Targeting specific breeds during wild pet battles

Gameplay Pet Battles
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I Googled this query and was unable to find any specific information about this, so maybe the WoW community who is more familiar with pet battling can answer this: “Is it possible to determine the breed of a battle pet in the wild, before you catch/tame it?” I have noticed that when I use Wowhead to look up a wild battle pet that I’m interested in to try to determine its breed, I can’t. The numbers don’t match up. Like, at all. I match up the rarity and the level, of course, but none of the breed options match the actual pet that I’m actually in the middle of fighting.

(If it matters, the pet I am looking for/at is the Void Shardling, in McAree/Eredath in Argus.) In this specific case, most recently, I was SO SURE that I was catching a Speed breed pet (100% Speed), because in the wild before catching, the pet had a speed stat that was higher than its power; and for the matching rarity and level (in this case, grey level 25), the ONLY breed according to Wowhead that had a speed stat higher than its power was the 100% Speed breed… but then after I caught it, and it squished to level 23 (as is normal), it COMPLETELY switched breeds on me – now the power was higher, and it ended up being a 100% HEALTH breed!

What???

I’m just so confused about this. I understand not being able to target specific breeds, I guess, but… it completely switched. I don’t understand how or why that can happen. So does that mean it’s completely impossible to even target specific breeds, until you’ve caught it? And then you have to just… battle it, catch it, kill the other two pets, look at the stats, compare to Wowhead, and then release it when it doesn’t end up being the breed you want, so you can make room to catch the ones you do want…?
I fully expected to be able to look at the stats after I engage in the battle, compare it to Wowhead to see if it’s the breed I want, and if it’s not (which will be the case most of the time for a pet like this that has 7 possible breeds), just white-flag myself out of the battle and move on to the next one…

I really hope I’m just missing something, or doing something wrong here, and this is all just a silly mistake on my part. :confused:

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Pet stats in the wild change then they’re caught. While it’s technically possible to calculate a breed of a pet you’re battling without addons, it’s 10000x easier if you use an addon like Battle Pet BreedID.

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Using the WarCraftPets calculator, a level 23 grey S/B Shardling shows Speed (205) higher than Power (202), so that alone isn’t a guarantee of a pure Speed S/S pet. The S/S has a speed a LOT higher than power.

BattlePetBreedID is great, sometimes takes a short time to catch up with brand new pets but with an old-timer like the Void Shardling would have given you the right breed info.

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*Can change. They don’t always suddenly change, but it’s unsurprising if the breed does end up something else. Just wanted to point that out so as to not scare any newer battlers. It won’t always be RNG lol.

I second the Battle Pet BreedID addon. Again, since wild pet breeds can sometimes swap on you, even this addon can get the breed wrong. It’s still infinitely better than not knowing or having to determine the breed yourself.

6 Likes
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Other people in the thread have said it’s happened to them, but I can’t say it’s happened to me… Odd.

Anywho, I use a combination of Battle Pet Battle Stats & Battle Pet BreedID. I believe that’s the combo I have so it’s not just the icons, like a heart and a sword, but the actual breeds, like S/S, and so on. Or maybe it’s Battle Pet BreedID & PetTracker that does it. It’s one of those combos.

It shows me the breed of all the pets in the battle, as well as their numeric stats, like 311 power. The stats aren’t going to be as important in wild battles when you can see the breeds, but it comes in handy when facing NPC teams.

1 Like
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Nice to know some things haven’t changed since I quit WoW over two years ago. I find that most of the time, the breeds of the pet I capture and the breed I end up with are a perfect match. Note, I said “most of the time.” Then there are times like what you’re describing, and the breed you capture is not the breed you end up with. The only thing I can say is catch and release, try again, until you get the breed you need.

Thankfully, this doesn’t happen often, and breed often isn’t an issue for what I do anyway.

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Thank you very much to everyone who replied! I really appreciate the Addon recommendations as well; I will be installing those shortly :slight_smile:

It’s relieving to know that the breed doesn’t always switch upon capture. Hopefully those Addons will help to make this process of hunting specific breeds faster; I imagine that it will!

<3

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I have never had this happen to me and I have 1,731 unique pets, and until yesterday every pet I ever caught remained the same breed identity as prior to capturing it. Now I have 2 accounts and wanted to catch a white in color rabbit, in front of SW and need it to be a speed/speed variety. I captured it, then killed the rest and upon checking to see what it’s rarity was found that it was not a speed/speed but a power/speed on one then the next one it was a health/speed. So I released them as I only battle speed/speed rabbits and a few others in my normal battles. I put in a ticket and was returned with the reply to check the forums and to submit a bug report. That I am doing now. I had no idea that this was even possible to happen as with the 2,000+ pets I have battled and collected as I had 3 of each until I learned there was a limit… so all my dupes I released, except those that I could put in a cage. Then with all my excess pets loaded up a guild tab of my guilds to share these tradeable pets with guildies, and others.

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Don’t know if you’d noticed this yet but the Guild Bank isn’t a good place to store pets anymore. Some sort of maintenance on it several months ago made it impossible to see what the banked pets are without withdrawing them, otherwise they just show as Empty Pet Cages. And apparently trying to fix this must be a very, very low priority bug.

4 Likes
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There are two possibilities here:

  1. Level 1. It is sometimes not possible to tell from the stats of a Level 1 (and maybe 2 in some cases?) pet which breed it is. It’s a rounding problem with small numbers. Level 1 seems unlikely, but you did mention just outside SW gates, so I mention it.
     
  2. Addons. Are you using Battle Pet Breed ID and Rematch? If so, check in Rematch Options whether you have Battle Pet Breed ID specified as the Breed Source. I had that problem myself, and have heard it from a couple of others as well.

You can always check the correct stats for a specific Species, specific Level, and specific Rarity by going to their Statistics page on Xu-Fu’s or Warcraft Pets and selecting the right values to identify the Breed. For example:

https://www.wow-petguide.com/Pet/61080/Rabbit/Stats

https://www.warcraftpets.com/wow-pets/critter/rabbits/rabbit/ and choose the “Battle Stats” tab.

1 Like
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i was just going to mention this, that there are times for a few level 1 pets where Breed ID cant identify the actual breed due to there not being enough stats. Otherwise it has never been wrong.

The Black Lamb is a prime example that comes to mind. I still remember it took forever to get the right breed I wanted.

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I do have those 2 addons and the speed speed variety shows as a pink to purple arrow. Also, I have been doing this a long time after I caged and released almost all of my duplicate pets. I have a few that for their variety I have 3 speed/speed crows lvl 25 just for my PvP team and win a lot more often than not. I have certain pets duplicated, so I do not have to heal as frequently in multiple pet battles. In all of the ones that I have collected over the years, first without any addons… believe it or not, I didn’t even know what an add-on was for several years. I don’t know what I would do without them now. I look for the breed when I start the pet battle and it hasn’t always been that the border showed a visible color for poor - rare. This is why I check after caging so I can see if I need to use any stones. I have been using these resources for a while now. The only reason I was aiming for a white in color rabbit, I have a few brown ones that seemingly only come in brown. Thank you for your advice.

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I went on Warcraft pets, to see where I might be able to find another rabbit, that is white in color and plan to check a few of their listed places for higher lvl rabbits. Thank you

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I did… and that is just wrong I guess I should consider that… I have guildies that collect them from that bank tab then I went in and the whole thing, except for the ones, like the bell for the deer that comes around the winter holidays, if it is caged it only shows the cage and offers no tool tip or anything to identify the majority of the pets. Thanks

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There are a lot of white rabbits with an S/S speed breed. Some strats call for an H/P breed, so i would look at that one as well.

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But then you didn’t answer the important question:

  • in Rematch Options, is Battle Pet Breed ID specified as the Breed Source?

What happened to me, and to some others, is that somehow the Breed Source was changed to PetTracker, which was not showing the correct breed.

Wild pets stats change when captured, as well, which could be a factor here, given your description of an apparent change of breed after capture.

If your Breed Source is not set to Battle Pet Breed ID, you may be seeing the wrong breed.

Someone else should check me on this, but I don’t think the combination of Rematch and BPBID will produce those icon versions of breeds. I always see letters, like S/S and H/P. Could another addon be involved with Breeds here?

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Yes, it is specified as the breed source. Also, I use Pet Tracker which includes the journal along with Battle and Config. That may be the one that shows the symbols when you right click the pet to battle, it shows the H/P as well as a sword and heart combo that signifies the breed, it shows it on every pet regardless of their lvl. It’s just these white rabbits that are wrong… but I will try finding one higher lvl to see if that makes a difference. Thanks again.

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