Warcraft Garrison Pet Battles : Two Pet Strategy for Elekks and Others

Trying to find a good strategy for some of the Garrison pet battles can be frustrating, particularly when you're just starting out and you only have a few pets leveled to 25. If you're trying to work on two-pet strategies so that you can level your pets to complete the Awfully Big Adventure quest with the Elekk, you may find yourself yelling at the screen and pounding on the mouse as that frail little garrison visitor suddenly demolishes your whole team in three blows.

There've been some changes recently, and now most garrison pet battles award only a trivial amount of experience.  However, the tokens you win each day allow you to upgrade several pets, so it's a pretty reasonable tradeoff.

There are differences in individual pets' health, speed, and power-to-hit.  This and the "random number gods" make every pet battle different.  These two pet strategies allow you to field a third pet (I suggest something level 15 and above) to take care of those cases where two pets just aren't going to take down the garrison challenge.

Let's start with some terms:

All pets have two rows of 3 actions that you can pick from.  When web pages talk about pets, they will usually add the setup that they have for that particular battle -- in this case, arcane blast is the first thing you can choose and it's on the second row, as is life exchange.  Moonfire, the third action we want for this pet is on the top row.

So if I'm telling you to use this pet and this setup, I would say "Sprite Darter Hatchling (2,2,1)"  If I'm giving you a specific pet strategy, I will use the slot number instead. So, if I want your Sprite Darter Hatchling (2,2,1) to first do Moonfire, then Life Exchange, then Arcane blast, I would say "strategy: 3,2,1"

NOT ALL PETS ARE CREATED EQUAL.  If you look at your Sprite Darter, you may see that your health or speed is different.  That means your attack effectiveness will be different than mine.  You can either go hunt the specific pet type that you need or use some alternatives -- where I know alternatives, I'll list them.

Got it?  Okay, here, starting from the Quintessence of Light, are the pet strategies I use.  These are two pet strategies, so you can put whatever you like in the third slot.



 Quintessence of Light
* Sprite Darter Hatchling (2,2,1)
*Nether Faerie Dragon (2,2,1)
*ANY
*Strategy: 3,1,2,1,1,1 rinse, lather, repeat

Blingtron 4999b and friends 
* Singing Sunflower (1,2,1) (slow but reliable fight)
* Nether Faerie Dragon (2,2,1) moonfire, life exchange
*ANY
* Strategy: start with sunlight, keep up photosynthesis
ALTERNATE: Ruby Droplet(2,2,2) or Blossoming Ancient for first pet  OR Mechanical Frostboar(2,2,1)plus Ikky (1,1,1)  Black claw and flock them to death.

 Stitches JR.

 WARNING:  THIS FIGHT IS VERY RANDOM-NUMBER-GODS (RNG) DEPENDENT - If your pet does less than 500 damage to him, he will ignore that damage.
* Nether Faerie Dragon (2,2,1)
* Water strider/ mirror strider/etc strider (2,2,2)
* Any water with "pump"
* Strategy:  Nether Faerie Dragon (2), swap, Strider (2,3,3) bring out NFD, rinse, repeat
ALTERNATE: Nether Faerie Dragon(2,2,1), Mini Mindslayer,(2,1,2) Zao, calfling of Nunzao (2,2,2) STRATEGY: (3,2,) swap (3.2.1) swap (3)

Hanos-Fatos-Manos
* Mechanical Pandaren Dragon (1,1,2)
* Winter's Little Helper (2,1,2)
* any third with 800 health (swap in and out when Manos comes in)
Strategy:  (3,2,1,1,1(etc)) Winter's helper (2,1,3,1 etc) -- she really takes them down fast.

Squirt - one of the few garrison battles where you can level a pet!
*Scourged Whelpling (2,2,1)
*macabre marionette(2,2,2)
*any third with 800 health.  Swap when Puzzle (3rd pet) enters and immediately swap back to Marionette.
*Strategy:  Whelpling - spam 3,2,1,1,1 until whelpling dies.  Bring out Marionette, spam 3, 1,1,3. 

Rukus
* Lil' Bling
* Darkmoon Zeppelin
* any mechanical over 700 health

World of Warcraft Garrisons (Alliance)

Ah yes... SilverGeek is also a Warcraft junkie.  I've been enjoying the new expansion, though learning what to do with the garrisons has been a bit of a head-scratcher.  Although I play-tested both the alpha and beta releases, I was more interested in the quests and storylines and details than I was in playtesting the garrisons.

Still, they're a lot of fun, and it's been interesting to work them.  This set of notes is a general "guide to starting a garrison" as learned (the hard way) by me.

HEARTHSTONES:
The best bit of advice I got was to keep your old hearthstone along with the new garrison hearthstone. Yes, you can use the portals on Ashran (the PVP island) but those are useful only if you want to go to Stormwind or Ironforge.  If you want to go to (say) Shattrath or Darnassus, you have to take the long way around.  Setting your old hearthstone to the main shrine in Pandaria is a much easier solution.

One of the features you'll notice with garrisons is that you do (ugh) get the old "city chat channels" by default.  One of the NEW things you'll notice is that they've limited how frequently you can post something to the chat.  There's less stupid "impress the world" chat and a bit more useful information on it.

BUILDING THINGS
The first building you will learn for your garrison is your barracks, which teaches you how to put buildings in the garrison.  Once it is finished, a reward announcement shows up along with a button that you can drag to your action bar.  You will want to keep this on your action bar -- if you get in trouble or you're trying to take down an elite, clicking on this button gives you reinforcements.

When you go into new areas, you will be able to build a "garrison outpost."
I built the Guardian Orb at Ft. Wrynn because the damage from this lasts longer.
I built the Shredder at Highpass because it gave me a mobile "tank"
I built the Trading Post in Spires of Arak
I built the Tank in Nagrand because it gives you a nice solid fighting vehicle for ten minutes.

 I'm not wimpy, but I don't like dying and I don't like repair bills.

 Shortly after you garrison is in place, other building plans will drop for your professions (though there's no 'kitchen' for cooking.)  You will find that your professions act in very different ways now.  You will eventually get a mine where you can mine ore, and a fishing shack.   At level 95 you can build a lumber mill, at 96 you get a herb garden.

These three professions give you a unit of currency called "garrison resources" (and later, apexis shards).  Gold is not that hard to collect in Draenor, but other things like the apexis shards and garrison resources can be a hard grind. 


LUMBER MILL:
Build this rather than the other choices.  Lumber mill generates Garrison Resources.  The other buildings don't.

DAILY TASKS:
If you are undergeared or don't like wasting time (or are a caster with low DPS), get one of the people in your garrison to follow you around as you collect herbs from your herb garden or mine or do other collection tasks.  Occasionally you get jumped by mobs, and your follower will help you kill them quickly.  Anytime there's a quest inside your garrison (the "seismic" one, for example), get a follower to help.


FOLLOWERS:
Be choosy about which missions you send them on.  Each mission costs (usually 5-10 garrison resources) and you can choose ones that give YOU (yes, you) experience or the occasional epic object or gold (most often) or garrison resources.  My first time through I sent them off on every available mission.  When I hit level 100, I found myself resource-short for garrison upgrades.

At level 95 (or near there) you will get the quest that gives you blueprints for a level 2 barracks.  When you do this, you can go to your "architect board" and assign yourself a bodyguard that follows you all over Draenor and helps you kill things.  This is a great timesaver, because things die faster with help.

EXTRA RESOURCES:
Not everyone in your garrison is honest.  As you prowl around, you will find pilfered supplies (the guy in your fishing pond, the pug... and so forth.)  These are "one time" resources but still pretty handy.