Monday, September 30, 2013

Celestial Tournament: Week Three

The third week the first round of Celestial Tamers are: Blingtron 4000, Wise Mari, and Shademaster Kiryn.

Wise Mari
{Crow, Mechanical Pandaren Dragonling, Eternal Strider}
The crow is faster than Wise Mari's first pet so lead off with Alpha Strike. Second round Call Darkness, third round Nocturnal Strike. Alpha Strike until Wise Mari's first pet dies then swap to your Pandaren Dragonling. Decoy and then Flame Breath until you kill the second pet. Bring in your Strider then Pump, Water Jet, Heal, and then just Pump until you win.

Blingtron 4000
{Sea Pony, Electrified Razortooth, Fel Flame}
Start out with your Sea Pony, or any water strider pet. Pump, water jet, and pump, and the first of Bling's pets will be dead. Swap to your Razortooth, or any other elemental pet with beast attacks. Bleed, Blood in the Water, Water Jet, refresh Bleed, the second pet will die pretty fast. When Bling's last pet (Lil'Bling) comes out put up bleed, and hit Blood in the Water if it's up again, then Water Jet until your pet dies. Swap to your Fel Flame and toast Lil'Bling until he is dead. I had a nice combo of Immolate, Conflagrate and then Burn to fill in until I needed to refresh Immolate or Conflagrate was off cooldown.

Shademaster Kiryn
{Flayer Youngling, Terrible Turnip, Amber Moth}
At first I tried an undead pet against Kiryn's first pet, however that stupid yeti has a critter attack so that failed miserably. I swapped over to the Flayer Youngling so that it would take less damage from the Yeti's main attack. Just kick every time it is up and hit Blitz otherwise. Once the yeti is dead switch in your Terrible Turnip, change the weather to sunshine, and then Tidal Wave to make sure the Turrets die. Leech Seed if you have a chance, but only if you won't take an extra round of turret damage. When your Turnip dies swap in the Flayer to finish the second pet and to whittle down the third pet as much as possible. Kick and deflection are pretty nice against the third pet. Finish off with your moth, cocoon is handy vs the prowled attack from Kiryn's wolf.

Chi-Chi
{Corefire Imp, Silkbead Snail, Festival Lantern}
I changed up my Chi-Chi team this week as well. I got a snail leveled up and used that instead of the previous Vicidius Globule. Ooze Touch and Acidic Goo are pretty much all you need, but Dive is good to use when Chi-Chi has his dodge ability up. So still lead off with the Corefire Imp with Immolation and wild magic, but then bring in the Snail for Acidic Goo and Ooze Touch. Because critters take less elemental damage I never even needed to bring in the Festival Lantern at all this week. If I level up another snail or two I'll swap my Chi-Chi team to be entirely snails.

Sunday, September 29, 2013

Random Shrine of Two Moons Screenshot

Of course he sells meat:

Monday, September 23, 2013

Celestial Tournament: Second Week

Work has been kicking my ass lately so I've been a bit WoW deprived this week. Hence I didn't get to look at this week's Celestial Tournament until Friday. This week's trainers are Wrathion, Taran Zhu, and Chen Stormstout.

Chen Stormstout
{Robo Chicken, Kun-lai Runt, Chuck}
Robo Chicken will handily take out Chen's first pet, a beast. Once that is dead keep your Robo Chicken in until it gets put to sleep. Only then swap the Kun-lai Run in. Proceed to have your Runt Mangle and Rampage until Chen's critter is dead. Then swap in Chuck; Bleed then Blood in the Water, and Surge until the alemental is dead.

Wrathion
{Turtle, Anubisath Idol, Peddlefeet}
Wrathion of course has a team full of dragons. His first dragon is undead with lots of small elemental attacks. Send in the turtle first to Shell Shield and then wear down Wrathion's first pet with Powerball. After that swap in the Anubisath Idol, and put up Stoneskin to take care of the remaining dots. Then just Crush until dead. Bring Peddlefeet in and fill Wrathion's last pet full of arrows.

Taran Zhu
{Ghostly Skull, Fossilized Hatchling, Giant Bone Spider}
Taran Zhu has a team of all monks, so I have lined up an all undead team to take them out. Lead off with the Ghostly Skull and hit Taran Zhu's first monk with Ghostly Bite. It'll stun your Skull, but the monk will take that turn to feign death and swap out anyway. Shadow Slash until your Ghostly Skull dies and then use Unholy Ascension. The timing of this is a bit tricky because the second monk doesn't use blind on CD, so do your best to actually get Ascension to hit. You can still win if it doesn't. Bring in the Fossilized Hatchling second for Bonestorm. Again try to time your abilities so that you use Ancient Blessing when blinded and not Bonestorm. Interleave Bone Bite while waiting for Bonestorm CD. This should take out the first and second monk pets and seriously whittle down the third of Taran Zhu's monks. When your Hatchling dies bring in the Spider and Bone Bite again until you win.

Yu'la
{Pandaren Water Spirit, Chrominius, Hopling}
Because of Wrathion's dragon team I needed to swap out a few humanoids from my Yu'la team. I kept the Hopling, but lead with the Pandaren Water Spirit, and Chrominius. Send in the Water Spirit first, put down Geyser and Whirlpool, then swap to Chrominius for Howl and Surge. The timing should work out so that you are swapping in Chrominius as Yu'la is in the air, and your howl should go out in time to have Geyser and Whirlpool hit for full damage, as well as Surge. If that doesn't kill Yu'la the Hopling can finish things off.

I also tried out winning the Celestial Tournament with a character different from last week. The coins are bind on account so that won't affect anything. I was hoping to get the Rainy Day quest again, but no such luck.

Monday, September 16, 2013

Timeless Isle: Celestial Tournament

Friday night when we first got to the Timeless Isle I picked up the Celestial Tournament quest, but I knew that I didn't have time to fight seven different master pet tamers. Not when Kuan and Morn were ready to run around and explore all the things. I did take a moment or two while DraNgNon was afk to look at Lil Tommy Newcomer.

Yeah. He only has one pet... one pet that is fucking OONDASTA. So that was painful sucker punch, but he succumbed to a heavy hitting mecanical team. Lightning storm plus double ion cannon for the win.

{Sunreaver Construct, Darkmoon Tonk, Tranquil Mechanical Yeti}

Sunday I had breakfast and then sat down for the Celestial Tournament. I set up seven different dummy teams, and embarked upon my path of pet destruction. The basic format of the Celestial tournament is that you fight three Master Tamers and then four children of the celestials. You also can't heal your pets outside of a battle. Fortunately your character is also off in a solo scenario so you don't have masses of people watching to see how you do.

I've written up a guide of my teams I used for each tamer and all the celestials, but it uses a lot of rare pets. If anyone reading this is actually trying the celestial tournament look at the abilities I've used and swap in similar pets.

I have to admit that this is the closest I've come while playing WoW to taking my laptop and smashing it against the table while screaming in rage and fury. I had to pause and log out a few times just to keep from losing my shit. These master tamers are hard. Individually each fight is roughly as difficult as some of the harder Pandaren Masters, but the fact that you can't rez pets in between adds a whole new level of difficulty. Choosing teams so that you have enough strong pets for each tamer and celestial is a tricky balancing act. Any bad rng means you need to start the entire thing over again.

Celestial Tournament Guide

The first three tamers rotate in and out. This week they were Lorewalker Cho, Dr. Ion Goldbloom. and Sully "The Pickle".

Lorewalker Cho
{Legs, Fel Flame, Minfernal}
Cast Focus Beams twice and then Mana Surge, Legs will die before he gets another ability off, but the owl will be dead. Bring in the Fel Flame and go to town with Flamebreath and Conflagrate. If your Fel Flame lasts long enough dot up Cho's third pet. Bring in the Minfernal and immediately hit Meteor Strike, you really need to avoid the big hits when the Cho's dragon is buffed. Then just smash away with Crush until you win.

Dr. Ion Goldblom
{Netherspace Abyssal, Pocket Reaver, Emerald Protodrake}
For some reason I had a lot of trouble with this tamer. I think I could benefit from swapping the Emerald protodrake for another pet that had dragonkin attacks but wasn't vulnerable to magic or humanoid damage. Anyway I sent the abyssal in, and hit immolate, dotted the enemy pet, meteor, and then swapped out, which synced with the flyer feigning death. Pocket reaver comes in and punches the second pet (beast) until it is dead. Keep punching until your reaver dies. This will take out the beast and the flyer unless you're super unlucky. Swap the protodrake in and flame the 3rd pet until it's dead.

Sully the Pickle
{Jungle Grub, Calico Cat, Gilded Moth}
A snail would have been really nice here, but I made do with a Jungle Grub. Acidic Goo, then Burrow, then Gnaw. Refresh Acidic Goo on the rabbit and hold out as long as you can to let the Haunted debuff fall off. With the Calico Cat just Pounce on the rabbit as much as you can. Use Prowl if the rabbit burrows. Bring your moth in for the otter, which will lead off with a dodge attack to don't use Cocoon until after that has been cast.

Once you defeat the initial three tamers you get to face off against the children of the Celestials.

Xu-fu
{Dragon Kite, Darkmoon Zeppelin, Tranquil Mechanical Yeti}
Xu-fu is Xuen's child. He's an adorable lil white tiger, who will devour pets if he kills them and get an absolutely huge heal. I went with a team that was similar to what I use for Greyhoof in Valley of Four winds. I opened up with Dragon Kite's Lightning Storm. Quickly swapped in the Zeppelin and put up Decoy, then pounded away with missile. Swap the Zeppelin out just before you think it will die. Tranquil Mechanical Yeti can punch Xu-fu as much as needed until you can finish him off with Ion Cannon.

Zao
{Sunreaver Construct, Clockwork Gnome, Darkmoon Tonk}
Zao hits hard and will heal half his health with wish if you don't kill him soon enough. Just like Xu-fu I opened up with lightning storm, then swapped in Clockwork Gnome to lay down turrets and punch him in the face. When the gnome died I used the Darkmoon Tonk's lovely combo of Shock and Awe and then Ion Cannon to finish Zao off.

Yu'la
{Kun-lai Runt, Hopling, Anubisath Idol}
Yu'la child of Yu'lon was a cute little jade dragon. I went with an all humanoid team to take her out. I chose humanoids with stuns and abilities that hit hard, like Crush. Yu'la's shield mitigates a lot of damage and he also flies up to entirely avoid a fair amount of damage. Fortunately he is pretty slow do you can get some nice stuns off with your hopling. Deflect the liftoff when using your idol, restart the fight if your Kun-lai Runt doesn't freeze Yu'la to start with.

Chi-chi
{Corefire Imp, Vicidous Globule, Festival Lantern}
I had the most trouble with Chi-chi. I've found that the magic pets I have seem to have low health. So it felt difficult to do enough damage before my pets died. And the usual magic family ability of not taking a single big hit is thwarted by Chi-chi's multi-hit attack. I eventually went in with Corefire Imp for Immolate and Wild magic. Then swapped to Vicidious Globule and used Expunge every time it was up. Then tried to finish off with the Festival Lantern's Flash and Light. If rng had been particularly unkind I could bring back the Corefire Imp for a last hit or two. Just watch the cooldown of Chi-chi's dodge ability; don't waste an ability with a CD when it is up.


At least once you beat the Celestial Tournament for the first time you immediately have enough coins to get a pet.

Saturday, September 14, 2013

Minfernal!

I'm a bit delayed posting this, but about three weeks ago I finally caught a Minfernal and got the Zookeeper title. My months of stationing Kairon in Felwood finally paid off. Just before I logged out one Saturday night Kairon did a fly over of the fel pools. There on a hill slightly to the east of the southern most pool was a lovely Minfernal just hanging out, waiting for my Terrible Turnip.


It was a green quality, but I got a Flawless Magic Battlestone the next day.


I think this means that the only battle pets I have left to capture are the Sumprush Rodent and the Unborn Valkyr. Looks like it's time for Kairon to camp out over Northrend.

Saturday, September 7, 2013

Why Niuzao is an Ox, anyhow.

Clara posted a great picture of Niuzao and said he was her favorite Celestial in the game, he was the god of tanking.  I wanted to follow up on that a little.

The Pandaria Celestials don't quite match the Chinese ones.  Yes, there's a Vermilion Bird in the south, and the Azure Dragon in the East, but White Tiger is in the West, and in the North, is the Black Tortoise.  For a while we puzzled over how Blizzard came up with a Black Ox to replace the Tortoise, although doing so made sense since there were already turtles all over the continent and it would be boring.

But I figured it out last month, after quite a bit of websurfing*.  the Black Tortoise Celestial is Xuan Wu, or Pak Tai - the god of martial arts - yes, yes, those are all wikipedia links - and the legend is conflated, or possibly the same (as an cultural outsider I am not sure really) as that of Xuan Tian Shang Di.  and I tripped across this reference to how he came to be a god, citing an analysis ofthe 1602 "folk novel" Beiyouji (Journey to the North) by Yu Xiangdou and summarizing the novel:

The novel describes Xuan Tian Shang Di as going through four mortal reincarnations in the course of the story, at least three of which are as princes of nations (9-10). He is shown, through the use of a mirror, that his original identity was the Jade Emperor, and told that he can either work towards becoming an Immortal or become an ox in his next reincarnation.

so.  Kudos to Blizzard for actually not being totally random in replacing the Tortoise with an Ox.  Makes me really wonder just how much they are paying their research people though.  English references to the work Beiyouji outside of scholarly work are hard to get.  I haven't found an English translation of it either, and while I haven't looked hard, I did poke around more than just searching amazon.com.

*as to why I did all this websurfing, at first it was not becuase of wow, but becuase I also got sucked into the Journey to Wudang novels and I like to get my mythology from closer to the source.  but I quickly realized what reading tied into Pandaria and wanted to share.


somewhat related:  here are some pictures of the temple to Xuan Wu at Wudang - what a great comparison to the Pandaria art in the game.

Friday, September 6, 2013

Random Monk Screenshot

Sucan, my lowbie monk, was up in Peak of Serenity doing his daily quest for extra XP. This was the panda I challenged that day.

Tuesday, September 3, 2013

Ephoenix