Pet Battles in World of Warcraft are my latest obsession. I love experimenting with new abilities and team lineups to find unexpected combos that surprise my opponents. Whenever I find something particularly interesting, I’ll share it with you here and tell you how to get the pets so you can try it yourself. Happy hunting!

Role: Tank, Poke

Type: Mechanical (Rare)

Source: Dwarf Archaeology

Defining Ability: Build Turret

Tranquil Mechanical Yeti

Role: DPS, Weather

Type: Mechanical (Uncommon)

Source: Quest in Winterspring

Defining Ability: Call Lightning

The Clockwork Gnome excels at consistently pelting the enemy with a large number of small hits, and the Yeti adds a flat amount of damage to every attack dealt, which adds up fast. On top of that, the Yeti’s weather summoning also adds a flat 25% boost to all Mechanical damage.

Team motto: Hit ‘em softly, but hit them a million times.

Start every match with Tranquil Mechanical Yeti, regardless of counters on the enemy team. If your Yeti isn’t facing his worst nightmare (an Elemental pet with Elemental attacks that can stun and/or root), use his first turn to Supercharge. This will let the follow-up Call Lightning smash for about half of the health bar of his opponent in a single hit.

If your Yeti is facing a hard counter, just unleash Call Lightning and immediately swap in the Clockwork Gnome. The little mecha-midget’s ideal play is to (1) Build Turret, (2) Rail Gun/Metal Fist, (3) Rail Gun/Metal Fist, (4) Build Turret, (5) Repair. That allows you to bash the target down to half health, then start repairing while your turrets eat through the rest of the enemy.

This is great because it encourages your opponent into a risky move: going all out aggressive to try and kill your gnome before it can repair. If they attempt and fail, you have an easy victory. The safe move by the opponent is to swap in a pet that can stun/interrupt your Repair or absorb small amounts of damage (like Shell Shield), but that also forces them to waste a turn pet-swapping. Either way, your turrets are going to town while you heal.

Yeti don’t take star trash from elf minions!

Tranquil Mechanical Yeti:

This is either the easiest or most challenging part. The Yeti pet is crafted by Engineers who must skill up to 250 and complete a semi-lengthy series of quests in Winterspring to unlock the recipe and then farm the very specific list of materials needed to craft it from around the continents.

Or you can just buy one off the auction house for a healthy hunk of change, since they’re bind-on-equip.

I wanted to earn mine the proper way on my Monk, so I spent about a day on my level 95 Mage farming the ore and gems needed to powerlevel Engineering to 250. After tinkering my way up the Engi ladder, I completed the Winterspring quest chain in about 20 minutes and unlocked the recipe to build my own personal sasquatch. Another hour later, I’d farmed up the materials I needed to craft one.

Clockwork Gnome

It’s a rare reward from Archaeology, which can only come from Dwarf digsites. I got mine in Northrend’s Storm Peaks personally, but you should be able to collect it from any Dwarf digsite. Eastern Kingdoms is definitely the best continent to farm Dwarf Archaeology. The plethora of Troll digsites there also have a chance to unearth a different battle pet, so two birds and all that!

Crawdads can be remarkably aggressive when provoked.

If you want to go all-in on the mechanical on-hit strategy, you want a pet that does frequent mechanical hits divided into as many small chunks as possible (Batter). Such as:

Pet Bombling: Has an extra DoT to proc lightning strikes

Cogblade Raptor: Adds a debuff that adds more damage to every attack

Enchanted Broom: Not in the Mechanical family, so not as vulnerable to Elementals

Alternatively, you could try to shore up your weaknesses by including a counter to the archnemeses of this strategy: Elemental-heavy and shielding teams. To take down those, you want Critter pets with Aquatic attacks and heavy-hitters

Snails: Tanky Critter with an Aquatic attack, the perfect counter for Elemental pets

Crocolisks: Very aggressive, with heavy Aquatic DPS

Crustaceans: Tanky thanks to heals/shields, with one big Aquatic attack

Elementium Geode: Big burst damage to burn defensive pets trying to stall your Turrets

• 
  
• SUBSCRIBE to the WoW Battle Pet Crew podcast on iTunes or this RSS feed.
  
• FOLLOW me on Twitter or Google+
  
• MEET fellow battle pet tamers and discuss team strategies and the latest pet battle news in our Google+ Community.
  
• GUESS what the mystery pet on this week’s podcast is. The audio at the end of the show has the clues, and this week’s hint is: A lot of people earned this pet in the last week.