Squirt Character Leveling in Chromie's Draenor

Gameplay Pet Battles
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I’ve been gone from the game for a long time. I essentially skipped Shadowlands (I bought the expansion, but I only logged into it once). I recently resubbed for reasons that mostly involve the Emerald Dream and “retaking of Gilneas,” so of course I’ve got a fair few alts to level.

I appreciate all the choices that Chromie gives us to inject a little less monotony into the leveling process. During WoD one of my favorite methods of leveling alts was through pet battles with Squirt, and I was more than a little disappointed when that was disabled. I understand Blizzard’s logic in doing so at the time, even though I still disagree with it, but there was nothing else to do other than accept it and move on.

Anyway, the thought occurred to me today that if I chose Draenor as my leveling zone, maybe I’d still be able to gain character XP through the Squirt pet battle. I logged in, chose Draenor at Chromie, went back to my Garrison and queued up the fight. Of course, no character XP was granted, it was still just pet XP. I suppose there’s a possibility that if I had never played through Draenor and was building my Garrison for the first time it might work, but I suspect that is not the case. If someone else has any experience with that scenario, I’d be interested to hear it.

My question for Blizzard is: why not? Squirt pet battles were an excellent source of character leveling in WoD. I understand why it was disabled when Blizzard wasn’t encouraging us to return to older content for character leveling, but now that Draenor is a valid option for that, shouldn’t Squirt’s character XP rewards be enabled, especially for characters who choose to level in the Draenor xpac? I think it’s time to reexamine the philosophy that led to disabling character XP gains on pet battling NPCs in previous expansions given the Chromie system. Thank you!

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Legion still gives XP which is why that is always preferred over squirt. The one advantage to squirt was not having to use bandages, but most people have thousands of them at this point that squirt or even super squirt isn’t woth it. Also most legion fights are on par for speed as squirt or quicker.

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I was confused. I thought you meant that Squirt was disabled for leveling pets. And I was thinking, "That can’t be. I was leveling pets with her yesterday. But I see what you mean now. You can’t use Squirt for leveling your toons.

Well, I’m sorry that disappoints you, but – unpopular opinion – I don’t think Pet Battles should confer player experience at all. Leveling pets, yes, absolutely. But I don’t believe you should be able to get experience for your character when you’re not actually doing things with your character’s abilities.

I once complained in General Discussion that Archeology was conferring too much experience. I started as low as I was able, and started leveling up my ability, and boom, boom, boom, in rapid succession, I was leveling faster than I could get gear to keep up with my progression.

But as you say, you can see Blizzard’s logic. You can now go to Draenor at a very low level. Makes no sense to just use a repeated Pet Battle, especially in the safety of your Garrison, to level up to 70.

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Considering that we can buy boosts and skip actually playing the game for experience altogether, I don’t think it’s reasonable to dismiss certain activities as not worthy of player experience. I wouldn’t expect to acquire gear in such a manner, but player XP can and does come from literally anything.

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I guess we’ll have to agree to disagree on this, because I don’t think those are worthy of player experience, either. And just because there are wrong methods to acquiring experience, that doesn’t justify making more of them.

Simply put, your character should get experience when your character does character-related things. My Hunter gets experience when he kills mobs with his bow. I don’t believe he should be leveling up because his Pokemon critters beat other such critters.

But, hey, that’s just me.

But even though I don’t agree with the method of leveling up your toons, I get you’re disappointed, and I’m sorry about that. I guess Blizzard does away with this stuff because some players find loopholes to exploit, or because through foresight, they see something that has the potential to be exploited.

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Considering most hunters are Beastmasters, that should read “when they kill mobs with my pet”, which actually means the character shouldn’t be getting any XP either, by your logic.

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Do you even pet battle, bro? Let’s be clear: you can still get character experience from Legion pet trainers, as well as all the xpacs after it. The reason Blizzard used to disable character experience from pet battle NPCs in previous expansions is that they didn’t want characters returning to Draenor or some other older expansion to level their alts. Their design choice was that you were supposed to progress through Eastern Kingdoms/Kalimdor into BC then Northrend and so on and so forth according to the content levels at the time. Since then, there has been a design change that welcomes characters into older expansions as essentially current leveling content. Ergo, it makes sense to reevaluate the decision to disable XP gains on these pet trainers.

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There was no need for this.

I was trying to be nice in my dissent, even though I don’t agree with you. But yes, I do pet battle, and since you’ve chosen to be contrarian, “bro,” I have one of the smaller pet collections on here, but it’s still roughly twice the size of yours, Madame 630 unique pets.

You are in no position to talk down to anyone in this forum.

I’m aware of that, “bro.” But at the very least, when you get pet experience in Legion, BfA or subsequent expansions, you’re at least braving the environment to reach that pet.

Just today when I was doing a Pet Battle in Mechagon, I was attacked by some ubiquitous trash. Granted, since my toon was 70th level, they were a petty annoyance, but still had to be dealt with.

In the safety of your Garrison, there’s nothing that poses even a slight threat to you. The only time you’re in any danger whatsoever within the confines of your Garrison is when you initiate a invasion, and since Lio the Lioness beats a retreat when that happens, you wouldn’t be able to pet battle during that event anyway.

But you’d rather just level all your alts, without having to do a single thing with your character, other than turn around and ask for a free healing for your pets.

Regardless of the specialization, Hunters use bows. And are expected to, since Blizzard included all sorts of fancy-schmancy player-controls aside from the damage they do with their bows for the Hunter, including the Beastmaster.

Obviously, proficiency with the bow was included with the Beastmaster specialization design, perhaps not as emphasized as with other specializations, but still present; therefore killing mobs with the bow is using the Hunter as intended, and should confer experience.

So, kindly don’t preach logic to me. Your comment drips with ill logic.

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You’re right, your pet collection is bigger than mine (lololol) and more importantly you prefer to kill mobs to level your alts, so of course you are the superior player, even if you never, ever battle pet trainers for character experience EVER, because that would, of course, be beneath your far superior player style. Dude, you’ve been dripping with superiority and disdain since you started trolling this thread.

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My Survival Vulpera armed with a two-handed sword has entered the chat

And dwarves prefer rifles.

Which mostly goes to show your position is idiosyncratic and internally inconsistent. But at least you do accept that YMMV.

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Please. One of the joys of the Pet Battle Forum is that threads here so seldom deteriorate into arguing, something that’s so common to many of the other forums.

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How is it any different than using the repeatable trainers in Dalaran which do still give EXP?

i’ve leveled a good half dozen toons by sitting in Dalaran hitting space bar while binge watching a series.

I actually much prefer the Rydyr battle. Your pet only gets half EXP but your toon gets the full amount and each battle takes roughly 25 secs (The fastest squirt battle takes 60 secs). Some of the strats have pets that you can easily get 3 copies and rematch just keeps swapping the next one in. Cutting down on bandages.

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lol big ups homie

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I tried not to, but apparently, expressing a dissenting opinion, even politely, is trolling and dripping with superiority and disdain.

This wouldn’t have happened if certain people could just realize that not everyone is going to agree with them, and not to take contrary opinions like personal affronts.

I don’t approve of that, either. The only things that should give experience to your toon is when the toon functions in the ways that his class was designed to do.

Who can, and still does, use a bow.

As someone who once played a Dwarf Hunter, Dwarf Hunters prefer whichever ranged weapon, bow or rifle, that has the best stats. “No, I’m not going to use that bow with much better stats, even though I suffer no penalty for using it and I’m just as proficient with it as with a rifle. I prefer to use my rifle with much lower stats.”

Nah. I wouldn’t say that. That would be stupid.

I’m not the one that suggested that a Beastmaster should only get experience when he kills with his pet. As if the Beastmaster wasn’t designed to use a bow or rifle. Well, looking at the talent tree of my Hunter, I see the Beastmaster still has specialized abilities for his use of the bow (or rifle).

So, yeah. Beastmasters are intended to use bows (or rifles) and they collect experience for doing so, as they should.

So long, guys. I’m done with this discussion.

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It’s weird to me that you came here to voice opposition to the way Blizzard has always designed the pet battle system. My suggestion regarding Squirt is asking Blizzard to apply their current leveling system consistently.

Bye! Enjoy grinding all those mobs in Classic!

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If that were true, we wouldn’t get experience from gathering professions.

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