zandalari Kneebiter is a dino-mite pet that deserves a place in a battler’s arsenal.

Battling Discussion on the Zandalari Kneebiter

Pet of the Month is co-written by Liopleurodon, an experienced pet battler and long-time WoW player. She maintains her own Pet Battle blog and is a Pet Battle columnist on the fansite Blizzard Watch.

Color Me Golden
Wowhead dug straight into yesterday's Legion Alpha patch and discovered what appears to be the Unborn Val'kyr's long lost sister! [source]


The val'kyr (pictured above, image courtesy of Wowhead) is a recolored version of the Unborn Val'kyr. An icon was also datamined, called "valkiergoldpet".

It's unclear if collectors will be able to obtain this golden version, but we can only hope!

MMO-Champion also discovered a manafiend that received the gold treatment in the latest Alpha build. [source]

Similar to the val'kyr, it's unknown if this manafiend (pictured right, image courtesy of MMO-Champion) will be available to pet collectors in Legion.

It would be neat to round out the manafiend collection with a new color. We'll have to wait and see.

The More the Merrier
Even more boss pet NPCs was added to the Legion Alpha. [source]

Some interesting additions are Stitches Jr. Jr. and Lil'idan. Two val'kyr boss pets will be making an appearance as well, Harbinger of Dark and Herald of Light. It's possible that the latter will use the golden val'kyr skin pictured earlier.

With more boss pets means more pet abilities. There were adjustments to a few pet abilities, plus a number of new ones in the patch. [source]

One particular ability, Magic Scales used by Chromadon, is reminiscent of Stitches Jr. However, instead of ignoring attacks that deal less than a certain amount of damage, Chromadon will ignore attacks that deal more than 250 damage. We look forward to all of the strategies developed to defeat this boss pet!

A Dusty Surprise
Last week, Blizzard Watch reported that one of their staff stumbled upon the cleverly hidden Dust Bunny while on Legion Alpha. [source]

This adorable wild pet is tucked away in the barber shop in (new) Dalaran. Clicking on the rug (pictured right) located in the center of the room will reveal all the dust the Magical Broom has swept under there. In the form of a bunny, of course.

The Dust Bunny is a level 25 wild pet, and can spawn in as any quality (poor up to rare). It's a single spawn and does not come with a team of two additional pets.

Being a wild pet, it can be killed by player attacks and abilities so be careful where you wave your sword! Thankfully, the rug has a relatively short respawn time of roughly 15 minutes.

You can resummon as many of these dusty pets as you please, but you can only capture the max number allowed in the Pet Journal (3).

Others can step in to battle and collect the Dust Bunny if you are unable to; it is not personal-spawned.

This is an adorable and easy to collect pet that you don't want to miss out in Legion. If you're allergic to dust, you may want to take an antihistamine first!