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.

5 Likes
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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.

5 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